By the time Wei Chenxi is almost two years old, Wei Qing thinks she has a pretty good handle on her life. It’s hard to remember the Before. She hadn’t been unhappy, living in her own space, by herself—though very close to her family and the larger community. She would have been content to continue as she’d been. Pregnancy had been almost a whim, though she had not offered herself to the cause casually. Wei Ying had asked for help, and it was the first time he’d asked for anything for himself—even though he’d put it in terms of a gift for his husband—and she’d realized that part of her had been waiting for some chance to repay the debt her family owed for their lives.
She’s kept more tabs on Qishan than most. She knows how bad it got there, but she also knows how much worse it would have been. Wei Ying and Lan Zhan did not just pull her entire family out of the way of Wen Ruohan, they also pulled them out of the way of Zhao Zhuliu—now titled Taiyang Yunmie (太陽運滅,) the Sun’s Doom, rather than Huadan Shao, the Core Melting Hand—who had pursued every Wen cultivator he could find, until Qishan had very few cultivators at all, and none who did not swear direct allegiance to Taiyang Yunmie. She knows that, had the Dafan Wen stayed loyal to Wen Ruohan, the most they could have hoped for would have been a simple life without cultivation, if that. As close relatives of Wen Ruohan, they’d have been lucky to survive at all, had they not been warned to flee and hide.
Qishan is quiet now, but also haunted. She occasionally sends new batches of talismans, of spirit nets, even a few purifiers. Wei Ying doesn’t ask, has never asked, where they end up. She doesn’t even ask him directly, simply mentions the need to Wei Ning, who puts them on the list of things to do, and they get done. It is a debt that Wei Ying doesn’t even know exists, though he wouldn’t mind. What she sends helps the common folk survive in a haunted land without cultivators, and it is enough.
What she did not expect, in the fulfillment of this debt, was that it would transform her life so completely. She’d thought she would be giving them a child, but she has given them herself as well, and gotten back more than she could have imagined. She’d never felt a need for romance, for love. She’d never really wanted touch, or the complexity of navigating a relationship, but somehow, with them, the complexity had always been there, between the weight of a debt too large to ever truly repay and their easy affection, which has never carried with it any obligation at all.
They do not ask her to be less herself. They do not demand things she is unwilling to give. Her own parents’ relationship was always loving, but she has known so many that weren’t. Her uncle had talked about marrying her off for political purposes when she was barely old enough to understand what politics was, or even marriage. She’d been six the first time she’d stomped her foot and declared she would never marry.
She’s still not married, but the difference is subtle. She lives with her partners, often shares a bed with them, though they still keep their libidos focused tightly on each other rather than on her, by her own choice. She has borne one child for them. She thinks she might offer another when her body is ready for it, when Xixi nurses a little less, when her cycles return.
Wei Ying’s life is perfect. His responsibilities include playing with babies (not just Wei Chenxi, who is absolutely perfect in every way, right down to her deep streak of mischief, but also her close agemates, who show up at Lotus Pier on the regular. He remembers piles of bunnies. They have bunnies, but now he gets piles of toddlers, too,) and creating new cultivation tools. He doesn’t even have to nighthunt unless he really wants to, and honestly, the only time he wants to is in order to test his new toys. Their daughter is just old enough to spend the night with the grandmothers now and then, and they’ve had no trouble finding time to sneak off for more grownup play.
His last life exists mostly as an archive, stored away unless he pulls it out to look at it, which honestly, why would he? He wrote the book on that story before he was five, literally threw his old life at a wall and then stuck the memories into the mental equivalent of a locked chest in a closed room, except when needed. Madam Yu took care of everything that didn’t need his direct attention, and the peace is rich and deep and well-founded. The world they live in is not drowning in the resentment of old wars, because it can’t, he doesn’t let it. Neither do the people who are close to him.
His mothers still go out together, less nighthunting now and more preventive maintenance. Cangse Sanren and Tang Lijuan have become so well known for their efforts at reducing the number of children living on the streets that sometimes when they walk into a new town, people will immediately direct them to a struggling family or a child newly bereaved. Sometimes children walk into Lotus Pier, asking for the Kind Ladies. The mistresses of the other sects have taken their lessons to heart, and he knows that in this world, a child orphaned is not a child abandoned. It is the greatest gift they could possibly give him besides the fact that they are alive.
Only Lan Zhan and Wei Qing have given him greater. Not just the impossible miracle of his little girl, but in the way they both take him at face value and love him completely. In his last life, he loved them both, but always through a veil of grief and stress. In this life, he can throw his whole heart into it and have that affection multiplied as it comes back to him. They are both strength and softness and fiery competence and so very, very precious to him.
When Wei Qing asks for his help to make another child, there is not a moment of hesitation.
Lan Zhan remembers both his lives, but the grief of the old life makes this life all the sweeter; it does not rule him.
His mother lives. His brother is whole. His relationship with his uncle is loving. His father is still a neglectful, ineffective person, rarely seen, but Lan Zhan is now utterly clear that the fault is not his own, and that it is not genetic. The only things he has inherited from his father are a completely inadequate tolerance for alcohol and his height. Even there, he is taller than his father, having grown up in this life on the rich food and lively activity of Yunmeng Jiang. There has never been a meal skipped in punishment during a growth spurt or unnecessary fasting. He is a loving father, a doting husband, a considerate partner.
He visits Gusu Lan just often enough to remember why he left, though it is not as closed and restrictive as it was when he was young.
Keeping his memories readily accessible has been essential to maintaining his new life. He walks through Cloud Recesses and remembers fear. The fear is gone, but the habits remain. He sees the courtyard where he was beaten, the place he knelt waiting for his mother, the classroom where he learned everything about the words of the rules and nothing about the meaning, and then he returns to Lotus Pier and his mother and a life that makes sense down to his bones.
Wei Ying smiles for him all the time, and there is no pain behind the smile. Wei Qing leans against him and nurses his daughter and understands how sometimes he needs quiet because she does, too. Here are the people he can lay his whole self down before and have the gift received as a treasure.
He feels the building want in Wei Qing before she puts it into words, and waits for her words, because she will always need that. And of course he will give her what she wants. After all she has given to them, it could not be otherwise.
Xixi stops nursing quite so much after she turns two, and asks, as she often does, to spend the night with Nana and Nainai—who she usually calls just NanaNainai as a single word, for they are always together—who decide to meet with Xichen and his spouses at Koi Tower so all the cousins can play together. “Just stop by if you need to nurse,” Tang Lijuan says. “You know where to find us.”
Wei Ying, Wei Qing, and Lan Zhan go about their day normally—their daily routines are usually adjacent, but it is so common for one of them to be working alone that all three of them easily find occupation with their projects. Wei Qing indulges in a long bath in the afternoon.
Dinner is odd, though, without the piping voice of their little girl. Their connection makes for a mostly silent meal, but not one without discussion.
She’s gotten used to them understanding her before her thoughts are fully formed. But misunderstandings are still possible. Wei Ying’s, “Aw, I miss Xixi, too,” has completely missed the point of her image of an infant.
Lan Zhan knows, however. And he is the one who says, aloud, “Of course you can have another baby, A-Qing. Whenever you’re ready.”
Wei Ying looks between the two of them and says, “Aiya, is that what that meant?”
Wei Qing blushes, tightening the connection so that they can’t just pluck her superficial thoughts without her actively sending them, but not before Lan Zhan has picked up on the rest of it.
“She wants you to make her pregnant,” Lan Zhan says, and then flushes. “And no, I don’t mind.”
“Should we ask A-Ning to make another bamboo syringe?” Wei Ying asks, picking up his cup and taking a drink.
Wei Qing is scarlet as she sends him an image.
Wei Ying coughs and splutters and tea comes out his nose. Lan Zhan looks amused and intrigued, by the slight quirk of an eyebrow and a modest tilt of his lips.
“Or we could ask A-Ning for a syringe,” she says. “If you don’t want that.”
“I thought you didn’t… that you weren’t…”
“I usually don’t,” she says. “But I think… Usually with a child at the breast, we don’t have cycles for a while. There’s something protective about nursing that means feeding our own infants inhibits most conceptions. And my friends say that it is not uncommon for them to have times they are more interested or less interested. I’m just usually not interested. But Xixi went from nursing ten times a day to two, and my body…”
Wei Ying grins. “Are you broody like a chicken?”
She rolls her eyes. “I… yes, but it’s not just…” She stops, and lets him feel what she’s feeling. “It’s not like that very often for me. You know that.”
“We feel arousal differently,” Lan Zhan says. “But while the physicality of what you’re feeling is different, the emotional feeling is quite similar. Restlessness. Want. We can help. Whatever you need. The level of contact you are comfortable with. It could be brief. Or not.”
She nods. She has toyed with the idea of simply waiting until Wei Ying is close and then letting him finish in her. But if she’s going to go past her previous limit, she has enough curiosity to want the experience.
Their assent flows across the link.
She has watched them, felt what they felt during sex, so the process they go through with each other, in all its variety, is not strange to her. The idea of inserting herself into this process, of wanting to insert herself into this process, is wildly unfamiliar. She feels an ache of want—it could be just wanting a baby and this being the most expedient way—but also the idea of it, for once, is not completely unappealing.
She knows her own body well. She’s adept at finding her own release. It helps her sleep sometimes, not that she’s needed it since Xixi, as nursing is its own soporific. But her release is usually a much quieter and more inward-focused process than what she usually sees them do.
And she knows they’re paying attention to her internal process right now. Five years ago, the idea of two people listening to her mull things over—especially these things—would have been horrifying. But they have been privy to each other’s thoughts for longer than she’s been alive, and they are remarkably unconcerned about her mental dithering, even with something so intimate.
She can feel a thread of worry from Wei Ying. He doesn’t want to hurt her. That amuses her, because she knows that her body has accommodated an entire human being passing through it. She may not have had sex, but her hymen was a lost cause long before she got pregnant, somewhere between figuring out her own anatomy and riding horseback.
Lan Zhan is mostly curious. She looks at him, and then sends a mental image of how he might help, then smiles slow and wide as his ears turn pink.
Wei Ying is pinker, his flush goes down his neck—he was in that image, and she hadn’t glossed over what she’d imagined him doing.
Lan Zhan manages to push his embarrassment aside and say, “It might be better for you to be over him, so that you have control.” He sends back an image of exactly what he means, and Wei Ying makes an incoherent noise and hides his face in his hands.
“Wei Ying,” she asks, “will you be able to reach completion with me? I mean, because I’m a woman…”
Wei Ying does not uncover his face, but he nods.
“If he can’t, I have ways of making him climax,” Lan Zhan says. “It should not be an issue.”
Wei Ying groans.
“The question, really, is when,” Lan Zhan says.
“Ah,” she says. “The way I feel, tonight is good.” Then she looks at Wei Ying. “Unless you’re too shy to try?”
“There has always been a great misconception,” Lan Zhan says without irony. “People think that he’s the shameless one.”
“Wei Ying, are you ashamed of me?” she asks, teasing.
He lifts his head and looks at her. “Never.”
“Would you rather we use the other method?” she asks.
He closes his eyes. She can feel him sort through a complex range of feelings in a split second, and then he’s looking at her, and they have been so careful, for so long, not to look at her that way that her breath catches with it.
She can feel Lan Zhan’s eyes on her as well, and it’s dizzying to be the center of their shifted focus.
Wei Ying stands, and Lan Zhan is helping her to her feet, and she swears she only closes her eyes for a moment, but at the end of that slow blink, Wei Ying is right there, with one finger under her chin, nudging her to look up at him, and he’s so close.
“If we feel any hesitation,” Lan Zhan says in her ear, and he’s pressed up against her back, “this stops. If it’s too much, or doesn’t feel good, or just if you stop desiring it.”
She opens the link as wide as it goes and lets them feel the want, layered with the rarity of wanting.
Their eyes meet over her. Wei Ying’s hand reaches past her shoulder to Lan Zhan’s cheek, and then they bend.
Her eyes close again as Wei Ying’s lips brush hers, as Lan Zhan’s mouth finds the side of her neck. Her breath comes out as a sigh against Wei Ying’s mouth and he chases the sigh with his tongue, and it doesn’t matter how many times she’s felt them kiss each other, this is something else entirely.
It feels like drowning, but for once in her life, she wants to sink into it.
Wei Ying kisses her while Lan Zhan methodically removes each of the layers she’s wearing, down to the dudou. When she’s standing there, still being kissed, in only light trousers and the dudou, Lan Zhan shifts to undress Wei Ying, whose hands find a familiar stretch of skin on her back and spread across it, fingers warm like honey.
He’s touched her before, but this is different. This is touch with intent. His hands lift away one at a time as his sleeves are removed, but then return as fast as they are freed.
When his skin is bare, she brings up her hands, hesitantly, to rest her palms flat on the skin of his chest. Her hands move uncertain across his skin, and then more sure as she feels how it affects him for her to reach for him that way.
She finds herself studying this, the way she studies everything, until Lan Zhan, behind her again, slides a hand up under her top and brushes a nipple and thought becomes very difficult. Why her nipple is more sensitive to him than to the endless twiddling of their daughter, she has no idea and really doesn’t care because do that again.
She feels him smile against her neck, and now it’s Wei Ying’s hand sliding up behind her to untie her top, dropping it to the side. She’s having a hard time tracking whose hands are where, just that there are a lot of hands and a lot of sensation as the rest of her clothing falls away.
She’s able to focus a little better when it’s just Wei Ying, still kissing her, his hands feather-light on her bare arms, tracing out along her fingers. She likes the way he teaches her tongue to play with his. It should be stranger than it is, but she’s already familiar with the way he kisses his husband.
His husband, who is back, pressed long and warm against her bare skin, reaching around to untie Wei Ying’s trousers, his hands moving against the bare skin of her belly. There is a decided pressure against her back, and then Wei Ying steps out of his trousers and they are both pressed against her and it’s suddenly very real.
Without a word, they both take a half step back at her flash of anxiety. She shakes her head, and says, “Don’t be silly. Take me to bed.”
She squeaks a little as Lan Zhan scoops her up completely unnecessarily, carries her to the main bedroom, and gently sets her in the middle of the bed, Wei Ying following.
They are looking at her, but not touching. She flashes a little impatience at that, and Wei Ying lies down next to her on one side, Lan Zhan on the other, tracing the lines of her body. She can feel their curiosity, the way they catalogue her responses. She feels like she should be reciprocating but feels a burst of amusement from them at that idea because they can feel exactly how overwhelming it is for her to feel what they’re making her feel. And she can tell that they’re enjoying the novelty, too interested in her reactions to worry much about their own.
A flutter of a request comes through, followed by her assent, and then they’re bending to taste her skin, at the tender, sensitive places at her wrists, her throat, her belly. They move together to her nipples, tongues flicking, until she’s arching and gasping at the way the sensation radiates everywhere and then concentrates in a pulsing need and coiled want deep inside.
They linger, and then someone’s fingers trail along the inside of her thigh, chasing the pooling energy to touch lightly between her legs.
It’s so much, and not enough. A firmer touch, hesitation, then more confident, and she’s so keyed up that she flies apart quickly.
“Should we stop?” Wei Ying asks, aloud, as she shudders even after they’ve stopped moving, taken their mouths off her breasts.
She doesn’t manage words, but she manages a sense of don’t stop. be gentle. continue.
Wei Ying’s fingers slip down, and she can feel his curiosity at how wet he finds her, how very slick. Then his fingers are slipping in, curling up, and she’s arching again with a groan, then pushing her hips up because she can’t not move.
One of them, probably Lan Zhan, is making diligent mental notes about how her responses differ from theirs, noting with interest that her desire doesn’t wane after orgasm.
She opens her eyes to see them smiling at each other, across her, and then they both turn to look at her, and she can see herself in their eyes, mouth open, a slightly wild look. Their approval is radiant.
“Can I, A-Qing?” Wei Ying says.
She nods, and glances down. It’s not the first time she’s seen him erect, but it’s never been about her before.
“Do you want to be over me?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
Lan Zhan parts her legs as Wei Ying shifts to move over her, then reaches down to guide them together, his fingers lingering as Wei Ying slides in.
It’s not what she expected. She knows what they feel like together, but this is softer, slicker, easier somehow, and exquisitely sensitive after her orgasm. She can feel his surprise at the difference, feel him move experimentally, and then with more confidence as he senses that it doesn’t hurt her.
Lan Zhan keeps fingers there, on her clit, feeling his husband move in her, and starts to apply pressure and friction where it makes her react the most.
That’s when things start to blur as her body rises to another peak. Wei Ying’s mouth is on hers, and he’s moving steadily, deep and fast until his rhythm breaks and he’s crying out, shuddering into her.
Lan Zhan’s hand stills, Wei Ying withdraws, and Wei Qing is breathing hard as her body quiets.
They stretch out next to her, wrapped around her and their fingers entwining over her belly as her breathing settles. Lan Zhan is hard against her hip but doing nothing about it. She sends him a flash of questioning thought and he sends back what he intends to do to Wei Ying in a few minutes, and Wei Ying blushes and hides his face against her shoulder.
It’s adorable how he’s getting shy, now, and her hand comes up to thread fondly through his hair.
“You are well?” Lan Zhan asks, pushing up to one elbow. She turns to look up at him, and strokes his earnest face.
“Mn,” she says with a quick nod.
He smiles. “A-Qing is beautiful with Wei Ying.” His hand traces the small softness of her belly.
“You two are lovely together,” she says.
He looks his husband over, soft and still somehow predatory, and says, “Wei Ying is always gorgeous when he climaxes.”
Wei Ying groans. “This is why I get no rest.”
“Wei Ying may rest soon,” Lan Zhan says. “But not quite yet.”
“You’ll have to let him sleep some tonight,” Wei Qing says. “We should probably try again tomorrow if I still feel like it.”
“It was only once, last time?” Wei Ying says, sounding puzzled.
“If I still feel like it, might as well give it the best chance. I’m less… certain about the timing than I was then.” She gives a little half-shrug. “I probably won’t feel like it in a few days.”
“Was it okay?” Wei Ying asks.
She nods. “It felt good. But like, oh, a rich holiday food, not something for everyday.”
Lan Zhan coughs, and Wei Ying barks a laugh.
She snickers. “Yes, I know it’s a staple for you. But I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been remotely interested in the idea of it.”
A little bit later, Lan Zhan pulls himself away from her and moves behind Wei Ying, who is still plastered up against her side.
Her mind is still wide open to them, and she feels with Wei Ying as Lan Zhan presses his oiled cock to Wei Ying’s ass, gentle but inexorably pressing in. The pressure moves Wei Ying up, and she turns her face to his, to see him bite his lower lip and tip his head back.
She trails her fingers down his neck, her body responding to the shared sensation.
As Lan Zhan begins to move, their breathing synchronizes, and he’s looking past Wei Ying’s shoulder to meet her eyes, then shifting his weight forward onto the arm farthest away from her. Without breaking rhythm, he reaches over, and his fingers find her clit, not entirely gentle but she doesn’t mind, the intensity of it matches what he feels, what Wei Ying is feeling, and she is shaking with it. Wei Ying finds her mouth with his, and they are locked together like that, all three of them, until an orgasm ripples through them, as much from the mental echoes as from the physical stimulation.
Lan Zhan slides off Wei Ying and rolls onto his back, breathing hard.
Wei Ying shifts, turns, tucks his head on Lan Zhan’s shoulder, and then reaches back for her, finding one of her arms and tugging at it a little, a gentle “Come here,” accompanied by a visual of where he thinks she should be.
She laughs, reaches for one of the soft cloths they keep by the bedside, plops it on his chest, and then grabs another for herself. “Clean first,” she murmurs. “Too sticky.”
Lan Zhan makes a feeble grab at the cloth without opening his eyes, and Wei Ying sighs, then wipes the both of them down.
A moment later, she crawls over them even though she could go around, just to make them grumble, and then tucks her head against Lan Zhan’s other shoulder.
Someone sends a trickle of power and twitches their finger to pull the blanket up over them.
In the early morning, they’ve rolled away from each other, but they wake as Lan Zhan, kneeling between them, rolls them back.
Wei Ying squints up at his husband and says, “It is far too early to be awake.”
“You should try again, if A-Qing is willing,” Lan Zhan says, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world.
Wei Qing drags her eyes open. “So early.” The sun isn’t even up.
“Sleep after,” Lan Zhan says.
She raises an eyebrow at him.
He looks at them both, and then runs his hands up their bare legs, light, teasing, circling at the sensitive spots, and then says, “Should I let you go back to sleep?”
Wei Ying groans, stretching into the touch.
Wei Qing looks for her usual disinterest, but the strange desire is still there, and she knows Lan Zhan can feel it. Could probably feel it before he woke them. He follows her thought process, and then grins, and slides his fingers up her thigh and into her, pressing up to make her arch, thumb on her clit as he wraps his other hand, oil-slick around his husband’s cock.
Wei Ying flails a hand in her direction, finding her hand and threading his fingers between hers as he says to Lan Zhan, “If you make me come, this is beside the point.”
Lan Zhan stills the hand on Wei Ying, still toying with Wei Qing, and then slides his fingers down and under his husband’s balls to play with his rim.
Wei Qing can’t bring herself to mind that he’s clearly conducting an intellectual exercise and comparison, although she’s curious herself and can’t focus when he’s doing that. He brings her to the brink but not over it as he makes sure that Wei Ying is too awake to go back to sleep.
And then Lan Zhan sends an image of what he wants, and she knows they both feel when her body throbs at the idea of it.
It is dizzying how fast they go from sleepy play to Wei Ying spreading her open and fucking into her. She’s so worked up already that she feels him pass every single nerve as he slides in. Then Lan Zhan is behind him and the force moving Wei Ying into her is him, and none of them are going to last very long, but she’s reaching for both of them, feeling the cock moving into her past her fingers.
She can feel him still evaluating their responses as he drives Wei Ying into her harder, and it surprises her that she likes the pressure, the extra weight.
Wei Ying clings to her when Lan Zhan pushes again, unable to keep himself propped, and it’s like her soul is being pressed more firmly into her body, the weight of him, of them. She mouths his collarbone and wraps her legs up around him, where Lan Zhan catches them.
The pressure skirts the edge of tolerable, but doesn’t cross the line, and they’re all moving together, deep and fast and overwhelming.
The driving, relentless rhythm of it sends her over the edge, and that takes Wei Ying with her, which sets off Lan Zhan, and then the pressure is too much and they’re rolling off her as her body twitches with aftershocks. They all lay there, breathing in deep gasps of air, fingers touching skin but not moving.
Wei Ying starts to move toward her but there is a pulse of her more common need for space, and he leans back against Lan Zhan instead.
She’s not upset, just done. The backs of her fingers are still against his arm, and that’s fine, she just feels more in her body than she’s used to, and needs some time to adapt.
Lan Zhan is still deeply connected in the link and feeling for her responses, and there is a sudden burst of comprehension, followed by satisfaction and acceptance.
Wei Ying’s attention flicks from one to another and she can feel Lan Zhan explaining it to him, as she drifts back to sleep.
She wakes to the sound of water, the large bath filling, and some savory food-smell from whatever has been brought for breakfast. There are worse ways to greet the day.
Her body feels a little sore in places she’s not used to, and she directs spiritual energy to the relevant muscle fatigue until it goes.
Their link has faded, not quite gone, as it rarely goes completely anymore, just thready and needing renewal. She rises and finds the main house empty, so she grabs a bun and then follows the sound of the filling tub. In the other house, she finds Wei Ying enthusiastically screwing his husband against the wall, stops in her study to make tea, puts the bun on a tray with her teacup and sets it next to the bath.
The water stops as it reaches the right level, and she touches it to check the temperature. How they managed to fill it with the right amount of water at perfect bathing temperature while fucking is beyond her, but she’ll take it.
She wipes herself down with a cloth before climbing into the tub. Then she turns, sits, and picks up her tea.
Lan Zhan’s cheek is pressed against the wood of one of the outer wall posts, his arms bent, hands up over his head, Wei Ying’s hands gripping his wrists as he drives in hard.
Lan Zhan looks completely blissed out, eyes closed, and she looks for that feeling she’d had the night before, and in the early morning, and mostly she wants her breakfast.
They’re very pretty, and she finds herself pleased that they’re enjoying each other so thoroughly. It’s comforting. She eats her bun slowly, feeling the remaining grime and residual tension flow away.
Watching them, she’s pretty sure that they were exceedingly careful with her, even this morning, in a way they’re not being now. And that’s probably good.
Something changes in their rhythm, Wei Ying’s hand drops down to Lan Zhan’s cock and he’s moving faster, hand and hips, his mouth open on Lan Zhan’s shoulder until his hips thrust forward hard and still, hand still working until Lan Zhan spurts onto the floor.
Wei Ying turns his head and rests his cheek against his husband’s back, and his eyes open, meeting hers.
She holds up her teacup and nods a wry toast, and he gives a sheepish, bleary chuckle.
Lan Zhan’s eyes open, then, but he’s a little dopey yet, so they share raised eyebrows and then his eyes are closing again as Wei Ying pulls out.
Wei Ying guides him to the smaller bed, sitting him on a spare cleaning cloth, and then carefully cleans them both. By the time he’s done, Lan Zhan looks more present, and they join her in the bath.
“The wanting is gone?” Lan Zhan asks.
She reaches out and renews the connection with them, and he nods.
“So now we wait?” Wei Ying asks.
She nods. “It isn’t always the first time,” she says. “Sometimes it takes a few cycles. I don’t even know if my body is ready for it.”
Lan Zhan gives a wide, sly, close-mouthed grin.
Wei Ying sits upright and shakes a scolding finger at his husband. “Even if it doesn’t take this month, she might not want to, next month.” Turning back to her he says, “If you want to go back to the bamboo method, or if you want to try again this way, it should be your choice.”
She nods. “It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, you know that. I just… don’t want very often? And it’s hard to imagine wanting when I don’t. If I do…”
“…A-Qing will have what A-Qing wants,” Lan Zhan says. “Whichever.”
The little familiar ping doesn’t come.
But her flow does, a few weeks later. It isn’t a surprise that she's not pregnant—the two of them are so familiar with her body and her mind that they say nothing about it, though she can feel the little wistfulness from Wei Ying and something that Lan Zhan is not letting himself feel to spare them. That first night of flow, they send Xixi to the grandmothers’ and she curls up against Wei Ying while Lan Zhan massages her back until she falls asleep. She wakes in the night, drenched in sweat, tucked against Wei Ying’s bare shoulder, with Lan Zhan plastered against her back.
Her instant misery at being sweaty and gross is enough to wake them up, and there is a brief flurry of activity while Lan Zhan brings cool water and dry clothes and then, while she cleans herself, changes the bedding and takes Wei Ying to the other house to let her sleep blissfully alone.
She bleeds twice as long as she did before Xixi. Her mother just says, “It’s your first cycle after giving birth. Your body is clearing out months’ worth of stagnant qi.”
Wei Qing’s answering sulk gets a curious look from her mother.
“Tell, child,” Wei Jinjing says, picking up her daughter’s chin.
“I was hoping to avoid it entirely,” Wei Qing says, looking away.
Her mother’s brow furrows, and then relaxes. “You want another? You were trying?”
Wei Qing nods miserably.
“I’ll make you a tea,” Wei Jinjing says. “No, hush, I know you can make yourself a tea, but who has had more experience here?”
“Yes, A-Niang,” Wei Qing murmurs.
“You are using your little device?” Wei Jinjing asks.
Wei Qing blushes scarlet.
Wei Jinjing folds her hands together and says, “There are things we explain to a bride on her wedding day, which have not been explained to you. I will explain them now, and you need tell me nothing more about it. Anyone else will assume that since one child was gotten the other way, subsequent children will be as well. It is your business and your business only. This is not in the things we teach doctors, but in the things we teach women. I have been arguing for some time that we should teach all girls, but have been overruled. But you must listen, for your health.”
Wei Qing gives her mother a mortified nod.
Wei Jinjing does not go into a lot of nonsense about the blood of virginity, but does explain a few techniques to avoid illness. She starts to mention things to improve pleasure, when Wei Qing puts up a hand.
“Not necessary,” she gets out past clenched teeth. At her mother’s raised eyebrow, she elaborates, “They can feel what I feel. It was not a problem.”
And her mother, who is absolutely evil, smiles. “Good. I’ll make you morning and evening teas. Take them every day.”
Wei Qing nods and flees, saying she’ll be back for the teas later.
Her mother, who is awful, sends them over via her brother, who can somehow tell by smell what is in them and guesses why and spends a ridiculous amount of the afternoon in her office gushing about the idea of another baby in the family.
She snaps at him, “Go make your own if you want one so badly,” and then he’s blushing so hard and looks pointedly at the teas.
“Oh!” Wei Qing suddenly realizes why he recognized the teas by smell. “You’re trying, too?”
He nods. “Don’t tell A-Lian I told you.”
“Don’t you tell anyone, either,” she snaps.
He holds up his fingers and says, “Jie, I swear I won’t. Oh, but our children might be so close in age!”
And she has to smile at his enthusiasm. “I hope so, didi. I hope so.”
Wei Ying and Lan Zhan pull the whole mortifying ordeal out of her later, and she lets them because it’s just too much trouble to hide it. Wei Ying has feelings about his sister possibly becoming a mother, and then he has feelings about Wei Ning becoming a father, and then he has feelings about another batch of close cousins, and Wei Qing starts to question whether it would have been better to hide it from him after all.
Lan Zhan just seems bemused by both of them, lets Xixi “help” make the tea, and then spends the evening petting his partners’ hair while encouraging Xixi to distract them with chatter. He’s actively egging her on, which Wei Qing notices but doesn’t call him on, and Wei Ying doesn’t notice.
She knows that Xixi was conceived on day 11 of her cycle, but 11 days after she started bleeding she’s not really the least bit wanting. She thinks about it with the link almost closed, then goes down to the clinic, where they now keep a number of bamboo syringes, having found the design useful for a few tasks, plucks a clean leaf, and sends Xixi to her mother’s for the afternoon. Then she lets the link open, feels Lan Zhan and Wei Ying take notice, and shows them what she wants.
They are back inside the house and waiting next to the bed by the time she walks back from the river, which is not far.
She says, aloud, “I might want, in a day or two. But this worked last time, so…”
“A-Qing need not explain,” Lan Zhan says. “We understand.”
Wei Ying nods. “Do you want to be in the other room?” he asks.
“I… That isn’t necessary,” she says. “If I’m right here, you can do the transfer quickly, after.” She sends an image of what she means.
Wei Ying nods. He grins at Lan Zhan. “You remember how I helped?”
Lan Zhan blushes, and starts taking off his clothes.
“Easier if you are nude, as well,” Wei Ying says to her.
She blinks, and then shrugs, and disrobes. By the time she’s done, Lan Zhan is nude and lying on the bed, sideways, carefully cupping the leaf on his belly and blinking up at his husband.
She watches, curious, as Wei Ying strokes himself to hardness, eyes locked with Lan Zhan’s. As he flushes, glances at her, and then back at Lan Zhan, and she can feel him remembering the three of them together, the feeling of him deep inside her. Her body gives a feeble little throb of a response, and he comes, messily, over the leaf.
The leaf’s surface repels the fluid into a tidy bowl, and Lan Zhan sits up, ignoring his own erection, and tips the bowl into the syringe with steady hands. He glances at Wei Ying, who is anything but steady, and asks her, “May I?”
She nods, and he deftly parts her labia, keeping a finger over the top of the syringe until he’s touching her opening, then slides it in, presses the plunger, waits a moment, and then pulls it out again.
He stares thoughtfully at her vulva until she says, “What?” and closes her legs.
“You are dryer than you were,” he says. “Does that matter?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “The bamboo was wet enough that it didn’t hurt.”
“May we hug you?” he asks.
She nods, and they both tuck themselves against her shoulders, hands clasping over her belly, until she makes them let her get up to pee.
Two days later, she wakes in the middle of the night feeling want tingling through her, and finds Wei Ying holding a sleeping Xixi on his shoulder as he sends ink flying onto paper.
“You were supposed to put her down hours ago,” Wei Qing murmurs, startled by the way her usual flush of affection for this man turns the tingle into an ache.
“Hm?” he says, and then looks up at her, processes what she said, notices what she’s feeling, glances over at Lan Zhan who is sleeping like a rock, makes a quick decision, and says, “I’ll put her down now. Hold that thought.”
She watches, as he gently deposits the toddler onto the bed next to Lan Zhan, who does not wake but wraps a protective arm around the girl as she flops sleepily over him.
Then Wei Ying is taking her by the hand and pulling her into the second house, before she can quite wrap her mind around his intent.
“You want?” is all he says aloud.
She nods. She feels him parsing all the information he has from their previous encounters, from things her mother has told her, and from other sources she’s trying to ignore, even as he’s untying her clothes and then his own in quick succession.
“Will he mind?” she asks, and he shakes his head before she’s finished speaking.
“We’ve already discussed it. Whatever you need.”
And then he sends a visual suggestion of what he has in mind, and the wanting becomes a pulsing need.
His head is between her thighs, his lips teasing and suckling at her, tongue tasting, fingers deep inside her, slowly, exquisitely curling up into her. She's wetter, slick with wanting.
He’s taking his time, the link between them wide open as he works her up. She can feel how much he’s enjoying it, and doesn’t hurry him, because it feels very, very good. She rides a sustained orgasm for longer than she would have thought possible, but he’d know if it was too much, and it’s definitely not.
Her body is still quivering when he enters her, and that’s a different set of sensations, the pull and push and wider softness of him, hard, but not like fingers. He rolls her with him, until she’s straddling him, and that’s a whole different angle. Her head hangs forward over him as she braces her hands on his shoulders and starts moving. Everything is so, so slick, and she can control how deep, how fast. He takes advantage of the position to apply his thumb to her clit, and she’s throwing her head back as everything overwhelms her. He’s driving hard up into her as she comes, and then he’s coming, and it’s so, so much.
He catches her around the hips and rolls them again without slipping out, staying inside as long as he can, mouthing at her forehead and trying not to collapse onto her.
“I think it’s probably okay,” she says. “If it’s going to happen, it will happen, even if a little comes out.”
He eases out of her, and flops down onto the bed next to her. They drift like that, hands touching, eyes closed, for a while, and then Lan Zhan is there, gently cleaning them, kissing each of them, and then helping her up.
“I can go back to Xixi,” he says as she finishes her ablutions.
She thinks about it, and shakes her head. “I’ll go,” she says. “Keep him company.”
Lan Zhan grins at her, and Wei Ying gives a laughing groan from the bed.
She curls around her daughter and doesn’t wake even a little bit when they come back to bed later.
Xixi is up much earlier than any of them are prepared for, even Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying finally brings out a paperman, walks it up her arm to her shoulder, making her giggle, and says, “Go find your Nana and ask for breakfast.”
Xixi is delighted by this idea, and he follows along with the paperman as she trots down the boardwalk and into her grandmothers’ house.
“Xixi, it’s so early, does A-die know you’re here?” Then Cangse Sanren is plucking the paperman off her grandchild’s sleeve and addressing it directly. “You terrible child, why would you think I’m any more awake than you at this hour? Not you, Xixi, you’re a perfect darling. I’m talking to your A-die.”
Xixi giggles at her father being called a child.
Wei Ying whispers to his mother, “If you want any more grandchildren from me, you’ll take this one for now.”
Cangse Sanren claps her hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh and then, a moment later, says to Xixi, “Shall we go see if Shimu has breakfast for my baobao?”
Tang Lijuan opens one eye and mumbles, “Why isn’t my son up?”
“I’ll tell you later, go back to sleep, love.”
It is too early for Tang Lijuan to wake up enough to be curious, so Cangse Sanren pulls on clothing, picks up her grandchild and hops over to the main pier to head to the kitchen of the Jiang siheyuan.
Wei Qing wakes later with a sleeping Wei Ying hard against her backside and Lan Zhan regarding both of them with interest.
She raises an eyebrow at him, and he sends a visual suggestion, raising an eyebrow back at her. She sends back a slight reluctance, and her reasoning, and he relays a memory of a conversation he’s had with his husband already. Her answering flush of desire widens his grin.
She nods, and shifts slowly, carefully. Lan Zhan leans forward, helps slide her up just enough, and reaches between her legs to aim Wei Ying a little better, then lets her ease back. She tries not to laugh or gasp as Wei Ying sleepily snuggles closer, sliding into her.
Lan Zhan puts a finger to his lips, and puts a quieting hand on her shoulder until she relaxes. Then he lays down, his head even with hers, and offers a kiss, slow and quiet in the dim morning light, his fingers sliding over the softness of her skin, from the place just below her ear, slowly down to a nipple, the curve of her hip, the soft place at the back of the top of her thigh.
She loses herself in the kiss, in touching. With Wei Ying still mostly asleep behind her, she has room to reach out and touch, tracing fingers curiously along Lan Zhan’s skin, feeling his responses. She reaches down and wraps a hand around him, and feels his surprise at how different her hand is from Wei Ying’s, how when she takes him in a firm grip, he is startled by her strength and then annoyed with himself for being surprised.
“You think too much,” she whispers, as his hips roll, driving into her grip.
Behind her, they feel Wei Ying wake with a sleepy grind, then a flurry of startled worry/curiosity/understanding as the situation becomes clear. Another hand joins hers on Lan Zhan, a sleepy smile against her hair as the cock already buried within her stiffens more.
They take longer with it, finding the things that each of them need. Lan Zhan comes first in their hands, and then Wei Ying’s fingers are on her clit as he pushes into her from behind. When she doesn’t want, she can’t imagine this, but now, with her whole being demanding it, she can’t imagine ever being anywhere else but here, doing this.
Thinking too much, Lan Zhan teases her, and then rolls back toward them, his lips finding hers, his hand tracing the place where Wei Ying’s flesh meets hers.
She breaks free to pant for air against Lan Zhan’s cheek and says, “Give us a baby, A-Ying.”
Wei Ying groans, and comes hard, his hand slipping back to tighten on her hip as he thrusts in and shakes. Lan Zhan doesn’t miss a beat, his finger slipping back to her clit, until she’s coming, too.
There are aftershocks, until finally Wei Ying slips out of her and rolls to his back, and Lan Zhan’s hand stills.
“What a way to wake up,” Wei Ying says.
“I know he’s woken you that way before,” she murmurs.
“It’s different to wake up with someone fucking you, than to wake up fucking someone. I’ve woken up in far less pleasant ways.”
“He said you’d like it,” Wei Qing says, eyes still closed.
“He wasn’t wrong,” Wei Ying says. “I don’t think it is something I would ever mind with you two.”
“I’d mind if it were anyone else,” Lan Zhan says with mock pique.
“He would never,” Wei Qing says. “Not ever.”
“He knows that,” Wei Ying says. “But he is possessive, and I like that he’s possessive.”
“And yet, this,” she says softly.
“It’s you,” Lan Zhan says, his gaze meeting hers. It is rare that he looks so directly at anyone. It’s overwhelming but she’s caught by it. “You are part of us, for as long as you will. However you need.”
“For as long as you both will have me,” she says.
Wei Ying spoons behind her, and says, “As long as we can keep you, and you are happy.”
She is not sure she has ever felt so completely content.
The wanting does not settle, but there is work to be done, and so they finally bathe again and go on with their day, with her research, with Wei Ying’s endless inventions, the sound of bow and strings and plucked notes, the laughter of their daughter, A-Yuan’s child’s voice which has grown less piping with time, a visit from The Cousins (of which group Xiao Mianmian is an honorary member.) The day has its own trajectory, but when Xixi asks if she can go to stay the night with A-Ling, they say yes for the first time.
And when the evening goes suddenly quiet, they open the link wide again and move.
The next morning, she feels it, that funny ping. They’re eating breakfast, and her hand goes to the side of her belly, low, and Wei Ying demands an explanation. When she explains that this is something that happens most cycles, he goes quiet and thoughtful and she can feel him looking with his mind’s eye, deep within her, trying to parse what is going on.
“Be careful with the spiritual energy,” she says. “It would be very easy to upset the balance at this point.”
But his mind is light within her body, tracing the unfamiliar structures they do not share, less than a breath. They stay like that, still and quiet, as he traces the outlines of an ovary, and then the other, and finds the roughness on the side that she felt.
“There is something tiny, there,” he says. “It’s moving.”
A larger structure seems to reach for it, and he opens his eyes and holds up his hand. “It’s like this,” he says, holding up a lotus seed from the table with the other hand, and then plucking it from one hand to the other with his spread fingers.
“I’ll go get Xixi,” Lan Zhan says. “Let me feel what you feel.”
“Mn,” Wei Ying hums absently, closing his eyes again as his husband cleans up and leaves.
Wei Qing does not stop him, because she’s curious. It’s always easier to see into someone else, and she’s fascinated by what he’s seeing. They sit that way for a long time.
They’re both watching closely as the little bit of qi flares. She’s seen this before, but he hasn’t.
“What?” he says. “There was… that was… Is that?”
She’s crying, but smiling when he opens his eyes.
His voice is low, rough, shaking when he says, “Wei Qing, is that our child?”
“If it stays,” she says. “If it stays.”
It matters more, somehow, this time, because she knows what it means—that this tiny little spot of energy might turn into a person, a damp newborn on her belly, suckling at her breast, a running child asking questions and falling asleep in their arms—and he knows it too.
Lan Zhan comes into the room in a bluster a few minutes later, setting down Xixi and wrapping both of them in a tight hug. Xixi climbs up and worms her way into Wei Ying’s lap and he sobs happy tears into her bunches*.
Wei Qing assumed that she already knew what pregnancy was like, that this one would be much the same, but maybe easier for knowing that she’d need contact.
What she isn’t prepared for is that the feeling of wanting doesn’t really go away. It’s not unmanageable most of the time, but it’s there until she’s too nauseated to do anything about it.
Wei Ying usually obliges her, in those earliest days, though he’s leery of touching her on the day the little spark reaches her center, near the dantian. He’s been looking with his mind’s eye frequently, and then nearly constantly once it is there, until the sharp flare they all remember happens again.
Wei Jinjing is clear when she says to him, “If sex could dislodge it, the human race would die out.”
He blushes, but it’s a relief because after that, as the child takes root, it doesn’t worry him if Wei Qing pulls him aside, pushes him down on one of the bed platforms and rides him until the feeling subsides.
A few days after the nascent possibility settles near her core, her brother notices, and “Oh, it’s just like A-Lian!” slips out.
She seeks out her sister (officially sister-in-law through Wei Ning, as good as through Wei Ying, though she still hasn’t really admitted that their relationship is permanent, yet) and A-Lian leans into a hug as they cry happy tears onto each other’s shoulders.
“I had thought you wanted to wait,” Wei Qing murmurs into Lian-mei’s ear.
“Qing-jie, I did, but then I didn’t. Toddlers are too much fun! And it’s good to have close cousins, so I didn’t want to wait too long. And A-Ning is going to be such a good baba. And of course, my brothers are so good with the kids.”
“Please don’t make me keep this a secret from him,” Wei Qing says. “He’s in my mind so often, it’s almost impossible.”
“Let me tell him, then,” Wei Lian says.
The thought is barely sent before Wei Ying and Lan Zhan are there in Wei Lian’s house, looking curious but not concerned.
“Where’s Xixi?” Wei Qing asks.
“With Shifu,” Lan Zhan says. “What do you need?”
“Not me,” Wei Qing said, glancing at Wei Lian.
Wei Ying’s attention zeros in on his sister. “Meimei?”
She laughs, a wide smile so much like her brother’s, eyes twinkling. “So remember when you had Xixi and Li-jie had a-Xun the same day?”
Wei Ying glances down, looking for something, and then catches his sister in a tight hug, planting a kiss on her head. “You’re much too young for such nonsense! You’re five. I held you when you were born.”
“I’m twenty-three, you ridiculous gege. You’re only five years older than me,” she says, struggling until he loosens his grip and then thwapping him on the head with a fan.
“Ah, Meimei, I’m an old, old man, but I’m happy for you.”
“You’re having a baby, Meimei?” Lan Zhan asks, his voice so soft.
“Mn!” she says, throwing an arm around him. He tolerates it benevolently until she lets go. “Another whole life you two saved,” she says, softly, stepping back, eyes on her brother.
Wei Ying covers his mouth and turns to sob into his husband’s arms. Lan Zhan guides him gently out of the room.
Wei Qing leans over and whispers to Wei Lian, “You totally did that on purpose.”
“I had a wager with Wei Ning that he’d cry,” Wei Lian whispers back.
But both of them have damp eyes, too.
The desire flips like a coin when the nausea shows up full force. Even when the queasiness is controlled, it’s like Wei Qing never wanted to be touched at all. They give her space. It is a relief to her that they take their own appetites to the other house. The nausea is controlled, not gone.
She spends an inordinate amount of time sleeping, and Wei Ying spends most of the time he used to spend inventing things taking notes on the exact progress of what he feels going on inside of her, awake or not. There are sketches, illustrations, drawings of the weird outlines of the growing life. She wasn’t letting him look so much when she was pregnant before, at this stage.
At one point Wei Ying goes out to the stables and finds a pregnant horse and studies that, and then finds broody chickens, and studies their eggs. Once he knows what to look for, he realizes that they have no less than four pregnant bunnies and can often be found next to a napping Wei Qing with a bunny on his lap and a distant expression on his face. Xixi is sometimes napping, too, when this happens.
Lan Zhan wishes he could draw the way Wei Ying does, because he’s not sure he’s seen anything more perfect in his life than these people, in this way. He turns the feeling into music, instead, a lullaby of quiet joy.
Wei Ying is (reluctantly) in Qinghe to help Nie Huiasang with a project at an outlying Nie settlement when Wei Qing finally wakes up all the way from the miasma of the first third of the pregnancy.
Wei Qing has been carrying on with her work with Lan Zhan, organizing Wei Ying’s notes and drawings into a more coherent medical text. He has a lively mind and a keen eye, with more medical training than Wei Ying, though obviously less than her own. His ability to spot logical and technical flaws is useful. They will take each chapter to her mother, but their goal, at the end of this, is a text for medical cultivators and midwives, and each has a part in it.
Xixi plays at their feet, or with A-Yuan, or with her myriad grandparents or cousins. When she’s gone, the house is so, so quiet.
Wei Qing finds herself restless, in the quiet. So much of her energy is returning, and her body wants to move. Her body wants.
The fourth time she shifts and grimaces, trying to stay focused, Lan Zhan reaches out and takes the papers gently from her hands. “I can help, if you need.”
Their connection has been thin and quiet with Wei Ying gone; their habits always seem to revolve around him, something neither of them minds. She looks up at him, and gives a slight head tilt. “Help?”
“You need,” he says.
“Did I send…” she starts, and he shakes his head.
“You move differently when you desire,” he says. He reaches out a hand and tucks a stray hair behind her ear. “I would like to assist.”
“You just miss your husband,” she says, flippant and teasing, starting to reach for the papers.
He catches her hand, and presses it to her forehead. “Renew it.”
She realizes how quiet her head has gotten, too quiet, and quickly sends the thread of energy into her fingers, then lets him draw her fingers to his lips, where the connection is made.
Wei Ying is in the connection too, even as far as he is, and the complex blend of relief/amusement/curiosity/longing for home that comes back to her feels like a warm cloak on a cold night. And there is Lan Zhan, holding them both in his mind, and explaining just exactly how he will help, if she chooses.
“Wei Ying is with me, always,” Lan Zhan says softly. “If you choose to wait for him, you can, but you need not.”
“Is it what you want?” she asks. He’s touched her, run his fingers inside her, brought her to orgasm, come in her hands, but not this.
“I am… not difficult to please in this way,” Lan Zhan says. And then he lets her see the undercurrent of desire that he has all the time, nearly constantly, the level of restraint he usually exercises, and the fact that while yes, his primary sexual focus has always been on his husband, she has been increasingly in his thoughts as well. He is curious, and he wants, sufficient to the task at hand, and it amuses her endlessly that it is a task.
There is a distant mental yelp when Wei Ying realizes what is happening, a plaintive, “Warn me, will you? I need to lie down,” when they’re already half-naked. They can feel his half of a stumbled set of excuses to Nie Huaisang, but it is of no matter.
Soon enough, Lan Zhan is lying on his back on the bed, helping her slide down onto his thick cock. It’s not longer than Wei Ying’s but its solid width is a lot. She stays there, for a long moment, as he runs lazy fingers along the small firm ball of her growing belly, clear and visible as she arches a little, grinding her hips in a familiar circle. As always when they are playing, he studies her, notes the things that make this different. It is rare for him to get completely out of his head with her, and she toys with trying to get him to let go. He dismisses the notion as soon as she has it.
It lacks the urgency she has seen with him and Wei Ying, but he pushes up and into her lazily but persistently, his hands trailing up to her nipples, thumbs circling as he cups her. She feels measured, studied, analyzed.
Then he cheats.
He holds up his fingers, two of them, and they glow blue. His smile is wide and strange, something that belongs more on Wei Ying’s face, almost a smirk, as he divides the little bit of spiritual power between his fingers, then applies them to her nipples, and then her clitoris.
Then he takes his fingers off of her, rests his hands on her hips, and lifts her up just enough that he can fuck up into her, quickly, roughly. The places he’s touched tingle, buzz, a tickling that turns into a deep throbbing current running through her whole body. She tightens hard around him and an orgasm hits her out of nowhere and then keeps rolling through her as he thrusts quick and firm. She’s crying out as he finally, finally releases and lets himself come.
She hangs there, shaking, hands on his chest, still sitting on his softening cock, as her body finally shivers and calmness spreads. Tears are falling, though her mind is calm, empty, the tension that’s been winding her up finally dissipated.
Wei Ying’s soft mental presence is amused at her, and sympathetic.
“Hm?” Lan Zhan hums at her.
“Mn,” she hums back, letting him help her sag to the side, curling up against him.
“Was that sufficient?” he asks.
She laughs, a low chuckle against his chest. “It will do,” she finally says.
“Eh?” His voice sounds both amused and almost offended.
“You can feel what I feel, you know it’s enough. I’m not going to puff up your head with how completely enough it was,” she says.
He’s chuckling silently under her cheek, and Wei Ying sends a mix of delight at her teasing of Lan Zhan and utter indignation that he can’t be there with them.
Lan Zhan does something through their connection that feels to her like somehow remotely stroking all of Wei Ying’s sensitive spots at once. There is a mental gasping yelp, and then Wei Ying is quiet for hours.
They stay curled up against each other for another hour, drifting, until they hear Xixi’s piping little voice outside. Lan Zhan rises and swiftly but calmly dresses, and Wei Qing lets the residual calm pull her into a nap.
The next night, Wei Ying sneaks back after Xixi has fallen asleep and drags Lan Zhan off to the other house. Wei Qing is barely aware of it until they return, when Lan Zhan slides the toddler over so that they can both sleep around Wei Qing, Wei Ying plastered up against her back, Lan Zhan on his back with Xixi on his other shoulder, his free hand resting on Wei Qing’s thigh. She’s not awake enough to do more than snuggle back against Wei Ying as he spoons up against her, his hand resting on her belly.
In the morning, she wakes to find Lan Zhan and Xixi gone, and Wei Ying hard against her backside. She wiggles back against him with a sleepy purr, and he laughs, and obliges, sliding in easily, lazily, slowly working her up until she finds release, then following. They’re so different, but this is now, somehow, familiar, and even comforting. She knows herself, knows things will change, later, but it’s good, now.
She’d been fine listening to Yanli, Xiuying, and Mianmian talk about sex during her last pregnancy. None of them are pregnant right now, but A-Lian is, and she finds herself absolutely not up to talking about sex with her sister-in-law. Nor is she going to talk to Yanli about sex involving Wei Ying or Lan Zhan.
Mianmian is sensible, understanding, and not related to any of them, and she finds herself seeking out her friend more this time, for all Mianmian isn’t pregnant.
Over tea, Mianmian listens, and finally says, “I’m shocked it took you this long. They’re very pretty.”
“It’s not the pretty I crave,” Wei Qing says and then blushes, and is enormously annoyed with herself for blushing.
Mianmian laughs and laughs. “They’re so tall, does that, er, extend to the rest of them?”
Wei Qing takes refuge in her teacup and declines to answer.
“Sorry,” Mianmian says. “That was indelicate of me.” She does not, in fact, sound the least bit sorry.
Wei Qing sighs after a minute and says, “You know, I don’t think they’ve even once told me no, about anything?”
“Qing-jie only asks for reasonable things,” Mianmian says. “Healthy food. Kind treatment. A little… would it be triple cultivation? Nevermind. You’re a doctor, I hear a little exercise in bed can be good for pregnant women. They will take care of you forever if you want.”
“But I won’t, later, I don’t think. This is the exception, not the rule,” Wei Qing looks into her empty teacup until Mianmian refills it. She’s not thirsty, but being able to hide for a moment helps.
“Lucky, then, that they can take care of each other,” Mianmian says. “Very practical, that.”
Her general level of interest stays elevated right up until the end.
Wei Quan is born in an uncomplicated and peaceful labor and an overwrought, emotional postpartum. Her partners are beside themselves with Sizhui’s appearance and subsequent rebirth. Wei Qing is too preoccupied with the ordinary overwhelm of her second postpartum to think about it too much. She has to tamp down the connection with them to a thin thread because they are both overwrought in completely different ways.
Three days later, A-Ning reports the birth of Wei Hui (晖), and Wei Qing cries, as much because she’s three days postpartum as any inherent emotion about her brother’s child. Of course, she’s delighted to be an auntie again, but she’s auntie to so, so many children, for all this is technically her first official nephew. Even Xiao Mianmian calls her Auntie Qing, and they’re not even related by sort-of-marriage. But she cries, and hugs her brother, and he carries his wife over a few days later and they spend part of their sitting time together, being pampered by three doting fathers as they nurse their little boys.
As with most children, there is a before and an after, and after Wei Quan it is like a door has been closed. Babies are miracles and exhausting and the very notion of anything in bed that isn’t sleep or feeding a baby is beyond her completely.
She suspects that if either of her partners had been her only spouse, there might be hurt feelings about how completely she has stopped being interested. She remembers enjoying it. She remembers craving it. And it feels like too much effort, too much mess, too much everything.
They don’t take it personally. Their habits are still centered around each other, and they take care to avoid putting her in the middle, though they enjoyed it very much when she was there. But she is busy and the clawing fatigue of broken sleep and the subtle drain of nursing an active baby and her own innate tendency to lack of interest mean together that every so often the idea crosses her mind and is dismissed out of hand.
It does not change their deep and abiding affection for her.
Wei Quan is a year old when out of nowhere, Wei Ying says, “We would marry you, if you ever wanted it.”
“I know,” she answers. “Thank you for not insisting.”
“I meant it,” he says, “that you mean more to us than marriage implies. That it is a wholly inadequate measure of your importance to us.”
“I know,” she says, so quietly. “And you mean everything to me. I am happy with this.”
Her cycles return two years in, but she’s so busy she can’t even think, and it’s all she can do to collapse into bed with whoever’s at home, or alone. Their eldest is seven and Wei Quan is four and Wei Qing is thirty-five when it occurs to her to wonder if they’re ready for another. Things have finally settled into a new rhythm.
She looks at Wei Ying and Lan Zhan and realizes that they still look twenty-five. They’re not. Their bodies are over thirty, technically, and it might be years, even under normal circumstances, to really see age on them, but it’s no secret that their staggeringly powerful cores have nearly stopped their bodies’ aging. She wonders about herself, not that she’s ever spent much time studying her own reflection, but she’s seen herself through their eyes often enough. She feels good, though. Time passing hasn’t felt as urgent to her, and marked more in the changes of her children than in her own.
It probably helps that they keep slipping her spiritual energy when they think she’s distracted or sleeping. They have their own little loop of energy from dual cultivation, which they certainly practice diligently enough. But they’ll pour a bit into her even though she’s not currently in that mode, not really, with a hand on her shoulder, a little feedback of gratitude when she renews their bond most mornings. But she hasn’t been up for trying actual dual cultivation.
Well, she wasn’t. Now she’s thinking about it, thinking about a baby, thinking about getting older, and she wonders if their lack of mortality makes them worry more about hers.
They are living at Xianlin Shen, formerly known as Luanzang Gang, the Burial Mounds, in the new siheyuan, in the elaborate family suite, most of the time. A-Chen and A-Yu are rooming together, and though A-Yu often goes home to Gusu Lan, the cousins seem happiest presenting a united front to the world. The suite was built for their family from the ground up, and every adult and every child has a space of their own, but the bedrooms are shared. Wei Ning and Wei Lian have the next suite over, and little A-Hui and A-Quan are inseparable, sharing a room between their parents.
It takes another six months for Wei Qing to get around to suggesting another baby.
They’d talked about it, when they were building this place, their redeemed lives on their redeemed mountain, but always in the abstract of “If Wei Qing wants another, maybe when things settle down.” They’d talked about taking their chances with parentage, of not knowing. Wei Ying had stopped short of suggesting trying again just so he could study the process again. She knows it’s on his mind.
When she opens the connection between them wide for the first time in nearly a year, she has their attention instantly.
Not tonight, but soon, she sends. I… we can leave it up to fate, who makes me pregnant.
A flash from each of them of interest, challenge, and the spark of their innate competitive natures is not unexpected but still catches her off guard with the sheer force of it. Her breath catches, and she suddenly remembers wanting.
Okay, she sends. Maybe tonight. But it probably won’t get me pregnant.
“You don’t have to be trying, to ask, you know,” Wei Ying says softly, aloud.
“Perhaps you should teach me about dual cultivation,” she says. “I mean, it looks like you want to keep me around for a while.”
They look at each other, and then at her, and they grin.
Lan Zhan straightens his face and says, “It requires diligent practice.”
“There are other ways of maintaining the level of spiritual energy,” Wei Ying says. “Fucking is just convenient and easy.”
“It’s convenient that it appears I will have many months to practice,” Wei Qing says dryly. “We can try the easy way until I’m done with it. And then you can write ‘Wei Wuxian’s Guide to Fucking to Immortality.’”
“Lan Zhan, how did we get so lucky?” Wei Ying asks his husband while giving her a fond, slightly stunned gaze.
“We worked very diligently for many decades and suffered much,” Lan Zhan says. “We are quite fortunate, but I prefer to think of this as a reward you have earned us.”
“It never would have happened without you,” Wei Ying says.
“Nor you,” Lan Zhan replies.
“Though honestly,” Wei Ying says, “without A-Qing, the circumstances would never have existed for us to go back in time at all.”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees.
“How do you figure?” Wei Qing asks.
“If Jiang Cheng had not had the core transfer, I would not have been thrown into the Burial Mounds in the first place. That experience taught me an entirely new cultivation path. Had I not learned to rely on talismans, I never would have created the time travel device. Without that, we would not have gone back in time nor managed to save your whole family.”
“So it is my doing that you were thrown in?” she asks, though there was no heat in his words.
He laughs. “Absolutely not. But every cultivator with a core who went in died. I either wouldn’t have been caught, would have fought them off, or would have been killed outright. Without your skills and willingness to help, I never could have helped you, and you would not have been in a position to join our family.”
The looping tangle of their mutual indebtedness will give her a headache if she thinks on it too hard. “Shut up, Wei Ying.”
He draws his finger across his lips.
“Take me to bed,” she says.
They do.