Chapter Text
Mo Xuanyu doesn’t want Yanli to leave. He’s crying about it in that way ghosts do, leaking saltwater through the taps, a thin dribble, like he’s holding back tears. The lights flicker sadly. A sharp, almost antiseptic smell that disappears when you’re on the cusp of identifying it spreads through the entryway.
“I’ll visit,” she promises. “All the time. You know I can’t stay away from my Yingying.”
Wei Ying turns off the lights, scowling. Mo Xuanyu is going to give him a migraine if he keeps this up. The flickering starts up again immediately.
“She will,” he insists waspishly, flipping the switch again and holding it down this time. “Just because she’s getting married to some bitch doesn’t mean she’s leaving forever.”
A thin wail seeps through the unlit apartment.
At the door, Wei Ying holds his sister tightly. He’s not going to cry. He’s not. So what if Zixuan is stealing his jiejie away? So what if he needs to find a roommate who Mo Xuanyu won’t chase off, now that she’s really leaving?
“Oh, A-Ying,” she says, squeezing back. “You know I’ll come visit all the time. I know you’ll find a great roommate. It’ll be okay.”
Absurd. How is he supposed to find someone else who is going to deal with his shit the way she will? But he can’t say that to her, so he just says, “You’re so right, jiejie! I got this!”
They both know he’s lying. They both choose to ignore it, to pretend he isn’t crumbling at the change just as much as Mo Xuanyu. She leans up on her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. He never wants to let her go. He forces his arms to behave. To unclasp. To be soft and obedient, no matter how much he wants to beg, to plead, to weep on his knees for her to stay.
But he has shit to do, and his sister needs to leave. He needs a new roommate, but he’s a mess, and the apartment, stripped of Yanli’s presence, is perhaps even more of a mess than he is. So, after Yanli leaves, the last of her belongings stuffed into her backpack, he cleans, and he’s not crying, he’s not. He cleans enough to trick someone into thinking he’s palatable. The jar of crow’s blood—at least, he thinks it’s crow’s blood—vanishes from the kitchen counter and reappears under the sink, next to the bleach. His more creative and liable-to-explode talismans end up stuffed into his desk. He scrubs away at the array on the bathroom floor, the one that seeps blood and a fine black mist when disturbed, the one that his ISP doesn’t need to know about, the one jacking up his download speeds by 20 megabytes per second. He’s going to miss that one. He should probably rewrite it on his closet floor.
Maybe, just maybe, if he pretends he has his shit together, he can find a roommate who actually does. A responsible roommate. Someone who will pay the rent on time, someone who will put up with Mo Xuanyu’s eerie wailing on moonless nights. And then, after he wows them with his winning personality, maybe they’ll put up with him, too. Maybe they’ll like him too much to dip the second he blows up another dead rat—ethically sourced, he would like to add, from the independent pet store around the corner—in another experiment gone wrong and gets rodent viscera all over the kitchen table.
Look, necromancy isn’t as easy as they make it look on TV.
—
Twenty blocks away, Lan Zhan stares at his brother, waiting for the punchline, waiting for him to say that it’s all a joke. That Meng Yao isn’t getting evicted. That he won’t be moving in. That Lan Zhan won’t have to put up with the screaming arguments between Meng Yao and Lan Huan’s husband.
The punchline never comes.
It’s—they live in a two-bedroom. He breathes through his nose, slowly, carefully. Four beats in, hold for two, six beats out. On his best behavior. Always. He’s a good brother. Meng Yao shouldn’t have to sleep on the sofa—“Just until he gets a new place, didi, I promise."
It’s a lie, a pretty one, but a lie nonetheless, so—
“I’m moving out,” Lan Zhan says finally. “It is for the best.”
His brother makes a face. “That isn’t necessary.”
He forces himself to keep breathing, the same slow, deep inhales he’s been pushing himself to maintain since Lan Huan called this stupid, stupid meeting. Not necessary. Ridiculous. It’s almost laughable, but Lan Zhan doesn’t do that, not the type to bubble into nervous laughter in the slightest. Barely knows how to laugh at all, if he’s being honest with himself, and today he is. Today he’s admitting to himself that he’s no longer Lan Huan’s first priority. Admitting that this isn’t merely about Meng Yao’s eviction. Admitting that this was inevitable, two years into what was supposed to be a sloppy dalliance, no feelings, as if Lan Huan could do anything with Meng Yao with anything less than his full chest.
Mingjue stares at the ceiling. He doesn’t look any happier about this than Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan’s brother-in-law is a straightforward man, face giving him away even when his words do not. It’s a quality about him that Lan Zhan finds immensely appealing. Mingjue’s emotions are obvious and projected, his words plain; Lan Zhan doesn’t need to parse a thousand conflicting cues to decipher what he really means and still end up wrong at least half the time.
His brother is not a straightforward man.
There is a long, stretchy silence.
Mingjue breaks it. He says, eyes glued to the atrocious popcorn ceiling that was already fifteen years out-of-date when they moved in two years ago, “Huaisang has a friend in need of a roommate. His sister’s getting married and moving out. It’s dirt cheap. Close to the school.”
So Mingjue has come to the same conclusion as Lan Zhan—there’s no stopping this. It’s happening, whether they want it to or not. An ocean roars over Lan Zhan’s head. New. This is new, and it hurts. He aches under the pressure of a hundred billion gallons of saltwater. But it’s for the best. Lan Huan deserves whatever this is. They’re still brothers. Living somewhere else won’t change that.
It will be the first time they’ve lived separately in Lan Zhan’s entire life, both of them living at home throughout college. Their first apartment. Then their second, when that one sold—“Just business. You know how it is,” the landlord had said, even though they did not, didn’t know how it was at all. Then this one, with Mingjue. He will bear it, even if he should know better than to take up Mingjue’s offer. He should. Huaisang, for all that he’s been a good friend since childhood— since they were toddlers, really—keeps questionable company. Loud. Irresponsible.
But he’s a teacher, and his salary is peanuts, and close to the school is temptation enough.
He says, quietly, because Lan Zhan has always been quiet, has always been polite, has always been what’s expected of him, “Thank you. I would like to meet this friend.”
Lan Huan’s smooth, plastic smile settles into place. Good. He’s done the right thing. He’s making his brother happy. He can do this. He will meet with this mysterious friend. Mingjue dutifully forwards along the contact information: Wei Ying (BITCH). Lan Zhan wonders idly if Mingjue merely kept the same name from Huaisang’s contact card or if he added the parenthetical himself. He carefully removes it when he adds it to his phone.
Wei Ying. He wonders what he’s like.
—
Work is slow. Sugar seeping down a tree tapped unasked, a throbbing wound. Lan Zhan finds himself distracted in school for perhaps the first time in his entire life, his entire career, hands seeking his pocket. No. He won’t check his phone, carefully silenced after his text to this mysterious Wei Ying:
Hello. My name is Lan Zhan. I am friends with Nie Huaisang. I received your contact information from Mingjue. I hoped to inquire about the room for rent.
So formal. Stuffy. But he couldn’t find another way to put it, so he sent it exactly one minute before his first class of the day, hoping teenagers, bored to tears about musical cultivation, would serve as an adequate distraction from the mess of his life.
His younger cousin is in this class, though, insistent that everyone give gege—uh, Mr. Lan, sorry!—his due respect, and it is hardly the distraction he would like.
“Thank you, Jingyi,” he says, finishing sketching the notes on the chalkboard. Music is just not a priority for the district, not even at a performing arts school. If he taught math or science, maybe he would have a smart-board like the rest of them, but he doesn’t mind. The chalk is friendly, the lives of tiny creatures that died a hundred million years ago thrumming with energy in his hands. He rides that energy, putting a bit of his own magic into the final flourishes. “Now, would you like to come up to the board and note the following chords to finish the sequence?”
Jingyi grimaces but rises. He’s always hated this, hated being up in front of everyone while Lan Zhan plays the chords at the ancient Steinway & Sons piano. The magnet school he dedicates his working life to loves to boast about them. Distasteful.
“We carry the third largest collection of Steinway & Sons pianos in the country!” the brochure declares cheerily. It might land better if they ever hired a tuner, but, well, the budget just isn’t there, Lan Zhan. Sorry. Can’t you do it?
He can’t. Tuning is a specialized field, a vocation, but that doesn’t matter to the district. Music is music, right? It doesn’t matter. He makes Lan Jingyi come up to the board. No favoritism here. Jingyi puts his face together and screws up each and every chord Lan Zhan plays. He correctly identifies the the tonic for one of them, and Lan Zhan gives him one of five points for accuracy and five of five for participation.
“Anyone else?”
No one volunteers. He calls on a sallow-faced girl—Wilhelmina, goes by Mina—and she heaves a long-suffering sigh, entire body projecting just how much she doesn’t to be here. He gives her five of five for accuracy, two of five for participation. Jingyi flips her off, and Lan Zhan tells him to stay after class.
“Yes, ge—I mean, yes, Mr. Lan! Of course, Mr. Lan!”
His phone burns in his pocket.
—
hi Lan Zhan! what a nice name! yes of course! i’m like SO desperate and if you know Mingjue you’re probably not a serial killer, right? he’d never let a serial killer be friends with his precious little didi. ugh, i’d totally let a serial killer be friends with my brother haha. tuesday?
—
Lan Zhan arrives three days after that text, paystubs in hand, vibrating with nervous energy. Wei Ying lives in an old building. Probably pre-war, but he couldn’t say which war. The stone facade is crumbling under the weight of decades or perhaps centuries. It’s obvious that it cannot stand on its own, the metallic, ozone reek of patchwork city-funded magic oozing between the bricks like heavy water. He sneezes.
Hands steadier than his knees, he presses the little stone amulet Huasiang had copied for him against the security sigil by the door. It makes a feeble sucking sound when he pulls back. The door unlocks, and he makes his way up seven flights of creaking stairs. No elevator. Probably against code in a building this old, this pieced together.
He stands outside the door—7Q—and checks his phone for the third time. Confirming. Sketched onto the door is a reddish-brown array. Security, maybe. He wouldn’t know. None of the other doors in the hallway have one. He touches it with one fingernail, and it flakes under the pressure but holds strong. Looking at it too hard makes his eyes water, makes his brainstem vibrate down his spinal column. He withdraws his hand, a little queasy, then presses it back against the wood. It feels warm under his knuckles. Almost alive. Friendly, as old wood often is. Just happy to have someone touching it, acknowledging that it once lived, that it once pulled water from root to leaf with no thought at all. That sap once ran through it, sticky and sweet. He knocks.
Unearthly screaming erupts immediately. A voice cuts through it—“Shut the fuck up, Mo Xuanyu!”
Mo Xuanyu?
The man who opens the door is—ah. A disaster. His hair is spilling out of a messy bun, and he’s clutching a violently red coffee mug with a hastily scribbled warming talisman plastered to the side.
“Hi! I’m Wei Ying, but you already know that,” the disaster says, offering a hand for him to shake. “And that is Mo Xuanyu. He’s being a bitch right now. Sorry! Lan Zhan, right?”
Lan Zhan can only nod.
“Well, come in, come in!” the disaster says. The talisman starts peeling off his mug and the disaster glares at it, withering. The screaming gets louder. “Sorry, he’s just. Fuck. Sorry. Just come in.”
The disaster—Wei Ying, Lan Zhan amends—slaps his free hand over the nearly detached warming talisman. It doesn’t work; the talisman peels itself off and drifts to the floor. Wei Ying swears.
He looks at the ceiling and snaps, “Mo Xuanyu! I swear to god, I’ll exorcise you if you keep this shit up.”
The lights flicker.
“Well fuck you, too!”
Lan Zhan still hasn’t moved. He unsticks his feet, feeling adrift, and steps over the threshold. Once he does so, Wei Ying launches into an explanation.
“Oh, don’t worry, he’s a sweetheart,” he says, fondness evident in his voice. “He’s just nervous around new people. He’s really a big softie. Yeah, I said it!”
The last bit is directed at the flickering lights. Lan Zhan stares.
Wei Ying stares back.
“Fuck, Huaisang didn’t tell you, did he? Bastard. Asshole. I’m going to kill him,” Wei Ying says. Lan Zhan is tempted to believe him.
He manages to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“Your apartment is haunted?”
Wei Ying sighs, the answer coming out on a breath. “Yeah, it’s why the rent is so cheap. Most people don’t know this, but you can’t raise the rent for ten years after an exorcism. It’s the law. Really helps with rent control, honestly. Probably the only good shit Giuliani ever did.”
“But there is clearly still a haunting,” Lan Zhan says. Idiot. Stupid. Of course there’s still a haunting. Do not use words needlessly. Don’t point out the obvious. It’s rude. He shakes his head minutely.
Mo Xuanyu wails again.
Wei Ying drags a hand over his face. Oh, his fingers are very long. Crooked. Pretty.
“Yeah,” he concedes. “He’s kind of a…” He pauses. “Uh. Secret roomie? I got hired on to get rid of him in exchange for lower rent for me and jiejie, but he was just so sad I couldn't bring myself to do it. That was five years ago.”
This is a mistake. Clearly. But Lan Zhan has spent the past week trawling housing groups for something in his budget and keeps coming up empty. Maybe this could work. Sort of. Just for now.
So he says, “That is very kind of you,” and Wei Ying grins at him, all teeth, and he’s—fuck, it’s all over for Lan Zhan.
“You say that now,” Wei Ying says cheerfully. He throws a few more pointed if toothless threats at the ceiling, and Mo Xuanyu eventually quiets down enough for Wei Ying to launch into the tour. The apartment has, very evidently, been hastily cleaned. Lan Zhan has never done anything hastily in his life. It’s strange. It’s nice, the idea of doing something without worrying about whether it’s done perfectly.
Or maybe it’s an inability to worry about whether it’s perfectly done for Wei Ying, not a lack of care, Lan Zhan muses. Maybe it’s freeing. Maybe it’s its own type of prison. A quietly smoking scroll pokes out from between the couch cushions, and Wei Ying turns as red as his mug when he grabs it and says to it firmly, “You know you aren’t supposed to go wandering in front of guests. Behave yourself.”
Wei Ying chatters the entire tour. Lan Zhan learns that he works at a non-profit, that he does pro bono exorcisms and spirit calmings for those who can’t afford the exorbitant fees of the mainstream firms. That he has an older sister and a younger brother—“Asshole,” Wei Ying corrects, one crooked finger held aloft.
That he talks about Mo Xuanyu the way people talk about a dearly beloved but incredibly poorly behaved pet. And as a dear friend. Lan Zhan finds himself hanging on Wei Ying’s every word, each word drawing him closer, in spirit, in distance. They’re very close together when Wei Ying shows him the second bedroom and says, flushing attractively, “Oops! I talked all about myself. Sorry! Tell me about yourself?”
Keep telling me. Never stop. Lan Zhan barely keeps the words behind his teeth. He doesn’t trust his voice not to erupt between his lips if he dares open them, not now, so he shoves the paystubs at Wei Ying, shame-faced.
Wei Ying—surely the “(BITCH)" was a mistake. Lan Zhan can’t imagine thinking of him in such terms—laughs in surprise, and Lan Zhan is a goner.
“Oh, you’re a teacher? Public school? Nice! What do you teach?”
Lan Zhan watches his mouth form the words. The roundness of the vowels. The pinch of his teeth when he closes out consonants. Lan Zhan forces himself to drag his gaze from mouth to eyes. He’s being rude. Unacceptable.
“I teach music,” he says. “Cultivation. Theory. And I direct the concert orchestra.”
He’s not bragging. Bragging is rude. It’s not bragging to do three jobs for the price of one.
“I play as well. The qin and the violin. I hope that won’t be troublesome.”
More of that laughter. Wei Ying waves at the ceiling.
“Lan Zhan! Don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure you sound better than ghostly screams!”
Oh. Oh, no. Lan Zhan cannot move in with this man. Not as a roommate.
So he says, “I should mention that I have two rabbits as well. They can be destructive.”
Be off-putting. Make him uncomfortable, just like he does with almost everyone else. Make him question whether Lan Zhan is worth living with. Put him off enough that Lan Zhan can leave, jerk off about this furiously in the shower, and forget he ever met this man.
But Wei Ying just says, “Aw! Don’t worry about it. I’m destructive, too! What are their names?”
“Mocha and Falafel,” Lan Zhan says, face burning. What stupid names. Humiliating. “They came with the names. Rescues. It seemed rude to change them.”
Wei Ying’s smile crinkles his eyes. He smiles with each and every one of his teeth. Fuck.
“That’s so sweet, Lan Zhan! So respectful of their first parents,” he says, laughing in the empty bedroom. “Well, just so you know, you’re the only person so far who didn’t run screaming from Mo Xuanyu, so the place is yours if you want it.”
Lan Zhan means to say no. He does. He means to politely decline. He means to—
“Is the first acceptable as a move-in date?”
—
When Lan Zhan leaves, Wei Ying waves after him, shouting “See you later, roomie!” at his back.
Then he closes the door and says, very quietly, “Fuck.”
Mo Xuanyu concurs, flashing the lights in sympathy. They have a little Morse code system going on.
“He’s hot. Over.”
Wei Ying presses his palms against his eyes.
“Yep. I’m gonna kill Huaisang.”
He leans his back against the door and shoots off a series of texts to his horrible bastard of a friend.
excuse me what the fuck you didn’t say he was HOT
Huaisang responds almost immediately.
yep! He’s a total neat freak too, boo
fuck
The ellipsis of Huaisang’s reply is long. Then: don’t let the put-together act fool you. he’s a total fucking weirdo. if he likes you he WILL steal your shit. i’m p sure he still has a pair of my socks from a sleepover when we were nine.
Okay, that’s a bit alarming. Wei Ying lets himself sink down into a crouch.
??? Is he gonna CURSE me?? With my SOCKS??
Huaisang doesn’t respond to that, not over text. He calls him.
“Hey, boo!” Huaisang says, loud over the tinny, shitty speakers of his phone. “I said he’d do that if he likes you, bitch! You don’t know if he likes you. If he doesn’t like you, good fucking luck. As I said: weirdo. Legit weird as fuck.”
“Look, tell it to me straight.”
“Gay.”
Wei Ying rolls his eyes. “Fine, tell it to me gay, bitch.”
Huaisang is quiet for a moment.
“You already said he could move in, right? So, you’re stuck with him?” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Well, he used to do this super bitchy act where he throws a silencing charm on you if you piss him off, but his uncle made him stop after I kept trying to run my mouth with it on and I made myself puke all over his stupid two-hundred-year-old carpet. He was so mad, dude. Like, so mad. I don’t think Lan Zhan had ever gotten grounded before. He was all, oh, I’m such a bad person, forgive me, A-Sang, and I was like, gege, bro, dude, buddy, I’ve been wanting to puke on that stupid carpet since I was six. You did me a fucking solid.”
What.
Wei Ying says weakly, “What.”
“Look, you said you needed a roommate,” Huaisang says, exasperated. “You didn’t say they had to be normal.”
Point to Huaisang. “Fair enough, bitch.”
“But seriously, he’s a total neat freak. Get your shit together.”
Great.
—
The next week is a flurry of getting his shit together. Sort of. He can be neat. He can. Definitely. He can’t afford to go sans roommate for a month or more. His pitiful NGO salary can’t take it. So he tries.
He stuffs all the weird shit he can find into his room between jobs. Mo Xuanyu screams helpfully every time he leaves a room without properly decontaminating it. Wei Ying is going to fucking kill him. Or bring him back to life just to kill him. Or something.
“You could use the lights, you know,” he says after the third time Mo Xuanyu screams in the middle of his frantic living room decluttering.
Every tap in the apartment overflows.
“Now you’re just being a dick.”
Mo Xuanyu flicks the lights in agreement. He is being a dick. Wei Ying can tell he’s preening.
“Put on some Nirvana. Over,” Mo Xuanyu says through the lights.
Fucking ghosts who died in the nineties. Mo Xuanyu died two weeks before the Unplugged tour come through New York and still hasn’t gotten over it, nearly thirty years later.
“Whatever. In Utero, okay?”
“No. Unplugged or bust. Over.”
Whatever. At least he’ll have some music to listen to while he cleans. He pulls a vial of his own blood and a sticky note out of his pocket and scribbles a slapdash talisman with his finger. He slaps it onto the back of his phone. Music blasts through the entire apartment.
Like he’s going to pay for speakers.
—
Rabbits are, as a rule, not adaptable creatures. It’s part of why Lan Zhan finds himself so drawn to them. Stuck in their ways. So stuck in their ways that an abrupt enough change can send them into rabbit histrionics so powerful that they perish.
It’s true. Rabbits are delicate. A fox in the grass may never get to sink its teeth into the living muscle of a thigh before a rabbit simply collapses, heart giving out in fear. What is the biological imperative of this? Lan Zhan never understood biology to be particularly merciful, but this seems a mercy. A quick death before the teeth come.
So, because rabbits are not, as a rule, adaptable creatures, Lan Zhan prepares them for the move slowly and kindly. He speaks to them quietly, carefully packing up the non-essentials, the precisely dated jars of pellets, the seagrass mats, the wicker balls. Their lives. His life with them.
“It’s okay,” he says. Is he speaking to himself or the rabbits? “Or, if it is not okay now, it will be okay soon. I know you’ll miss everyone here. I know you’ll miss the cranberries Mingjue sneaks you. Don’t tell him—he doesn’t think I know. Don’t worry. They’ll come visit you.”
He doesn’t say that they’ll come visit him. It’s too much to hope for.
—
Two weeks later, Lan Zhan arrives with his rabbits, a stream of houseplants floating placidly behind him. He doesn’t own enough worldly possessions to justify movers. Mingjue will cart the rest of it for him, taking pity on him and maybe himself.
“I’m sorry, didi,” he’d said after Lan Zhan declared his defection from the household. “I don’t want him moving in either. But your brother loves him, and he really has nowhere else to go.”
“It’s fine.”
It’s not fine.
“I’ll help you move,” Mingjue had said.
“You have my thanks,” Lan Zhan had said, not feeling spiteful glee at taking his brother’s husband away for the afternoon at all. Mingjue had always been kind to him, even when he was a tiny child, even worse at reading social cues than he is today, when Mingjue was just his and Huaisang’s babysitter, putting them in front of the television for lack of better options. They’d trade off with Mingjue, Huaisang crying for Sailor Moon, Mingjue demanding Dragon Ball Z, Lan Zhan sitting silently, unable to bring himself to offer his own opinion.
He would have sided with Huaisang.
Now, he’s just getting ready to settle the rabbits in before Mingjue hauls what little bedroom furniture he has later in the afternoon. A desk. His ancient, creaking bed frame. Wei Ying throws open the door and smiles like a supernova.
“Hey!” he says, almost a shout. He is still a disaster. This time he’s in a pair of black bike shorts, far too tight, and a loose red muscle tank. It says ENEMY OF THE STATE in blocky white letters. He’s once again drinking coffee out of what is presumably the same red mug he’d been using when Lan Zhan first met him. “Oh, fuck, these are the buns? They’re so cute. Hi!”
He wiggles his fingers at the carrier. Falafel twitches her nose. The rabbits are to live in the living room. Wei Ying has already cleared a swath for their enclosure. Wei Ying watches nosily while Lan Zhan sets it up, face burning. Maybe he’s too much. Maybe they’re spoiled. Maybe rabbits don’t need little beds they never sleep in.
“Lan Zhan! What the fuck. That’s so cute,” Wei Ying says from the sofa, laughing over the rim of his mug. “They want for nothing, huh?”
Yes, he’s definitely too much, and they’re definitely spoiled.
In the carrier, Mocha twitches her nose, matching Falafel perfectly. Wei Ying gets off the sofa, onto his knees on the carpet, peering at them curiously.
“They look pretty happy to me!”
Flickering lights. Lan Zhan won’t know this yet, but Mo Xuanyu agrees, and he’d also like Wei Ying to know that he still doesn’t approve of Yanli moving out, and he certainly doesn’t approve of a hot man moving in if he has to be dead and can’t do anything about it. Lan Zhan closes his eyes against the strobing lights.
Wei Ying is appalled.
“So you think I’m ugly?” he says, aghast. “You’re such a bitch.”
Lan Zhan looks up from his task.
“Pardon?”
Wei Ying laughs. He sounds nervous. Maybe Lan Zhan’s wrong. What’s there to be nervous about? He’s often wrong about these sorts of things.
“Oh, nothing,” Wei Ying says, waving a hand. It’s clearly not nothing. Lan Zhan doesn’t push. People don’t like that, don’t like it when he tries to tease out their meaning, so he says nothing. “Mo Xuanyu is bullying me. He uses Morse code. It’s cute, right?”
Lan Zhan reminds himself that the rent is cheap, and his roommate is—well. His roommate is. Um. Well. Yes.
He’s curious, though. “What did he say?”
Is Wei Ying red? Lan Zhan can’t tell. It’s warm in the apartment, high up on the seventh floor. Heat rises. Maybe he’s just hot—warm. Maybe he’s just warm.
“Oh, just something about how your rabbits are way cuter than me, which is true, but he doesn’t have to say it like that. Asshole.”
All of the lights go off at once. Soon, Lan Zhan will learn that this is classic Mo Xuanyu. A hissy fit. If they were to try an outlet, it would be dead.
Wei Ying laughs, the same laugh from earlier, the one that might be nervous and might not be.
“Just don’t piss him off when you need to charge your phone. I have some emergency stuff we can—”
“No need,” Lan Zhan says. He’ll be helpful, and he’ll be good, and he’ll show Wei Ying that he’s a tolerable roommate, not merely a man made of ice, awkward and cold.
All of his houseplants rustle. Wei Ying couldn’t say how he can tell, but they seem friendly. Happy to be here. Happy to help. Lan Zhan can feel his eyes on him and looks away, face burning. The lights come back on.
Wei Ying crows.
“Lan Zhan! That’s so cool! I was gonna do a blood array, and it was gonna take at least half an hour to turn the power back on. Holy shit!”
Lan Zhan doesn’t respond immediately. He gently lifts each rabbit from the carrier and places them in the enclosure along with a huge pile of hay and a handful of pellets for each.
“Blood?” he asks idly, petting Falafel’s brown head. She butts her head into his hand, and he strokes her cheeks.
When he looks up, Wei Ying is scratching his nose, embarrassed. Maybe.
“Ah, yeah, I’m maybe, like. So, necromancy, you know? That’s my deal. Ethical necromancy!”
What.
Lan Zhan has evidently gone very wrong somewhere in his life to end up here. Maybe Wei Ying (BITCH) was accurate.