Ada

Purple prose.

When Jiang Cheng broke up with him, Lan Wangji’s world imploded.

It was only fitting, Lan Wangji supposed, because when Jiang Cheng had asked him out, his world had exploded, into a riot of color.

Truly I lived as in black and white before I first laid eyes on you.

It had been in the first minute of his first class on the first day of his junior year, at his new high school in this California suburb so different from what he’d known on the East Coast. Yet all homesickness and discontent had been driven from his mind when he’d noticed the brilliant-eyed, perfect-skinned, small-waisted boy sitting one desk over and three desks up. Lan Wangji had seen the tiny waist first, and his body had done something complicated and unprecedented in response which had so discomposed him that when the boy turned and revealed a profile both sculpted and delicate, and a skin like glass yet also like cream, Lan Wangji had gasped aloud. The sound had been as a summoning, because the boy had turned further around, and met Lan Wangji’s eyes, and whatever he made of what his own eyes like stars beheld turned them wide and wondrous.

Thus had been born the palest shades of purple.

Lan Wangji had done the only thing he could, in order to keep breathing: he’d looked disdainfully away.

He hadn’t let himself look toward the boy—Jiang Cheng, he’d learned upon roll call, and taken the name home to whisper into his pillow upon nights, and stifle against his wrist upon dawns, all unknowing until made all at once aware upon an orgasm not only exquisite but also amethyst that each invocation was further empurpling the world—again, until the day came in mid October when the object of his fantasies both fevered and sweet had approached him, and asked to speak to him, and beseeched him with those eyes like stars.

“My name is Jiang Cheng,” he’d said, “and I’m in love with you. I know I am, because I’d die for you. My brother told me not to say it so plain, but I decided to speak my heart. Lan Wangji: you have my heart. What will you do with it? Will you reject it, and by doing so break it? Or will you accept it, and have me for your boyfriend, and make me the happiest boy in the world?”

But the world had exploded into a riot of purples.

“I knew your name,” Lan Wangji said into their royal profusion. Lilacs and lavenders—violets and veronicas—plums and amaranths and aubergines—he gazed through them, past them, around them, into those eyes like stars.

But then he could say nothing more.

But then he found himself saying it all.

“I love you too,” he said. “I loved you at first sight, because you are the most beautiful boy in the world. You have my heart, and I will cherish yours. Yes. I will have you for my boyfriend, and make you as happy as you are beautiful.”

Those eyes like stars had shined like stars.

“Kiss me,” Jiang Cheng said. “Say my name, and kiss me.”

“Jiang Cheng,” Lan Wangji said, and kissed his boyfriend.

From their royal profusion (1419 words).

Lan Xichen hadn’t meant to do it: to steal his didi’s boyfriend.

He of all people knew what it was to do, quietly, the reprehensible on purpose. He knew, at nineteen, the exact number of hearts he’d broken, of attachments he’d severed, of egos he’d wrecked, all in service of bolstering his own. Or so a therapist would say, or so he imagined. He himself knew the truth: his ego needed no bolstering. All he had to do in order to stroke it was to look in the mirror, whether that mirror be made of glass, reflecting to him his incomparable visage, or made of the words he wrote, reflecting to him his own brilliance. No. He did what he did, he committed his acts of quiet reprehensibility, for the sake of art. Where Lan Wangji was an artist of ivory and ebony keys, drawing from them strains and streams of glory and beauty, Lan Xichen was an artist of the human psyche, drawing it to its utmost lucidity—to its taut extremity—to the point of death. And he played it, this fine instrument of his, with as much love, and more, loving kindness, as Lan Wangji played the piano.

From the next part of Sonata Pathétique.

Quiet devastation had never looked more beautiful.

That was a corollary of beauty, Lan Wangji thought. It should never wear any expression but the one it’s wearing now.

Until its mood shifted with the winds of change—

And then this one, this new expression, at this new now, should be the one it wears for all eternity.

And ever and onward into eternity—

Or until beauty fades.

But Jiang Wanyin’s beauty would never fade.

And his allure would never pale.

Up close, in full flower, both were otherworldly.

Lan Wangji, beholding them in their blinding radiance, knew truth for truth: beauty like that, allure like that, was a high and lonely tower.

Outside, men would kill themselves scaling it to try to pluck the prize it held.

Men would kill each other.

Inside—

It had never been so clear to Lan Wangji as it was now, what lay on the other side of Jiang Wanyin’s too-beautiful eyes.

Need.

The too-ordinary need for ordinary human connection.

If Jiang Wanyin was unique in his need, it was only in how exquisitely he wore it and bore it.

Lan Wangji felt a wave of unfeigned tenderness—

No one loves you, Wanyin, more than life.

No one cares to give you what you need.

—followed by a swell of lust.

It’s my turn now to give you what I want.

Thus, “As I undress you, then,” he said, “and touch you, you will please me by hiding nothing from me. Let me read you; let me eat you: all of you, in the light of the waning day.”

Like a skin-bound book, he thought. Like a feast of meat.

From the next part of Ten Thousand Swords.

A: Appassionata. “In my experience, hands don’t lie,” Lan Xichen said. “Yours say you’re beautiful behind that mask. Will you take it off? Let me see you? Before you kill me?”

B: The Body Electric. I work with my hands, it reads, with my body, with animals. They sense my comfort and my love; they calm, because they find their center. Ideally you work with your mind. Ideally you work with words. I speak, but my love language is touch. You speak words enough for both of us. You speak wit, intelligence, eloquence. You speak your love for me, while I press my love into you. Let me press my love into you.

C: Conversations in Therapy. It's not that Jiang Cheng doesn't know he has daddy issues. It's just that he doesn't really mind them anymore, ever since he started seeing his awesome new therapist who works with his issues rather than enabling him in trying to eradicate them.

D: Dreams Come True. Jiang Cheng read the prose and wept. He wept because it was honed to gleaming, spare perfection. He wept because he wanted to live in the world that prose promised, and not in this world of mud and mess. He wept because he would never write anything half so fine and it was all he wanted to do with his life: to write, to craft, to change the world for the better one novel at a time.

E: Equilateral. I am the damned, Jiang Cheng thinks, walking in my chamber. Come to me not, melting melodious words to lutes of amber.

F: Fly me to the moon. Wen Zhuliu finds that his new charge must have made an impression on him, because one day, walking the bazaars on his rounds, he stops short at a pearl merchant's stall. What's caught his eye is a necklace of lavender pearls. What mollusks tortured those, he thinks, aided by what machine? Yet the shade and sheen of each perfect purple pearl puts him irresistibly in mind of Jiang Cheng's alabaster skin.

G:

H: Homewrecker. Jiang Cheng knows himself to be the sluttiest cockslut who ever took a cock in his hungry hole, who ever begged, prettily and irresistibly, to be fucked like the slut he is. No man has ever been able to resist him. Jiang Cheng knows himself beautiful. He knows his marvel of a face, high and fine and stern, for what it is; and his feast of a body, tiny of waist and lean of muscle and long of limb. He knows how to look at a man, to hook him and make him his.

I: Intuition. Math had always been Jiang Cheng's worst subject; his B's in freshman geometry and sophomore-year algebra II had been eked out by the skin of his teeth. On the subject of skin, Father and Mother would have skinned him alive if he'd done any worse. Even the B's, so hard-earned, had warranted only "I'm very disappointed in you, son," from Father and "You're simply not trying, are you?" from Mother. Jiang Cheng could have cried. He did cry. He had tried so hard.

J:

K: Killer. “They want to kill someone, they go buy a gun to shoot them with or, worse, they hire someone like me to do the killing for them. There’s no respect for the art of murder, much less appreciation for artistry in the instrument of murder. There’s no understanding that outsourcing the kill does more damage to the immortal soul than willing someone dead in the first place. I mean, we’re not talking affairs of state here. That’s above my pay grade, and yours as well, my pretties. Affairs of the heart, however—those require the knife, the dagger, the sword. You don’t know someone until you’ve stabbed them in the heart. You don’t hate someone until you’ve bled them dry. Most of all, you don’t love someone until, pierced by your steel, they’ve drawn their last breath in your arms. After all—I would know.”

L: love and lust. If the boy was shy yet enticing beyond bearing—if he’d looked at Lan Xichen with trusting eyes that then too soon turned knowing—if he’d woken up to his own allure and learned to wield it without scruple—if he’d taken to offering himself up to be relished—ravened—ruined—then How, Lan Xichen despaired, am I to resist him—temptation incarnate?

M:

N: Notes Toward a Minor Fiction. It’s not just Jiang Cheng’s lyrics that enthrall. His voice is sex, low and throaty, with a grain to it. His control over it is total, he bends it to his will. And his will, it seems, is seduction. Seduction beyond the flesh: seduction of the soul.

O: only love. Their romance is the event of Jiang Cheng's life. It shouldn't be. The burning of his home—the murder of his parents—the destruction of his core—the miracle of its restoration—all these have greater claim. But when Jiang Cheng is in Nie Mingjue's arms, he knows the truth. The truth is that love is greater than death—and greater, too, than life. The golden core glowing inside him is the source of his life—of the part of his life worth the name. Or so he used to think. Now he doesn't know. Now he thinks he could live without it, his core. Now he thinks he could live on love alone.

P:

Q:

R: Roses. So he does it. He posts an ad on Craigslist. For five hundred roses, he writes, because why not aim high if you're gonna aim at all, you can have this. The photo is both artistic and filthy, Nie Huaisang is as talented as he's thirsty. Jiang Cheng sends the post into the ether and waits.

S: suns' blood and stars' milk. Wei Wuxian remembered the nine months of the pregnancy simply as a blur of confusion. He’d just lost his parents and been moved out of the cozy home he’d shared with them, even if only to the next suburb over, even if to a much nicer house. He’d still been acclimating to his new surroundings, and his adoptive parents had still been acclimating to him too—while cooking their own little bun in the oven. Had they taken pains to ensure that he felt welcome and loved by them regardless? Had he believed their gestures? Had he understood why they made them? Sixteen, he didn’t remember. Sixteen, he didn’t remember his mind at four, because his life had started at five, or rather five days after he turned five: on that day, his new parents’ little bun had come out of the oven fully baked—sweetly swaddled—black-eyed and tiny-fingered and perfect—and Wei Wuxian had fallen in love.

T: The Tale of Psyche. Jiang Wanyin was so beautiful that, as he grew, and grew only more beautiful, the populace neglected worship of the goddess of beauty, whose name was Weinasi, to worship him instead. Word of his beauty spread far and wide. People from kingdoms near and far made pilgrimages to fill their eyes with his beauty, and traveled home thinking of nothing but his beauty, and returned to their families to speak hushed and awed encomiums, soliloquies, orisons, upon his beauty.

U: Utah. He’s alone in the world, a friend to all and therefore to none. He’s been alone since death in the form of an orange Corvette driven by a drunkard decided to plow its way into a crowd and yet kill only two. If those two hadn’t been Lan Xichen’s brother and his uncle, then the crossed flags of the car’s emblem—one checkered, one lilied—wouldn’t to this day kill him to see. If Lan Wangji and Lan Qiren were still in his life, Lan Xichen wouldn’t dream those flags almost nightly. He wouldn’t dream himself reaching out his hand, freeing the fleur-de-lis from the red flag, turning its point toward his ribcage, and carving out his own heart.

V: Vermont. A-Die and A-Niang adopted Jiang Cheng when he was five, and Jiang Cheng has never recovered his memories of his time on the streets and before - or if he has, he's never spoken of them. It breaks Wei Wuxian's heart to think about it, so he doesn't think about it. Instead he follows Jiang Cheng to Vermont. The campus is beautiful, all ivy and stone and fall foliage, and Jiang Cheng enrolls in advanced Greek and Latin while Wei Wuxian scours the catalog and decides just to take survey courses to start.

W: whore & hundredth. "You want," he said, "to be treated like the whore you are."

X:

Y: Your Life's Desire. “Wen Zhuliu,” Wen Chao says. “You’re up. Go ahead: take him. This prize is all yours.”

Z: