35 for yanqing pls!!! :3c
35. “Can I have one last kiss?”
Wen Qing has never gone with Wei Wuxian to the market to sell their crops. It has always been her brother’s task. She prefers to stay on the mountain with the rest of her family. It comforts her to be able to watch over them, and she’s grown to dislike the crowded market streets and the way they make her want to hide and turn back into the skittish, dirty, and bruised thing that she was.
She wonders if something was guiding her to join him, now, as Jiang Yanli stands before her, in full wedding regalia. She is so beautiful that Wen Qing can feel the physical pain of her want deep in her chest. If it was something spiritual that drove Wen Qing to accompany Wei Wuxian to the market today, she does not know whether to curse it or thank it. Love and grief are tearing her to pieces, and she cannot tell which one is winning.
Jiang Yanli’s eyes widen when they turn from her brother to Wen Qing. Wen Qing sees love and grief in those eyes as well, and hopes it is not just her own reflected back.
Wei Wuxian steps closer to his sister, speaking to her, and those eyes are off Wen Qing now. She wants to say something so that Jiang Yanli’s gaze will return to her. She doesn’t. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli deserve to have this moment undisturbed by Wen Qing and her selfish want.
Jiang Yanli’s brothers call her beautiful, and Wen Qing holds her tongue. But when Jiang Yanli says their opinions don’t count, Wen Qing sees her gaze slip to her, and there is meaning there, meaning which makes Wen Qing’s lungs expand harshly and her hands twitch at her sides. She holds herself still for fear of what she’ll do if she moves.
The siblings have their reunion, and Wen Qing knows she should wait outside the courtyard, but she doesn’t. Instead she sits on a ledge away from the table, and shakes her head when Jiang Yanli looks at her, inviting her, but she basks in the glances that Jiang Yanli sends her way, starving like she never had even when she was living on the streets.
Jiang Yanli sends her brothers to wait outside the courtyard, saying they can catch up while Wen Qing helps her clear the dishes. Wen Qing knows that they can’t defy Jiang Yanli’s loving smile and her soft voice, because Wen Qing can’t either, so she is not surprised when they step outside, even with frowns on their faces.
Wen Qing reaches for one of the bowls, and her hand brushes Jiang Yanli’s, and she remembers those hands on her, on her hands and her face and her back. Jiang Yanli’s face is so close to Wen Qing’s where they are both bent over the table, and Wen Qing remembers being so close their breaths were one and the same, remembers how it feels to close that gap, how Jiang Yanli’s lips were so soft just like her voice and her hands and her love, and oh, Wen Qing thinks she might break.
She does not realize she is shaking until Jiang Yanli takes her hands in hers, stilling them with a thumb running across the back of Wen Qing’s hand. She wants to cry. She doesn’t. It’s a mirror of how she held Jiang Yanli in her room of the Yiling Outpost, when Wen Qing was the one who was strong and Jiang Yanli was the one who was falling apart. She does not wish they were back there, but she swears she would give up enlightenment in favor of laying in that bed with Jiang Yanli forever, faces so close Wen Qing could see each speck in the brown of her eyes, hands intertwined beneath the covers, Wen Qing pressing her legs against Jiang Yanli’s cold feet to warm them up despite Jiang Yanli’s protests.
She wants that back, now more than ever, as the red sleeves of Jiang Yanli’s wedding gown drape over their clasped hands.
They are silent, for a moment, Wen Qing sure that if she opens her mouth to speak a sob will come out instead. Her efforts are made useless, however, when Jiang Yanli breaks the silence with a gentle “A-Qing,” and she sobs anyway.
Wen Qing does not bury herself in Jiang Yanli’s arms and chest. She does not want to ruin her gown. Or maybe she does. She won’t, anyway.
“Do you love him?” Wen Qing asks, and she is relieved when her voice only wavers a little.
Jiang Yanli does not answer for a moment. “I do,” she answers finally, softly, so soft it could ruin Wen Qing. “He is a good man, and he loves me too. I will be happy with him, and well provided for.” And how did she know what answer Wen Qing wanted when Wen Qing didn’t know herself?
“But A-Qing,” she continues. There is a gentle hand beneath Wen Qing’s chin, tilting her head up to meet Jiang Yanli’s eyes. “He is not you.”
Wen Qing clutches Jiang Yanli’s hands tighter. She swallows down her want. Her want to push her hands into Jiang Yanli’s hair and ruin how it’s arranged for someone that isn’t her. Her want to lead Jiang Yanli back up the mountain so that they can lie together on a pathetic excuse for a bed and Wen Qing never has to watch her leave again. Her want to take, take, take from Jiang Yanli, of Jiang Yanli, drink up her smiles and touches and glances and never let anyone else have them.
She swallows it down, but Wen Qing is still a selfish woman, and oh, she wants to be selfish now. So she does not stop herself from asking.
“Then, A-Li, please, can I have one last kiss?” She stares at Jiang Yanli, takes in every piece of her face at this moment, where she might once again be Wen Qing’s, for the last time.
Tears well up in Jiang Yanli’s eyes. Wen Qing presses her thumb against them, soaking them up into her skin instead of wiping them so that they do not leave tracks in Jiang Yanli’s makeup. She hopes, irrationally, that the tears will stay in her skin forever.
Jiang Yanli moves forward, and Wen Qing lets her come. She wants to draw out the approach, the time before their lips meet.
When Jiang Yanli kisses her for the last time, it is a gentle thing. Fitting for Jiang Yanli, but not for Wen Qing, who slices and pushes and fights for all that she knows and wants and loves. But she lets it be gentle, lets it be Jiang Yanli’s. She can feel the heat of Jiang Yanli’s mouth, the taste of her soup on her lips, the texture of the wedding-red lipstick between the two of them, stopping their lips from meeting fully.
Wen Qing waits for Jiang Yanli to pull away. She does not pursue her. She watches her go. She carries her bowl of soup up the mountain and when she lies down on her mat of a bed she thinks about cold feet pressed against her legs and she lets herself break at last.
