Chapter Text
Something is different about his Ying-gege. Nothing is particularly unusual about Wei Ying absconding with him after school. Every day is different, and that’s okay. It’s been like that for as long as Wen Yuan can remember. He understands that his family is structured differently from many of his peers’. He understands that instead of parents he has his grandmother and his uncles and aunties, his cousins, his Ying-gege.
But historically Wei Ying has come to him alone or, if not alone, then with one or both of his cousins. Sometimes with Yanli-jiejie and the fiance Wei Ying loves to torment. Never with Wen Yuan’s music teacher, his music teacher who has been inexplicably absent for the first time, not even since Mr. Lan became Wei Ying’s roommate, which was a shock in itself, to look up from his homework and find his teacher in his slippers, almost like a real person.
So this is strange, and even if he knows that Mr. Lan is Jingyi’s cousin, it’s still weird to be on a walk in the park with his teacher and his best friend and Wen Yuan’s honorary uncle. He knows to behave in front of his teacher, and he definitely knows to behave in front of Wei Ying, who, for all his tales of his troublemaking youth, has never really approved of Wen Yuan getting into trouble, but Jingyi always makes it hard to behave.
He’s certainly making it hard now, ducking off the path to shout about the turtles in the pond. Or maybe he’s shouting at them. It’s hard to tell with Jingyi sometimes. Wei Ying laughs.
“You’re sure you’re related?” he asks, elbowing Mr. Lan. Wen Yuan stuffs down the urge to gasp.
“Positive,” he says. “He is almost exactly like his mother was at that age. She’s still like that.”
It’s true. Jingyi’s family isn’t exactly like Wen Yuan’s, but he, too, is cared for by a variety of adults, and it was only after six months of knowing each other that he met Jingyi’s mother, and he learned that the intensity Jingyi displays is definitely, entirely genetic. He doesn’t know much about single parenthood, but he does know enough from his eldest cousin’s stories that excelling in emergency medicine requires a special kind of weirdness.
And even that weirdness doesn’t really compare to Wei Ying’s nervous, wobbly smile or the way Wei Ying squeezed him tightly when he caught up with him on the steps of the high school. It felt like a greeting and a farewell at once. Something is wrong.
“Gege! Come look! This one’s standing on that one’s back!” Jingyi shouts from his crouch by the pond. Mr. Lan dutifully peels off to look at the turtle piggy-back ride, leaving Wei Ying and Wen Yuan on the path. As he walks away, Wen Yuan looks up and almost has to look away, the tenderness of expression on Wei Ying’s face like nothing he’s ever seen before.
“Ying-gege. Um. Ge?” he says. “Um.”
The tenderness melts into prickly fondness, the look that’s just for him. “Spit it out, kiddo.”
“Um. What’s — what’s going on?”
“What? I can’t take my favorite brat out for the afternoon without something going on?” Wei Ying says, one hand splayed across his heart, all drama, fake wounded.
“I guess,” Wen Yuan says, toeing the pavement awkwardly. “Ying-gege, is everything okay? You bought us pretzels, and you always say that park vendors are a rip-off. And, uh, Ning-gege came home really late last night, and Qing-jiejie didn’t come home at all.”
“Oh! That! Ah, ah, little radish, you shouldn’t worry so much! They stayed over to help me with a work problem,” Wei Ying says. Then he sighs. “Aw, fuck, I can’t lie to you, kiddo. Don’t say that at fucking school.”
“I won’t say that at fucking school,” Wen Yuan says dutifully.
“Good boy,” Wei Ying says. “Ah, so Mo Xuanyu is missing. Don’t worry! I’ll get him back. But Qing-jie and A-Ning are helping me find him. Qing-jie is staying over, so you might not see either of us for a little bit. So I figured I could spoil you a little.”
Well, if he puts it like that, it makes a little bit more sense. But it doesn’t explain why Mr. Lan is with them. That look on his Ying-gege’s face, though. He squints. Wei Ying looks at the sky.
“Are you — is — Mr. Lan — my teacher?”
“Shut your mouth! He is your teacher, as you know perfectly well, if that’s what you’re asking, you horrible child,” Wei Ying hisses. Jingyi looks over his shoulder at them, and Wei Ying waves cheerfully with the hand he isn’t using to squeeze Wen Yuan’s elbow in a vise-grip. He lowers his voice. “Nosy. You’re a nosy one. I take it back. I clearly didn’t birth you. No child of mine would be so impertinent, so unfilial, so terrible. Fine. Yes. Yes.”
He can’t help it. He laughs, and, after a moment of mulish indignation, Wei Ying is laughing with him.
“That’s gross,” Wen Yuan whispers when he catches his breath and gets a gentle elbow to the sternum for it.
“Super gross,” Wei Ying agrees. “Now come on, let’s go see what’s so interesting about these turtles. Wanna bet they’re doing it? Hey, Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan! Are they doing it?”
They aren’t. When they make their way to the pond, they discover that Jingyi mistook a large rock for a second turtle, and Mr. Lan is doing something Wen Yuan has never seen before — fussing.
“I’m fine, gege,” Jingyi says miserably as his cousin feels his forehead and cheeks with the back of one hand. “I’m fine!”
“Mm, you aren’t warm. I’ll schedule an appointment with the eye doctor,” he says. “Are you having difficulty seeing the board? Perhaps that would explain your math grade.”
Jingyi scowls. “That’s not my fault! And you can’t do math either!”
“He does always squint at the board,” Wen Yuan adds helpfully. Another elbow, this one to his stomach. Everyone is elbowing him today. It’s not fair. He’s just being helpful, so he helps Jingyi get a closer look at the turtles.
After Wei Ying drags a squawking Jingyi out of the pond, both of them sopping wet, Wen Yuan doesn’t even get a lecture. Mr. Lan just runs his hands over Jingyi’s wet clothes and hair, eyes closed, flicking the water back into the pond. Over their heads, what few leaves remain on the trees shiver and shudder, lending their help. Then he does the same to Wei Ying, who grins, all teeth, and pats Wen Yuan on the head.
So, yes, something is definitely very wrong. Worry grows flowers in his gut, and when Wei Ying holds him at the entrance to the apartment he shares with his grandmother and cousins, it doesn’t feel like anything but a farewell.
—
“He knew something was up,” Wei Ying says once they’ve seen the light in the apartment flash three times. He reaches for Lan Zhan’s hand. They meet, palm to palm. “I told him about Mo Xuanyu. I didn’t tell him the rest. But he knew something was up. He’s a smart kid.”
“He is,” Lan Zhan agrees. There’s nothing else to say. Either Wei Ying will return or he won’t. No point in worrying Wen Yuan further. But not knowing can be worse than knowing. Not knowing why someone is gone. Not knowing the circumstances that lead to their absence. Not understanding for years and years and years.
“I’ll come back,” Wei Ying says. It sounds like a question. Firmer, “I will. I have to. I can’t exactly up and leave all the rent to you, can I?”
“That would be terribly rude,” Lan Zhan agrees. “I am, after all, a teacher. I could hardly afford the rent on my own.”
“You’d need to get a new boyfriend ASAP,” Wei Ying says gravely. “And that would be so mean! I’d be so mad. I’d definitely haunt you.”
He would. Ghost or not, Wei Ying would haunt him, in the absence of him, in the gaping hole he’d leave in Lan Zhan’s chest, open and bloody. Acceleration is cruel. The minutes compress ahead of him, shifted blue, coming shorter and shorter. No one could blame him for grasping, for clutching, for wanting, for aching. That’s not true. He would blame himself. So he doesn’t grasp, doesn’t crush the moments in his fist. Wei Ying’s palm is warm in his. He squeezes gently. Wei Ying squeezes back.
Sniffling just a little, eyes wet, Wei Ying says, “Let’s go home, sweetheart.”
They go home, palm to palm, shoulder to shoulder. At their landing, Wei Ying doesn’t let his hand fall. Doesn’t separate into his own orbit.
“I can’t,” he says. “I can’t spend tonight pretending I don’t want you. If this is it. If we don’t have more time. I can’t do it. Maybe you can. I can’t. We don’t have to say anything. But let me be close to you?”
As if Lan Zhan wants to parted from him. As if he has any desires in these fleeting moments for anything but Wei Ying. As if he could bear becoming a lone satellite again, always circling because falling out of orbit means crashing, means shattering. Every touch is a cataclysmic event when observed from the right vantage point, electrons and atoms and cells jumping, trading, entangling. Even if Wei Ying never returns, even if he loses him, some of his electrons will make a home in Lan Zhan’s body, joining the atoms that build the molecules of his living cells. In each of his somatic cells he carries twenty-three chromosomes from his very first loss. So is anything ever truly lost?
Yes. Wei Ying is not the sum of his constituent parts, and Lan Zhan is not one half of his mother. But it’s a small comfort, and small comforts are the glue that hold together what was once shattered. Enough of them may even forestall crumbling altogether, the dab of glue holding together one last load-bearing element in a wobbling dam. He’ll take the small comforts. He takes one from Wei Ying’s mouth. Then another and another.
“Mm, yes,” Wei Ying says, a puff of air, cool against his wet lips. “Yes, like that. Closer.”
“Like this?”
Wei Ying’s hands on his waist, tight, gripping, possessive. He wants to be possessed. No, he feels possessed, is possessed, full to the brim. “No. Closer.”
“Any closer and we may face indecency charges,” Lan Zhan manages in a sliver of time that Wei Ying’s mouth isn’t on his, when his teeth are closing on his earlobe, right in the middle of the seventh floor landing. With a laughing sigh, Wei Ying releases the press of his teeth and follows the shell of his ear with his tongue.
His whisper sends a shudder down Lan Zhan’s spine. “Why? Because you’d let me fuck you right here on the dirty floor?”
He wouldn’t. Anyone could see, and it’s a shared building, and it would be both grossly, profoundly inappropriate and exceedingly illegal. There’s no harm in pretending, though, in playing, in enjoying this day. So he says, “Yes. Please.”
“Well, I guess one of us has to be responsible,” Wei Ying says cheekily. He pulls away just enough to be respectable, responsible. “We can do whatever filthy things you want later. Ah, we’d better get back in there before Jiang Cheng has that fucking stroke he’s been at risk for since he was, like, ten.”
They make their way to the front door with its peeling security sigil, and Wei Ying only releases his hand to run his fingers over it, allowing them entry. Behind the door, Lan Zhan can hear some sort of commotion, but that’s to be expected. As before, a burst of humidity hits them, heady and steamy. And, as before, Jiang Cheng is waiting for them in the entryway, face purple and blotchy, shouting so fast and loud Lan Zhan can’t make out the words, but, unlike before, he’s not alone. Wen Ning’s round face is visible over Jiang Cheng’s shoulder, smiling wanly. He has Jiang Cheng’s arms pinned behind his back.
“Please, Jiang Cheng,” he says politely. He doesn’t even sound out of breath. “Please don’t hit anyone. Don’t worry, jiejie took his sword.”
Wen Qing’s voice carries from the kitchen. “Behave! All of you!”
“Um. Sorry we’re late? Sorry I wanted to see A-Yuan before we do something crazy risky?” Wei Ying says, too perplexed to even shout it.
“You — you fucking — you fucking asshole! How fucking dare you?”
“How dare I do what? What kind of fuckup am I this time?” Wei Ying snaps, no longer too perplexed to shout. He gets right in his brother’s face. For a brief moment, Lan Zhan thinks he’s going to hit him while he’s restrained. He doesn’t get the chance before Jiang Cheng jerks his head and snarls, “Not you! Him!”
Him?
“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Ying says, low and dangerous. “Who?”
“Your little fuckbuddy! What the fuck is wrong with you, Wei Ying? You’ll let just anyone into your bed, won’t you? He’s just gonna drop you when he gets bored with you, just like everyone else! And then you’ll come crying to a-jie, like it’s some big fucking surprise. You really have no goddamn self respect, do you?”
Everyone goes very quiet. Wen Ning grimaces. Wen Qing storms out of the kitchen, an oven mitt still on one hand. Blood rushes in Lan Zhan’s inner ears, to the surface of his skin, dripping a flush down his chest and shoulders. He can hear his heartbeat, fast, humiliated, shocked, but more than any of that, angry. In all his life, he’s never felt the urge to strike another person, to curse them, to hurt them. Wei Ying is in the way. He breathes, slow and steady.
Then Wei Ying says, so quietly it may as well be a whisper, “Let him go.”
Wen Ning’s face crumples. “Wei Ying, Wei Ying, please don’t.”
“I said let him go,” he says again. “This is a family matter.”
Face pale and miserable, Wen Ning releases Jiang Cheng, and Lan Zhan thinks that, for just a moment, Jiang Cheng looks afraid, eyes widening just a hair before narrowing. And then Wei Ying grabs his arm and drags him bodily out the door. It slams.
Their shouting carries all the way down the hall, but what comes out clearest of all is Wei Ying’s shout right when the door slams — “You don’t get to take anything else from me!”
And then an anguished wail that trails into pained whimpering — “No! No, no, no! You promised, you promised, you promised.”
And then nothing. Wen Ning covers his face with his hands, muttering to himself, sorry, sorry, sorry, and his sister flicks off her oven mitt and places a hand on his shoulder.
Voice incredibly gentle, the same voice his own brother would use on Lan Zhan down when he stretched himself so thin that he’d have no choice but to snap down the middle, says, “It’s not your fault.” She’s clearly talking to both of them.
“It’s not. I already knew. You two aren’t subtle,” she says. “You really aren’t. He told me, like, two days after you moved in how handsome his new roommate was. And insufferable. There was no way he wouldn’t go completely insane about that. I think it’s, ugh. I think. Ugh. It’s sweet. Go, sit. A-Ning, go with him.”
Numbly, Lan Zhan makes his way to the sofa. Wen Ning trails behind him and perches awkwardly beside him. They’re sitting on Jiang Cheng’s bed. He doesn’t like it. After a brief trip to the kitchen, Wen Qing returns with a beer and two glasses of water. She hands the waters to them and unsheathes the dagger on her belt, the one next to her sword, and uses it to crack her beer. What an interesting person. She chugs half of it before speaking.
“Jiang Cheng saw you two when you left. He has anger issues. They come out in high stress situations, especially when Wei Ying is involved,” she says, straight to the point. “He’s working on them. Doesn’t make what he said okay. I tried to calm him down before you got back, but it just wasn’t happening. Oh, A-Ning, don’t cry.”
“He’s going to kill him,” Wen Ning says to his water. “And then he’ll have to go by himself, and we’ll lose him.”
Something on Lan Zhan’s face must give him away because Wen Qing laughs a little. She sits with them. “No, he won’t actually kill him. But Jiang Cheng will be completely useless for the rest of the night after Wei Ying finishes with him.”
“What is he going to do to him?” he forces himself to say. Wen Qing looks at him sidelong.
“Probably not anything worse than what you wanted to do,” she says. “You must really like Wei Ying. I thought you were gonna beat the shit out of him.”
“I didn’t like the way he spoke to Wei Ying. He can talk about me however he likes.”
“He will. He will. If he doesn’t like you,” Wen Ning says. “Um. He goes for the throat when he’s mad. Uh, he knew that would hurt. Wei Ying, um. Well. Um. No one. Um. He has a lot of love.”
Wen Qing rescues her brother, speaking plainly. “Wei Ying gives and gives, so people take advantage. At work, in relationships, whatever. Then they fuck him over. I don’t think he’s ever had anyone stick around longer than a week or two. And that’s rare. And Jiang Cheng knows he’s insecure about it. But he also hates seeing Wei Ying hurt.” Her voice turns sharp. “You’re not going to fuck him over, are you?”
“No,” he says because it’s true. And then, because it’s also true, “I love him.”
She whistles. “Wow, you two really are alike. Wish he’d met you years ago. Wait. Have you told him that?”
“He knows. We’ve agreed to, ah. Date. Exclusively.”
Laughter, first just a giggle, then a full-belly laugh. Still laughing, she jostles her brother. “Wei Ying’s first boyfriend! A-Ning, are you already designing a cake?”
A nod from Wen Ning, face ducked, shy. “I made the cake for his birthday. I always do.”
“It was very good,” Lan zhan says honestly.
“Of course it was! A-Ning here is in culinary school. He’s going to be a pastry chef. He’s probably already planning your wedding cake.” Lan Zhan flushes dark. So does Wen Ning, and Wen Qing laughs harder. “A-Ning moves fast, too.”
The laughter dies down. It’s not really funny, but sometimes it’s easier to laugh because, yes, this whole stupid situation is absurd, moments stolen, and for what? Fraternal pride, protection, relationships gone sour? Soured bonds and stolen time. And what does anyone have but time? This time, here, now, without Wei Ying, stretches until it sags as much as the exhausted bags beneath Wen Qing’s eyes. In this time that runs away from him, he eventually forces himself to rise, to feed the rabbits, to be a pair of uncertain hands in the kitchen. Stir this. Hold that. Watch your step! Don’t touch your face—shit, A-Ning, he’s going to swell like a balloon.
He’s banished to the living room after that, holding a bitter lozenge under his tongue while he waits for his lips to stop tingling. “Give it ten minutes,” Wen Qing had said before returning to final preparations. Ten minutes pass like decades. In those decades, his phone rings, buzzing away in his pocket. Mingjue’s name flashes across the screen. Wednesday. It’s Wednesday, and he’d forgotten.
“Mingjue,” he says through numb lips.
“Didi, are you okay? Where are you?” he says, sounding unmoored. Lan Zhan’s presence at these dinners is perhaps the only thing that prevents the screaming arguments that characterize Lan Huan’s household these days, the arguments his brother bears with his plastic smile firmly in place. Wei Ying isn’t the only one whose fraternal bonds are crumbling under words unspoken.
“My apologies,” Lan Zhan says. He means it. He likes Mingjue. He loves his brother. He has no quarrel with Meng Yao. “Unfortunately, I will be unable to make it this evening. I am dealing with an emergency at home.”
“An emergency? A-Zhan, what’s going on?” It’s his brother. So Mingjue has him on speaker phone.
“Please, don’t be alarmed. Mo Xuanyu is missing.”
A mutter in the background. Meng Yao. “Mo Xuanyu?”
“You don’t ever listen, do you?” Mingjue hisses. It’s not directed at Lan Zhan. “The ghost in A-Zhan’s apartment. I’m so sorry. I hope you find him soon. Here, you should talk to A-Huan.”
There’s a little click before Lan Huan’s voice comes through, gentle and placating and wrong, wrong, wrong, “Are you sure he didn’t move on?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re staying home because of it? Didi, I don’t understand. Don’t the living come before the dead? We hardly see each other anymore.”
And whose fault is that?
Silence stretches, turning to taffy, in these red-shifted moments. Did he say that aloud? Some words should remain unspoken. Shame. Guilt. Horror.
“Mine, is what you’d say,” his brother says, quiet and hurt. “But you chose to leave. You could have stayed. A-Yao would have been fine in the living room until he found a new apartment. I never made you leave.”
Some words should remain unspoken, but no amount of glue can maintain a crack in a dam forever. Water is heavy, and a hundred million tons of it will one day shatter a feat of human ingenuity and engineering into so many pebbles, and a snaking river will eventually carve a rift so gradually, so slowly that you don’t even notice it until that rift becomes a ravine and then a gulf and then a canyon, a canyon with you on one side and your brother on the other, miles away.
Bridges, like canyons, don’t spring up overnight.
“You can choose to believe that,” Lan Zhan says, letting the water come as it will.
“We couldn’t stay children forever.”
“No, we couldn’t.”
He’s drowning.
“I’ll see you next week, didi,” Lan Huan says through the miles of water over his head. “If you want.”
Not miles. Just a few inches. If he stands on his toes, he could breathe again. “Or you could come here.”
He ends the call, and he breathes.
—
It’s unsporting to hit below the belt. Wei Ying has never been particularly fond of sports. On the roof, under miles of cold, cold sky, he has a sobbing Jiang Cheng on his back, knees digging into his shoulders.
“You can’t let me have anything, can you?” he shouts. Tears drip from his nose onto his brother’s face, salt water on salt water.
The answer is a heaving sob, wet and miserable. “I’m just worried about you! And you promised. You promised.”
“What did I promise? To save your sorry ass while you told me it was all my fault? Like I made you run off that night, like I fucked up your parents’ stupid marriage?”
“That you wouldn’t blame me!”
More tears fall, fat and hot, cutting rivers in the blood trickling from Jiang Cheng’s nose. He looks so pathetic, once again a teenager with dead leaves in his hair and blood all down his front. Shivering in the cold on the banks of the river. And Wei Ying had been on his chest then, too. Warming him with his body and, then, when that wasn’t enough to keep him lucid, his own spiritual energy. And when that was depleted and Jiang Cheng was still bleeding out from a wound that wouldn’t close, a blighted wound, a wound that should have killed him, he kept going until the sky turned grey then pink then blue. Until his core cracked down the middle. Until Jiang Fengmian and his strongest cultivators found them, Jiang Cheng flush with life, Wei Ying half-dead.
And what had he said? “A-Cheng! A-Cheng, you’re alive, you’re alive.”
And when the doctors said that they were lucky to be alive, that most don’t survive an encounter with what lies beneath the Hudson, the pain and fear bred of half a millennium of murder gone unacknowledged, that Jiang Cheng only survived at the expense of Wei Ying, all Wei Ying’s beloved Uncle Jiang had said was, “You did the right thing, A-Ying.”
He had. He knew his place — at his brother’s side, the buffer between Jiang Cheng and his parents. Some bonds form easily, ionic. But what bonds easily breaks easily. Water is enough to tear such bonds apart. Other bonds can only form under awesome heat and pressure, the crucible of the death of a star, the crucible of a marriage that never should have been.
And those bonds don’t break so easily. But when uranium splits, it explodes.
“I do.”
—
When Wei Ying returns, he’s shivering. He doesn’t have shoes to carelessly kick off in the entryway. He doesn’t have a jacket to throw at the coat rack and miss by a mile, like he always does. And he doesn’t have a whining, grumbling brother at his side.
“What’s left?” he mutters in lieu of a greeting or explanation. “Jiang Cheng is — he left. It’s just me now.”
There’s nothing left to do. Hesitantly, Wen Qing makes her way across the short distance from living room to entryway. She tells him that her part is done, a strange expression on her face, and leads him into the apartment proper. Then she pulls him into a brusque hug and whispers something into his ear. He shakes his head. No.
“I won’t try to stop you,” she says after a tense silence. “But it would be irresponsible not to suggest you give him time to cool down. Or at least let someone else come with you.”
“I won’t let Mo Xuanyu suffer if there’s something I can do about it,” Wei Ying says flatly. “I’m going tomorrow. I don’t care.” Then he untangles himself from Wen Qing, pitches his voice into something bright and brittle and fake, and says, “Anyway, I’m hungry! Let’s order in. We can even eat at the table!”
They order in, and time flattens once again. Delivery arrives in under a minute. Dinner passes in seconds. Wen Ning’s departure occurs between one of Lan Zhan’s heartbeats, when a blood cell is passing between atrium and ventricle, somewhere in his tricuspid valve. And all the while, Wei Ying clings. On the sofa before the food arrives, half sprawled in his lap, talking to Wen Ning with his mouth but not his eyes. At the table with one hand clutching Lan Zhan’s knee. These moments don’t stretch. Minutes like these never do.
“Well,” Wen Qing says once the door closes on her brother’s back, aiming for cheery and missing it by several lightyears. “We’d better have an early night, don’t you think? I’m turning in. ‘Night.”
“Yeah, good idea! ‘Night!” Wei Ying calls to her back. She waves over her shoulder, carefully casual. Bad luck finds its way in with risk acknowledged. That’s really what they’ve been doing, not looking, not acknowledging. Sometimes averted eyes are safer, the light of the eclipse filtered through the trees, the shadows spilled on the pavement.
Sometimes they’re a crutch, the last line of defense between the stumble and the fall.
—
Under a Newtonian model, an object in orbit is in a perpetual state of freefall. Weightlessness is an illusion. Gravity does not err. One atom calls to another, pulling and pulling. But to stumble out of orbit? That’s the real fall.
It’s not the fall that kills you.
—
Falling into bed is easier than falling out of orbit, and pulling Lan Zhan into the shower is easier than thinking about what comes next. So Wei Ying pulls Lan Zhan into the shower with him, like that’s not something brand new, like it’s something they’ve done before.
But it is new, and under the harsh overhead lighting, Wei Ying tries to catalogue each and every mark and spot and scar on Lan Zhan’s body. A mole on the back of his neck reveals itself when he puts his hair over his shoulder, showing Wei Ying how he runs conditioner from ends to roots. “Is there?” Yes. Wei Ying likes it. He presses his mouth to it, soft, open, easy. A slash of a scar on his chest. “Bike accident. I was nine. I went over a fence. Fifteen stitches.”
In return, Wei Ying draws Lan Zhan’s soapy fingers to the three dimples on his lower abdomen. “Appendectomy. Probably the first time I ever saw my aunt worry about me.” Lan Zhan tells him he has a freckle behind his ear and marks it with his tongue. Asks about the divots above and below his left eyebrow. “Teenage shit. Zixuan fights dirty. I used to have an eyebrow piercing, just to piss off my aunt. Not anymore!” Then Wei Ying presses Lan Zhan’s back against the ancient porcelain tile, takes them both in hand, stroking lazily, indulgently, like they have time to spare, and words aren’t really a priority after that.
Falling into bed, shower damp, is easy, too, and has Wei Ying ever really taken the easy way out? No. He hasn’t. Let him take the broad road this time.
“Play with me?” he says, crowding Lan Zhan up against the inside of his own door, mouth open and hot on his throat, hands grabbing and grabbing and grabbing. If he doesn’t let go, maybe — “Wanna have some fun?”
So maybe he’s falling back on old habits, the ones he thinks might make him appealing enough to keep but never do. It doesn’t matter. Except it does.
“Yes. And no.”
Pulling back, releasing the press of his teeth, the hold on Lan Zhan’s pulse, Wei Ying scowls, a scowl that’s kissed away, easy as anything.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Yes, I’ll play with you,” Lan Zhan says carefully, doing his own crowding, putting Wei Ying first on his back foot and then just on his back, splayed on the crisply made bed, the one Lan Zhan makes every morning, the kind of put-together Wei Ying couldn’t even dream of achieving. Far less carefully, hands rough, he tugs Wei Ying’s bathrobe open, baring him, then his own, touching skin to skin, a line of contact from chest to calves. Lan Zhan is already leaking, cock digging into his hip, and so is he, excited and hard because Lan Zhan wants to be here. “No, I don’t want to just have some fun with you, though I expect we’ll both enjoy ourselves.”
“Stop it,” Wei Ying says miserably. Then, when Lan Zhan pulls back, just a hair, questioning, “No, don’t — don’t stop. Please don’t stop. Fuck, you’re so earnest.”
“I don’t know any other way to be.”
Of course he doesn’t. It’s not fair, it’s not, to have this for once and not know if he’ll get to keep it. But he can keep Lan Zhan for the night, and he can keep him for the morning, and then, if he comes back, he’ll keep Lan Zhan as long as he's willing to be kept.
“You can keep me as long as you want,” Lan Zhan says against his jaw, nosing up to his ear, earnest to the bone, to the marrow, and Wei Ying takes him at his word, arms looped around his neck.
“What if I want to keep you forever, huh? What then?”
He pitches it like a joke because Lan Zhan isn’t particularly good at jokes, because if it's a joke, because then, because maybe — just because. With all the grace that belies the quiet ones, Lan Zhan props himself up on his forearms and looks at him. The lamps beside the bed are still on. That’s new. He likes it.
“Then that’s how long you’ll keep me,” Lan Zhan says, laughing at him with his eyebrows.
“You’re too earnest, you really are. I’m gonna ruin you,” he says, letting his hands trail down Lan Zhan’s back, letting them slide beneath the drape of his open robe, digging his fingers into the meat of his ass, dipping one between his cheeks. A ghost of a touch over his hole, gentle, almost nothing, but Lan Zhan falls from his elbows, lets his legs part even more, moans like he’s already ruined, like he’s been ruined for a long time now. Kissing again, open-mouthed and filthy. A lazy grind into the crease at the top of Wei Ying’s thigh, smearing precum, marking him.
“You like that.” It’s little more than breath caught between their mouths, between their teeth. Lan Zhan moans again, agreement, hips pushing back, turning Wei Ying’s touch into intent. More pressure against the little furled muscle until it gives, just a bit, until Wei Ying’s breached him with just the tip of one finger. Too dry to try for anything more than teasing, than feeling the heat of him.
“Mm, I do. What do you want tonight?”
Anything. Everything. Everything he might not get to have again. He flays himself to the bone in saying it, bared in ways he once thought belonged solely to the dead, to those who have nothing left to lose.
“Anything?”
“Mm, yeah,” he says, still playing between Lan Zhan’s legs, still grinding his cock into his belly. Still lazy, still indulgent. “You have a lot of fun toys. Maybe you wanna play with them. With me.”
Oh, yes, he does, gripping Wei Ying’s wrist, stilling his teasing. And then he’s up on his knees, stripping both of them entirely, tossing first his own robe and then manhandling Wei Ying up and up and up, pulling him first to kneel and then farther. He leans back and takes Wei Ying with him, pulling him to his chest, then into his lap, tugging Wei Ying out of his shitty poly-blend bathrobe. It finds a new home on the floor. Then hands on his back, his chest, tweaking his nipples harshly, dragging little hitched noises from somewhere near his diaphragm. Those hands close around his wrists when he tries to touch in return. Lips on his jaw, then up to his ear. A whisper against the shell of it, a question.
“Yes, yes, I wanna try that, please,” Wei Ying babbles, feeling something give, feeling himself slacken without his conscious input. “On my knees. Like you showed me.”
Lan Zhan stills under him, eyes dark, cheeks pinking. “It can be intense. If you don’t like it, we can do something else.”
“I want it,” Wei Ying says. Experimentally, he flexes his fingers, pulling against the resistance, testing the grip. Lan Zhan squeezes tighter. He could free himself if he tried. He doesn’t try. “Intense for me?”
“Not just for you,” Lan Zhan says, nosing against his cheekbone, brutally tender. So tender it hurts, down in his guts and bones. “Intense to hold that trust. To hold you. To catch you and trust that you will tell me when you want to be set free.”
Oh, that is a lot of trust. Wei Ying shivers. He’ll make himself worthy of that trust.
“Don’t let me go yet. What are you gonna do to me when you have me at your mercy?”
So much. Quiet, quiet Lan Zhan knows what he wants. Wei Ying’s mouth, on his hole, on his cock. His throat opened and squelching, Wei Ying gagging. Wei Ying’s fingers inside him, Wei Ying’s eyes on him, watching him split himself on a plug. Wants to kiss him, wants to edge him, wants him to beg for his cock. Wants Wei Ying on his knees, wants to fuck him with his face in the pillows, wants to make it hurt. Wants him, wants him. Him. And never once does he release the grip on Wei Ying’s wrists.
“Oh,” Wei Ying says, a little dazed. “Oh. Yes! Yes, all of that, all of it!”
His wrists are freed then. He’ll need his hands, he supposes, for part of this. Then he’s on his back, very suddenly, one hand cradling his head through the fall, through Lan Zhan throwing him down. He gasps. Knees bracket his shoulders, and Lan Zhan’s cock is right there, bobbing in front of his nose. He could just —
“Open,” Lan Zhan says, pressing his fingers to Wei Ying’s lips. He opens, lets Lan Zhan fuck into his mouth with three fingers, lets himself drool. Spit drips down his chin. Messy. He likes it, moaning around the fingers pressing down against his tongue, pushing deeper, testing his gag reflex. He gags, and he likes that, too. Lan Zhan’s gaze is soft.
“You can’t take me all the way,” he informs him. Wei Ying’s answer is garbled nonsense, and Lan Zhan’s response is a smile, the smile for Wei Ying, the one he pressed the pad of his index finger to just the day before.
“One day you will,” he says, and folds his pinky into Wei Ying’s mouth, not particularly gently. “You’ll have to practice. I think you will enjoy practicing.”
Like this, on his back with his mouth split around Lan Zhan’s long fingers — his hands are big, how did he never notice just how big they are until now? — he can’t really nod his agreement, but he tries to make himself known with words, more sloppy, sticky nonsense. With the hand he doesn’t have in Wei Ying’s mouth, Lan Zhan grabs at one of Wei Ying’s and brings it to his hip.
“When I’m fucking your throat, tap three times to stop. Show me.”
One, two, three. The fingers withdraw, a thread of spit connecting Lan Zhan’s callused fingertips and his lips. Wei Ying watches it break, feels it land on his chest, cooling in a way that should feel disgusting but doesn’t.
“Good,” Lan Zhan before ducking down to kiss his still open mouth. It’s so soft. Wei Ying melts. This is good, this is good. Breaking the kiss, Lan Zhan pulls back. “Keep your hand on me. If it comes off, we stop. Squeeze once to slow down, twice for more.”
When Wei Ying speaks, his mouth and throat feel rough, feel used. Used but not discarded. “You’re — you’re — wow. You know what you’re doing. That’s so hot, so smart, please fuck my mouth, please?”
He doesn’t get straight to it. Instead, he grips the base of his cock and rubs the red, wet tip of it across Wei Ying’s cheek, then his chin. His lips, the lips Wei Ying runs his tongue over, tasting. Lan Zhan is marking him, spreading the wetness at the tip all over his face. It feels proprietary. It should feel disgusting, degrading, even. It doesn’t.
That’s new, very new, and it's a heady shock. Not only does he not mind it, not when it’s Lan Zhan, he enjoys it, maybe even loves it, so he whines, sticks out his tongue, pleads, more, more, please. But he’s pinned. He could get up if he wanted to, could put Lan Zhan on his back, could wriggle free and put his mouth right on him, could break the game, but he doesn’t want to. Good behavior gets rewards. His reward is the full length of Lan Zhan’s cock against the side of his face, almost a slap but not quite.
“You!” he says, nearly a shout, suddenly not feeling so well behaved anymore. Good behavior gets rewards. What would bad behavior earn him? “You pulled that punch! Slap. Whatever. You wanted to slap me with your dick!”
“I did,” Lan Zhan admits. He’s panting, a little breathless. He keeps running the head of his cock over Wei Ying’s face, which he’s sure is burning, pinking under the dim light of the bedside lamps. “But I didn’t ask.”
Perhaps that’s fair, but there’s something hungry in his eyes, in the set of his mouth. Wei Ying kicks his feet, knocking his knees into Lan Zhan’s tailbone, petulant and bratty. No, it’s entirely unfair.
“You didn’t ask,” he says slowly. “You didn’t ask because you wanted me to ask you for it. You’re a monster! Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan! What kind of man do you think I am?”
A shrug. A shift. Now he’s marking Wei Ying’s pulse, a thin smear of precum over his carotid artery, across his Adam's apple, up his jugular.
“The kind of man who asks his boyfriend to slap him with his cock.”
Wei Ying huffs. “What if I wanted to slap you with my dick, huh? Mess up your pretty face? Would you ask me all nice and sweet for my cum on your face?”
“Of course.”
“Really?”
“Mm, you could force me to my knees,” he says, and when Wei Ying’s mouth falls open around a gasp, he feeds his cock right inside, quieting him. Moaning softly, he rocks into his mouth, a gentle start. “You’re strong. I’d let you, ah, I’d let you pull my hair. Like this.”
And he grips Wei Ying’s damp hair and yanks him closer, forcing his cock farther into the wet heat of his mouth. It’s deeper than he’s gone before, and it prompts Wei Ying to gag, to thrash his legs. He’s still drooling, all down his chin, throat spasming, and Lan Zhan keeps talking, keeps pulling at his hair.
“You’d fuck my mouth,” he breathes, watching Wei Ying’s face go red beneath him, eyes so very soft, like Wei Ying is something incredibly precious, something worth having, worth keeping. He wants to cry. “So hard, so hard, Wei Ying, ahh, like this. You’d make me take it. I’d be so good for you, so good, choking on your cock. I wouldn’t touch myself, not, ah, not if you told me I couldn’t.”
He can imagine it, can almost feel it, Lan Zhan telling him how he’d take it while he fucks his mouth, while Wei Ying chokes in it, while he can only manage thick, gagging noises, sloppy, drooling, wanted. While he’s rock hard and can’t even get a hand down to do anything about it, one arm pinned to his side, the other clutching Lan Zhan’s hip, greedy fingers wrapped around to press into the fat of his ass, greedy fingers that squeeze twice. Harder.
“Ah, you still can’t take it all,” Lan Zhan groans and fucks him harder. It’s barely more than half of him, and Wei Ying’s throat is a twitching circle around the tip of his dick. He presses against the resistance, a steady pressure, and Wei Ying’s throat gives a little, allowing him deeper. “You’re so beautiful, trying so hard. Fuck, you’d pull out and, Wei Ying, Wei Ying, you’d make me beg. Beg you to cum on my face, fuck, fuck, you’re doing so well. You’d make me beg you to slap me, ah, and I would.”
Nothing matters, nothing but Lan Zhan’s cock in his mouth, pushing past his soft palate, dragging wet, incoherent sounds from his spasming throat, and there’s still more of him. He needs more time, needs to be able to take him all the way down his throat, needs to come back. Two more squeezes, a few more brutal thrusts, just the right side of painful, before Lan Zhan yanks his cock out of his gasping mouth, and Wei Ying wails.
“Don’t stop! Please, please.”
Gentle fingers touch his flushed cheeks, his swollen lips. Lan Zhan’s cock is so red, so wet, and it’s right there — if he could just lean in, he’d have him again. Breath hitching, Lan Zhan says, “Mm. ‘Please?’ What are you asking for?”
It dawns on him slowly. What Lan Zhan had said. Begging. What Lan Zhan would beg for. What he’s expected to ask for.
“Bastard!” He aims for a snarl and lands on a gravelly whine, which really ruins the effect. Fuck. “You’re a bastard!”
The fingers keep stroking, so sweetly. Lan Zhan shifts back, taking his dick away from Wei Ying’s wanting mouth, and kisses him deeply, licking into his mouth. He mumbles against his lips, “If you say so. You taste good. Ask for what you want.”
Of course he has to kick his feet again, irate.
“You dick! Dick! Please,” he says, throat still sore, face burning more than when he had Lan Zhan halfway down his throat. “Please, um. Slap me. With your cock. Please, baby, please.”
“Thank you for asking,” Lan Zhan says, shifts forward again, and slaps him with his spit-wet dick, first on his left cheek, then his right. Each slap against his burning cheeks makes a dull, wet noise, the absolute filthiest way he’s ever been treated during sex.
Wei Ying gasps, shocking himself, maybe even shocking Lan Zhan, “Thank you.”
He doesn’t receive a response, not with words. Instead, he finds himself freed from the cage of Lan Zhan’s knees, yanked up to kneel again for the briefest of kisses, before the fall continues, ending with Lan Zhan on his back, Wei Ying up against his chest, feet knocking against the headboard.
Not at all hurried, Lan Zhan cradles his face, fingers under the hinge of his jaw. A pause in their game, a little breathing room. Wei Ying steals a kiss, then another, before looking down. Lan Zhan is red all the way down to his sternum, lips parted and wet. Oh. This is fun for both of them, and Wei Ying is warm to his toes.
“Did you enjoy that?” Lan Zhan says, not letting his fingertips fall away from Wei Ying’s face.
Digging his cock, wet and neglected, into Lan Zhan’s hip, Wei Ying grins.
“What do you think? Feel that?”
Lan Zhan wipes the grin off his face with his hands, both going to his ass, holding him still.
“I do. Hold still.”
“Afraid I’ll make you come?” Wei Ying says, all cheek, wriggling against his grip. Lan Zhan just squeezes tighter.
“You will, but not like that. Eat me out. Show me how to stop.”
Three taps again, this time against Lan Zhan’s chest, over his heart. Seemingly satisfied with his tutelage, and, wow, he really is a teacher to the core, Lan Zhan takes Wei Ying’s shoulders firmly and puts him between his legs. It’s a nice place to be, nosing at the crease of his hip, running his tongue along the seam of his balls, gently taking one into his mouth, sucking sweetly with Lan Zhan’s hands fisted in his hair. He keeps his eyes up, knowing he isn’t following instructions, wanting to know what comes next.
Nothing. No shoving him down, no rushing, just Lan Zhan on one elbow, mouth open, eyes gentle. The hand in his hair releases its grip and moves to his cheek, cupping his face, thumbing gently beneath his eye.
“When, ah, like that, like that. When you’re ready.”
If it’s his choice, he chooses to stay like this for a moment, letting time hang, still sucking gently. Lan Zhan smells good, feels good in his mouth, the thin skin, the scratch of his pubic hair. When he’s ready, he shifts lower, using one hand to cup his sac, lifting a little, feeling the hand fall from his face, making a space for himself between his his lover’s thighs — oh, oh, he has a lover, him, of all people, he does, he does, he does — and buries his face between his cheeks. He’s not as good at this as Lan Zhan, not as good with his mouth, his mouth that always seems to get him into trouble, but he is nothing if not an eager student, and one hand returns to his hair, pressing his mouth to the little furl between Lan Zhan’s cheeks.
“Good, good,” Lan Zhan moans, holding him in place. Wei Ying feels more than sees him fall to his back, feels both his hands in his hair, feels the soles of his feet meet his mid back. Keeping his tongue soft and flat, he laps gently, playful and wet. Lan Zhan holds him there for a long while, letting him play between his legs, sometimes gripping tightly, sometimes instructing and moaning at once — point your tongue, push inside, oh, like that, like that — until Wei Ying’s jaw is aching, until he thinks he’ll die if he doesn’t get some attention of his own. With shaking fingers, he asks to be set free. His release is immediate.
He crawls up Lan Zhan’s body and demands a kiss — “If you. If you wanna.” — and, not minding at all, he kisses Wei Ying indulgently, stroking fingers across his face, making demands of his own, demands met from his ridiculously stocked nightstand. There’s just — there’s just so much in there. Wei Ying doesn’t think he’ll ever be content with his fingers again.
Across his back, Lan Zhan watches Wei Ying fumble with the drawer, a languorous drape of limbs; Wei Ying’s dating a big cat, Panthera something-or-other for sure. When Wei Ying had first opened this veritable sex shop of a nightstand, he’d only noticed that there was rope. Now, with Lan Zhan whispering in his ear, he learns that there are types of rope, that they don’t have to use rope at all. That Lan Zhan has handcuffs and ribbons and all sorts of other methods of binding Wei Ying into some kind of sex pretzel in this nighstand that he must have had enchanted to hold far more than it should, but that rope is his favorite, his favorite of all.
“But first,” Lan Zhan whispers, both arms around his waist, stroking his dick, fucking finally, “pick out a plug for me.”
Wei Ying runs his fingers over the toys, mesmerized. He lets his fingers still over a largish plug, dark red and ridged. Lan Zhan would look particularly pretty stretched open on it, he thinks.
“That one?”
“Yeah,” Wei Ying says, plucking it out of the drawer. Lan Zhan squeezes on an upstroke, and his words break on a moan, “I think, fuck, yeahhhh, just like that, just like that. Fuck, I think your hole will look so pretty around it.”
He’s not surprised when Lan Zhan’s teeth close on his ear. The full body shudder against his back is a surprise, though. The sigh, contented and happy, in his ear. Oh.
“You wanna be pretty? Sweetheart, you’re so pretty it’s stupid. Like, you’re so beautiful. You want me to tell you?” he says, almost laughing but mostly moaning when the fingers on his dick slide faster. “Mm, I bet you do. Ahhh, pretty, pretty Lan Zhan. Pretty Zhanzhan. Oh, oh, you like that. Can I call you that? Zhanzhan, pretty, sweet, handsome Zhanzhan. Oh, you really like that. Well, I picked. Now you, now you. The rope.”
There really isn’t time for more than a primer on the basics of his options. In the end, Lan Zhan selects a silk rope, black and soft, apparently easy for beginners and light bedroom play, whatever the hell that means, and, somewhat alarmingly, a pair of shears, blunted on one side, the kind Wen Qing uses to cut through bloody clothes and other miscellany in the field.
“For quick release. If we need to stop urgently.”
“Oh.”
“Tell me to stop if you need to,” Lan Zhan says, pulling him back into the no longer pristine bed. He flips down the duvet, baring the sheets, which are probably some nice, natural, biodegradable material, just like the rest of Lan Zhan’s possessions. “And I’ll tell you as well. Now, will you give me your fingers, please?”
So polite! So polite for someone who was rubbing his dick on Wei Ying’s face not half an hour ago. Wei Ying tells him that and gets kissed for it, sloppily, all teeth and tongue, and, there, in the barest cracking of his composure, Wei Ying can see that Lan Zhan is just as eager and excited and anxious as he is.
And it really is such a polite request. How could he deny him? He can’t, so he doesn’t, opening him on his fingers, keeping his eyes on where his fingers disappear into Lan Zhan’s body, just like he was told. Watches Lan Zhan’s chest heave, watches his own fingers, slick with lube, stretch him loose and easy for the toy. Hears the tripping gasps as Lan Zhan takes each ridge, hands fisting the sheets, watches the plug split him open, sliding deeper, deeper until the flared base sits flush with his skin. It’s cute. Wei Ying ducks his head, tells him that, and traces his tongue around his slick rim.
Pulling back to rest on his knees, Wei Ying swipes the back of his hand across his mouth and says, “Now me, now me. Please?”
Even with his movements a touch shivery, navigating around the plug he’d asked for, Lan Zhan is fast, and Wei Ying finds himself on his knees before he can really process what’s happening. Practiced, too, swift and sure as he loops the rope around his wrists, as he binds Wei Ying to the center slat of the headboard. Firm hands press against his upper back until he’s curved, sinuous, ass up, face in the pillows, elbows bracketing his ears. Those hands move first to his knees, arranging Wei Ying’s body to his liking, then to his ass, spreading him.
“Are you comfortable? Wiggle your fingers.”
“Mm, yeah,” Wei Ying says to the pillows. There’s enough slack to allow him to raise his face. He wiggles his fingers. “Yeah.”
“Good. If your hands feel numb or uncomfortable, tell me,” Lan Zhan says and, just as Wei Ying is formulating an affirmative, spits on his hole. It drips down, over his taint and his balls. His face burns. He likes that, too.
Lan Zhan takes a good long time opening him up, digging his fingers right into his prostate, making him moan and keen and leak, leak, leak, like Lan Zhan is forcing precum out of him, like he’s never going to fuck him, like he could keep him like this forever, and his face burns even more. It’s not fair.
“Fuck me,” he whines and gets another stab to his prostate for it, more precum dripping all over Lan Zhan’s fancy fucking biodegradeable sheets. Not fair at all. He tries to kick out a leg, and his bastard boyfriend catches it, almost lazily.
“You want to stop?”
“I want you to fuck me,” Wei Ying mutters. The fingers dig deeper, spreading wide, and he cries out. Then, louder, more demanding, “Aren’t you gonna fuck me? I already said I liked it. Come on, fuck me. Fuck me.”
“No,” Lan Zhan says simply, removing his hand from Wei Ying’s thigh, bringing it to stroke his own cock, bumping the tip against his knuckles, slick with lube and spreading Wei Ying’s hole far more than he needs. Wei Ying kicks again. How is Lan Zhan holding it together? And he expects him to beg. He told him exactly what he would do, and it’s not fair that he’s doing exactly that. If nothing else cemented it, not the love here, not his obligations to his friends, to his family, to Mo Xuanyu, this does — Wei Ying has to come back, has to pay him back for this. With interest.
“Please,” he whines into the pillows, giving in. “Please, please, please.”
Again, Lan Zhan moves fast, pulling his fingers free, getting his cock into him in one smooth movement, and starts a punishing rhythm, mouth hot on the back of his neck. Wei Ying howls, that it’s good, that he wants his fingers, that it hurts, that he loves it, that he’s not going to last, that it’s not fair, that he’s close, fuck, fuck, fuck, that he wants to stay, wants to stay.
He wants to stay. That’s all he can say in the end, mumbling it to the pillows even after he comes the second Lan Zhan touches his cock, spilling all over the sheets, even after Lan Zhan keeps going, keeps using him and not discarding him. Even after he starts to cry.
That must be too much for Lan Zhan, or maybe he’s too much, because he stills inside him, doesn’t keep fucking him through the quivering, overwhelming aftershocks. His voice comes out breathless and maybe a little concerned. “Wei Ying?”
“I wanna. Can we, um, face to face?” he manages, feeling very stupid. He’s still sniffling, and his dick is soft, and he’s never been more embarrassed in his entire life. This is the least sexy he’s ever been, probably, and he’s going to turn over and let Lan Zhan see his snotty face and hope he isn’t too disgusted with him, and maybe that’s what love is.
His hands are freed first, and then, carefully, Lan Zhan eases out of his body, helps him turn over, looks at his miserable face with red-rimmed eyes, and, oh, it’s like that. His fingers aren’t numb, but they shake when he brings them to touch Lan Zhan’s face.
“You’re sad,” he says stupidly. Long fingers curl over his hand, holding it in place. “Do you wanna stop?”
“Only if you do.”
“Oh. Um. No. No. Keep going. Unless you want something else? Is there? Something we haven’t done yet, maybe. Just in case.”
Is Lan Zhan pink from embarrassment or exertion or emotions? He flushes darker — embarrassment, then — and Wei Ying laughs, another surprise, because this man is ridiculous. He loops his free hand around Lan Zhan’s neck and pulls him down for a kiss, no longer crying but definitely still the least sexy he’s ever been.
“There is! Tell me, tell me!”
Voice soft, Lan Zhan tells him, and Wei Ying laughs harder. He can’t help it, and it must be infectious because Lan Zhan does that thing with his eyebrows and his breath that might be a laugh.
“On my face?” Wei Ying wheezes. “On my stupid, puffy face?”
“Yes. It’s not stupid. Just puffy. Will you let me?”
He lets him, laughing as Lan Zhan gets on his knees and paints his face white. Ridiculous. He runs his fingers through the mess on his face and puts them in Lan Zhan’s mouth. Keeping him quiet like that, or mostly quiet, he says, “You definitely have to do all the cleanup, sweetheart.”
—
Cleanup is a strong word for what either of them can handle. After chasing the worst of the mess on Wei Ying’s red, puffy, not at all stupid face with his tongue, Lan Zhan retrieves his robe and slips into the hall. He kicks over something at his feet with a glassy clatter. It’s a little glass bottle with a dropper-top. Where it had stood before he knocked it onto its side is a scrap of paper. He brings both into the light of the bathroom.
For more time. Two drops under the tongue. Sweet dreams. ~Wen Qing
When he returns to the hall, damp cloth in hand, a dim light spills around the corner and, with it, the sound of someone moving in the living room. Wen Qing. She makes a quiet huffing noise. The sounds grow quieter, more distant. Then there are no sounds at all, nothing except Lan Zhan’s own breathing.
By now, Lan Zhan recognizes the quiet hiss of the security array when it’s disturbed, low and threatening, usually by Wei Ying, tipsy on after-work drinks and fumbling the passkey until he bangs on the door and wails, “Lan Zhan! I’m drunk! Take pity! Let me in!” Someone is attempting to gain entry. He should get Wei Ying, he should get someone adept at dealing with threats to help. He shouldn’t stumble into the living room, stinking of sex, some sort of misguided chivalry screaming that he can’t leave Wen Qing to deal with this alone, as if she hasn’t dealt with far worse than teenage feuds and high school level curses thrown across the classroom.
But he does it anyway, or he does something close enough. He makes it barely a foot into the living room and sees the back of Wen Qing’s head at the door, muttering something he doesn’t quite catch. She seems more annoyed than alarmed by who- or whatever is begging entry.
She opens the door and says, just loud enough for him to hear, “I figured you’d be back. Come in before you wake everyone up.”
This isn’t a threat Wen Qing needs help with. He turns on his heel and returns to bed, to Wei Ying, to more time and sweet dreams.
—
Ghosts don’t dream. Ghosts don’t sleep. That makes this worse: Mo Xuanyu is tired. If he had bones, he would feel the exhaustion in them, but he has no bones, just ashes, somewhere far away. He doesn’t know where. No altar is set for him but the one in Wei Ying’s home, and before Wei Ying, no altar was set at all, his apartment going unlet for decades, and he was alone, alone, alone.
No family grieved him. Wei Ying grieves for him now. He can feel it, a beacon. He’s close. He’s so tired.
Others try to speak to him. Some are friendly, some are hungry, some are greedy, some are kind. Some offer food, but he’s not that kind of ghost. Not all of the things that speak to him, that call to him, are spirits. Whoever dragged him away, whatever stuffed him into that smear of viscera on a concrete floor, is looking for him, sneaking through the world of ghosts, trampling in affairs the living cannot understand.
Mo Xuanyu doesn’t care about any of that just now. He just wants to go home.
—
“What took you?” Wei Ying demands from the mess of rumpled sheets, one arm over his eyes. “You jerk off on my face and leave me to fend for myself? A nightmare. You’re a nightmare, Zhanzhan.”
“Wen Qing left this for us,” he says in explanation, settling beside him. He pulls Wei Ying’s arm away and presses the little bottle into his hand before wiping at his face, his throat, down over his cock and between his legs. Wei Ying squirms cheerfully. Then, feeling foolish for wasting the gift of more time by mentioning things best left unmentioned, he says, “Your brother has returned.”
The cheerful squirming ceases immediately.
“And I bet he expects me to come out to tell him what a good fucking boy he is. He’s not taking anything else from me,” Wei Ying mutters, bitter and harsh. Those words again. Lan Zhan doesn’t pry, doesn’t take what isn’t freely given. No explanation comes, just Wei Ying wriggling closer, tugging at his robe. He lets it fall, and he lets Wei Ying clean him up enough to sleep. “I’m spending tonight with you. He can get his second asskicking in the morning. Now, what’s this?”
Lan Zhan doesn’t know. He tells him as much and shows him the note.
Wei Ying snorts. “I knew I saw A-Ning with the good lingzhi. Wow, do you wanna?”
“I’m not sure what it does,” Lan Zhan says honestly, recalling the bitter mushroom brews his uncle had insisted would clear up his hay fever but had mostly just made him lightheaded and drowsy.
“It’s for dreaming,” Wei Ying says. “Or for shared dreaming. Or tripping balls if you’re awake, but my boss hates it when I say that. ‘It’s not a drug, it’s a spiritual tool, blah, blah, blah.’ Whatever. It brings you closer to the spirit world. Not enough to pass through, but close enough to share. If you want. That’s what she means. More time. Um. Together.”
“I see. Yes.”
Grinning, Wei Ying waves the bottle in his face. “You really wanna get fucked up? What if I have crazy dreams? Ah, I’ve never used it like this before. Just for work. Or to get really twisted in the woods and, like, feel the universe and shit, haha. It might be embarrassing. What if I have my recurring dream about breaking into my old boss’s office and pissing all over her stupid begonias she always made me water, like I was her fucking servant?”
Well, then Lan Zhan will dream about pissing on begonias. At least he’ll be with Wei Ying. He takes the bottle from his hand and unstops it. Wei Ying’s grin slips away, a look of surprise taking its place for just a moment. Then he opens his mouth. Two drops under his tongue. He takes the bottle back with clumsy hands.
“It, ah, works fast.” His words come out molasses-slow. Maybe they taste just as sweet. “Open up.”
Lan Zhan opens up. It does work fast. He barely notices Wei Ying’s arms around him, barely notices himself respond with a hazy kiss, and he doesn’t notice hitting the pillows at all.
—
“When you first kissed me, I wanted to climb into your mouth.”
Wei Ying is a mountain, towering above him.
“Wow, that’s so hot,” the mountain says in Wei Ying’s voice, trees all up the slopes shivering as he breathes. Lan Zhan’s vision blurs, and Wei Ying is just a man. Blurs again. Mountain. Settles. Both at once, neither, all. “Do it, sweetheart.”
He does. Each of Wei Ying’s teeth is a boulder, his voice an earthquake.
“Does my breath stink?” the earthquake says, growing stronger as Wei Ying laughs.
“No,” he says. “I want to live here. You have twenty-seven teeth. I counted.”
The laughing earthquake rattles him to the ground, and Wei Ying is Wei Ying sized again, leaning on his chest, into his chest. He splits down the middle, and Wei Ying’s hands curl around his core, intimate, warm, soft, good, safe.
“Strong,” he says. “Mine is —” His hands stay curled around him, and, at the same time, they wave in front of his face, thumb and forefinger pressed close together, a sliver of a gap between them. Lan Zhan dips his hands inside to touch. Wei Ying groans, half pained, half pleased. “Small. Weak. Cracked.”
Firming his grip, Lan Zhan holds the cracked pieces together, and Wei Ying squirms and laughs and turns into flickering lamplight. “That tickles. Mm, feels good. Zhanzhan, you’re superglue.”
Inside him and in front of him and a ball of twitching, giggling light, Wei Ying says, “My turn,” and the ball of light settles on his tongue. He rolls him in his mouth. “You smell like toothpaste.”
“Dentists were the first doctors,” Lan Zhan informs him solemnly.
Shushing him, Wei Ying picks the lock on a door made of sawdust stuffed between veneered plywood. “She’ll hear.”
wei ying
“Who will?”
“Linda, the boss lady,” he says loudly. Someone across the open floorplan flashes a thumbs up and returns to their typing. “Ouch! It bit me!”
Sawdust isn’t friendly. It’s angry.
“Be nicer to it,” Lan Zhan admonishes. “What if someone sawed you in half and threw the mess left on the floor into a waste bin? You would be angry, too.”
“You talk more in dreams, you know,” Wei Ying says. “Wait, are we dreaming?”
Begonias with waxed leaves and flowers, quivering in fear. Plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic, Lan Zhan, they’re fucking plastic, she had me watering plastic flowers, what the fuck? You didn’t notice? I don’t know anything about plants, plants, plantsplantsplantsplants
Plants are autotrophic, multicellular eukaryotic organisms. The most common plants on earth are angiosperms, or flowering plants. Angiosperms are a subset of vascular plants, or tracheophytes, plants with specialized tissues for carrying water, minerals, and the products of photosynthesis. The cohesive and adhesive properties of water allow it to travel from root to leaf with no active energy expenditure, a direct contrast to the inherently energetic movement of sugar. A subset of vascular plants, deciduous trees are trees that shed their leaves in autumn. The dead leaves in your and your brother’s hair are from a variety of native and non-native trees, including sweet gum, river birch, and eastern redbud.
Wei Ying sobs over Jiang Cheng’s corpse. “I lied. I know a lot about plants.”
“I know,” Lan Zhan says from somewhere underwater.
“They told him three days after his birthday. It’s almost his birthday. I still have to get him a present. Bro, stop playing dead. It isn’t funny anymore.” Wei Ying stands over a child of maybe six or seven. He kicks him gently, and the child springs up — pop goes the weasel! —becoming a scowling adult. He runs away, and Wei Ying crumbles into a fine mist, and the mist says, “Come here, Zhanzhan. You’ll freeze down there.”
Lan Zhan rises from the deep and breathes in the mist. Breathes out Wei Ying, still cracked down the middle but smiling. Shopping in early November is so difficult, Wei Ying complains, looping his arm through Lan Zhan’s, holding tight against the crush of bodies all around them. Saturday in the city, a terrible day for shopping.
“Shopping for someone you care for is always difficult.”
“It wouldn’t be so hard if I didn’t leave it to the last second,” Wei Ying says. “I won’t leave yours to the last second. I already have something for you.”
wei ying
“Oh?”
“I ordered it the day after Halloween! That’s what I was doing when you were grading. It won’t top what you got me, of course, but I think it’s pretty good! Well, they. I got you four. I wasn’t kidding!”
“I’ll have to get you eight next time.”
“Ah, then I’ll get you sixteen!”
“Thirty-two.”
“Sixty-four, oh, oh, this is getting out of hand!”
The streets clear. The city falls away. The kitchen floor rises to meet Lan Zhan’s back, and Wei Ying is above him, inside him, fucking him, asking him under the flickering lights, “Is this what you dream about?”
“Yes, yes, yes, harder, please.”
Tile under his knees, mouth open, begging, please, please, please. Two slaps, left, right, spit-wet. Wetness on his cheek, in his mouth. Wei Ying on his knees in front of him, face pink, you didn’t flee the country, I’ve never done it bossy like that, you stayed, was it good, thank you for staying, did I do a good job, did you like it? Yes, yes, yes.
Wei Ying laughs, breath coming in time with the misbehaving lights, bright and easy. “Oh, good. Good. Oh, shit, he’s gonna be pissed.”
Ears pinking, Lan Zhan says, “I didn’t consider—”
“It’s not like he watched or anything! But you’d better come up with a damn good apology. Ambushing me like that before I’ve even had my coffee!”
i’m here i’m here i’m here i’m watching i’m sorry
“I will apologize. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t notice you were gone. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
i didn’t mean to see you like this i’m here i’m here i’m sorry
“I’m sorry, too.” Wei Ying drips tears down his cheeks, tears so hot they steam. The bath fills around their bare feet, salty and sad. “I’m sorry. I was just so happy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was a bad friend, Lan Zhan. I love you, I love you, I don’t want to leave, I have to go, I have to find him, I love you, I’m sorry.”
i’m sorry i’m here don’t leave don’t go don’t risk i’m here i’m right here i’m right here i’m here wei ying WEI YING WEI YING HELP
—
Bathwater drips onto a hastily stapled and poorly copied packet of PDFs. The ink runs. When its owner returns from her bathroom and beer break, halfway through her all-nighter, she swears.
She shouts at the peeling plaster above her, “Asshole! Your fucking ghost is doing it again!”