Today's darling

They had agreed to meet at the courtyard fountain ten minutes after the last bell, and when Lan Wangji saw Jiang Cheng, arrived first, lighted by the winter sun which seemed unable to determine whether it loved more his ethereal beauty or his carnal appeal, he decided on the Appassionata.

“Jiang Cheng,” he said, upon reaching the boy looking at him as if he was something worth looking at.

“Wangji,” Jiang Cheng responded, soft and low.

“Let us walk to the parking lot,” Lan Wangji said. “I have called a car.”

So they made the short walk, and when the car arrived, Lan Wangji opened the rear passenger-side door and gestured. Jiang Cheng smiled his thanks, and then getting into the car he took the seat not behind the driver but behind the console. Getting in next to him, then, brushing his thigh when he fastened his seatbelt, Lan Wangji felt his heart in his throat.

And then, as the driver pulled into the line of cars waiting to exit the lot, Lan Wangji drew on some untapped because unknown—until it was needed—and it was needed now—reservoir of courage deep inside himself and reached out to take Jiang Cheng’s hand.

He did so without trembling, and with the certain knowledge that Jiang Cheng would let him. It wasn’t doubt that made him brave to do it. It was his no less certain knowledge that he was changing the world despite himself, despite itself.

Jiang Cheng let him take his hand. More, he laced their fingers together.

Lan Wangji knew perfect happiness.

“You said you like to talk,” he said. “Talk to me.”

“Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax,” Jiang Cheng said, as if quoting. “Of cabbages, and kings. Yes, Wangji. What would you like me to talk about?”

“Of beauty,” Lan Wangji said. “Talk to me about beauty.”

“Beauty,” Jiang Cheng said thoughtfully. “All right. Beauty is an absolute. One of Plato’s Forms, illuminating the Good. I’m not as susceptible to Beauty as to the Good, which is the Form that rules me, that draws me toward itself, daily and irresistibly. Though I stumble it’s patient. When I fall it rights me, and it beams on me when I resume my ascent. Beauty, on the other hand, has no care for its beholders. Beauty is self-complete, and revolving in its own splendor it contemplates only itself. It’s not cruel, merely divine. Its worshippers break themselves against it, and will for the rest of time. Like people break themselves against you, Wangji. They do, don’t they? All the boys and the girls? Against your beauty, high and solitary and most stern?”

In a world that for exemplars of beauty had both Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng to choose from, there was no response that Lan Wangji could make to such preposterousness.

So instead of addressing it he said, “You know your own beauty. You must.”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng said, “I do. I have no choice but to know.”

His tone more than his words evoked for Lan Wangji an impression of the myriad petty dramas that had all too likely dotted his life alongside the gross encroachments on his virtue attempted by predators like Jin Zixun. Beauty had its consequences, or its price. Yet—

“I must be truthful,” Lan Wangji said. “I would not wish it away—your beauty—even to secure your peace.”

He raised their entwined hands to his lips, and kissed the back of Jiang Cheng’s hand.

He meant the kiss to be a sweet thing, a tender thing. An apology for the truth.

It was. But—

“Oh,” Jiang Cheng breathed, and visibly quivered—

And between one second and the next he bloomed into the very picture of arousal.

Arousal parted his pretty lips—flushed his clear skin—looked come-hither out of his exquisite eyes.

Lan Wangji spent all of one second being shocked, before he caught the flame, or it caught him.

Aflame, he held himself very still—

To forestall his falling on Jiang Cheng like a pack of wild dogs.

But Jiang Cheng saw it, his desire—

And unlaced their hands, and reached into Lan Wangji’s lap.

When he touched what was there for him, hard for him, huge for him—

And made a noise as if he was the one who had come to heaven—

What could Lan Wangji do, but let him explore his heaven?

From the next part of Sonata Pathétique.