Lan Wangji follows the summons dutifully as he would always have. He didn’t wait until the last minute - instead he completes what he was doing until he reaches a natural stopping point. Then he half-cleans up his workstation (he would be returning, after all) and begins his search for Lan Qiren. There were a few places where he knew where he would find him, and a quick look as he walked confirmed that he was precisely where he would have looked first.
He could guess as to why he was being summoned, but Lan Wangji did not like to make guesses when it would simply be easier to find out directly what it was for. There was no use to ponder and become concerned over something that may not be the case, after all. With soft footfalls up the wooden plankings of the stairs, Lan Wangji approached his uncle and announced himself in a low voice.
Cool golden eyes watched Lan Qiren turn around to look at him. Standing before his tall uncle, he felt his stomach tighten as he was uncertain what to expect. Though it had been many years since his fall from grace, he still felt its weight pull at him when he stood in front of or passed certain people in the Cloud Recesses.
Lan Wangji listens with a straight, impassive face. Even his eyes are unwavering, and his mouth does not move as though he was going to speak out. It is a habit so well-practiced that it became instinctual decades ago. But Lan Qiren’s hand taking his breaks the mask: Lan Wangji blinks and angles his head to watch as his uncle’s hands deposit something warmed from his grasp into the cool palm of his hand. His breath catches in his throat, which swells at recognition of the meaning of this gift. The younger Jade doesn’t have to see how Lan Qiren wrestled with his instinct to frown at the mention of WeI Wuxian - he can hear it in the stiffness of his birth name.
He tears his eyes away from the glittering jade tokens as he encloses his hand around them. They warm his fingers, and he holds them even tighter. Looking up now, Lan Wangji meets his uncle’s eyes with a gaze that is unsteady. His eyebrows are starting to knit together as he blinks once - the only show of emotion that cracks his facade.
The enormity of this gift and gesture was not lost on Lan Wangji. In fact, his throat is clenching tightly, his heart is pounding, and his thoughts are whirling as though they were being thrown around by a tempest. Though he was not truly his father, throughout the lives of his nephews he had to be one when their true father took to seclusion. Lan Wangji could only guess if he ever wanted this position. It was not his place to ask or assume, and so he only ever accepted this fact of life instead of questioning it. But, beyond accepting Wei Ying by calling him by his most intimate name, and acknowledging him with a token for him as well and formally allowing him the freedom to leave and return as he pleased… he knew what joy felt like, and it felt very much like this.
“I thank you for this gift, Shufu,” is all he says in a tone that is changed slightly from the tightness in his throat, although he suppressed much of his emotions from leaking into his voice. Lan Qiren’s nephew dips his head in a formal expression of his gratitude. He doesn’t know what else to say, but when he looks back into his uncle’s face, he gets the feeling that he might understand how much this meant to him through the way his eyebrows started to knit together and the way his eyes sought out for that unspoken connection.
Lan Wangji excuses himself with more control over his voice than he did mere seconds ago. He couldn’t linger too long - there was the work he left behind in his room that he wanted to complete, and there was the token in his hand to pass along to Wei Ying.
In his heart he wonders if Lan Qiren did this as proof of his affection for and acceptance of him, or because it was seemly to do so. He hoped, and believed, that it was the former.
Lan Qiren’s face didn’t noticeably change even as he caught the slight twitching of muscles in every possible angle of his nephew’s face. The rest of the world would have been a fool if they thought only Wangji’s older brother could read him----the famous exemplar of this generation was raised by him. What sort of uncle and teacher would he be if he didn’t even know his own nephew and student? Not to mention, said nephew had been the only object of remembrance his older brother had left him. How... pitiful, he thought. He recalled the days he held Wangji in his arms when his brother’s wife had newly birthed him. The Old Master then might not have held their mother in very high regards...or high regards at all, even when he was young, Lan Qiren knew that his disdain of their mother had nothing to do with her children.
He had been the first one to hold Wangji in his arms, while his brother was the first to hold Xichen. He remembered it clearly---tiny arms no larger than his own finger. As babes, Wangji was the one who smiled and laughed the most out of the brothers. For a moment, Lan Qiren had even thought that he could grow up to be like his mother.
But the boy he’d watched grow up who now stood before him was an exact photocopy of his father. Young, stubborn, headstrong, foolish, and love-struck. It had taken him a long time to realize that what he hated wasn’t Wei Ying, but Wei Ying’s effect on Wangji that reminded Lan Qiren of the days when he lost his brother to his wife, and the pain all along with it. He had sworn before their ancestors that he would never allow another foolish woman to take away a Lan like that.
....but Wei Ying wasn’t a woman, and for what wrongs he committed in the past, none dared breathe another word of it as long as both the Jiang and Lan’s name were involved. Lan Qiren convinced himself that he hadn’t broken his oath to his ancestors and that as long as Lan Wangji knew his way to deal with this fool of a child, it wasn’t a bad thing.
He watched as what he hadn’t seen in Wangji for many, many years---a smile as gentle and genuine as the one he saw on him when he was still a babe---formed across his fair skin. He felt his heart swell with a conflict of emotions and inhaled sharply to steady himself.
He snorted when Lan Wangji kneeled before him.
He restrained himself from bending down to help him up. Instead, his hands tightens ever so slightly.
❝Do not kneel to anyone, from now on and henceforth. Do not kneel even to Wei Ying. I will not have my nephew gravel his knees to any insolent fool if they know what’s best for them.❞
