Chapter Text
Wei Ying gives the servants a scare when they find him slumped over the table the next morning, but he plays it to his favour, pretending to be confused about how he got there and complaining of feeling giddy. He isn’t sure if Meng Yao suspects him of the mess he’s caused in the kitchen but he must look ill enough that Meng Yao doesn’t dare accuse him outright of it, and having to allocate servants to deal with Wei Ying suddenly being bedridden and being a very difficult patient on top of everything keeps Meng Yao busy long enough that it is too late in the day for him to make the trip downriver that day.
The stage is set. Now all he and Lan Zhan have to do is play their parts.
"Did you hear that?" Wei Ying asks the servant boy who brings him his lunch.
"Hear what?" the boy replies in confusion.
"Footsteps. Listen, there they go again. Can't you hear them?"
"I don't hear anything, San-ye," the boy says, looking a little nervous now.
"They're coming closer," Wei Ying observes.
“Um, I have other chores that I need to do. Please excuse me, San-ye," the servant boy stammers out, unloading the dishes on his tray as fast as he can before he bolts out of the room.
A different servant comes along to collect the plates after a while, and Wei Ying asks her off-handedly who was the tall man in blue walking behind her when she was crossing the east courtyard.
Wei Ying starts complaining that it is too cold in his room, and two servants come to bring him extra blankets when it's really the job of one person. Wei Ying makes sure they walk in on him having an animated conversation with an empty room, then exchanges glances with thin air and hides his smiles like he’s sharing a joke with an invisible person the whole time that the servants are in the room.
“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, I think we frightened them,” he comments loudly when they flee from his room, and maybe it’s because he did spend the whole night talking to Lan Zhan but he can imagine Lan Zhan’s amusement at his antics even though he can’t actually see or talk to Lan Zhan properly like this.
By the time the sun sets, none of the servants will venture into the east wing. Lan Huan visits to see if Wei Ying is feeling any better and to Wei Ying’s delight, asks if it would be possible for dinner be served in the sitting area of the east wing so that he doesn't have to eat alone - which also means that the food Wei Ying is served will be from the same plates as Lan Huan and finally safe to eat. The servants are jumpy and nervous, and Meng Yao can't quite hide his annoyance at their behaviour. Perhaps Meng Yao doesn't believe in ghosts, Wei Ying thinks in amusement.
The servants are almost done laying out the dishes when a door slams shut from somewhere in the east wing. A servant girl lets out a shriek and drops the plate she was holding.
"A-Jiao! What's wrong with you?" Meng Yao snaps. "Quick, clean that-"
Another door slams shut, followed by another, then another - in a slow, deliberate pace, moving closer and closer. The doors that open to the outside are shut against the winter chill, leaving one last door that leads from the sitting area to the bedroom, and nobody even dares to breathe as they stare at it, waiting to see if it will move by itself.
“It’s just the wind,” Meng Yao bites out, breaking the silence, and everyone jumps, even Lan Huan. Meng Yao walks over to the door and pulls it shut firmly.
“Yes, that's why I said it gets quite cold in here,” Wei Ying agrees mildly, picking up his chopsticks. “Da-ge, let’s eat.”
But when they find Wei Ying a few hours after everyone had gone to bed, a pale spectre in only his white undershirt and drenched in moonlight, surrounded by stacks of Lan Zhan’s books and chests full of Lan Zhan’s clothes that Meng Yao stashed away in the unoccupied west wing and playing Lan Zhan’s guqin with his eyes closed as if he’s still asleep, the servants give up pretending that they don’t suspect what’s going on.
“It’s Er-shaoye! That’s the song he always played!” one of the older servants exclaims and a low murmur of agreement starts up amongst the servants who have huddled together at the entrance of the room.
Only Lan Huan dares to approach him. “A-Ying? Wei Ying?"
Lan Zhan keeps on playing, moving Wei Ying’s cold-numb fingers across the silk strings with practised ease.
“A-Zhan?” Lan Huan whispers.
Lan Zhan stops and gently steps out of Wei Ying’s body. Wei Ying doesn’t have to feign his gasp of relief when sweet oxygen floods back into his lungs, or the way he loses his balance and almost falls off his seat. Lan Huan dashes forward to steady him and calls out urgently for blankets and hot water once he realises that Wei Ying’s skin is as cold as ice.
“Da-ge, I found something… there's something I need to show you,” Wei Ying mumbles, just loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.
“We’ll talk about it later, when you're feeling better,” Lan Huan says, putting an arm around Wei Ying to help him to his feet.
Meng Yao is frozen in place, staring at the guqin sitting in the pool of moonlight, but when Wei Ying staggers past him, Meng Yao turns and looks right into his eyes and Wei Ying sees fear.
It looks like Meng Yao is ready to start believing in ghost stories.
--
There's a lot of fussing over making Wei Ying take a hot bath and drink a bowl of steaming broth, but the Lan household finally settles down a few hours before dawn, and Wei Ying dreams of Lan Zhan. Thankfully it isn’t one of those horrible dreams where Lan Zhan makes him wander around an endless maze - maybe because Wei Ying has already done his fair share of wandering around the Lan family estate for the sake of their plan tonight. Instead, Wei Ying finds himself sitting at a stone table with matching stone stools in the east courtyard under the full moon, and even though there is frost on the ground and Wei Ying is barefoot, he doesn’t feel cold at all.
“This is much better than the dark hallways,” Wei Ying says with a laugh as Lan Zhan takes a seat next to him. "I managed to slip the letter to your brother before he left. Do you think he will believe us?”
Lan Zhan doesn’t respond at first, but he usually doesn’t speak, not even in Wei Ying's dreams. Wei Ying is so used to his silence that he doesn’t mind, and it’s nice just sitting here with Lan Zhan, admiring the moon. This is probably the first time that Wei Ying has had a chance to really see Lan Zhan clearly instead of just a blurry glimpse, and there's a strange fluttering feeling in his gut when he remembers that he went through all the proper wedding rites with Lan Zhan.
“If he doesn’t want to believe, there is nothing we can do about that,” Lan Zhan finally says.
“Oh! We can talk to each other now? This is good,” Wei Ying says.
Lan Zhan shakes his head, his expression troubled. “I don’t think this is a good thing.”
“What? Why?” Wei Ying says in surprise.
Instead of explaining himself, Lan Zhan frowns and stands up. “Wake up, Wei Ying.”
“Huh?”
“Wake up."
Wei Ying's eyes fly open just in time for him to see a figure hovering over him and a flash of cold steel coming down towards him. He rolls out of the way and Meng Yao's knife slashes across the mattress, right where his throat would have been. Meng Yao recovers quickly and comes at Wei Ying again with the knife, but Wei Ying manages to dodge a second time and kicks out, sending Meng Yao sprawling onto the floor. The knife falls out of his hand and skids across the floor further than he would expect, well out of Meng Yao's reach. Wei Ying scrambles out of bed, prepared to make a dive for the knife, but he isn't expecting Meng Yao to pull out a gun from the waistband of his trousers.
"Wait! If you shoot me, everyone will hear and come running. There's no thunderstorm this time to mask the sound," Wei Ying points out, already winded from the brief scuffle. It is probably an hour to sunrise, and the other servants should be getting up any moment now to prepare for the day. Wei Ying set himself up as bait so he fully expected Meng Yao to come for him, but he can’t believe Meng Yao would be daring enough to try this right now, and he can't outrun a bullet.
“I know. But you leave me no choice. Most of the servants are convinced that Lan Zhan's ghost has come back to claim his husband as his companion anyway, and if he can make you play his qin, he can make you kill yourself. All I have to do is plant the gun in your hand," Meng Yao replies, sounding almost calm, but Wei Ying thinks his eyes look a little wild.
"And not shoot me in the back, unlike what you did to the man you hired to kill Lan Zhan. It would be a bit difficult for me to shoot myself in the back,” Wei Ying says. He knows he’s rambling but it’s easier to keep Meng Yao talking while he tries to think of what to do next. "And don't people usually shoot themselves in the side of their heads or in their mouths instead of in the chest?"
Meng Yao lets out a harsh, slightly hysterical bark of laughter. “Did you really talk to Lan Zhan’s ghost? I wasn’t sure if you were just putting on an act, but nobody else should have known about the man I hired.”
“Yes, Lan Zhan is right here with me. You won’t be able to hurt me, he’ll protect me,” Wei Ying says with false bravado.
“What is he going to do, slam a door in my face? Break another bowl?” Meng Yao asks mockingly. “Even if he were really here, his abilities must be limited, or he would have killed me outright and wouldn’t need to use you. And he can haunt me all he likes but he can’t scare me if I can’t see him.” Meng Yao cocks his gun. “I could let you live. Just tell me where you put the proof that Lan Zhan hid, the proof that I was behind Lan Qiren’s death."
“There was never any proof, except what you just confessed,” Lan Huan says quietly as he walks in from the next room.
Meng Yao’s eyes widen in horror and he drops his arm. Wei Ying sags against the bed frame in relief.
“Wei Ying wrote me a letter, suggesting that I pretend that I had some urgent business that would take me away from the house for a few days and give you a chance to attack him,” Lan Huan explains, then glances at Wei Ying. “But I know A-Yao. He doesn’t like putting off tasks to later if he could do them right now.”
“I did it for us,” Meng Yao whispers. “You know how I feel about you. I’ve never tried to hide it.”
“And you thought that murdering my uncle and my brother would convince me to change my mind?” Lan Huan asks in disbelief. “Have you ever thought that I kept you at a distance not because I was afraid of my uncle’s wrath, but because I thought it would be unfair to you if I could never officially declare my relationship with you? You’re a servant and I’m the master of the house, and as the sole male descendant of the Lan family, it is my duty to marry someone who can help me continue the family line. You would always be a dirty secret, and I didn’t want to put you through that."
Meng Yao smiles. "I wouldn't have minded being a dirty secret, but I know I wouldn't have been able to share you with someone else. Not that it matters anymore now.” He takes a deep breath and raises the gun to his temple.
"A-Yao!" Lan Huan gasps.
But it's Wei Ying's words that stop Meng Yao in his tracks. "Hey, if you truly cared about Da-ge, you wouldn't do this to him. You wouldn't make him live with the memory of watching you kill yourself," Wei Ying says hotly.
"Do you really think I'm that noble? Maybe I do want him to live with this memory. At least he'll never forget me," Meng Yao says. But he puts his hand down and lets Lan Huan take the gun away from him, then collapses into Lan Huan’s arms, sobbing.
Lan Huan holds him for a while but eventually calls for the servants to take Meng Yao away, and Wei Ying can see what it costs Lan Huan not to follow. “Da-ge, are you alright?” Wei Ying asks.
Lan Huan smiles bitterly and shakes his head. “It’s my fault. I should have allowed my uncle to dismiss A-Yao right from the start and cut all ties with him, instead of begging my uncle to keep him as a servant. I thought that with time our feelings for each other would fade but they only grew more confusing, and I doomed us all to misery. Is A-Zhan really here with you?"
Wei Ying looks around the room and catches a fleeting movement in the shadows. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry, A-Zhan. I’ve let you down,” Lan Huan says wearily. “Go back to sleep, A-Ying. You’ll be safe now."
--
“My brother was right.”
“About what?” Wei Ying asks. He doesn’t really remember falling asleep, but he’s back in the dream of being in the moonlit courtyard with Lan Zhan.
“That it’s kinder to let go. Remember what the temple medium said, that the living and dead should walk different paths? You’re dying, Wei Ying. And it’s my fault,” Lan Zhan says.
“Dying? That’s ridiculous, I’ve never been healthier!” Wei Ying protests. "Well, I’ve been feeling a bit tired, but not having enough sleep or food will do that.”
“You shouldn’t be able to talk to me like this. You shouldn’t be slipping so easily into this world, between life and death,” Lan Zhan replies. “Meng Yao has been brought to justice and my murderer is already dead. I should go.”
Wei Ying gets to his feet, catching up to Lan Zhan in a few steps. “Wait, you’re just going to go like that?”
It isn’t fair. They’ve only just started getting to know each other, and he’s kind of gotten used to having Lan Zhan lurking in the shadows. The thought of never hearing his voice again, not even in his dreams, and never getting to see Lan Zhan smile or hear him laugh fills his heart with a terrible ache. Besides, Lan Zhan is his husband.
He reaches out to take Lan Zhan’s hand. It’s not exactly warm, but it’s not as cold as he thought it would be. Lan Zhan looks shocked that he managed to hold his hand, but he isn’t letting go either, and Wei Ying takes it as a sign. Heart racing furiously, he leans forward and kisses Lan Zhan - just a gentle press of his lips against Lan Zhan's.
“Wait for me. Since we didn’t get to be proper husbands in this life, let’s be husbands again in the next life,” he whispers before stepping back.
Lan Zhan smiles, just a slight tilt to his lips. “Mn.”
When Wei Ying wakes up, his pillow is wet with tears and there’s a ghost of a kiss on his lips.
—
Lan Huan agrees that it would be best to exhume the body that was mistaken for Lan Zhan's and replace it with Lan Zhan’s pendant as soon as possible. Wei Ying hates that they can't find Lan Zhan's body though, and there's still the mystery of who had taken Lan Zhan's pendant and clothes and dressed the murderer's corpse in them as a decoy. Besides, the temple medium Xiao Xingchen has taken a leave of absence, which reminds Wei Ying that he promised to help them find Lan Zhan's body, and Wei Ying is in the main wing with Lan Huan planning to renew the search for Lan Zhan's body when a servant runs up to them.
"Laoye, San-ye. San-ye's brother is at the door, and he says you must both follow him right away."
Wei Ying and Lan Huan exchange a look of surprise and hurry out of the South Gate to find Jiang Cheng waiting for them - with a man that Wei Ying takes a while to recognise.
"Ah, you're the new physician's brother! The one who knew Lan Zhan," Wei Ying says, trying to force out a smile.
"I'm Wen Ning. And actually, I've only just found out the name of the man I found by the river two weeks ago," he replies with a smile.
"You found-" Wei Ying is lost for words.
"Don't just stand there! He's still alive, but we have to hurry," Jiang Cheng says impatiently.
They take the car instead of the horse carriage, speeding in the dark towards the town downriver. Xiao Xingchen is already there, in the house where the physician Wen Qing lives with her brother, and when Wen Ning leads them to the guest room where Lan Zhan has been in a deep, unnatural sleep for almost two weeks, Wei Ying has to pinch himself to make sure this isn't a dream and Lan Zhan is really lying there in the spare bed, looking very much thinner than Wei Ying remembers but with his chest rising and falling in slow steady breaths.
When Wen Ning had found Lan Zhan on the river's edge with a firm grip on a corpse's wrist, Lan Zhan had apparently been conscious enough to tell Wen Ning to hide him. Wen Ning had convinced his sister to go along with the deception and to try to save Lan Zhan's life, and when Wen Ning had discovered Wei Ying's connection to their mysterious patient, it had taken a few days of careful investigation for the Wen siblings to decide that the Jiangs could be trusted to be informed that Lan Zhan was with them.
"He had been in that freezing river for too long and he was badly wounded, and it's not unusual for patients to sleep very deeply as part of the healing process. But even though his injuries are healing well and he has no problems breathing on his own, he just won't wake up," Wen Qing says briskly. “A-Ning has managed to get him to swallow some broth, but it’s been two weeks and I’m not sure how long he can go on like this.”
“We think that he did die, if only for an instant, before Wen-daifu managed to revive him, and the hun part of his soul latched onto the jade pendant,” Xiao Xingchen says, and holds out his hand for the pendant. “May I?"
Wei Ying gives up the pendant readily and everyone in the room watches with bated breath as the medium calls out to Lan Zhan's soul before placing the pendant on his chest. To their joy and amazement, Lan Zhan frowns, then blinks his eyes open slowly.
"A-Zhan?" Lan Huan says softly. “You’ll be alright now."
Lan Zhan looks around at all people in the room, and Wei Ying's heart soars when Lan Zhan's gaze fixes on him. Jiang Yanli nudges him forward gently, and even though Lan Zhan doesn't seem well enough to speak yet, when he puts his hand in Lan Zhan's, Lan Zhan's grip is firm.
"Looks like we won't have to wait for the next life to be husbands after all," Wei Ying says with a teary smile.
--
The second time that Lan Zhan marries Wei Ying, Lan Zhan comes in person to collect his groom. This time, there is a grand, noisy procession and Lan Zhan actually comes on horseback, which makes Wei Ying laugh in delight. It is an unusual match to be sure, but over the many months that it has taken Lan Zhan to finally recover completely and get back on his feet, everyone in both towns has heard the story of Lan Zhan’s death and resurrection, and two men getting married to each other - twice - is hardly the strangest part of the tale.
They go through the three bows without having to use a rooster as a stand-in, something Wei Ying can laugh about now, although they ask Xiao Xingchen to do them the honour of playing the part of matchmaker and guiding them through the wedding rites again, and there is a lavish dinner banquet afterwards where the whole town is invited to share the good fortune of both families. But tonight, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan do not have to participate in the festivities with everyone else just yet. Tonight, their celebration of each other is for them alone.
Two bowls of sweet dumpling soup are waiting for them in Lan Zhan’s room, and they feed each other spoonfuls of it before they toast each other, linking their arms to drink the wine. Wei Ying waits impatiently for Lan Zhan to set their cups down, then sneaks up on him and pushes him down onto the bed, grinning as he moves to cover Lan Zhan’s body with his own.
Lan Zhan’s eyes are blown wide, his cheeks already a little flushed as he lays under him and Wei Ying will never get tired of pressing his fingertips to Lan Zhan’s chest so he can feel his heart beating, strong and sure. “It’s probably too late now, but are you prepared for the bad luck I’m going to bring you, Lan-Er-ye?"
Lan Zhan smiles. “I’ve already died once, and you brought me back. Some things are meant to be lost so that something else can be found."
Then Lan Zhan rolls him over on the red silk sheets of their wedding bed, and Wei Ying's bright laughter can be heard from the moonlit courtyard until Lan Zhan seals his lips with a kiss.