He knows that Wei Ying had had to start over again from nothing several times - as a child, as a young teen taking care of an entire clan's worth of women and children, and then once again after taking Mo Xuanyu's body.

When Wei Ying tells him this, in this way, it lets him know that he might not have made all the right decisions in his life, but this was among them. He holds Wei Ying's face in his hands and then pulls him into an embrace; without the wings and without the scales that are against his cheek, Wangji would feel completely normal.

It's not like he consciously wants to leave Wei Ying - if it were up to him, they would have had these last sixteen years together. If it were up to him, they'd have married at home, and he'd have come to live with him at the Cloud Recesses, and they would've already fought through all the things young couples fight through, and made up a hundred times, and both really understood what forever might be like.

"We won't talk about it anymore," he promises.