Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Today was fine, if Lan Zhan ignores the microaggressions from his students, the fact that he forgot his tea in his car this morning and that none of the projectors worked despite his video heavy lesson plan. He is practicing mindfulness and gratitude, which is the focus of the therapy syllabus this month. (“You really should not refer to the healing process as a syllabus,” his therapist told him a few weeks ago. Lan Zhan played dumb: “I’m sorry?” “You cannot fail therapy,” she said. Lan Zhan wanted to ask if he could get that in writing, for when he failed therapy, but he just stared at her and waited for her to sigh and change the topic. He believes he only got a B+ that day.) He tries to focus on the clear streets, on the egg sandwich he got in the lobby of the humanities building, the salad he packed for lunch and the stilted but pleasant greetings from the Chinese language and literature graduate student from Guangdong who hangs around on the history department floor (“I am avoiding my American classmates,” she tells Lan Zhan, and he nods in understanding, right before having to rush away into his office because he sees one of his own American classmates walking over), the student in his last class that did the reading and argued that it’s stupid to criticize the use of violence in revolution. Lan Zhan almost smiled.

Today was fine, and he wanted to end it on a peaceful note, maybe do a face mask or make bread or finish knitting the black mittens for Wei Ying, but instead he is caught at this dinner with Wei Ying and his friends. Not sure they’re all Wei Ying’s friends.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Wei Ying says, not really a question, putting down his fork to stare at whoever it is that just said gened classes are a waste of time. They’re new, sitting next to Wen Qing, and their hair is dyed an interesting shade of blonde. It makes them look sickly.

“What?” the person defends. “Why did I waste two years reading useless books and writing essays I’ll never see again, that have no impact on my career? In this country, it’s just money grabbing.”

“Wow,” Wei Ying says. He takes a long drink from his red wine. Lan Zhan glances at the bottle of wine he and Jiang Cheng are sharing. Huaisang had a glass, but Huaisang is a careful drinker. Wei Ying is not. It’s pay day, he says. The commonwealth has filled our bank accounts with the spoils of imperialism and neoliberal capitalism, he says. The least I deserve for dealing with it is some wine, he says.

He does have an excuse every time he drinks too much. Lan Zhan has one explanation—ah, well, many explanations, one word. In English, a number of them start with a.

“I’d hate to be your professor or TA,” Wei Ying laughs. “I know your writing is complete shit.”

“Wei Ying, drop it,” Huaisang says. He looks put out. Is the man his friend? Huaisang is such a good judge of character, otherwise. Can’t be him. Wen Qing? Lan Zhan almost laughs. No.

“I went to UCLA for undergrad and was dean’s list every year,” the other guy snaps. Lan Zhan supposes it’s too late to learn his name. He doesn’t care much.

“Yeah?” Wei Ying says. He smiles. “I know your A+ writing at UCLA was complete shit. Your parents probably bought a library renovation so no one was allowed to fail you, and you ride high thinking that this will make you a good lawyer.”

“What’s your fucking deal?” Wei Ying doesn’t respond, just keeps sipping at his wine. Jiang Cheng is on his phone, checked out of the conversation, perhaps already drunk. Lan Zhan will have to bring them home. Well, Lan Zhan has to bring Wei Ying home, and it is—kind? if he brings Jiang Cheng, too. He supposes. Jiang Cheng hasn’t been an asshole to Wei Ying this week, so Lan Zhan may allow kindness. Is this man Jiang Cheng’s friend?

“Do I seem like I have a deal?” he asks lightly, taking another swig from his wine. Wine, Lan Zhan thinks, should not be chugged. “Do you have the critical thinking to determine whether or not I have a deal? Do they teach that in business law, or do you all just circle jerk while you wait for corporations to co—”

“Wei Ying, get over it,” Wen Qing interrupts, annoyance plain in her voice and face. “I’m serious, get over it.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Wei Ying says.

“You’re a piece of shit,” the other man says. “You don’t need to take out your deadend career and parent issues—“

Jiang Cheng is completely alert now, like a live wire sparked alive. He suddenly stands up and pushes back his chair, says, “what the fuck did you just fucking say?”

The guy scoffs. “So it’s fine that your brother is a bitch but I defend myself and I’m yelled at? You must be as much of an asshole as he is.”

Lan Zhan’s hand flexes tense on his thigh. Who is this person? Why are they still here? This is all strange.

“Speak to him like that again and I’ll break your fucking n—“

Lan Zhan places his left hand on Wei Ying’s thigh. He hopes this will make Wei Ying remember he’s in public, rephrase his wording to something other than a blatant death threat, but Wei Ying stops speaking altogether.

“No, finish. Tell me how you’re gonna break my neck so I can sue you for what little you have.”

Wei Ying tenses, but when Lan Zhan squeezes his thigh, he doesn’t say anything. He takes another drink from his already-refilled wine glass, and Lan Zhan decides they need to get out of here.

“Wei Ying, Jiang Cheng, let’s go,” Lan Zhan says, gently pushing his chair back and moving his hand to Wei Ying’s shoulder to pull him up as Lan Zhan stands. “Huaisang, please pay and I shall Venmo you. Wen Qing.”

“Okay,” Huaisang says in English. He doesn’t look up from his plate. Was this his guest after all? Lan Zhan doesn’t wait to see if Jiang Cheng is following as he leads Wei Ying away from the table, but he does give Huaisang a soft pat on the shoulder. Wei Ying still has the wine glass gripped tightly in his hands when they reach the front, and Lan Zhan has to pry it from him and put it down on the host stand before they can exit. Jiang Cheng’s boots are loud behind him.

Somehow, the drive back to Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng’s apartment’s is silent. Jiang Cheng is still drunk and angry, Wei Ying is still drunk and angry, and Lan Zhan, well, he knows himself. He also knows that entire thing was ridiculous, and pointless, and trite escalation. There must be something greater. Lan Zhan too believes it is necessary to take courses outside one’s own field, and that the other man was not...interesting, but no part of it necessitated the energy Wei Ying gave other than that final parent comment.

Lan Zhan parks on the curb a block away from their house, and trails behind Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng as they stumble towards their brownstone. It’s quiet tonight, most noise coming from the jingle of the small liquor store as people exit, the faint hush of noise when the chicken takeout opens as people enter. Lan Zhan keeps his eyes up. He presses the knob to make sure his car is locked. He does not look below Wei Ying’s waist. He tells himself not to look below Wei Ying’s waist.

Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng are clingy in the later stages of their drunkenness, but Lan Zhan will not comment on their intertwined hands, the low murmurs of reassurance that he’s fine, he already forgot what that asshole said, should we get chicken, oh we have leftovers at home, maybe pizza? that Wei Ying gives his brother.

Inside, Jiang Cheng heads straight to bed after Lan Zhan makes him brush his teeth and drink water, but Lan Zhan can’t find the Advil, so they will deal with their hangovers come morning. Lan Zhan bought them Advil three drunken nights ago, but it’s only been accessible once before. Maybe he should keep it in his car. Wei Ying stands in front of his open fridge and eats warmed up leftover gyro, says, “Lan Zhan, d’ya want some?” and Lan Zhan feels consumed to poetics. Bathed in this artificial white light, soft and blurry and swaying on his feet, forkful of lamb halfway to his mouth, Wei Ying is ethereal.

Lan Zhan shakes his head. “Should drink water.”

“I’m not even drunk,” Wei Ying says. Lan Zhan raises an eyebrow. “I’m just, like, tipsy. Whatever, I drink all the time, a little wine won’t hurt me. Watch TV with me?”

Yes, Lan Zhan thinks, that’s the issue. Lan Zhan nods and sits down on the couch, and focuses on pacing his heartbeat when Wei Ying gracelessly folds down onto Lan Zhan’s lap, chastises him for manspreading, and turns the television onto Youtube. In this time, he almost drops his gyro four times, and by the time Wei Ying is typing in bento packing into the search bar, Lan Zhan has had to put the food down on the coffee table and hold Wei Ying’s waist so he doesn’t tip over. Wei Ying isn’t clumsy when he’s sober, but gravity is his worst enemy when drunk. Gravity and myself, he said once, grinning with all his teeth and beer tipping out of the bottle. That was a bad night. Wei Ying does not like beer.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, “will you make this for me?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, and pays more attention to the television and the egg whites being beaten into whipped cream, the next shot of strawberries washed, halved, and sliced for the cake.

“Ha!” Wei Ying says. He licks his lips, and relaxes more his weight on Lan Zhan’s lap. “When would you have time? No way.”

“I will find time for you,” Lan Zhan says.

“Ah, that makes you one of maybe two people in the world,” Wei Ying says, and laughs softly like it’s funny, the disdain he has for himself.

“I have to disagree,” Lan Zhan says.

“‘M too presumptuous?” Wei Ying asks, and shifts in Lan Zhan‘s hold like he’s thinking of getting up. Lan Zhan tightens his hand.

“Not enough,” Lan Zhan says. “Many people care for you. Should I list why?”

Wei Ying pretends to gag, but relaxes again, none of that endless fight in his body for a rare moment.

They get through two more cooking videos, back to morning bento after the cake interlude, and then Wei Ying says, “Lan Zhan. Sleepy.”

“Bed?”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying says. He yawns, and tips his head back to look at Lan Zhan upside down. “You gotta carry me.”

In bed, after Lan Zhan gets down to his underclothes and convinces Wei Ying to switch to pajamas, Wei Ying drapes himself over Lan Zhan’s body, and Lan Zhan practices mindfulness. When he thinks Wei Ying is asleep: “I was such an asshole today. To everyone. My students hate me. Basically told them they’re stupid today.”

Lan Zhan combs his fingers softly through Wei Ying’s hair, rubs them into his scalp until Wei Ying sighs and relaxes on top of him. “Why were they being stupid?”

“Lan Zhan, s’posed to tell me to not call my students stupid,” Wei Ying says, and laughs a little. Lan Zhan smiles and curves his thumb down Wei Ying’s earlobe.

“I trust your expert deductions,” he says, just to hear Wei Ying huff out another little laugh.

“Just… I guess they were. Like, you know when they’re being racist and you call them out for it but then you feel like the bad guy? Like you’re that evil American liberal stunting their progress? I’m not a fucking American liberal, what the fuck, and I don’t believe in free speech, actually. Doesn’t mean—doesn’t mean I’m gonna debate racism. Fuck.”

“Cannot debate people who think they live in a democracy,” Lan Zhan says.

Wei Ying laughs really loudly at that one. The walls here are thin, but Lan Zhan believes Wei Ying’s joy is more important than Jiang Cheng’s interrupted sleep. “Right!” Wei Ying says. He sighs. “Everything felt wrong today.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says.

“Don’t wanna do this anymore,” Wei Ying mumbles, moving up so he can burrow his face into Lan Zhan’s neck.

Lan Zhan drags his palm up Wei Ying’s back, and the other cradles the back of his neck. “You are good at what you do,” Lan Zhan murmurs. “Okay to feel off. Okay to have bad days. They do not define you.”

Wei Ying doesn’t say anything after that, but Lan Zhan does not expect him to. He says nothing of it the next morning when he texts Lan Zhan sorry and thanks for breakfast and then i was freaking out until dude told me tip was already pai d omg i thoguth i was gonna be a deadbeat delivery dad and ❤️.

10am, Lan Zhan sits in a cafe and reminds himself he is too old to want this helplessly. Something in him still aches.

“Why do you always morning walk of shame when you sleep over at Wei Ying’s house?” Zixuan asks, leaning back in Lan Zhan’s passenger side seat and adjusting the distance even though Lan Zhan tells him all the time not to. Zixuan and Wei Ying are almost the height, but Zixuan always pulls it too far back, and Wei Ying never reveals discomfort in other people’s spaces unless he’s wasted or bad-high.

“Put your foot down,” Lan Zhan says. “I am not your Uber.”

“You should’ve let me drive, then,” says Zixuan, but he does take his foot off the dashboard. Lan Zhan doesn’t bother responding. “I’d let you drive my car if A-Li didn’t take it to go shopping with her brats.” Zixuan pauses. “Do you wanna go accidentally show up at, uh, Whole Foods, wherever, and run into them? Your boyfriend will be there.”

Lan Zhan’s mouth twitches down. “Shut up. You are no longer eighteen.”

Lan Zhan met Jin Zixuan at the international students’ admit day of his undergraduate school. Rather, they met in the hotel lobby the school put them up in in downtown Chicago, in ostentatious attempt to sell them on a school Lan Zhan’s brother told him he would not like that Lan Zhan chose anyway, partly just to avoid the wave of people he knew back home in Beijing who were going to Ivys in New England. Jin Zixuan was there because his father went there, and his family dealt proudly with nepotism. Zixuan was with his mother and Lan Zhan was with his uncle and his brother, who flew in from Berkeley to see them both, and Zixuan’s mother asked Uncle if they were Chinese and here for admit day, Uncle reluctantly said yes, where were they coming from, what will Zixuan major in, finance is an excellent choice, Lan Zhan is--undecided, but perhaps they will have introductory classes together, ah, I see, I may know your husband, what great news that Lan Zhan will be with such a dedicated and ambitious classmate--and Lan Zhan and Zixuan were forced to exchange numbers. They ended up taking a taxi together at Mrs. Jin’s insistence, and Lan Zhan was forced to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with someone in a logo Louis Vuitton belt that smelled like he dumped an entire cologne bottle on his body, and neither of them spoke to each other all day. Lan Zhan never messaged Zixuan, no matter Uncle’s unsubtle hints at what a great field finance would be since it would reasonably allow Lan Zhan to pick up as director of their hospitals. Perhaps, Lan Zhan said that entire summer, switching from his article tabs on same-gender desire and sacrificial eroticism in the mid Ming to the U.S. Audi site to finish customizing the car Uncle would have waiting for him in Chicago.

Lan Zhan would’ve forgotten who Zixuan was were it not for Uncle’s endless disdain for Lan Zhan’s intended degree. Then, first week of classes, Jin Zixuan was in his introductory classical Chinese poetry for native speakers, and Lan Zhan was intrigued, more so when Jin Zixuan introduced himself as an anthropology major. He avoided looking at Lan Zhan, like he was afraid, what, that Lan Zhan would call his mom and tell her that he was a fraud who wanted his half-brother to become CEO instead of him, or whatever tale Zixuan spun in his head, and if Lan Zhan was a different person, he would have burst into laughter in the middle of class. Zixuan calmed down when Lan Zhan said he was studying history. Anthropology was still bad, in Lan Zhan’s mental but solidifying ranking of terrible majors, but surely not as bad as finance, so he didn't mind when Zixuan sat next to him in the dining hall and started bitching about the food like he didn’t have money to buy other options. Lan Zhan cannot overestimate enough how annoying Zixuan is--Lan Zhan could only exhale loudly, drive him to McDonald’s drive-through, and pretend that he was a normal person for five seconds who didn’t mind Zixuan eating inside his car. They ended up on the roof of the car, Lan Zhan half-guilty eating his order of fries while Zixuan dripped burger sauce onto his Versace and told Lan Zhan about his bastard siblings. Lan Zhan could not get rid of him after that, even in graduate school. Lan Zhan convinced him to study comparative literature instead, so the friendship is not a waste.

“We could get lunch there. I know you like their shitty tempura tofu.”

Lan Zhan huffs. It’s not shitty. “Jiang Yanli only shops at Whole Foods when she is with you. Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng prefer other stores.”

“Like?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t answer.

“A-Zhan,” Zixuan says with false gravity.

“Absolutely not,” Lan Zhan says firmly, turning into the parking garage of the mall. He parks near the mall entrance. Zixuan should know that Lan Zhan stops listening the second he calls him A-Zhan. Brother is the only person in the entire world who can, other than--Lan Zhan’s dead mother, and one day Zixuan will give up.

“It’s not even creepy, that’s my girlfriend and I miss her. Do you not miss your brat?” Zixuan rushes to get out of the car before Lan Zhan locks him in and the alarm declares him a thief. ”Do not be unreasonable.”

“You sound like your father,” Lan Zhan says. Zixuan has shorter legs than Lan Zhan, and he scrambles a little to catch up when Lan Zhan doesn’t hold the entrance door open for him as they go into the Macy’s.

“Fuck you,” Zixuan says. “I’m gonna tell my psychiatrist I need a higher dose because you’re a piece of shit.” Lan Zhan tries not to smile. “So I take it that you don’t miss your brat?”

“He has a name,” Lan Zhan says, and then inhales slowly when he realizes how easy that trap was, and how easily he falls into it every time. Your idiot, your brat, your dumbass, Zixuan will say, and Lan Zhan will know who he means every time, and he can never kill Zixuan for it.

Zixuan laughs. The security guard smiles at them when they walk in, and Lan Zhan tips his head in acknowledgement. “If you’re not dating, then why do you run away every time you sleep over at his house?” They walk past the men’s shoes section on the way to the escalator, and it takes one glance for Zixuan to grab his size in another pair of garish Nikes. Zixuan’s parents forced him in dark tones his entire life to remain respectable, and his mid-twenties rebellion manifests through pastels and shoes that Lan Zhan hates.

“We--Wei Ying is embarrassed after he drinks,” Lan Zhan finally answers a few moments later on the escalator. He hates escalators. He watches his step when he steps off. Zixuan almost trips on his bright-yellow shoelaces.

“Oh,” Zixuan says. He doesn’t press further. He and Jiang Yanli live together, and Lan Zhan knows that Jiang Yanli is often at the frontlines of Wei Ying’s alcohol dependency. Wei Ying almost always calls her when he is drunk, whether it’s day-drinking at brunch with Huaisang or out clubbing at three AM with Jiang Cheng and--Huaisang. Perhaps Huaisang’s dependencies need to be considered, too. Wei Ying is… sometimes honest when he is drunk, and he is most honest with Jiang Yanli, and Lan Zhan always feels like an intruder when he overhears their conversations, the way Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng ask Jiang Yanli, for the third time that call, if she’s sure that she doesn’t wanna live with them again. Zixuan knows how Wei Ying gets when he’s drunk, and he knows how Wei Ying gets with Lan Zhan when he’s drunk. Zixuan has been angry about it only once, when Wei Ying was drunk and high on bad weed at someone’s lunar new year party and tried picking a fight with Lan Zhan that Lan Zhan was not willing to give, but he knows about other times through proxy. Wei Ying does not let Lan Zhan leave at night, and he is distant for days when he sees him in his bed in the morning.

Lan Zhan hums.

“What are we buying?”

Wei Ying’s desk chair is terrible and uncomfortable, and Lan Zhan can no longer tolerate knowing that Wei Ying spends hours on it destroying his back. Zixuan laughs when Lan Zhan tells him, but he gives a real smile when Lan Zhan lets him play test guinea for comfort. Lan Zhan weighs more than him or Wei Ying, so he tests durability. “You know,” Zixuan says later, when they sit in the Whole Foods dining area and Lan Zhan eats his perfectly good tempura tofu, “if you’re ever in a bind and need to platonically be in charge of me again after your brat friendzones you again, it is fine with me. I am sure A-Li will not mind.”

Lan Zhan’s ears feel hot. He glances at the table next to them, but thankfully no one is there. “There will be no again. I was never your platonic… dom.”

“How can you deny it when you did so well at making me less of a shitty trust fund brat,” Jin ZIxuan says.

“You are still trust fund brat,” Lan Zhan says.

“Notice shitty is no longer there,” Zixuan says, even though he knows Lan Zhan just doesn’t like calling him that. That’s what Zixuan’s mom calls him, and Lan Zhan aggressively ignores Zixuan’s internalization, even when it’s lighthearted. “And you like the brat part. Platonically, for me. Perhaps not platonically for others.”

“I hope Jiang Yanli never f—” He frowns. Why does he still feel this automatic guilt from cursing? He squints at Zixuan and manages it out, “--never fucks you again.”

“Do you think they’re at Target?” Zixuan asks ten minutes later.

“Shut up,” Lan Zhan says, after three minutes of trying to ignore Zixuan.

Chapter Text

Wei Ying calls him on Sunday night, 9pm right after Lan Zhan moisturized his face so he can go to sleep for his morning lecture. He wakes at 5am most days, and the professor he TAs for this semester prefers morning meetings at eight before lecture at nine AM, so Lan Zhan likes accounting for potential delays in his morning routine. He once tried getting off the waking schedule his uncle had ingrained in him since childhood, that single rebellious week sophomore year when Uncle declined Lan Zhan’s request for Zixuan to spend the summer with them, even though Lan Zhan told Uncle that it was for Zixuan’s health; when Uncle said he’d met with the Jins and they seemed—like they just wanted best for their son—and Lan Zhan ignored his phone calls and messages for the first time in his life, angry at the lie and hypocrisy and disregard from someone who claimed they were a health professional, even if Lan Zhan knew his Uncle hadn’t practiced medicine for years since becoming director—ah, he supposes it still upsets him, sometimes. Xichen let them spend the summer with him in Berkeley and London, which was great for Lan Zhan’s grasp of different English dialects even though the food and people were miserable, but before this possibility, he was upset, felt like his morals had diverged from Uncle’s at an unknowable endpoint, and he questioned a lot. He learned, quickly, that the sleeping schedule did not need to be on that list.

“Wei Ying,” he answers, and sits up against his headboard.

“Hey, Lan Zhan, where are you, are you home?” Before Lan Zhan can answer, Wei Ying’s unusually high voice continues, “you wanna go to the gym? I haven’t been—in basically four decades—Jiang Cheng won’t go with me because he’s a lazy fucker—“ outside of the phone, Lan Zhan hears fuck you, you piece of shit, and squints in annoyance even as Wei Ying laughs, still too high, “—but you’re a gym goer. You work out, I know this, those arms cannot be purely genetic, do you wanna go to the gym with me?” Wei Ying exhales. “Like, right now?”

Lan Zhan pushes away his comforter and gets out of bed. “Yes. Shall I pick you up?”

“Um.“ Wei Ying hesitates. “I mean, it’s probably fi—“

“I am picking you up,” Lan Zhan says. He doesn’t like interrupting Wei Ying, but sometimes… some things are best left unsaid. “Will be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay,” Wei Ying says. “If it’s not a bother?”

“Wei Ying is never a bother,” Lan Zhan says softly. How many times will he say this? Will it ever feel true, for Wei Ying? How many times has he heard otherwise?

Lan Zhan used to live with Zixuan, the first year they moved here. Zixuan met Jiang Yanli through Wei Ying’s post-midterms-grading party (which was advanced humor, Wei Ying told Lan Zhan, since Wei Ying hadn’t finished grading) and fell fast and hard when he watched her throw out one of their cohort mates for being rude to Wei Ying. Jiang Yanli often has a calm, welcoming face, but she was furious that night, obvious even under her play at courtesy. Lan Zhan unfortunately knows Zixuan’s type, in all its impossible standards, so he wasn’t surprised when Zixuan followed her like a puppy for the rest of the night, and then for several months after. Now they live together and Lan Zhan’s two-person apartment is cavernous. Last summer, since he was in Berkeley and then Beijing, he subletted his apartment for free to two international students that weren’t able to go home, Wei Ying’s linguistics friend from Zimbabwe and their friend from Japan; it was difficult handing his space to someone else, and he had to hire a cleaning service and clean for hours after he got back to get the smell of other people out of his home, but it was good use of this empty space.

If Zixuan was here, he’d laugh at Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan gets to Wei Ying’s house in the allotted fifteen minutes.

Wei Ying is waiting for him outside when he gets there, bouncing on his heels from the cold, his hands buried in the pockets of his shorts, the black shorts he told Lan Zhan he’s had since high school. Yes, I can tell, Lan Zhan thought to himself, and he remembers it now, feeling his throat go dry at how the tightness stretches across Wei Ying’s thighs when he grins and walks over to the car. Lan Zhan is sure they were standard basketball shorts when Wei Ying was sixteen, but it’s been almost a decade since then, and the only looseness is at the waist, which is… admittedly a very distracting body part for Lan Zhan.

What isn’t.

“Lan Zhan, I can’t believe you came,” Wei Ying smiles, glancing over at the driver’s side and bumping Lan Zhan’s shoulder with his fist. Lan Zhan wants to reply of course, Wei Ying asked, but Wei Ying continues, “truly the best gege ever.”

Lan Zhan grips the gear shift and doesn’t look at Wei Ying’s thighs even when they reach a red light. “You don’t have to call me that.”

“Ah, but doesn’t it please you so much? I like pleasing you, gege.” Lan Zhan refrains from running his car into a pole. “I’m just paying forward respect, y’know, Jiang Cheng never does for me, which is so rude that I think we should bring back corporal punishment, but only from older siblings, and only from me to Jiang Cheng. He used to when we were kids, but when we left China he left all his manners behind and became an American brat.”

Jin Zixuan’s unwelcome questions from yesterday enter his mind. Unwelcome, but better than thinking deeply about Wei Ying comparing their relationship to the one he has with Jiang Cheng. Lan Zhan glances at him out of the corner of his eyes, immediately scolds himself, and turns back to the road. Driving in this region is annoying. Lan Zhan learned to drive in Beijing, yes, but at least that was somewhat gridded. It is easier when they drive by farmlands, but Lan Zhan actively avoids that, being that he is Chinese with an accent in one of the most insidiously racist places on the continent. He and Wei Ying went to the mountains once, but only because their cohort all went, and if they got axe-murdered, Wei Ying said, their department would at least send forces to rescue the Americans. Wei Ying grew up in midwest suburbia, so he drives like everything is a highway, and single-lane roads make him violent. He drove Lan Zhan’s car once. Lan Zhan… feels the way he feels about Wei Ying, but once was enough. “Aren’t you also?”

“Also what?” He realizes quickly: “Lan Zhan! Take it back!” Lan Zhan’s mouth quirks up.

Wei Ying fiddles with QQ on Lan Zhan’s phone before switching to Spotify and putting on a song that thrums open with low synthesizer and hazy piano. Wei Ying leans back in his seat and puts his leg up on the dashboard. “Lan Zhan, pay attention, I think you’ll like this rapper.” Wei Ying puts the phone flat on his bare thigh, matte black metal on the soft black wisps of hair on his legs. Lan Zhan shouldn’t know all these movements. Lan Zhan is an unsafe driver. Lan Zhan feels brand new and desperate. “I think he’s gay.” Wei Ying closes his eyes. “Actually, no, yeah, I’m positive he’s gay, but you should go read his Genius annotations if you ever wanna see bisexuality claims being co-opted to skirt around homophobia, it’s kinda hilarious.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says. He parks. He turns off the ignition, unable to bear the recommendation, the frenzy of the instrumentals, the winding and wandering lyrics. He has always felt obvious.

“Oh, your gym?”

“Too many people at school gym in evening. Undergrads coming to life.”

“Oh, true, hate when undergrads come to life. Oh my god, did I tell you when I saw one of my former students checking me out while I was doing squats there?” Lan Zhan opens the door for Wei Ying to step through, and the blast of lukewarm air makes Wei Ying shiver. Lan Zhan reminds himself to keep an extra coat in his car, since Wei Ying refuses to accept that spring has not yet come. “It was the stalker creep from last semester, too, the one who looked at me like a piece of meat and told me I was irresponsible--wait, I don’t have a membership here, are you sure it’s fine for me to come so often as your guest?”

“Can get Wei Ying a membership if he wants,” Lan Zhan offers for the tenth time, scanning his keycard at the front desk before leading Wei Ying to the locker room. “I remember that student. Wei Ying is not a piece of meat.”

“No,” Wei Ying says, disagreement and agreement at once. He grabs Lan Zhan’s forearm and sways a little towards him. “Zhan-ge can look at me like a piece of meat if he wants, though.” In front of the locker room’s bathroom mirrors, he stands in front of Lan Zhan and looks up at him through his eyelashes.

“Do not joke,” Lan Zhan says, voice rough. They maintain eye contact. He amasses as much of Wei Ying’s soft shoulder-length hair as he can with his hands, gently untangling the ends, scratching his blunt nails through Wei Ying’s scalp in the way he knows Wei Ying likes, the way that makes Wei Ying’s eyes flutter, his body step back closer to Lan Zhan’s, his neck arch out.

Lan Zhan tightens his right hand in Wei Ying’s hair. Wei Ying’s mouth parts, the wet line of his tongue just-barely visible. He lets out a sound so soft that Lan almost strains forward to hear, to confirm, to really know. It takes immeasurable restraint not to pull Wei Ying’s hair.

“Put your head up,” he says lowly. Wei Ying listens, and he doesn’t break eye contact with Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan can’t be this physically close to Wei Ying when Wei Ying is like--this. It feels too close to how Lan Zhan wants him.

He ties Wei Ying’s hair up into a high ponytail, the way Wei Ying likes, the way Lan Zhan likes, and then steps back so that their bodies are no longer touching.

Lan Zhan runs a hand through his hair. His hair isn’t long right now, shaved close at the sides, but he hasn’t gotten a haircut in a few weeks, and it curls onto his nape, falls over his undercut in… in the way Wei Ying likes. Wei Ying doesn’t move for a moment, and then with a loud exhale, he looks away. Lan Zhan swallows.

“Do you need lifting gloves?” Lan Zhan asks.

Wei Ying laughs, too thready to sound real. “Lan Zhan, you know I hate lifting. It’s about lower body strength, you cannot lift away from the zombies.”

“Should lift at least once a week.”

“This is my first time going to the gym all week. Or all month? One of…” He waves his hands vaguely as they walk back out to the main room. “One of those time markers. None of this is real, Lan Zhan, I don’t even have a corporeal form, let alone arms. I’m gonna go try to pass out at the ellipticals.”

They leave an hour later. Wei Ying did the ellipticals for almost an hour, and Lan Zhan felt a terrible and insane urge to have his uncle buy this gym franchise, maybe the full organization, so that Lan Zhan can rearrange the layout to move the weights from behind the ellipticals and bikes. He isn’t often so distracted. He tried not to, but his eyes wandered to Wei Ying’s back so readily, to the sweaty lines of his shoulders, the natural dip of his waist, the rise and curve and shape and fullness of his—

He’d look away. Wei Ying is not a piece of meat.

Minutes later, his eyes drifted back. Zhan-ge can, if he wants.

On the drive home, Lan Zhan keeps his eyes to himself and asks, “how do you feel?”

“What do you mean? Lan Zhan, no higher level thinking, come on. Why didn’t you shower at the gy… oh, never mind, they’re disgusting, that’s probably why, hey, what’s the box in the back?”

“Desk chair,” Lan Zhan says.

“Did yours break? It was so nice, wow, your one spot of bourgeois indulgence and it broke. Lan Zhan, haha, I have the funniest metaphor for this, can you guess what it is?”

“I can guess a few examples,” Lan Zhan says. “My chair is fine. This… is yours, the chair, if you want it.”

“Huh? Lan Zhan, my chair’s f—it’s still there.”

“It is not good.”

“It’s a chair,” Wei Ying says. “You shouldn’t spend money on me, it’s, you don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t have to,” Lan Zhan agrees. “I wanted to.”

When Lan Zhan stops in front of Wei Ying’s apartment, Wei Ying asks, “can you help me bring it up?”

Lan Zhan knows it’s not too heavy for Wei Ying to lift, but he nods and parks.

Wei Ying walks ahead, and Lan Zhan follows, eyes at Wei Ying’s flushed and sweaty nape. When they get to Wei Ying’s room and Lan Zhan puts the box down in the corner next to Wei Ying’s desk, right under Wei Ying’s poster of Moonlight and adjacent to the door calendar he never uses, he looks at Wei Ying’s face for the first time since leaving the gym, and feels his breath catch in his throat. Wei Ying is already looking up at him, something… something miserable and muted in his grey eyes, in the flatness of his oft-smiling mouth.

“Is it weird if I want a hug right now?” Wei Ying laughs. Lan Zhan answers by stepping forward and pulling Wei Ying into a hug, arms across his back and nose pressed into his hair.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says into Lan Zhan’s neck, muffled and breathy, when his hands come up to Lan Zhan’s shoulders, “hug me tighter.” Lan Zhan hugs him tighter.

For a few minutes, this is all there is.

“You’re really nice to me,” Wei Ying finally says. “Too nice.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything more. He strokes his right hand up and down Wei Ying’s back in the same slow movement until Wei Ying’s breaths stop shaking. Lan Zhan has only seen Wei Ying cry once in the two years he’s known him, and he doesn’t think he’s crying now, but he hates to see Wei Ying even get close. His throat feels tight.

“Do you think we could… ah, we’re both sweaty and you probably have class tomorrow, you should… it’s probably…”

“For an hour,” Lan Zhan says, and walks Wei Ying backwards towards his bed until Wei Ying falls on his back. “Let me move my hands.”

“On top of me,” Wei Ying says instead, still holding onto Lan Zhan’s shoulders. He doesn’t lift his back so that Lan Zhan can bring his hands back around until Lan Zhan carefully drops down on top of him. “You can pull all your weight on me.”

Lan Zhan hums. He doesn’t, but he puts a little more, enough that he can actively feel him pressing Wei Ying down into the bed, enough that Wei Ying sighs and curls his wrists behind Lan Zhan’s neck and loosens his legs around Lan Zhan’s thighs and makes something in Lan Zhan flare, something greedy and mean and wanting. Again, this is all there is.

They both are sweaty, and Lan Zhan reminds himself to tell Wei Ying to wash this set tomorrow, maybe under dinner delivery bribe, but that dries quickly in the soft chill of the room, of the window Wei Ying always forgets to close.

“Is this okay? ‘M sorry for this, I really am kinda unbearable,” and he laughs breathlessly. “Just a few more minutes, if that’s okay, Lan Zhan, and I’ll stop bothering you.”

Lan Zhan palms the back of Wei Ying’s neck, thumb firm on his erratic pulse point, and curls his left hand in Wei Ying’s hair. He pets Wei Ying’s hair, same as he did in the gym, and he tracks responses with his thumb.

“You are not unbearable,” Lan Zhan says. He scratches right above Wei Ying’s ear, and Wei Ying’s pulse spikes high, higher still when Lan Zhan digs his other hand tighter into the thin and vulnerable skin at Wei Ying’s neck.

“I’m insane,” Wei Ying says. Lan Zhan hates how certain he is when he says this; as if he did the research and came to this natural conclusion. That’s how Wei Ying talks about himself. Wei Ying knows he’s smart, the smartest person in their cohort, likely in the department, and he’s not afraid or ashamed to speak plainly about that, no matter the people in their seminars who pretend they can’t understand Wei Ying even when he speaks with clear midwest inflection, who call him condescending and confrontational. Wei Ying always just laughs, and by the end of class, humiliates them so thoroughly they won’t look at him for a week. Wei Ying knows he’s smart, and that’s where his self-awareness ends. “I’ve never felt less in control than I do right now, Lan Zhan, I, I didn’t think I’d crash so fast, I swear it’s not because of the chair, I’m just fucking--like--I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“Close your eyes,” Lan Zhan says. He can’t see Wei Ying’s face, but he knows they’re open, probably wide and wild. Wei Ying’s mania usually lasts longer before he crashes. Has it been around? Did Lan Zhan fail to notice?

“I don’t like who I am,” Wei Ying says.

Lan Zhan knows.

“Close your eyes,” he says again. “Focus on my hands. Tell me where I’m touching you.”

“Lan Zhan—”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, softly, firmly.

“I—” Wei Ying starts, and Lan Zhan can’t help it; he pulls Wei Ying’s hair tight, intends it to sting, maybe hurt and redirect all of Wei Ying’s attention to the real and sensory presence of Lan Zhan’s instructions. He doesn’t intend… he doesn’t expect the sharp moan it forces out of Wei Ying. He doesn’t expect how easy Wei Ying is, the sudden loss of tension in Wei Ying’s neck, the way he arches into the grip and then goes lax into the bed like a plucked string falling back into place, the easy spread of his legs and heavy breathing. Lan Zhan trusts, now, that his eyes are closed.

“Where am I touching you?” Lan Zhan murmurs.

“My ear,” Wei Ying sighs.

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. He rotates between the same few places: ears, eyes, the relaxing line of Wei Ying’s eyebrows, his scalp, the side of his neck. He keeps his thumb on Wei Ying’s pulse, and the slowing and steady beat feels perfect in his grip. Wei Ying’s legs are spread around Lan Zhan’s, and Lan Zhan lets himself apply more body weight. Wei Ying moans again. He takes a few seconds to calm his greed down, and scratches down Wei Ying’s nape. “Now?”

“Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying whispers, a looseness to his tongue that slurs just these two words.

“Yeah, baby?” Lan Zhan says, and feels his ears burn when he catches his slip. Wei Ying is too out of it to care. Lan Zhan asks again, “where am I touching you?”

“Everywhere,” Wei Ying breathes. He sounds awed and half-asleep.

Lan Zhan’s mouth curves up; Wei Ying isn’t technically wrong. “Good,” he says, mouth pressed gently to Wei Ying’s ear. Wei Ying shudders. “You did good, Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying jolts awake at three in the morning, and Lan Zhan blinks his eyes open from the half-consciousness he spent the last four hours with. Wei Ying is shaking violently under him, which confirms Lan Zhan’s suspicion that Wei Ying—

“Please get up,” Wei Ying says. His voice is hoarse, and Lan Zhan doesn’t trust the tone. He moves off and sits at the edge of the bed, but he keeps his hand on Wei Ying’s waist, hesitant to break physical contact. Wei Ying keeps his eyes closed for two heartbeats too long, and when he opens them, his gaze doesn’t meet Lan Zhan’s. He shakes less, but he still shakes. “Ah, I’m sorry, Lan Zhan, I didn’t mean to fall asleep, that was really shit of me. You have an 8am, right? If you get home now you can still get a few more hours of proper sleep and get to shower and change, yeah?”

“I don’t think I should,” Lan Zhan says. He feels his heart rise like bile in his throat.

“Lan Zhan, you obviously can’t go to class in your gym clothes,” Wei Ying snorts.

“How do you feel, Wei Ying?”

“I feel fine,” says Wei Ying, stretching high and yawning. “Of course I feel fine. Just a little hot, but you’re seriously heavy.”

“I shouldn’t have let you—”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying interrupts, voice lilting and distant in a way that makes Lan Zhan want to sigh and find his keys. Makes him want to grip Wei Ying’s jaw until he shuts up and just does what Lan Zhan tells him to do. “No one needs to let me do anything. Go ahead, go shower and sleep, we can get lunch together at campus center later, okay?”

Lan Zhan waits to see if Wei Ying will meet his eyes. He doesn’t. Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything else as he leaves.

It’s a lie to say he never thought Wei Ying would be that easy. The first time Lan Zhan saw Wei Ying and heard him speak, that terrible introductions day of their historiography seminar when Wei Ying jokingly said his favorite theorist was Derrida because he also didn’t believe in history and ignited the passive-aggression of half their theory-repulsive classmates--that first time, when Wei Ying leaned against the door, prevented Lan Zhan from walking out at break, and asked Lan Zhan why he was the only one who didn’t react to his purposefully controversial take, when he laughed until his stomach hurt when Lan Zhan said things have happened, and pushed him out of the way to refill his water bottle--that first time, the bright smile on Wei Ying’s face when he asked Lan Zhan after seminar, were you there? Can you prove that things have happened? and Lan Zhan couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes and giving Wei Ying his number when asked--that first time, Lan Zhan saw Wei Ying laugh, and he wanted to put Wei Ying over his lap and spank him until he was begging Lan Zhan to stop. He has thought of nothing but how easy Wei Ying would be.

Lan Zhan knows what he likes. His first semester of college, in a single dorm and equipped with more content than he knew what to do with, he watched so much porn that he briefly wondered--in a moment of delirium as he jerked off for the fifth time that day to a low quality POV video of a boy fingering himself and whining, begging, pleading for something else, something bigger, and Lan Zhan gave him permission like the eighteen-year-old idiot ruled by his dick that he was--if he was addicted and would have to go to rehabilitation because of pornography. He limited his consumption a lot after a few disheartening articles and documentaries on exploitation and consent issues in the industry, and then he stopped being a virgin, so porn was less necessary. The first person Lan Zhan fucked was a third-year who started off thinking he was gonna top, and by the time Lan Zhan pulled out and came on his back, he was crying into the pillow. He said Lan Zhan was too rough, and Lan Zhan liked that. The second person was too pliant from the jump, but Lan Zhan liked how sweet and sensitive they were, how easy it was to want to take care of them, to tell them they looked pretty and felt good. Lan Zhan wanted a rougher edge to work off, but he liked seeing that flushed and boneless ending more. He knows what balance he likes. He has thought extensively about where Wei Ying fits in.

On the drive home, he can think of nothing else. In the shower, his dick is hard before he even wraps a hand around it, and fires rage in his mind. He thinks of how easily Wei Ying relaxed when Lan Zhan pulled his hair, the soft noises when Lan Zhan dug tighter into his skin, the way he shivered when Lan Zhan called him good, how pleased he sounded when he answered everywhere. It’s impossible to get over the sensory high of Wei Ying’s legs around his waist, no matter how many times it happens. Lan Zhan wants to know if Wei Ying can take two fingers at once immediately or if he needs to be played with and fingered with one for a long time before he loosens up. Does he like it up against the wall? On a good day, how much does Wei Ying tease and goad until going easy and whiny when he gets fucked hard? Lan Zhan wants to fuck him so bad his teeth rattle with it when he comes.

Ultimately, it does not matter. Lan Zhan deals with rejection easily, now.

Chapter Text

Lan Zhan has met Yu Ziyuan once.

Lan Zhan knows Uncle is overbearing and can be unfair and hypocritical, but he’s never felt guilty about loving him or doubted that his uncle loved him, whatever burdens that came with, even at his most suffocating, even when it didn’t feel unconditional. Lan Zhan never feels unsafe around his uncle. He realizes this is a privilege.

Wednesday, and Lan Zhan hasn’t heard from Wei Ying since Wei Ying kicked him out of his house Sunday night. Monday, Lan Zhan missed his morning dose of his anxiety medication, got gaslighted by one of his worst students during office hours, and ate lunch alone. Tuesday, Lan Zhan had therapy. “What’s on your mind?” his therapist asked, notepad down and head on her chin while she waited for Lan Zhan to respond. What could Lan Zhan say? I made Wei Ying drop, and then he kicked me out in the middle of the night. I can’t stop thinking about Wei Ying under me, and how I never provided aftercare. Wei Ying is likely in the midst of a major depressive episode, and I likely made it worse when I made him drop and got kicked out and could not provide aftercare.

“A few things,” he said.

“Are you willing to share them with me?”

Lan Zhan said no.

“Teach me something about the masculinization of jealousy in eighteenth-century China,” she said. He exhaled, tried and failed to relax the tension in his jaw, and did. It was not a productive session.

Today is equally unfruitful. He almost missed his morning run, he almost missed breakfast, he was almost late to his morning meeting with the professor he TAs for, and when he got there, he remembered that class and the meetings were cancelled. Too many near-misses. He tries to remind himself to be grateful that things worked out, that forgetting about a cancelled class is not the end of the world, not even the end of his day. Still, he cannot help the sharp annoyance that sits low under his skin all day. He knows why. He reminds himself why. The missed dose on Monday pushed back his medication schedule in the worst way, and the attempt to catch up pushed back his sleeping schedule, too, kept him up and staring blankly at his ceiling Monday and Tuesday nights. He has not had a good night’s rest since Saturday. Today, he forces himself to delay his dosage so that he can get back on his regular schedule, but this manifests through the tense static in his ears, the anger at all the near-misses, the impatience with the impotence and ignorance of his classmates.

He is angry at Wei Ying. No—he is angry at himself for how difficult it is to reign back irrational anger at Wei Ying. It does not help that Wednesdays bring his graduate seminar on modern China, and while the professor is fine, normal, respectful and worthy of her position on Lan Zhan’s dissertation committee, every second he spends around a table with these people is another half hour he will need to meditate to what feels now like an unreachable serenity. Wei Ying is not in class. Lan Zhan does not know why, as Wei Ying does not contact him.

Lan Zhan doesn’t hate anyone in this class or in his cohort; he doesn’t believe hatred is worth the energy or effort. Most days, he feels nothing more than indifference and perhaps amusement at these people he will never see two, three years from now. Wei Ying makes it amusing, the way that a few of their classmates always look to where he and Wei Ying sit as if to judge their facial reactions to validate their analyses on all of Chinese history, across all time, across the mainland and diaspora. Lan Zhan knows he has a blank face, but Wei Ying loves to play it up, making exaggerated faces of confusion or annoyance or contempt that even the professor almost laughs at, when the worst of their classmates try determining if all Chinese people everywhere are homophobic by the furrow in Wei Ying’s eyebrow. Once, when they were speaking about military prostitution and sexual violence, Wei Ying texted Lan Zhan a play-by-play reaction to their classmates’ terrible takes, and when Lan Zhan accidentally smiled, it was proven, then, that he hates women and that there must be a sizeable demographic of Imperial Japan apologists in China. This class is exhausting. Wei Ying is not here, and Lan Zhan lacks patience.

Lan Zhan is not angry at Wei Ying, but he is angry that he finds out why Wei Ying is not there from their professor; that he finds out because one of their classmates—who once stared at Lan Zhan and said well, I’m no China knower, but… and proceeded to ramble through increasingly bizarre generalizations for two minutes until their professor had to force midway break to cut her off; who made Wei Ying change Lan Zhan’s contact name to China Knower Lan Zhan from the sheer ridiculousness of the exchange—because that classmate asks where Ying is, and when the professor says, “Wei Ying can’t be in today because his parents are visiting,” that’s the first news Lan Zhan’s gotten on Wei Ying all week. That’s the first news Lan Zhan’s gotten of Wei Ying all week, after Lan Zhan made Wei Ying drop and then got kicked out and didn’t provide him with aftercare.

He tries calling Wei Ying when class is over. There is no response.

Lan Zhan has met Yu Ziyuan once. Wei Ying’s parents visited the first Thanksgiving break of their first year. Jiang Yanli lived a bit further then, before she and Jin Zixuan rented a place only twenty minutes from Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng, but even that was close enough for her parents to rent a hotel near her place and have Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng take the bus to visit them every day of the trip, spend a few nights on Jiang Yanli’s couch, one night on their parents’ hotel room pull-out.

Lan Zhan and Zixuan didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but campus was closed for a week, and the city felt quieter, more lonely, with so much of the college population gone home. There was the campus’ international student potluck, yes, but the extended offer from Wei Ying to join his family at Jiang Yanli’s house for Thanksgiving was much more appealing. You can even bring Zixuan, Wei Ying said, as long as he is on his best behavior and doesn’t stammer around my jie. Mom can smell fresh blood.

That invitation was one of two messages Lan Zhan got from Wei Ying that entire week, so abnormal and disheartening when Wei Ying usually spammed him with a hundred messages a day. He figured Wei Ying was just busy, just happy to see his parents and spend unfiltered time with his family. Wei Ying was happy, in moments.

Wei Ying does not talk about his childhood abuse, not on purpose, not in clear and digestible stories, not when he’s sober, rarely when he is drunk. Wei Ying likely does not believe he was abused. Lan Zhan… suspected, perhaps, with the way Wei Ying joked about trauma, the unhealthy dependence that he and Jiang Cheng had on Jiang Yanli. He thought something was wrong when Wei Ying said he and Jiang Cheng had been drinking since fifteen to laugh at Lan Zhan’s sobriety.

Wei Ying was raised to call Yu Ziyuan mother; every time she is upset with Wei Ying, bloodlines are emphasized. Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian had a mild disagreement in the living room, so tense that Lan Zhan and Jin Zixuan excused themselves to the bathroom to wash up, and when they walked back and passed by the kitchen, Lan Zhan heard who are you calling mom? Do you even know the stress you’ve caused me since we took you in? Have you earned the right to call me mother? An hour later, around the dinner table, Yu Ziyuan fretted and frowned, as Lan Zhan supposes mothers do, when she felt Wei Ying did not have enough food on his plate. A day of this. For Wei Ying, a lifetime.

7pm, Zixuan texts Lan Zhan and asks if he’s home. He is. Thirty minutes later, there’s a knock on his door, and when Lan Zhan throws a shirt on to open the door, it’s Zixuan, a duffle bag over his shoulder and his backpack in hand. “Hey,” he says in English.

Lan Zhan’s frowns and takes the duffle bag from him.

Zixuan rubs his shoulder. “Thank you for putting your upper-body strength to use, that was so heavy.”

“You overpack,” Lan Zhan says. “Why are you packed?”

“Do you wanna smoke?” Zixuan asks, stepping in and taking the unappealing yellow sneakers he bought on Saturday off. He has on Little Mermaid socks, from the time he drunkenly sent Lan Zhan a wishlist of Disney Princess clothing items, and thought incorrectly that Lan Zhan wouldn’t buy him everything out of spite. “You look wired. I’m wired.”

Lan Zhan shakes his head. He just took his replacement dosage, the one meant to get his medication schedule in order, and this is too soon after. “You can.”

Being around Zixuan is familiar and comfortable, even when they do not speak. Zixuan is an introvert, too, even in the awkward grandiose and now-healing hubris his parents taught him, and they’ve spent endless nights like this. Zixuan curls up on the couch under the window and exhales smoke and the earthy smell into the street below, and Lan Zhan rereads an old Neruda collection. There is a comfort in the melodrama of Neruda’s longing. A familiarity. Slowly, he relaxes.

“How are you?” Zixuan asks when Lan Zhan lets up the creasing grip of his book.

“Fine,” Lan Zhan says.

“How was symphony rehearsal?”

“Fine,” Lan Zhan says. “Beethoven and Debussy this week.”

“That will be very enjoyable. Is this for Valentine’s?” Lan Zhan nods. “Don’t forget to get my tickets at next rehearsal.”

“You can afford to purchase,” Lan Zhan says. “You should not ask for charity when you have no need.” He glances up from the book, and sees Zixuan’s grimace. Perhaps a pout.

“I am a major donor of the arts. You getting me the ticket—it’s about the thought, A-Zhan. It is to show me you care.” Zixuan turns back to the window momentarily to tap the ashes out. To Lan Zhan, he continues, “You know I love Beethoven.”

“All you know is Beethoven,” Lan Zhan says. He finds his bookmark, a laminated and pressed dry camellia that Wei Ying bought him, and marks his place. He shuts the book. “I will get you the ticket. Ask your students and department staff if they would like tickets to attend. We will be in a bigger auditorium.”

“You can get that many tickets?” Jin Zixuan asks, raising an eyebrow.

“You will pay,” says Lan Zhan. “Will match your purchase.”

Zixuan blinks, but easy as always when given a clear directive from Lan Zhan, he says, “okay,” and puts the smoke out. “That’ll be good for them. Department staff definitely deserve it, god, the faculty are nightmares.”

Lan Zhan hums. “Have you eaten?” He stands up, Neruda carefully placed on his coffee table, dark and low rosewood that Zixuan picked out. When Zixuan shakes his head, looking up at Lan Zhan with soft bloodshot eyes, Lan Zhan nods his head towards the front door. “Come on. Walk and food.”

The air is cool outside, a nice bite that further eases the buzz under Lan Zhan’s skin. He gives Zixuan his jacket because no one in his life knows how to dress for the weather, and Lan Zhan doesn’t get as cold. It is nice. Lan Zhan guides them to the Dominican restaurant down the street, and Zixuan grins when he gets the chance to practice his rusty Spanish with the host while they wait for their takeout. He is less tense than when he got here.

On the walk back, Jin Zixuan asks, “do you know?”

Lan Zhan considers edging around it, but that serves no one. He exhales. “Found out from professor, in class today.” Though not touching, they walk close enough that Lan Zhan almost feels Zixuan flinch.

“That’s fucked. I am sorry I didn’t tell you. Knew they were coming, but not that they were staying with Yanli until today.”

“Not your place to tell me,” Lan Zhan says.

“I thought you knew,” Jin Zixuan says.

“Yes,” says Lan Zhan. “I see why you would think that.”

Inside, shoes off and allowing Zixuan the indulgence of eating on the sofa while Lan Zhan prepares tomorrow’s lunch in the kitchen. He considers making zhajiangmian, but even that feels like more energy than he has right now, so he makes a boring salad and a boring sandwich, and decides this is enough.

They wash up together in the bathroom after changing into pajamas. “Wei Ying was there,” Zixuan tells him. Lan Zhan says nothing. Zixuan continues, “he was quiet, but fine. Ayi was in a good mood. One of her coworkers liked Wei Ying’s last article, one A-Li linked on Facebook, I think, so she took it as a personal compliment.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says. He walks out of the bathroom. Zixuan follows, patting serum into his chin and forehead.

“You’re not his keeper,” Zixuan says.

“I know,” Lan Zhan says.

“Do you?”

“I am reminded often,” Lan Zhan says.

Thursday is fine. He spends it with Zixuan in the library, and they both get a lot of work done. Lan Zhan treats Zixuan to dinner at the hole-in-the-wall Sichuan place their Beijing sensibilities slowly learned to like, and they only need two water refills to get through their meal. Their usual server points out this is a good improvement from the first time they visited. Lan Zhan feels better than he has all week; he again feels like a person instead of a cold and malfunctioning android. It is nice to eat with a friend.

On Friday, he wakes up to messages from Wei Ying. They came not long after Lan Zhan fell asleep, but he silences his phone most nights, and he of course did last night so as to not disturb Zixuan’s snoring in the other room.

11:15: are u up
11:23: ik i was asshole this week but if ur up pls psls pls pls reply
11:47: i need you

The last one almost an hour ago, a quarter to four: sorry. was drunk. pls ignore

When Lan Zhan calls him, Wei Ying does not answer. He goes about his morning routine. Classes are fine, his students are fine. Nothing goes wrong. He teaches in the studio arts building, and he often runs into Nie Huaisang during his break. Today, Huaisang works on his laptop on a comfortable sofa in the lobby corner, and they sit together for a while. Lan Zhan helps him with a translation assignment for his Chinese art history practicum, and they get lunch together in campus center. Huaisang is chattier than Zixuan, if less so than Wei Ying, and Lan Zhan enjoys the careful flow of thoughts and questions. Huaisang tells him that his brother follows Huaisang’s brother on Weibo now, and that he believes his brother is thirst-trapping on purpose. Lan Zhan tells him he wants no involvement, so Huaisang nods and promises to keep Lan Zhan updated.

At therapy, he divulges as much as he can to his therapist without treating Wei Ying’s hurt as a casual tale. He tells her that he worries, and that he does not feel like enough to make Wei Ying feel okay, and that he does not know at all, some days, where he stands with Wei Ying. She knew of Lan Zhan’s affections, but he admits that day that he is in love, and that sometimes it does not feel like a blessing.

“There will likely always be days where you feel this way,” she tells him, the lilt of her English low and honest. Lan Zhan has seen her since he moved here. Finding someone he felt comfortable with was difficult, since he did not want an American therapist and needed a therapist that was explicitly not homophobic, but the momentary unease of that first August was rewarded with Dr. Park, who is Korean-American but first generation, moved here when she was a teen, and has a wife that Lan Zhan has seen her with at Whole Foods. He feels comfortable with her, has since the third session, and it was a pleasant first.

“I want to take care of him,” he says. He brings his to-go cup of green tea to his mouth and gently blows into the opening, where the liquid is still too hot to drink. “He does not take care of himself.”

“You are not a replacement for therapy or medication,” she says.

“You’ve said before.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. “Yes, but…” The words do not come to him in any language.

“Don’t feel bad about taking your time to formulate a response.”

Lan Zhan drinks his tea and organizes the racing slope of his mind. “I know… that alone is not a replacement.” He thinks of Zixuan their freshman year. Zixuan two nights ago, the easy reminders of his own parents than he sees in Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian, the fading tension when Lan Zhan let him indulge and brought him to an old favorite restaurant. It is different, what he feels for Wei Ying, but he is not in the business of undermining the love he gives and receives from his friends. “But I think it can help, knowing that someone cares enough to want to help.” Painfully honest, he says, “it helps me, when I get to take care of people. Maybe a part of it is selfish.”

“And?”

“I believe Wei Ying likes being cared for. Part that is selfish wants to be the one to do it.” He feels exhausted, getting through this conversation. “Not replacement. Aid. Care.”

“That’s a good point, Lan Zhan,” she says softly. “But it may not be fair to expect it of him.”

“I don’t,” Lan Zhan says. “I try not to,” he corrects. “Today I expect nothing.”

Missed calls from Jiang Yanli, somehow, when he exits therapy and gets into his car.

“Hello, Yanli-jie,” he says, calling her back.

“Hello, A-Zhan,” she greets warmly, and then nothing else.

Lan Zhan hesitates. “Zixuan should be at my place. I will drive there soon.”

“Oh, thank you, but it is… I do not call for A-Xuan.” She pauses. She sighs. “I’m sorry to ask this of you, but… A-Ying is not doing well.”

Lan Zhan’s chest feels heavy. He takes a moment to remember his therapist’s words, to practice mindfulness as always, to focus on patience this week.

“Lan Zhan?” Yanli asks. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. He clears his throat. “Yes, I am here.”

“Okay,” she says. She sounds regretful, but she continues, “our parents are here this week, and, ah, well, I’m sure you know that can be difficult for him, sometimes. We haven’t heard from him all day, and A-Cheng and I can’t leave our parents, and our mother is upset that A-Ying seems to be ignoring us today.” She clears her throat, too. “I’m sure he’s home, so I wondered if, if you are free and it is not so much a bother, if you can go check on him?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. Does he have anything else to do? They can wait.

“He drank last night,” Jiang Yanli says.

Lan Zhan nods, then repeats, “yes, I… received a message from him last night. But he did not answer when I called back this morning.”

“He is having a tough time.” The worry in her voice is infinite. “Thank you, A-Zhan. Please keep me updated. Oh, I forget, do you have a key? I think A-Ying said he gave you a copy, but that was long ago, I might be wrong.”

“He keeps a spare in my car,” Lan Zhan says. Too many nights have Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng been drunk and forgotten their keys inside. The first couple of times, they slept at Lan Zhan’s house, Wei Ying with Lan Zhan on his bed and Jiang Cheng on the couch or guest room after Zixuan moved out, but error bred caution, and Lan Zhan suggested an extra copy. Wei Ying gave it to him.

“Good,” Jiang Yanli says. “Good. Thank you, Lan Zhan.”

“It is never a bother,” Lan Zhan says. He is sure Jiang Yanli knows.

All lights are off when Lan Zhan treks up the stairs to Wei Ying’s apartment. If Jiang Yanli didn’t already tell him, he’d think that no one was home, but Wei Ying is. Wei Ying is home and having a tough time, Jiang Yanli said.

He knocks softly on Wei Ying’s room door, light wood shut tight without any light coming through the bottom or cracks. “Wei Ying?” As expected, no response. He tries knocking again a few more times, but there isn’t even a rustle of movement. So he opens the door himself and steps inside.

Wei Ying is not an excessively messy person, but his room right now is overwhelmed by clothing thrown everywhere—over his desk chair, on his desk, hangers and sweaters undone on his closet floor. Lan Zhan sees a stack of exams haphazard on the floor under his window, a half-ripped Trader Joe’s bag of library books. An empty bottle of white wine, a gallon of cranberry juice, the open mouth of a vodka bottle almost done. Lan Zhan wonders if Wei Ying has eaten. Doubtful.

“Wei Ying,” he murmurs, unsure for a moment how to proceed.

On Wei Ying’s bed, his dark grey comforter is pulled over the curled-up lump of his body, not a strand of hair uncovered. He doesn’t move when Lan Zhan puts a hand over his shoulder, or when Lan Zhan shakes him a little, a mild attempt to wake him up.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan repeats. He turns on the warm desk lamp instead of the glaring ceiling light that Wei Ying hates.

The grey comforter still does not move, but voice low and unused and hoarse from beneath, Wei Ying says, “go away, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan considers it. Lan Zhan does not want to push Wei Ying. He always leaves when Wei Ying wakes up hungover and distant, when Wei Ying has a bad day and can hardly be around his siblings, let alone anyone else, and Lan Zhan gets reminded that he is everyone else. He left on Sunday, five days and a lifetime ago. Lan Zhan was honest when he said he does not believe he is a replacement for centered and deliberate healing, but he cannot fathom leaving Wei Ying like this. He does not want Wei Ying to feel so lonely.

He pulls the comforter down, and doesn’t loosen his grip even when Wei Ying tries tightening the fabric around himself. “What the fuck, stop,” Wei Ying says, but his voice is too raspy to hold any bite. His body is curled up on the side facing the wall when Lan Zhan has the comforter off, palms digging into his eyes. He reeks of alcohol.

“How’s your head?” Lan Zhan asks. Wei Ying hides his face in his pillow, the lines of his body stiff, tense, none of the regular fluidity and movement. “Wei Ying, how is your headache?”

“Leave me alone. It’s none of—doesn’t matter, Jiang Cheng will be home soon, just go away.”

“I have ibuprofen. Have you eaten?” Wei Ying doesn’t respond. “Have you left bed?”

“Go the fuck away,” Wei Ying says. His anger is unconvincing. “I don’t need to be reminded how nonfunctional I am, I know I’m crazy, you’re not—you’re not gaining anything from these questions. Just… go home. I can call you later or tomorrow, whatever, just leave me alone.” Wei Ying tries pulling the comforter back over himself, so Lan Zhan moves it to the floor. “Fucking—Lan Zhan!”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan snaps. He catches himself soon after. He flattens his mouth and waits for the desperate annoyance to dissolve. He knows Wei Ying wants to push him away. Lan Zhan will accomplish nothing if he lets himself get riled up so easily. Mindfulness and patience.

He steps out of the room for a few minutes. Wei Ying is where Lan Zhan left him when he reenters, curled up closer to himself. He looks small like this, in the worst possible way. Lan Zhan doesn’t bother hesitating before leaning down so he can pick Wei Ying up, keeping him close to his chest and ignoring Wei Ying’s complaints as Lan Zhan brings him to his bathroom and the warm bath waiting for him.

“Bathe,” he tells Wei Ying, and shuts the bathroom door. He doesn’t lock it. Wei Ying is an adult, Lan Zhan is an adult, and he ultimately cannot force Wei Ying to do anything he does not want or need to do. Still, he stands in front of the door for a few seconds to see if Wei Ying will keep arguing and not listen. All Lan Zhan hears is heavy and fractured breathing. A kick to the door. Then nothing. He waits. When he makes out the soft rustle of undone clothing, he makes his way back to Wei Ying’s room to clean up.

Wei Ying spends a long time in the bath. Lan Zhan has a split second of worry when his mind turns south, but he clears it as soon as it comes. He shouldn’t be ridiculous. By the time Wei Ying comes out, Lan Zhan finishes clearing his room and has the spicy Korean beef stew that Wei Ying loves warm on the living room coffee table, two glasses of water, blue Gatorade, and three ibuprofen on a set of napkins nearby.

Wei Ying is naked and dripping onto the wooden flooring in front of the open bathroom door. They stare at each other. It is easier than Lan Zhan expects not to drift down.

“Do I really look so rotten?” Wei Ying asks. He sounds defeated. His dark eyes are bloodshot and swollen, but there is no need to mention.

Lan Zhan shakes his head. He plans to leave it at that, but Wei Ying looks more open and vulnerable than Lan Zhan has seen in a long time. So few times. “You look beautiful.” Is this what he looked like, on Sunday, when Lan Zhan did not see his face?

Wei Ying breaks eye contact first. “Clothes laid out for you on your bed,” Lan Zhan says. “Will you need help?”

“No,” Wei Ying says, shaking his head. “Maybe.” He looks back to Lan Zhan, maybe at his shoulder. “Yes.”

Cleaning Wei Ying’s room was not a burden, and it is satisfying when Wei Ying’s eyes flutter at the renewed neatness, the changed bedspread and linen, and soft, linen-clean sweats where promised. The washer runs in the laundry closet, and a few color-sorted loads await. Lan Zhan took—liberated, he thinks—a candle from Jiang Cheng’s stash, warm honey peach that Wei Ying deserves most.

Lan Zhan rubs Wei Ying’s head and torso dry, down to his waist, and turns away to grab Wei Ying’s toner from the drawer to pat it onto Wei Ying’s drying cheeks while Wei Ying dries the rest of himself. Wei Ying still does not meet Lan Zhan’s eyes as Lan Zhan clothes him, but it is okay. Good enough to feel the hooded gaze on his scalp when he leans down to get Wei Ying’s boxers and black sweats on, one leg at a time while Wei Ying holds his shoulders. Good enough to see the movement behind Wei Ying’s closed eyes when Lan Zhan pulls the forgiving cotton t-shirt over his bent head. Good enough when Lan Zhan can feel Wei Ying relax with each gentle wave of what Lan Zhan can admit is manhandling, this smooth control of Wei Ying’s body where Lan Zhan needs it.

“Can I brush your hair?” Lan Zhan asks.

Wei Ying nods. “Yes,” he whispers.

Lan Zhan sits on the new desk chair, the prepared hairbrush in hand. Wei Ying hesitates for only a heartbeat before folding himself down on the floor between Lan Zhan’s spread legs. He presses his forehead to Lan Zhan’s thigh and Lan Zhan brushes out the tangles in his damp hair with all the care he can manage.

“Thank you for taking a bath,” Lan Zhan tells him. “I understand it was difficult.” He parts Wei Ying’s hair in quarters and works on detangling the top half. Wei Ying must’ve used the conditioner Lan Zhan left out for him to use. Wei Ying says nothing, but there is a heavier puff of breath on Lan Zhan’s thigh. “How is your head?”

It takes a moment. “Bad,” Wei Ying says.

“Advil and food will help,” Lan Zhan promises. He switches sections once the brush passes through easily. “Thank you for admitting you need help.”

“Am pathetic,” Wei Ying mumbles into Lan Zhan’s slacks.

“No," Lan Zhan says. “You are doing all you can. You are doing well.” Wei Ying’s breath is shaky. When Lan Zhan lowers his voice and says, “you’re doing well and I’m proud of you,” Wei Ying lets out a needy and muted noise onto Lan Zhan’s thigh, a pleasant and gratifying surprise. Warmth floods Lan Zhan’s chest, an immense and immeasurable pleasure at Wei Ying’s reaction.

Wei Ying’s eyes are closed when Lan Zhan carries him out to the living room. When Lan Zhan sits on the sofa and puts him sideways on his lap, Wei Ying drops himself back down to kneel between Lan Zhan’s legs, his cheek pressed down. Lan Zhan curls a hand in Wei Ying’s hair. “Look at me,” he demands.

There is no hesitation. Wei Ying does. His eyes are glassy and hooded when they make contact, and Lan Zhan could stay here forever.

Chapter Text

Lan Zhan wakes up to Wei Ying squirming on top of him, his lithe body and sharp limbs uncertain even in sleep. Lan Zhan glances down and only sees the crown of Wei Ying’s head, but it is enough to feel him and know he is safe. Lan Zhan shushes him and rubs his right hand over Wei Ying’s back until he calms down and sighs into Lan Zhan’s chest.

Wei Ying wanted Lan Zhan to feed him last night, so he did. It was a long and sometimes awkward situation, since Lan Zhan prepared stew for Wei Ying, but it was nice. It is nice to see Wei Ying ask and trust that Lan Zhan will answer.

Wei Ying fell asleep first with Lan Zhan’s hands in his hair and on his back and Lan Zhan humming softly in his ear. Lan Zhan, Wei Ying said, on the verge of sleep. Lan Zhan paused the humming to show his attention. I liked when you called me baby last time, Wei Ying said. Drowsy and warm. Lan Zhan had thought Wei Ying didn’t notice that. He wondered what Wei Ying thought of Sunday, if Wei Ying thought about it at all, if it wasn’t just another night cuddling and then waking up to Lan Zhan gone. Maybe Wei Ying thought of the discomfort of seeing Lan Zhan there the first time he awoke, and the presumed relief the second time. Lan Zhan wondered these things and more. Then, to hear Wei Ying admit recollection—enjoyment, even, of such a fleeting moment of that night… Lan Zhan knows he can be distant. He knows he can seem or be unattached. In that moment, nothing more than mn to say in response to Wei Ying, he’d never felt closer to anyone in his life.

He runs his fingers gently over Wei Ying’s ear and breathes in this warmth, this closeness. He anticipates a break in peace when Wei Ying awakes, but he doesn’t want to focus on that; he shuts his eyes again and indulges in a few more moments with Wei Ying’s body so near his.

Lan Zhan blinks his eyes back awake to Wei Ying’s mouth open and soft on his neck, saying, “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” many times over.

“Mn?” Lan Zhan says, stretching under Wei Ying. He keeps his grip of Wei Ying’s back and neck steady and firm so that Wei Ying doesn’t think he is attempting to move. Wei Ying stays where Lan Zhan put him. Lan Zhan thinks he could think that a million times and never be sick of it—Wei Ying stays where Lan Zhan put him.

“You don’t usually sleep in with me,” Wei Ying says, muffled by skin.

“Long week.”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying says, “yeah, um, I’m… I was…” Wei Ying, of all people Lan Zhan knows, at a loss for words. Lan Zhan rubs circles with his thumb on his neck until a tense muscle relaxes again. “My parents are in town. Did… did jie tell you?”

“No,” Lan Zhan says. “Professor.” When Wei Ying winces, the same bizarre reaction as Zixuan, he shushes him and hugs him tighter to his body. “I am not upset.”

“But you were,” Wei Ying says.

Lan Zhan pauses and frames a careful response. “I will not lie to you. But I am not upset. I am here, with you, and I am not upset at you.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying murmurs. “Lan Zhan.” He sighs and swallows. “I have brunch reservations with my family at eleven.”

Lan Zhan glances at Wei Ying’s counter alarm clock. 9:37. His chest pangs. “You should shower soon.”

“Don’t wanna move,” Wei Ying says. “Want you to bathe me.”

Is he still under? Lan Zhan tries tilting his head up, but Wei Ying makes a displeased noise and burrows further into Lan Zhan’s neck. “That will make you late.”

“It would be worth it.” They lie there for a few more moments of silence before Wei Ying sighs again and lifts his head. Eyes still glassy, but clearer than last night. He must’ve fallen so far under last night, much more than Sunday, to still be this way so many hours later. Lan Zhan despairs to think he must soon leave him. “I don’t wanna go.”

Lan Zhan almost says it will be good to see your family, but he tries not to speak what he does not believe. Most of his family? No, that will be too obvious a dig at Yu Ziyuan, and Lan Zhan thinks Jiang Fengmiam is useless, complicit. Terrible as Lan Zhan believes they are, Wei Ying loves his parents. He does not understand it, but he supposes it isn’t his place to. “You enjoy brunch.”

“I like your cooking more,” Wei Ying says. “Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says.

“Mn?”

Wei Ying blinks, the most beautiful person in Lan Zhan’s world, and nuzzles back into Lan Zhan’s neck. “Lan Zhan,” he repeats. He huffs out a laugh. “I don’t know. I like the way your name sounds when I say it.”

When the serenity breaks, Lan Zhan will never recover from this. “Mn,” Lan Zhan says again, so fond and in love he is certain it must be obvious. He buries his face in Wei Ying’s hair and breathes in the mellow note of rice milk that drifts up from Wei Ying’s nighttime moisturizer. “Wei Ying.” He feels lit up from the inside.

“Yeah,” Wei Ying says, voice thick. His eyelashes flutter on Lan Zhan’s skin. “Mine sounds best from your mouth, too.”

They lie there for a few more minutes until Lan Zhan forces himself to sit them up, careful not to bend Wei Ying’s ankle. 9:54. It takes some coaxing to get Wei Ying to lift his head from Lan Zhan’s neck, but his eyes are clearer still when he does. “Should get dressed. I can bring you to the restaurant.”

“Our breath smells really bad,” Wei Ying says, mouth quirking up. “Is it weird that I don’t mind? Because it’s you?”

Lan Zhan laughs softly. “A little weird,” he says. He tucks a strand of hair behind Wei Ying’s ear. “But I feel the same. We should still go brush.”

“Ugh, yeah, okay, but you have to carry me to the bathroom again.” Lan Zhan keeps a hand on Wei Ying’s lower back as he turns and carefully stands. Carrying Wei Ying is never difficult, but it is even easier now with Wei Ying wrapping his limbs all around Lan Zhan like an octopus, face pressed to Lan Zhan’s cheek. “I think you should always carry me. Everywhere. Lan Zhan, I think we should make a formal agreement that I never have to walk again, because you can just pick me up and carry me.” Wei Ying squeezes his bicep. “Like, wow, look at this. Maybe gege is right about upper body workouts, because your arms are huge.”

He opens the bathroom door and places Wei Ying down on the counter by the sink. Wei Ying does not disentangle. “You have suggested I always carry you before.”

“I have?” Wei Ying asks, genuine confusion in his tone. Lan Zhan hums in agreement. Several times. He was drunk every time. “Past me might not be so useless after all.”

Lan Zhan sighs and presses his lips to Wei Ying’s temple. “Reservations in an hour,” he reminds Wei Ying when he still does not let go. Then, because he does not want the conversation to end with Wei Ying’s self-deprecation, he adds, “Wei Ying has nice arms, too.” He grabs his spare toothbrush in the cabinet and waits for Wei Ying to sigh longsufferingly and twist to get his from the holder.

“Not as nice as yours. You carry me like I weigh nothing.”

“Then Wei Ying should eat more,” says Lan Zhan, just to see the toothy grin Wei Ying gives him whenever Lan Zhan jokes.

“Then Lan Zhan has to be there to feed me.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. He runs his thumb over Wei Ying’s high cheekbone, unsure how he can continue the day outside of this. “Will always be there for Wei Ying.”

After washing up, Lan Zhan transfers the set he forgot to remove from the washer last night into the dryer as Wei Ying goes into his room to change. At least he should be changing—when Lan Zhan walks in with a basket of dry dark clothing, Wei Ying is standing motionless in front of his closet. He looks overwhelmed.

“What’s wrong?” Lan Zhan asks, putting the basket down and moving quickly to stand next to Wei Ying. Wei Ying immediately drops his head to Lan Zhan’s shoulder, like he was waiting for it.

“Can you come to brunch with me?”

Lan Zhan swallows. He hesitates. “I… Zixuan and I have movie reservations.” For one terrible selfish moment, he imagines cancelling everything they both planned and spending the day inside with Wei Ying, on his bed, Wei Ying looking across at him with the absolute trust that is both terrifying and all Lan Zhan wants to see for the rest of his life. Wei Ying says nothing. “Shall I choose what you should wear?”

“Yes,” Wei Ying responds right away. “Yes.”

At the front door, Lan Zhan pulls a red beanie over Wei Ying’s hair in preparation for the windy day outside. His hands lingers, one on Wei Ying’s jaw and the other arched around his cheek. “Come to my house this evening, when you are done with your parents.” He tilts Wei Ying’s head up so that their eyes meet. “Promise me.”

“I can’t promise that, Lan Zhan.”

“I know,” Lan Zhan says. He does. Still.

Wei Ying licks his lips. He presses his cheek to Lan Zhan’s palm.

They’re both going to be late. Lan Zhan could live a life this irresponsible.

Instead of that promise, Wei Ying places his palm over Lan Zhan’s hand on his jaw and moves it down to his neck, to the dip below his clavicle. “If I asked you to bruise me, would you?”

Lan Zhan’s blood pounds in his ears. It takes him several heartbeats to push past the long-present fantasies in his mind that make it difficult to keep blood flow above his navel. “What?” His voice is too deep. He clears his throat. “What do you…”

Is he projecting the darkness in Wei Ying’s eyes? “I want you to bite me. Here.” He presses Lan Zhan’s fingers to that same soft spot. “Until it bruises. Would you?”

Yes. “Why?”

He doubts Wei Ying will answer. If he does, maybe not in full truth, maybe a deflection like he is so good at. Instead, Wei Ying’s eyes flutter shut and he inhales, slow and paced the way Lan Zhan told him to last night when he could not fall asleep. He opens his eyes. “I want to remember I have a body.”

He tells himself not to get carried away. It is easier said than done, so much easier, when he has Wei Ying pressed up against the door, Wei Ying’s arms loose around his neck as he arches his neck back for Lan Zhan’s mouth. Surely this is a poor idea. Lan Zhan knows he has sadist tendencies, long reconciled with himself, but the deep thrum of pleasure in his body as he bites Wei Ying too hard feels like a rediscovery. This is a bad idea.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says. “Harder.”

Lan Zhan’s hands tighten on Wei Ying’s hips, the pressure pulling Wei Ying’s body up to his toes so that Lan Zhan has better access. This is a bad idea. Lan Zhan knows this is a bad idea. He did not hesitate to say yes. What are they doing? What is he doing? He bites down harder. Wei Ying digs his nails into Lan Zhan’s shoulders and gasps, the sweetest sound Lan Zhan will ever hear, and then tries pulling Lan Zhan’s head further onto his neck.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying pleads. “Please, I—harder, make it—harder.” Lan Zhan pushes Wei Ying further up the door and sucks at Wei Ying’s thin skin until Wei Ying shakes, small sounds falling like air from his pretty mouth. When Lan Zhan presses him deeper into the door and moves his mouth just a little further down and works at bruising more skin, he feels—Lan Zhan feels—Wei Ying’s dick twitch against his thigh, and Lan Zhan pulses wild with desire. He pushes his knee up against Wei Ying’s crotch. Wei Ying cries out at that, hips rolling up into the pressure, so Lan Zhan does it again, and then he does it again when Wei Ying whimpers, and then he does it again when Wei Ying repeats his name, “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” like it is something reverent on his tongue. Wei Ying likes the way Lan Zhan’s name sounds when he says it. Lan Zhan wants to give him every opportunity. He wants to give him everything.

It is like a shock jolts them out of the daze when Wei Ying’s phone rings, loud chirps from his jacket pocket.

Lan Zhan hopes he has fallen into hallucinations.

He has not. It is difficult to catch his breath. First Wei Ying back on the ground, then Lan Zhan’s teeth unlatched from Wei Ying’s skin, then respectable distance from Wei Ying’s lower body. It takes effort to breathe through his nose instead of panting like an animal. When he looks down, Wei Ying’s hands are shaking.

“He… hello?” Wei Ying answers. His face is flushed and the clothing Lan Zhan chose for him is wrinkled. “Oh, jie, hi, good morning. I’m, yes. I’m coming. Yes. Yes. Lan Zhan is bringing me, we’re leaving now, we got caught—yeah, I’ll text you when I’m outside.”

Lan Zhan steps back. He wonders if he would feel better with a promise. He wonders how the eventual and sure rejection will burn.

He has to get down to greet Wei Ying’s parents and apologize for making him late. He says he was slow to rise. This is not a lie; he woke up early, but getting out of bed was difficult, lifting his mouth from Wei Ying’s neck was difficult. He bows slightly and hopes that Wei Ying’s collar covers where Lan Zhan mauled their son.

Much as Lan Zhan knows only cold indifference at Yu Ziyuan’s existence, she likes him. “You don’t need to bow, I understand, you are too polite, Lan Zhan.” She pats his arm. “Would you like to join us for brunch? I am not sure this… restaurant will be the best fit for you, but it is too late to go change now.” Behind her, Jiang Cheng frowns and looks down. Lan Zhan knows this is his pick, his favorite restaurant, one that Lan Zhan has visited with him and Wei Ying and their friends several times. Wei Ying leans his head on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder.

Lan Zhan was trained very well by his uncle, so he does not roll his eyes. “Thank you, ma’am, but I unfortunately have another obligation.”

When he gets back to his apartment, Jin Zixuan is laying on his back on the sofa and eating a pear. “Welcome home, cheater,” he says. “How was your walk of shame?”

Lan Zhan ignores him and goes straight to the bathroom to shower and get dressed. He blares Beethoven so that Zixuan does not hear him jerk off.

The indie theater near campus is running audience-selected favorites this month, and Zixuan called in three times and made Lan Zhan call once to request the gay British movie with… farms, Lan Zhan thinks, there was a farm in the trailer, in hope he might see it projected instead of on his MacBook screen.

It is a good film, with a prominent farm, and Lan Zhan is glad he was not so behind schedule that they missed the screening.

“I think A-Li would grant me a pass with the second male lead,” Zixuan says. “In fact, I think she would encourage it. Better yet, they should both fuck me at the same time.”

“We’re entering the store now,” Lan Zhan says, pushing the glass door open of the Chinese bakery a block down from the theater and hoping Zixuan realizes they are around people who can understand the ridiculousness he says again no matter what language he hides it with.

“You should learn Spanish,” Zixuan says. “Korean and French are useless.”

“To you,” Lan Zhan says.

“Exactly,” Zixuan says. “You should vet language acquisition by ease of private conversation with me.”

“I will keep that in mind next time I learn a language in all my free time,” Lan Zhan says. “Coconut or red bean?”

“Both,” Zixuan says over by the warm cakes. “We agreed Saturdays are for indulgence.”

Lan Zhan thinks to this morning. “Mn.” He agrees.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Jin Zixuan says a few hours later. Lan Zhan prefers the farmers market when he can for produce, and Zixuan lives to impress Jiang Yanli, so they are both perusing tomatoes, Lan Zhan careful about firmness and taste, Zixuan choosing whatever will look prettiest for his fiancée. Lan Zhan cannot fault his method; he plans half his meals with Wei Ying in mind, far more pepper in stock than he is comfortable with for himself.

“Mn?” Lan Zhan asks, distracted.

“Something happened,” Jin Zixuan says. He leans close and squints at a tomato. “Which tomatoes do you use for salads?”

“Things always happen,” Lan Zhan says. “I like grape tomatoes.” He throws an extra container into his plain beige reusable bag. "Got another.”

“Your Beethoven mix was quite joyful when you were jerking off in the shower today,” Zixuan says. He throws a lemon between his hands, and if it falls, Lan Zhan will not pay for him.

“Be quiet,” Lan Zhan says, ears burning red. He glares at the mangoes and takes a few steps away from Zixuan.

“A-Zhan, it’s not like anyone is listening or gets it. Usually you play, uh, what’s that French guy… Ravel, right? When you are most forlorn about being horny. So something happened.”

“You are insufferable,” Lan Zhan says.

“Don’t you always say lying poisons the soul? I am at least in your top five favorite people,” Jin Zixuan says. Clearly delusional.

Lan Zhan ignores him altogether until after they pay and walk back to the car. “Seriously, what happened? Did… he didn’t kick you out again, did he? You came much later. Yanli told me you brought him to brunch.”

“He did not kick me out." He unlocks his car and takes Zixuan’s bag from him to place both in the trunk. He waits until they are buckled in and pulling out of the curb parking before admitting, “He was not doing well. He let me… take care of him.” Zixuan knows what he means.

“Bro!” Before Lan Zhan can default do not call me bro, Zixuan continues, “Lan Zhan, that’s… I mean, it sucks that he was doing bad, but I’m really happy for you.” Zixuan is always genuine with emotion. Lan Zhan cannot resist the uptick to his mouth. “Have you spoken about it? I know what you’re thinking, but having a conversation is not pressuring him.”

Lan Zhan objectively knows this. The sins of the father haunt the son.

“I invited him over tonight.”

“Wow, the esteemed and untouchable Lan Zhan will finally lose his virginity.”

“Mn.” Lan Zhan nods. “Keep talking and we might see if yours reverts when Jiang Yanli sees your undergraduate party photos.”

“I bet you don’t even have any pictures,” Zixuan says.

Lan Zhan turns on his blinker to wait and glances at Zixuan. “Shall we find out?”

When they get home, Jin Zixuan insists on going back to his apartment instead of Lan Zhan’s in case Wei Ying does show up. Lan Zhan hesitates, unsure if it is selfish to subject Jin Zixuan to an evening with Jiang Yanli’s parents for a promise that may not happen, but Zixuan is persistent, halfway out the door before Lan Zhan can process it. “It’ll be fine,” he says. “If it gets super shitty I’ll come over and cockblock you in real time, but otherwise I’ll just come way later tonight with noise-cancelling headphones in.”

Lan Zhan passes the time cooking. He makes zhajiangmian for himself and diced chicken for Wei Ying—or Zixuan, depending on how the night ends up. He makes bread from scratch and allows the easy knead to quiet his mind. He takes his medication and looks at his phone and reminds himself that he cannot expect from anyone what they will not give. He sits on the kitchen floor with a novel and watches bread rise.

At some point, his phone rings.

“Wei Ying,” he says, standing next to his cooling loaf.

“Hey,” Wei Ying says. “Lan Zhan. Hi. You answered.”

“Hi,” Lan Zhan says. “I did.”

“It’s almost nine, I… I, uh, called almost hoping that you would be getting prepared for bed and wouldn’t answer.” Lan Zhan stays silent. “I’m in front of your door.”

When Lan Zhan unlocks the door and starts to turn the knob, Wei Ying tells him, “wait, don’t, don’t open the door. I can’t have this conversation if you open the door. I’m just, Lan Zhan, I’m gonna sit on the floor in front of your door and I’m gonna try to talk. About my, I don’t know, I’m gonna talk! So don’t open the door. Will you talk with me?”

Lan Zhan sits cross-legged in front of his door and looks at this single panel of wood blocking him from Wei Ying. He can hear the physical echo of Wei Ying’s voice, but he thinks Wei Ying wants the distance of the phone as well. “Mn.”

“Okay. Okay, I’m sitting now. Are you sitting?”

“Mn.”

“Okay,” Wei Ying repeats. “So I…” There is silence, then, “fuck! Fuck, god, this is so fucking terrible, I fucking hate being tongue-tied like this, I sound like a fucking child, Mom would’ve killed me if I stuttered this much in front of her, fuck.” Wei Ying inhales. Even his breathing is frustrated. “I hate being so—I hate feeling so incapable. It’s just words.”

“You are not incapable for needing to put your thoughts in order,” Lan Zhan says. His brother told him this almost every day of Lan Zhan’s childhood until he believed it.

“Right. Right, sorry, I sound like an asshole, I know you—I only say my mean things about myself, I don’t mean. Anyone else.”

“Do not say them about yourself,” Lan Zhan says.

Wei Ying barks out a laugh. “Right.”

Silence. “Can you tell me about your day?”

“There is not much to tell.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Lan Zhan traces his index finger down the outer seam of his cotton shorts. “Saw God’s Own Country with Zixuan and then went to the farmers market. I made dinner. There is fresh bread, if you would like some.”

“Hm,” says Wei Ying. “Was the movie any good?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. “I think you would like it. It is about two men.”

Wei Ying laughs softly. “Lan Zhan, that’s not a summary. But, well, I’m convinced to watch it just from that, so maybe you’re right. Is Jin Zixuan inside? I didn’t see his ugly car in the parking lot.”

“He went back home.”

“Ah, to terrorize my jiejie, I get it. I guess now is a good time. Better him than… hm. I don’t know. Jiang Cheng is at ours with Huaisang.” He sighs. “Everything feels liminal right now. This hallway. It’s, Lan Zhan, it’s actually super clean, although I know you’ll make me change right away—” Is he staying? “—it’s a very shiny hallway. I feel like, um, maybe… us, too.”

Lan Zhan moves closer to the door. He can almost hear Wei Ying breathe, away from the phone. “What about us?”

Rather than answer his question, Wei Ying abruptly says, “I did some research.” The metal pull of a zipper. “About last night, and Sunday, and how you made me feel.”

Lan Zhan did not expect this. He stays quiet and hopes that his heart does not strike out and split his chest open.

“Do you have feelings for me?”

Lan Zhan does not know what to do with his hands, with his mouth, with this terrible and ardent ache that engulfs his entire body. He stares at the door. He feels compelled to melodrama, and wonders if he is having a panic attack. It’s been years.

He understands, now, what Wei Ying meant when he said everything felt liminal. This cannot be a moment anchored in time.

“Lan Zhan?” He hears Wei Ying’s voice from miles away. “Lan Zhan???”

Lan Zhan inhales sharply and presses his nails tight to his knee. Not a panic attack. Just horror. “Wei Ying.”

“Lan Zhan, are you okay? You don’t have to—I understand if—”

“I cannot have this conversation like this,” Lan Zhan says.

“Oh,” Wei Ying says. “Um, that’s, I understand if this is. Unpleasant, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—” but before he finishes his thought, Lan Zhan stands, and says, “stand up,” seconds before opening the door and finally seeing the real body flesh of Wei Ying.

Wei Ying’s eyes are wide and the phone is still pressed to his ear. “Lan Zhan,” he murmurs, and it echoes in surround sound.

“I do,” Lan Zhan says. He considers speaking around it, but he does not like lying, least of all to Wei Ying.

“Huh?” Wei Ying’s mouth parts. “Oh, Lan Zhan, seriously? Like, really? You do?”

Lan Zhan nods. He’s so nauseous. “What does this have to do with the… the research you did?”

“That? Well, it’s, how do I put this. You always,” but he gets distracted by the latch open of an apartment down the hall, and they both remember that this is not a private conversation, not with Lan Zhan’s door open and sound traveling. “I should come in?” Lan Zhan steps back so that Wei Ying can step into the apartment and then closes the door. “Can we sit?” They sit.

Wei Ying sits with a knee up on the sofa, one socked foot swinging beneath him. “This is a lot harder without the door.”

“Mn.” Lan Zhan waits.

“Okay, it’s fine, I can be honest with you, right? I need you to tell me yes even if it’s no.”

“Yes. And it is yes.”

“Okay. Cool. I’m just gonna talk, so don’t interrupt me, okay, Lan Zhan? You have to let me finish all the way! Really. Okay. Here goes.” He pulls his other leg up between his thigh. “I did some research, and I did some thinking, and I spoke to Jiang Cheng about it, which was terrible, the worst possible thing, but surprisingly helpful? He was, like, crazy that there aren’t trained professionals that you can discuss relationship breakthroughs with, because he sucks, but he was still really nice about the important stuff. Are you paying attention?”

Lan Zhan nods.

“I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Lan Zhan nods.

“You take care of me a lot,” says Wei Ying. He inhales, deep and uneven. “Obviously it’s not usually that intense, and I don’t usually go under? That’s what it’s called, right? The sort of floaty whatever. It felt like I was high, kinda, but more? Is that what it’s supposed to feel like? Wait, never mind, research says it varies, and I shouldn’t assume that you even know what I’m talking about, but you seemed like you knew what you were doing, when it happened, so I’m kinda assuming anyway. You seemed very, haha, in control.” Wei Ying grins. Lan Zhan could listen to him speak for hours.

“Thank you,” Lan Zhan says, mouth tilting up.

“Do you have experience? Doing that for other people?”

Lan Zhan nods. “Ah,” says Wei Ying, scratching his neck. “I kinda wanted you to lie and say no. You were really good at it, Lan Zhan. I… I realized that I want you to take care of me in our regular way, Lan Zhan, but I think, I think I want it like that, too, sometimes. With you." He pauses and bites his bottom lip. "It feels good to be outside of my body when it is because of you.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says softly, charcoal in his throat. He never knew to dream this.

Wei Ying is looking down at the sofa, or maybe his jeans. It doesn’t matter where, because he’s not looking at Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan needs to see his eyes and know that this is real. His voice is so quiet. “I know that some people do it as, I don’t know, friends, or just for play, but I don’t think I can do that casually. Not with you. And I don’t think I could be like that for anyone but you. Or, if I could, Lan Zhan, I don’t want to. So. That’s why I wanted to know if you have feelings for me, haha, if that would be something you, maybe, if it's okay, want to try. Un… uncasually. That’s not a word, is it?”

“Look at me,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying’s face moves up, but his eyes still do not meet Lan Zhan’s. “It has never felt that way before. Wei Ying. Look at me. Wei Ying,” he says insistently.

“Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asks, dark silver eyes locked where they should be.

“My name sounds best from your mouth, too,” he says. He swallows. What more can he even say? There is that truth, and there is the way Wei Ying looks at him, and there is little else. “I want to do everything you allow me.”

“I would allow you everything,” Wei Ying breathes, eyes bright.

Lan Zhan wants so badly to touch him. “You cannot say that. I will take. I will not stop taking.”

“Good,” Wei Ying says. “I want that.”

Lan Zhan is at a loss for words. He did not expect this. He did not expect any of this. Wei Ying crawls forward on his knees until he is hovering over Lan Zhan. “Lan Zhan, kiss me,” Wei Ying demands, the bridge of his nose flush with color, so Lan Zhan kisses him.

Chapter Text

“I should go inside now,” Wei Ying breathes, pulling away from Lan Zhan’s mouth. His lips are wet and swollen, and Lan Zhan’s hands tighten around Wei Ying’s waist when he notices Wei Ying is still staring at his lips, no clear intent of getting off Lan Zhan’s lap and getting out of the car.

Lan Zhan can’t look away from Wei Ying’s shiny and pink mouth. “Mn,” he says, and leans forward to pull Wei Ying back into a kiss. Wei Ying moans when their mouths meet again, and Lan Zhan is sure Wei Ying's mouth is sensitive now, might even hurt, but Lan Zhan hasn’t kissed anyone in years, too busy hung-up over Wei Ying, and he’s thought about nothing but kissing Wei Ying for years, and he no longer has the restraint to keep from biting Wei Ying’s lips, relishing in the little sounds of discomfort and pleasure. He forces his tongue back inside Wei Ying’s mouth, runs it over his teeth, the vulnerable roof of his mouth, Wei Ying’s own tongue.

“Gege,” Wei Ying says into his mouth, “gege,” and he clenches his hands in Lan Zhan’s shirt until it wrinkles at the sides. He tastes so sweet. He didn’t eat the diced chicken but he thanked Lan Zhan and promised he would soon, and in place had a few slices of fresh toast with Lan Zhan’s homemade blueberry jam. “Lower.”

“Hm?” Lan Zhan licks his tongue between the seam of Wei Ying’s mouth and nips at the soft pout on Wei Ying’s bottom lip. This still feels so much like a dream.

“You can put your hands lower,” says Wei Ying. “If you want.”

Of course Lan Zhan wants. All Lan Zhan does is want. “Yeah?” he murmurs, moving his hands lower like Wei Ying wants until they grip the full flesh of Wei Ying’s ass.

“Yeah,” Wei Ying sighs. He arches his back onto Lan Zhan’s hands and adds, “harder.”

“Is that how you like it?”

“I like it how Zhan-ge likes it,” Wei Ying says, a sly little smile on his mouth. Ah. Lan Zhan is so hard that he regrets throwing on jeans when he left to bring Wei Ying home. It is exceedingly difficult not to angle Wei Ying onto his dick, especially now when Wei Ying pushes into his hands and whines when Lan Zhan digs his fingers in, kisses his way down Wei Ying’s neck until he can suck on the purpling bruise beneath Wei Ying’s collarbone. Only this morning. To think that was only this morning.

“Ah, Lan Zhan, that’s really… your mouth. I know I should go inside, but I can’t believe I haven’t had it on me all this time.”

Lan Zhan will know few happinesses like this. When he is satisfied with the deepening of the bruise, he takes Wei Ying’s soft and slick lips back into a kiss. He kisses Wei Ying breathless, caught up in taking what he wants from Wei Ying’s perfect mouth, greedy hands groping Wei Ying’s ass until Wei Ying whimpers and squirms on his lap. Lan Zhan strains in his jeans and wants so badly to grind Wei Ying down onto his dick until Wei Ying makes that same pretty noise, until Lan Zhan can swipe his fingers over Wei Ying’s dick and know how he tastes, until he can finger his own come into Wei Ying’s body until it craves it.

Wei Ying gasps and pulls back. Lan Zhan lets his head fall back against the driver’s headrest. He looks at Wei Ying and his mouth feels dry. He licks his lips.

Wei Ying laughs breathlessly and covers Lan Zhan’s eyes with his palm. “Zhan-ge, you really are too intense, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” Lan Zhan asks. He thinks he knows, but there’s enough uncertainty that it’s not a lie, and he wants to know how Wei Ying sees it.

“Like that. You know. It’s a lot. When you look at me so, so intensely, I can’t think of anything but having you inside me, and I don’t think we should do that yet.”

Lan Zhan resists tightening his hands on Wei Ying’s ass. “Yet?”

Wei Ying uncovers Lan Zhan’s eyes. Lan Zhan tries not to look like an animal that hasn't eaten in months. “If that’s fine with you? That’s kinda what I meant by uncasually, which I know still isn’t a word, Lan Zhan, but humor me. It’s cool if you… don’t want it to be that way? Whatever is fine, really, don’t feel pressured. I won’t pressure you. I’m fine with whatever you’re fine with, honestly, there’s no…” He looks like he’s trying to think of a word other than pressure.

“Wei Ying, breathe,” Lan Zhan says.

“I’m breathing,” Wei Ying protests, and then takes a breath.

“I want that, too.”

“Really? Lan Zhan, you know you don’t have to lie just to make me feel better. It’ll make me really angry if you start patronizing me just because of this potential… thing.”

Perhaps Lan Zhan should be as direct as possible. MIrroring Wei Ying’s words worked well last time. Last time—barely an hour ago. “I have not thought of anything but being inside you for… a while.”

Wei Ying flushes red, but there’s a warmth in his eyes that Lan Zhan sees even from the soft streetlight glow that filters in through the windshield. “Lan Zhan, you have to—you can’t spring things on me like that. Don’t smile, I’m serious! Look in my eyes so you see how serious I am.”

Not like looking in Wei Ying’s eyes is a hardship. “Mn,” Lan Zhan says. A small part of him keeps waiting for the other side of this joy, for the other shoe to drop, as it were, but he knows that is neither fair to himself nor Wei Ying. Wei Ying is not cruel. Lan Zhan knows it is difficult enough for him to be open about his feelings or desires, and he doesn’t believe that Wei Ying would say this in jest. Sure, sometimes the mind needs more time to ingest what the heart knows, but Lan Zhan must remind himself not to project his complexes onto Wei Ying. Mindfulness and the allowance of hope.

“Hey, you’re thinking too much,” Wei Ying says, and pokes his nose. Lan Zhan’s nose scrunches, and Wei Ying beams like he’s accomplished a great feat. It should not be possible to love someone this much. “Kiss me again, and then I swear I’m going inside.” He spends ten more minutes on Lan Zhan’s lap.

Wei Ying
10:47: ok are u in bed

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
10:47: Yes.

Wei Ying
10:49: omg...what are u wearing
10:49: 🥰

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
10:50: Pajama pants, like you always see me wear.

Wei Ying
10:50: no shirt?
10:50: 🥰🥰
10:50: so hurt you wear shirts when you sleep with me
10:50: dont do that anymore

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
10:51: Okay, I won’t.
10:51: What do you want to talk about?

Wei Ying
10:53: ok so
10:53: i thinkit would be cool if you hit me

Wei Ying
10:56: lan zhan
10: 58: was that too much? is that a hard no? im sorry i shouldve asked ffirst

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:00: Sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.
11:01: That’s not a hard no.

Wei Ying
11:02: OMG LAN ZHAN U FREAKED ME OUT
11:02: don’t apologize again just 😭 u have to
11:02 ok u dont have to do anything but like . u gave me a heart attack
11:03: i was like great the dmvs gonna be so annoyed when i call to cancel the name change to lan zhans sub

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:04: Don’t be silly.

Wei Ying
11:05: I’ve never been silly or joked a day in my life.
11:05: maybe. i should back up a little
11:08: so i took the bdsmtest.org test. it was…...a lot?? some of this stufff ive never rly thought about
so i had to mostly picture them in context w u and then. it was a lot easier
11:09: do u know that test? u said u have experience🤢
11:09: jk its ok not shaming u just shocked u had sex out of wedlock :/

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:10:07: I know what test.
11:10:38: Glad that the ghost of me helped you figure out what percentage brat you are.
11:10:42: 💙

Wei Ying
11:10:49: GOD??????? no one would believe me if i said u sent that text and youre cruel for that
11:10:55: can u guess what i got. my top 5

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:11:00: Yes.

Wei Ying
11:11: well?

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:12: Not yet. I don’t want to pressure you with my fantasies.

Wei Ying
11:14: you have fantasies of me?

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:16: I do.

Wei Ying
11:16: oh
11:17: gege what are they🥺

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:17: Focus.

Wei Ying
11:18: 😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐
11:19: ok i got it out of my sysystem.
11:19: system*
11:19: back to kink negotiating. ok im backing up
11:20: wow im so glad we decide to do this over text bc i simply could not do this in person
11:23: i tried filling out checklists but i kept getting overwhelemed HAHAHAH so i guess just
like. i want to use the stoplight system, are you ok w using that too?

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:23: Yes.

Wei Ying
11:24: ummmmmm no bodily excretions other than spit and cum… maybe a little blood? but not
like hardcore play just id be fine if u made me mouth bleed or something from biting but i dont think
i’d rly want anywhere else
11:25: but your rough kisses are. incredible
11:27:17: is it off topic to say that i had to jerk off when i showered bc you got me so hard i thought i’d melt
11:27:23: i just think your hand should always be on my ass

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:27:53: Fuck, Wei Ying.

Wei Ying
11:28: yeah you should fuck wei ying
11:28: my ass still hurts from how hard you squeezed :( don’t you feel bad

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:30: No.
11:31: Do I have to tell you to focus again?

Wei Ying
11:32: ah. no
11:32: im focusing
11:35: no ageplay, no chastity belts, no like burning or hot oils? but temp play wouldnt
necessarily be Bad. id be willing to try most stuff if ur into it i want to know what u
like. no visible public sexual play

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:38: There’s plenty I want to try. Not going to do any of it if I think you’ll hide what you
dislike because I like it or am not averse to it.

Wei Ying
11:39: yeah i know. its...a working process for me. but i promise i will be honest with you
with this. and if u ever feel unsure about how honest im being then i wont be mad if you pause or stop

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:40: Okay. Thank you for what you’ve shared so far. I know it’s hard but I appreciate it
and I will be honest with you too.
11:42: “No visible public sexual play.” Is hidden public play okay? What counts as hidden to you?
What nonsexual public play is okay with you?

Wei Ying
11:44: this is so embarrassing actulally
11:45: i mean like. nonsexua stuff is….standard nonsexual submission?????

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:46: Define standard.

Wei Ying
11:51: the stuff you do like... already but with……………..ur special dommy face

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:52: What’s my “special dommy face”?

Wei Ying
11:53: am i a joke to you.
11:55: i cant believe youre making me elaborate OMG fine i like you choosing clothes for me.
i like u grooming me. i wouldnt mind if u ordered for me when we went out even if it was w
our friends. it’s….nice when i dont have to think and just have ot let you
take care of me idk omg i sound like an idiot but IDK my brain is always
on and also im insane as you know and i feel Quiet when u take care of me like that

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:57: Thank you, Wei Ying. I know that was really hard. Not trying to punish you,
just want us to be on the same page with this. I am sorry that it was difficult.
12:00: I enjoy all of that, too, and I’d love to do all of that for you.
12:04: You are not insane. I won’t ever punish you for your mental health, but as your friend
and as someone who cares for you I’d prefer if you didn’t use words like that about yourself.
My therapist says that limiting external use can help intrusive thoughts fade from internal use too.

Wei Ying
12:07: yeah
12:08: can i convo safeword from the brain stuff lol

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:08: Yes.
12:08: Is hidden public play okay? What counts as hidden to you?

Wei Ying
12:09: u would copy paste your own texts
12:10: if u put a plug in me and made me wear it out (NOT W MY SIBLINGS!!!!!!!!) i would be ok with it.
i would be a lot ok with it

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:12: That is a main fantasy of mine.
12:13: Please continue.

Wei Ying
12:14: it kills me how you just say this
12:14: fr never thought I’d hear u say fantasy. like that
12:17: im fine w sex toys but i dont think i rly want like other objects involved yet. idk
i haven’t rly thought that far. um. i prefer bottoming is that ok with u

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:18: It is.

Wei Ying
12:20: ok thank god i thought so but i difntbwanna assume
12:22: Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm i think pain can be. Sexy

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:23: Do you want to elaborate?

Wei Ying
12:24: no ❤️ im knackerwd i havent been this emotionally open since I was like 7
12:25: HAHAHAHAHA im joking

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:25: No you’re not.

Wei Ying
12:28: no im not
12:28: what about you? what do u think my top 5 are

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:32: Brat, rope bunny, sub, masochist, for sure. I might… imagine degradee. Perhaps not.
I rank high for degrader but I know that is somewhat less common.

Wei Ying
12:34: you are insane
12:36: ok you don’t have permission to perceive me anymore thats
enough perceiving for the day. i am yellow safeword out from perception m

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:36: Was I wrong?

Wei Ying
12:37: what part of perceiving is over did u not get.
12:38: do you think we’re moving too fast
12:38: on one hand. hm idk I worry im being too intense. i just did a Lot of
research today/this week and it’s justbubbling inside me and I wanna Tell u

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:43: I may be the wrong person to ask. I have…thought about this extensively.
Any pace works for me.
12:45: As long as youare comfortable then I am, too.
12:45: *you are
12:56: Wei Ying?
1:07: Sleep well, Wei Ying.

Wei Ying
9:34: lan zhan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! im so sorry i fell aslepe
9:34: text me ur limits ill reply when im on the bus jc and i
are gonna be late and he wont fucking wake up

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
9:37: Good morning, Wei Ying. I can provide a ride to campus if needed.

Wei Ying
9:45: its ok!!! i threatenedto put an ice cube in jcs boxers and he woke up. text me ur list!!! ily ttyl

Lan Zhan looks away from his phone and up at Jin Zixuan’s knowing eyes across the kitchen table.

“Do not look at me,” Lan Zhan says.

“Your ears are so red,” Zixuan says, resting his chin on his upturned hand. “What could he have even texted you that made you this horny this early in the morning?”

“Do not speak to me,” Lan Zhan adds, and turns back to his phone. The history graduate spring outing is today. They’re meeting on campus to coordinate carpooling, and Lan Zhan made the grave mistake of saying he can drive to the chosen destination forty-five minutes away. Most of his colleagues are good, but he cannot escape the worry that one of the few he finds least tolerable will end up in his car for almost an hour.

“You haven’t even asked me what it was like seeing my beautiful and kind and smart and sexy top last night,” Zixuan says.

“You are not a bottom. You are in a heterosexual relationship.”

“Oh, great, biphobia this early in the morning,” Zixuan says, and Lan Zhan resists throwing the remains of their shared fruit bowl at him. “It was great, by the way. Ayi thinks you and Wei Ying are dating.”

Lan Zhan pauses typing and squints across the table at Zixuan.

“Seriously! You know she loves pretending that Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng aren’t both into men, but last night when Wei Ying had to leave to go to yours, she said that if he’s… like that, then at least it’s someone like you. I almost said you have a brother for Jiang Cheng, but I think she would’ve pulled my intestines out through my throat if I did.”

Lan Zhan does not know what part of that to unpack. “I do not have a brother for Jiang Cheng,” he eventually says.

“Huan-ge would love Jiang Cheng. He loves closet cases. Remember when he was in that Weibo flirtationship with my brother?”

“I try not to,” Lan Zhan says. “Huaisang says he is… in a Weibo situation with his brother, now.”

“See! Now he just has to get around to Wei Ying’s brother. Polyamory is in.”

“I’m done listening,” Lan Zhan warns him, and goes back to drafting a response to Wei Ying on his laptop. He’s almost done with the Notes app transfer when his laptop rings with an incoming FaceTime request from Wei Ying. He picks it up on his phone and goes into his room before Jin Zixuan can gain more unnecessary information. “Wei Ying,” he says, shutting his door.

Wei Ying’s face is still moist with sunscreen, and his hair is messily tied up, strands falling onto his smiling face and brushing his nose. He’s so beautiful. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Lan Zhan says softly.

“So I tried picking out something to wear.” He flips the camera. On his bed are a few different sweaters. “My executive dysfunction says to stay home and binge Love Island, but I figured I’d check with you.”

Lan Zhan bites the inside of his cheek and tries, inexplicably, not to get hard. Perhaps he can explain it. He prefers to ignore it. “The blue sweater is nice. Thin. Will need a jacket with it.”

“It probably won’t be that cold,” Wei Ying says.

“It will be…” He does the quick conversion to Fahrenheit for Wei Ying. “Low 30s.”

Wei Ying groans. “Seriously? Ugh, fuck, okay, I have to go cause I think Jiang Cheng was gonna wear some lame band tee he stole from my pop punk teen closet.” He flips the camera back around to his face. “‘M gonna wear black jeans. The one you like. Oh, I asked jiejie and finally figured out where I bought them. I have the name in my Notes app somewhere, do you want it?”

Lan Zhan shakes his head. “It’s fine.” He is not sure how to best tell Wei Ying that his appreciation stems from how they lift Wei Ying’s ass. “Go keep your brother from pneumonia. I will see you soon.”

“Your list!” Wei Ying says, pouting. “I want it.”

“Soon,” Lan Zhan promises. All he hears when Wei Ying says I want it is the pitch of his voice when he asked Lan Zhan to bite him yesterday, and if he masturbates in his room after a phone call, Jin Zixuan will never shut up about it. Lan Zhan cannot give him the satisfaction, even if the visible bruises on Wei Ying’s neck make his cock swell in his jeans.

Back in the kitchen, Zixuan says, “there’s a bruise on your Adam’s apple.”

“No, there is not,” Lan Zhan says. He does not double-check, because he knows Zixuan’s intent. He will not be baited.

“But there could be. I accidentally saw the kink checklist PDF on your laptop. How long have you had it downloaded in anticipation for this moment?”

“Accidentally,” says Lan Zhan. The laptop is across the table from Zixuan.

“Really! I went to refill my water bottle and your laptop hadn’t timed out, and it’s obvious what it is.” He puts his hand to his heart. “It kinda hurts my feelings that you won’t share updates with me.”

“I am sorry,” he says. They both have difficulty being upfront sometimes, but Lan Zhan struggles with it much more than Zixuan does, and he has to often remind himself that not everything needs to be kept this close to his chest. Certainly not with Zixuan. Everything with Wei Ying is so raw, but Zixuan has never been anything but supportive. “It sounds juvenile out loud. We agreed to try play, and then we made out in my car.” Recounting it like this does feel ridiculous, but at least this way he appreciates that the world did not tilt on its axis like the more melodramatic parts of himself believe.

Zixuan frowns. “Only play? Is that a good idea for you?”

“Not only play. He says he does not want it to be casual.”

Now, Zixuan grins. “Good, I was worried I’d have to kill him.”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” Lan Zhan says.

“I could easily take Wei Ying in a fight,” Jin Zixuan says. Lan Zhan hums noncommittally, and lets Zixuan seethe from the dismissal.

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:12: I do not have many hard limits. Same limits on fluids. No ageplay, no daddy kink, no slave play.
I will not involve others. Pet play and fisting are soft limits, but I could be convinced.
I like bondage and sensory deprivation. Any type is fine. I like marking and
causing pain, but we will have to review your limits there.
11:14: I like use of force, sometimes excessive, but I understand if you are
uncomfortable with that, and I can live without it.
11:20: I compiled a short/working Notes summary. I am sharing it with you; please add on.
11:21:

“Whatever you just sent, you’re overthinking it,” Zixuan says.

“Mn. I will leave soon. Are you staying here?”

“No, A-Li and I are going to the botanical gardens with her parents. I am emotionally preparing for it.”

Lan Zhan‘s mouth turns slightly down. “Are you needed? Do you want to go to the museum with us instead?”

“No, it’s fine. Your department is pretentious. Someone will try discussing current events with me, and I will inevitably end up being an asshole, and then they’ll be more unbearable to you for bringing me along, and then Wei Ying will be an asshole in your defense, and then we’ll get kicked out of the museum for inciting the race war or something. I know you won’t care what they say, but I already catastrophized all options. Might as well see Yanli.”

“Staying home is an option.”

“In the battle between A-Li’s breasts and my depression, her breasts win every time.”

Wei Ying
11:32: omfg lan zhan your list
11:32: BEING PERCEIVED????? im erasing that one u are so annoying
11:33: oh it seems less scary like this
11:33: i thought i spoke forever yday bur look how short my lists are in conlaeikjbto urs
11:34: what?? **in comparison to. idk how i got that typo
11:37: sry i dont mean that in a shamey way!!!! i am glad u have a more extensive list

Lan Zhan knows by now not to be embarrassed by his desires, but the skin sometimes feels thin during these reveals. With Wei Ying… he wonders if seeing it laid out like this will scare him away. Yes, I have feelings for you, yes, I want to take care of you and make you happy, but sometimes I want to force you down and hurt you until blood rises below the surface of your skin and you can’t stop crying. Should he have waited to introduce this to Wei Ying? Lan Zhan has worked through this list since he was eighteen; everything is new to Wei Ying. Should he have waited?

Wei Ying
11:45: your kinks lost is……………….so good
11:45: list
11:45: im on the bus now btw did u leave yet?? can u get me and jc
boba PLS ill venmo u🥺 u know our orders🥺😔💓
11:47: by breathplay do u mean like choking

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
11:50: Leaving now. Will get boba.
11:50: Yes, in various ways.

Wei Ying
11:51: oh neat
11:51: im gonna italicize everything I wanna try
11:55: yes to vibes btw. do u wanna see mine one day

Lan Zhan makes the mistake of checking his phone at a red light, and gets honked at to drive forward for the first time in his life. He locks his phone and does not look at it again until he reaches campus.

“Anyone who wants to spend both to and from talking about racism and imperialism and racism and white supremacy and racism and also probably xenophobia, if we get bored, should ride with Lan Zhan and I. Well, Lan Zhan, racism, and I, since that’ll be so present in this car that it’ll take up room.” Wei Ying grins at their colleagues standing in front of their department building, and grins wider when people avoid eye contact with him.

In the car, Lan Zhan tells him, “you’re ridiculous,” and reminds himself to keep his hand to himself on the shift in front of their colleagues.

“Did I or did I not successfully keep white people out of your car? Wait, Gail, you don’t count, in my eyes you’re human, not white.”

“Thank you,” Gail says drily, and goes back to their phone. Lan Zhan does like Gail, because they never speak. He understands.

Lan Zhan does not understand why the chosen day trip is an art museum so far away, but the drive is scenic. Wei Ying made Jiang Cheng come with them even though Jiang Cheng is in the architecture department, and they spend much of the car ride bickering amicably and fighting less amicably about song choices. Four people in the backseat is a tight fit, but Wei Ying insisted it would be fine, and Lan Zhan loathes to deny him.

They are halfway there when Wei Ying finishes his bubble tea and takes Lan Zhan’s hand from the gear shift to place it on his thigh. He wraps his palm over Lan Zhan’s and presses down until Lan Zhan squeezes the full flesh. Lan Zhan tightens his hands around the steering wheel and wishes they were alone.

“Oh, seriously? Finally?” Yewande asks, looking up from her current control of Wei Ying’s travel playlist.

“Fuck off,” Wei Ying says. Jiang Cheng gags, and Lan Zhan is too blissed out to even resent him for it.

“Oh, fuck, gege, fuck,” Wei Ying repeats the same few words like a mantra and Lan Zhan thinks he could hear nothing but this again and live well. The art museum bathroom is not the right place, but Lan Zhan’s restraint is on a thin line. Now that he knows he can touch Wei Ying this way, every moment spent otherwise is spoiled time.

He bites down harder on the marks he left last night, and slides a hand down to grab Wei Ying’s ass again, a harsh exhale escaping his mouth at the gratifying feel of the softness beneath his palm.

Wei Ying’s head thuds back against the plastic stall, and his hands pulse on Lan Zhan’s waist. “We should, we have to talk,” Wei Ying reminds him.

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees, and grips underneath the curve of Wei Ying’s ass. He sucks gently on Wei Ying’s Adam’s apple. “Can I get you off?”

“Please,” Wei Ying pleads, and turns his head until Lan Zhan pulls him back into a kiss.

They need to talk. Lan Zhan knows this. But Wei Ying italicized bondage on Lan Zhan’s list, amongst other things, and Lan Zhan believes he speaks volumes when he grabs both of Wei Ying’s wrists with one hand, eliciting a moan from Wei Ying, and pins them above Wei Ying’s head. “Keep them there.”

The effort to follow Lan Zhan’s command makes Wei Ying’s hips jut out, pretty and prone. “Hnnnn,” Wei Ying whines, eyes widening in shock when Lan Zhan drops to his knees and undoes Wei Ying’s fly. “Lan Zhan, we shouldn’t do this here!!”

That is not a denial. “Be quiet,” Lan Zhan says, and takes Wei Ying into his mouth. Of course Wei Ying is not quiet, but he tries to be, likely embarrassed by location. By how readily his cock leaks precome into Lan Zhan’s mouth? By how easily he follows Lan Zhan’s order, even when Lan Zhan looks up and sees his wrists twitch with the desire to cover his mouth? There are vast possibilities.

Lan Zhan enjoys the hard weight of Wei Ying’s cock on his tongue, how easy it is to take Wei Ying and work his mouth on him until Wei Ying’s thighs are shaking. Wei Ying tries squirming his hips, but Lan Zhan barely needs to exert energy to keep him still, and that makes Wei Ying moan, too, makes Lan Zhan press his thumb into Wei Ying’s hip bones and imagine how good it will feel when Lan Zhan can hold all of him down, pin him to a mattress and fuck him wet. Lan Zhan feels possessed, every errant fantasy he’s had over the past few years running through his mind in ecstatic motion. He wants to eat Wei Ying out. He wants to wrap his hands around his throat and finger him open; he wants to force Wei Ying’s shoulders down and his ass up and makes sure it bruises when he struggles. He thinks it would not be very hard to make Wei Ying sob.

Wei Ying does not last long. “Lan Zhan,” he begs, low and thready, “Zhan-ge, gege, Lan Zh— ahhn,” sweet little moans when Lan Zhan palms both sides of his rear and digs his fingers in until they slide into the crease. Wei Ying is gorgeous when he comes, body shuddering with the pressure of Lan Zhan’s hands holding him still, and he tastes as good as he looks.

Wei Ying still hasn’t caught his breath when Lan Zhan surges up to kiss him and tongue Wei Ying’s come into his mouth. Wei Ying whimpers, but Lan Zhan doesn’t pull back until Wei Ying swallows all of it down, and he does. Lan Zhan bites his swollen bottom lip before letting him breathe.

“Oh my god,” Wei Ying says, huffing out an incredulous laugh. “Lan Zhan?? Is that what you’ve been hiding from me all this time?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t particularly think he was hiding. Wei Ying never asked. He hums in response, and bites at Wei Ying’s chin.

“Is that what you mean by force?” Wei Ying asks.

Lan Zhan could laugh. “No.”

“Ah, gege, if you were any harder, I think I’d pass out.”

Lan Zhan tilts his head. “Would that be a bad thing?” Wei Ying shakes his head furiously, and Lan Zhan’s mouth curves up. “You were good. You can put your arms down.”

Wei Ying blinks and drops them to Lan Zhan’s shoulders like he almost forgot they were up. “I was good?” He’s so sweet. Lan Zhan can’t imagine that he won’t be brattier when he gets more comfortable with this new dynamic, and he anticipates that high, but like this, now, with Wei Ying soft and easy and more blatantly desperate for praise… he is so sweet. Lan Zhan kisses him again.

“You were perfect,” Lan Zhan says.

It is easy to get Wei Ying on his knees. Lan Zhan rolls the sleeves of his black sweater up to his elbows and undoes his belt and jeans, and Wei Ying looks up at him with eager eyes and his tongue poked out between his teeth. When Lan Zhan pulls his cock out his jeans, ears hot with arousal and the barely-restrained urge to slap his cock on Wei Ying’s face, Wei Ying’s eyes widen and his mouth parts, a pretty flush spreading across his nose and cheeks, and he leans forward to brush his lips over the tip. Lan Zhan exhales and pushes Wei Ying’s head back with a hand in his hair. “Wei Ying, don’t move.”

Wei Ying looks up at him with a bright glint in his eyes and tries moving in against Lan Zhan’s grip. “You already said I was good, Lan Zhan, you can’t take it back now.”

Lan Zhan’s cock throbs in his hand. He pulls Wei Ying’s hair tight, until it stings at the scalp and Wei Ying whines and kneels up to lessen the pain. They need to talk more, because this isn’t even half as hard as Lan Zhan wants to pull, and he needs to know how far Wei Ying’s limits extend. This is not proper play, not before they have that part dealt with, but Lan Zhan is selfish, greedy as anyone can be with it comes to Wei Ying, and he cannot keep from pulling Wei Ying’s hair again and telling him, “you do not tell me what I can and cannot do. Stop moving and be good.” Wei Ying shudders beneath him and goes limp.

The logical part of Lan Zhan still engaging in critical thinking knows that he should not continue this in a bathroom stall. Pushing their luck in a bathroom stall in a museum as their colleagues browse art is terrible judgement.

All the same, Lan Zhan pushes just the head of his cock into Wei Ying’s mouth, gaze sharp on the stretch of Wei Ying’s lips around it, Wei Ying’s tongue pressed up onto the underside, his hands wrapped around Lan Zhan’s calves. It is exceedingly easy and satisfying to jerk off into Wei Ying’s mouth, feeling his precome drip onto Wei Ying’s tongue as he rises towards climax. Wei Ying’s eyes are dark and hooded. He stays still on the bathroom floor and lets Lan Zhan pull off into his mouth, and Lan Zhan never wants anyone else ever again.

Wei Ying angles his head up and pokes his tongue far out when Lan Zhan pulls out, and Lan Zhan exhales harshly and pulses sticky and hot all over his lips and tongue. Wei Ying makes a show of licking his lips and showing Lan Zhan the white pooled on his tongue before swallowing it down. The image will be burned into Lan Zhan’s eyes until he dies. Best boy.

Chapter Text

Wei Ying’s parents fly back out tonight. After the museum and lunch at a vegan restaurant where Wei Ying complains about malnourishment the entire time until Lan Zhan sighs and brings him and Gail next door to order fried chicken, Lan Zhan brings his passengers home before driving Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng to Jiang Yanli’s house.

“Can I come over tonight?” Wei Ying asks, leaning over the console to speak against Lan Zhan’s cheek. Jiang Cheng went inside the second Lan Zhan stopped the car in front of the apartment, and early sunsets mean that the parking lot is dark and empty as Wei Ying says goodbye. “Sleep over, I mean. I’ll even get up in the middle of the night to begin the day with you.”

“Five is not the middle of the night,” Lan Zhan says. He turns his face so that his mouth brushes against Wei Ying’s and wonders if Wei Ying can still taste Lan Zhan’s come on his tongue. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“False, but it’s okay. I’m kinda disappointed you didn’t fuck my mouth. You should remedy that tonight.” He pecks Lan Zhan’s cheek. “After we talk.”

Wei Ying pulls back, a soft and smug smile that emphasizes his high cheekbones, and Lan Zhan cannot help but kiss him, and then kiss him again, and then kiss him again, and again, and again.

Lan Zhan gets home and sees a missed call from his brother. They spoke last Monday, although not for long since Lan Zhan was in a terrible mood. He did not reveal details of his upset to his brother, but Huan-ge let him go soon and instead spent the next few days sending Lan Zhan the woodworking videos he likes and pictures of the California sunset. Sometimes a picture of the stray rabbit and cat that hang around his front door.

“A-Zhan,” Lan Huan says warmly when Lan Zhan calls him back. “Hold on, lemme… move.” Muffled, like there’s a hand over the phone, “ge, it’s Lan Zhan, I’ll be outside.”

Lan Zhan waits until he hears the soft click of a door and the muted sounds of outside. It sounds like rain. “Hello, ge. Where are you? Do not get sick.”

“Hmm? I won’t, I’m just in Seattle. Incredibly, the rumors are true. It’s rained four days in a row. It’s glorious. I may never return to Berkeley.”

“Seattle?” Do they know anyone who lives in Seattle that Lan Huan might call ge? Nie Huaisang is from Washington, but… “Are you with Nie Mingjue?”

“I am,” Huan-ge agrees. “Did I tell you?”

“No,” Lan Zhan says. He pulls out a new pair of sheets from his linen and laundry closet, a fully white set with the sort of big comforter that Wei Ying likes. It will be cold tonight. Jin Zixuan’s old heated blanket should be in here… It is not. Lan Zhan will check the guest room; it is doubtful that Zixuan will sleep here tonight. “Huaisang said there was something.”

“Something,” his brother muses. In the background, a dog barks. “I suppose. I’m spending the week with him. I wanted to go hiking, and he did tell me it rains a lot in the winter, but I let hubris win. Staying inside can be fun, too.”

“Mn,” says Lan Zhan. He hopes his brother will not go into detail about his sex life. Lan Zhan wants nothing in the world less than that. He does not grimace when his brain conjures an image of Nie Mingjue and his brother in compromising positions, but it is very close.

“How are you, A-Zhan? Are you home? Alone?” He sounds distant, has sounded distant this entire phone call, and Lan Zhan cannot figure what could be wrong. He speaks well of Nie Mingjue.

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. He puts the sheets down and sweeps a look across his room. Ah. Wei Ying will likely forget to bring his toothbrush. He goes into his bathroom to search for a spare toothbrush. Should be in the cabinet. “I am fine. Museum with Wei Ying and department today. How are you?”

“Me? Well… how is Wei Ying? Last I heard of him was an indecipherable meme he sent me on WeChat. Something about Russian cats.”

Lan Zhan wants to tell, but this conversation is draining the anticipation of sharing his joy with his brother. He puts the unopened purple toothbrush on the sink counter. “Ge, what is wrong?”

His brother sighs. “It’s time to call Father.”

Thankful that the toilet seat is already covered, Lan Zhan sits down. “I see.”

“Good evening, Father,” Lan Zhan says.

“Ah, Zhan-er,” his father says. His voice is pleasant and soft as it always is, the two times a year that Lan Zhan speaks to him. The older Lan Zhan gets, the more his voice resembles his father’s. “I was worried A-Huan or your uncle did not tell you.”

Lan Zhan has never forgotten before. “Mn.” He sits in his bathroom and waits for his father to continue the conversation.

His father is as taciturn as he is. People who knew his father before he disappeared to somewhere in Fujian often say Lan Zhan takes most after him. They sit in silence for a few minutes. Finally, “how is school?”

“Fine,” Lan Zhan says.

“Have you begun your dissertation yet?”

“No, I have not,” Lan Zhan says. Not formally. He is still working on his preliminary exams, though he may present by the end of this semester, earlier than the standard December deadline.

“It is best to have a job offer available if you must renew your visa. Have you decided yet if you are remaining in the States or going back to Beijing?”

“No, I have not,” Lan Zhan says.

“I am sure your uncle would like to have you and A-Huan closer to home.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says.

“Ah, well…” He clears his throat. “How is your personal life? Are there any new developments? Do you have a girlfriend?”

Lan Zhan considers. I am not interested in women, he could say. Is there anything his father can do to him, if he knows this? Lan Zhan’s punishment is not in his hands. Uncle knows. This should be enough. He does not know enough about his father to imagine his reaction. Indifference? Acceptance? Huan-ge has always said he would surrogate if he did not end up with a woman. Would Lan Zhan’s father be disappointed to learn that up until a few years ago, Lan Zhan was prepared to let his end of the bloodline die out? Is it worth it, to have to explain to his father that when he aligns their similarities, he never wants to bring a child into the world, and that his first thought when he realized he was gay was the relief that he never has to?

“No, I do not.”

“Well, there is plenty of time. You are young. If you are ever in need of money, let your uncle know. He is able to distribute whatever you or your brother may need.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Of course. Zhan-er…” He is silent again. They listen to each other breathe. Lan Zhan wonders what his father looks like. In the few pictures Lan Zhan has of him in his youth, he looks like Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan looks like him? Ge smiles like their mother. Lan Zhan is, always, his father’s son.

“Have a good evening. It is good to speak with you. Thank you for calling your baba.”

Lan Zhan hesitates. “Yes. Good night.” He does not know how to tell his father he loves him.

When Lan Zhan finally exits the bathroom, he sees Jin Zixuan sitting below the window on the couch with a light in his hands. Lan Zhan didn’t think he would be back tonight. He wants to ask him why, but his mind feels cobbled and he cannot sort it into order. He stands there, the bathroom light harsh on his back, his phone clenched in his hand.

Zixuan glances at him once, and then looks a second time. He raises an eyebrow. “You gonna come smoke?”

Lan Zhan blinks. He nods once and walks to the couch. He sits down carefully and smokes with Zixuan.

It never takes him long to get high. The first time he did was with his brother. It was the summer after his second year, and he and Zixuan were only in Berkeley for two weeks before Huan-ge took out a light on his couch while they watched a movie. Lan Zhan was disappointed to think that his brother took up smoking, but he was scandalized when he realized it was—that—too taken aback to even say it aloud, as if the people on his dorm floor didn’t always reek of smoke. What? It’s California. Would you like to try, A-Zhan? Lan Zhan did not want to try, not at first, but Zixuan was Zixuan, curious but still too strangely demure and guilty around Huan-ge to take initiative, so Lan Zhan pretended he did not feel the ghost of his uncle staring him down, and tried.

It is very economical for Lan Zhan and Huan-ge to play with sobriety. Zixuan called it them being lightweights, but this was better than alcohol—when Huan-ge brought them alcohol a few days later, emboldened by Lan Zhan’s new willingness to participate in underage consumption, they ended up in Target at 11pm and then committing petty vandalism at midnight. According to Zixuan, at least; Lan Zhan and his brother came to when they got a call from their bank asking if they’d meant to purchase two original Monets. Lan Zhan does not drink. When they smoked, the range of foolishness only extended to the hundred dollars of Chinese-American food they ordered and the three thousand dollar tip they gave their delivery driver, a nice and fellow recent immigrant from Hubei that Huan-ge sometimes still speaks to.

It is not his first time smoking with Jin Zixuan after speaking with his father, but he does not know how Zixuan knew. Did Zixuan somehow remember that Lan Zhan was due for a call even though Lan Zhan forgot? Lan Zhan has never forgotten before. It is not his first time smoking with Jin Zixuan after speaking with his father. They sit in silence. Lan Zhan stares at his rice cooker on the kitchen counter. When it burns down to the skin, Lan Zhan goes into his room and onto his balcony. He sits in lotus position on the ground in his shorts and t-shirt and meditates.

Lan Zhan does not know much about his parents. Uncle keeps most of the family photos of his father in a safe somewhere, but when Lan Zhan and Huan-ge turned fifteen and eighteen, he gave them each two photos of their father, and that was the first time Lan Zhan saw his father since the age of three. His image of his mother was stronger but fading, but he and his brother only had one picture of her to share. It was a photo of her on the hospital bed holding newborn Lan Huan. She was smiling.

From his first birthday to the age of six, Lan Zhan visited his mother every three months in the psychiatric hospital. Twice a year, he and Lan Huan speak with their father. After, Lan Zhan meditates, and is genuinely fine with a life like this. He has never been caught off-guard before.

He shocks out of meditation when he hears his phone ring from the bathroom. He does not often receive phone calls, but this is Wei Ying’s ringtone, the one he chose for himself so that Lan Zhan, who dislikes speaking on the phone, can never miss his call. It takes more effort than it should to stand up, and he doesn’t realize why until he steps into the room and registers how much warmer it is. His knees feel stiff.

“Wei Ying,” he greets, when his rough fingers finally unlock the call.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says. His voice slurs. Lan Zhan shakes off the cold haze of his poorly-timed meditation quickly and straightens his back so that he no longer leans on the counter. “You gonna… are you gonna come pick me up? I’m at, um… where am I, A-Cheng… I’m at jiejie’s!! Are you gonna come get me? Can you come get me?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. Something in him tells him to call a rideshare instead, but he cannot grasp why. That will take too long. He is hungry. Maybe he will buy them dinner, too? Wei Ying likes chicken. Lan Zhan will buy him more chicken. Maybe Lan Zhan will buy… Ah. He will get Wei Ying honey chicken and a rice bowl for himself. “I will be there soon.”

“Okay. Jie says no bus right now… but you’ll come get me, right?”

Lan Zhan nods. Of course Wei Ying cannot see him nod. “Yes.”

When Lan Zhan takes his keys from the kitchen table, Zixuan squints up at him from the sofa in disbelief. “Where are you going?”

Lan Zhan is almost in front of the door when Zixuan blocks the exit. “Lan Zhan, have you lost your mind?”

“I am picking up Wei Ying. Move.”

“No?! You can’t fucking drive, you’re still high!”

“I am not. Move.”

“Or what? You’re gonna go add another DUI between the two of you? You’re gonna get couple DUIs to celebrate your new relationship?”

Lan Zhan frowns, a sharp prickle of annoyance in his chest. “Do not talk about that.”

“A-Z—Lan Zhan, seriously, are you even thinking? If, no, when you get caught and pulled over, do you seriously think that he won’t get in trouble too when he has a previous charge? Come on, if you don’t wanna think rationally for yourself and whoever else you could hurt, at least try not to fuck him over, too. Come on, give me your keys. Please.”

Lan Zhan does not slump, but he almost wishes he could. He gives Zixuan his keys.

“He asked me to pick him up,” Lan Zhan says. He’s never lied to Wei Ying before. Either way, he cannot remember where his car is parked right now. Perhaps he should call a rideshare.

Jin Zixuan sighs. “I’ll go get him. Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t even smoke, which you would’ve noticed if you weren’t out of your mind. I wouldn’t risk jail for Wei Ying, let alone getting pulled over by a pig. Go drink water and stop being stupid.”

“Fuck you,” Lan Zhan says, frowning again. He supposes he is still high. He rarely curses so easily. Then he feels guilty. “Thank you. I will… He is at your house. Your other house.”

“Yeah, whatever, fuck you, too, I’m driving your car, your mileage to fuck up. Go drink water.”

Lan Zhan drinks two glasses of water and then eats a pear. There is still diced chicken in the fridge, so Wei Ying can have that if he gets hungry. Lan Zhan has a clementine. He drinks another glass of water. He uses the bathroom after he drinks the third glass of water. He… He stands in front of his bedroom door and sweeps his eyes over the room. He’s forgetting something. Oh. The sheets.

He changes his linens very slowly and very carefully. He remembers learning this as a child. Uncle only allowed a maid until Lan Zhan was five, and then he taught Lan Zhan and Huan-ge the art of cleanliness. A pillow over one end to keep the fitted cover springing back. Tuck into all four corners. There is no need to press your body into the bed until it is covered; doing so wrinkles the sheets and shows a lack of control and patience. Fan the top sheet on. When they were younger, Uncle at times fanned it harder than necessary so that the breeze fluttered their clothing. Lan Zhan gets the heated blanket from the guest closet, unused by Jin Zixuan, and angles it onto the left side, where Wei Ying sleeps. He tucks the comforter on.

He calls his uncle. It is 8:27am in Beijing.

“Good morning,” Uncle says. “Did something happen?”

Uncle’s voice is colder than his father’s. Lan Zhan almost sits on the bed, then remembers he has yet to change his clothing. “No. I am fine.”

“I see.” Silence. “Did you speak with Adjei about taking your preliminaries in May? There is no need to delay to December if you can do it sooner.”

“Yes, I sent him an email. I will meet with my committee on Wednesday to discuss the adjusted schedule.” Lan Zhan plugs the blanket in and sets the temperature low, so that it can maintain a comfortable heat until Wei Ying arrives.

“Good. I spoke with Lan Huan. He is in Seattle, although I do not know why.”

“He is with a friend.” Lan Zhan's mouth turns up, imagining Huan-ge calling Uncle and talking around his impromptu visit of a love interest.

“Midterms are coming up. He should be focused on grading.” Uncle sounds like he is frowning.

“I am sure he still is,” Lan Zhan says. “Uncle,” Lan Zhan says.

Uncle gives him time to speak before prompting, “yes?”

“I apologize. I spoke out of turn. I hope you are well.”

“Of course I am well,” Uncle says. “I have lunch with Zhang Group representatives today.” The polite disdain in his voice is admirable. “You must sleep soon. It is late.”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan agrees. “Good night. I hope your meeting goes well.”

“Of course,” Uncle says, and then hangs up.

Lan Zhan showers and changes his clothing. He feels more sober now; no longer as if wading through a condensed pool of water. He drinks another glass of water and then checks his phone. There is an influx of woodland creatures from Lan Huan, so Lan Zhan supposes he was on a binge earlier. Mingjue ge keeps talking in detail about eating bunnies D: save me, his brother sent seven minutes ago. Lan Zhan upvotes the message in a show of solidarity, and then remembers to find sleeping clothes for Wei Ying.

Lan Zhan hears Zixuan and Wei Ying from the hallway before they even enter, bickering about who Jiang Yanli meant when she said goodnight. Lan Zhan leans against the kitchen fridge and raises an eyebrow when they burst in, Zixuan threatening, “if you throw up on me, I will rip your heart out, not even Lan Zhan could stop me,” and Wei Ying telling him, “fuck you, you’re only fifth most important to my jie,” before he sees Lan Zhan and beams. “Lan Zhan!” He pushes away from Zixuan and stumbles across the wood to Lan Zhan, planting face-first into Lan Zhan’s chest. “Tell loser brat that I say thank you.”

“Don’t be rude,” Lan Zhan says.

“Next time I really will kick him out in moving traffic,” Jin Zixuan says.

“I will try to avoid a next time,” Lan Zhan says. “Thank you, Zixuan.”

Zixuan scrunches his nose at him before heading for his room. He often forgets to close his door, but he makes a point to shut it loudly before—yes, that is Ravel. Lan Zhan’s ears heat up a bit.

“Let’s drink water,” Lan Zhan tells Wei Ying. He wraps his arm around Wei Ying’s waist and leads him to sit on a chair. Wei Ying looks up at him with wide and bright eyes.

“‘M hungry,” Wei Ying says.

Lan Zhan hands him the water, and waits until Wei Ying has a firm grip on the glass before letting go. Made the mistake of assuming too quickly before. “Do you want chicken?”

“No,” Wei Ying says. “I wanna go to bed.”

“Drink your water and we will,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying keeps his eyes on Lan Zhan as he drinks the water. Lan Zhan’s eyes are drawn to the way Wei Ying’s throat moves as he swallows. He wonders if the heating is too high. He pulls his shorts away from his thigh, and watches Wei Ying’s eyes jump down to the movement.

Wei Ying puts the glass down. “Bed,” he repeats. There’s a spot of water on his cupid’s bow, but he licks it away before Lan Zhan can.

Lan Zhan makes Wei Ying brush his teeth and change into the merch t-shirt that Huan-ge bought Lan Zhan last year. It is an American singer-songwriter that Lan Zhan liked during his angsty teen phase that he will never wear but cannot throw away, however else he practices against consumerist excess in his consumption. He does still listen to their music, he must admit. Their last album was about their dead mother, which Lan Zhan both relates to and appreciates. It is loose on Wei Ying, dips low over his collarbones, and seeing Wei Ying in his clothing makes him feel feral with desire.

In bed, under the covers, Wei Ying rests his head on Lan Zhan’s chest and throws a leg over Lan Zhan’s. It is nice to be like this. It is nice to be close to Wei Ying like this, and see a future where he has someone to call his. He knows Wei Ying is his own person, that they exist outside of each other and always will, no matter how their relationship develops, but he is allowing himself selfishness and he is in love and there is a thrum of possessiveness in his stomach, embedded where hunger lies, that lies near Wei Ying in the dark and wants to consume him. Lan Zhan is not his father. He reminds himself of this, and lets himself want.

“Lan Zhan~” Wei Ying croons, and creeps a hand down Lan Zhan’s torso to palm his dick.

“No,” Lan Zhan says.

Wei Ying removes his hand, but Lan Zhan hears his pout when he asks, “why not?”

“You are drunk. Sleep now.”

“Who are you to decide I’m drunk,” Wei Ying mutters, but he keeps his hand at a respectable place over Lan Zhan’s heart. It pounds at the proximity. “Whether I’m drunk is… that’s a decision between me.”

“You and who?” Lan Zhan asks.

“I contain multitudes,” Wei Ying says haughtily. “Who was the racist gay guy who said that?”

“Whitman,” Lan Zhan says.

“Oh, right. Less emphasis on the man, part, though, like, less heavy…? Whatever, I’m not a language teacher, pronounce it however, it’s direct action against him. Also I’ve decided the multitudes thing is my quote now. I said it even before I knew who he was. I said it when I was, like, twelve. Also I’m smarter. And hotter. And also will age better.” Wei Ying pauses. “Lan Zhan, agree with me.”

“Definitely hotter,” Lan Zhan agrees.

“Not smarter??”

“Some truths are implicit.”

“Also I will age better, by virtue of not being white. Repeat that part, too. Our server tonight sucked so bad, I wanted to be, like, like, fuck you, Italians can’t even make noodles. Also your pizza sucks. Lan Zhan, the best pasta I’ve ever had was at the Caribbean place that loser brat likes. I’ve never known an Italian who could make good spaghetti. Also their bread is bad. What’s the name of the place Zixuan likes?”

“Zixuan likes a lot of Caribbean places.” He studies Chinese diaspora in the Caribbean, and likes to pretend that going through Yelp lists is ground research.

“Yeah, but the one I’ve been to. Surely I don’t go to that many places he frequents.”

“More than you know,” says Lan Zhan.

“Ew,” says Wei Ying. “Also you have not said yet that I will age better.”

“Also, you will age better, by virtue of not being white,” Lan Zhan dutifully repeats.

“Okay, good boy. Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan is half-asleep, but he powers through. “Yes, baby?” His ears burn. “Mm, I mean…”

“Baby is good. Say that more often.” Wei Ying nuzzles into Lan Zhan’s shoulder and hikes his leg further up. He presses his now-lukewarm toes onto Lan Zhan’s knee. “Thank you for letting me come over. Mom was kinda mean, but Huaisang picked up Jiang Cheng, and jie had to bring them to the airport. It would’ve been—hm. I don’t know. Thank you.”

“No need to say thank you,” Lan Zhan says softly. He tightens his arm around Wei Ying’s waist and pulls him closer, so that Wei Ying is halfway on top of him.

“Lan Zhan, I really like you,” Wei Ying says around a yawn. “I think you’re so neat. Also can you finger me when you wake up in the middle of the night.”

Lan Zhan presses a kiss to Wei Ying’s forehead. “If you are awake and sober.”

“You could do stuff to me when I’m sleeping, too. Sometimes. When I’m sober, I know.”

Lan Zhan quiets down a dozen images. After a minute, he manages, “sleep.”

“Wait, Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan. I seriously like you a lot. Could say in four different languages, if you want. Also why don’t we ever speak French together?”

“You say it is a colonial language that lacks practicality.”

“Oh, true, fuck, I hate the French. Almost more than I hate Britain, and you know I hate Britain. Lan Zhan, I have something really funny to say.”

Lan Zhan waits. After a few minutes, he looks down and sees Wei Ying’s eyelashes fluttering with sleep, and a gentle puff of relaxed breath hits his torso. Lan Zhan kisses the top of Wei Ying’s head and follows him into sleep. An evening like this. A lifetime.

Chapter Text

“Lan Zhan? Are you still there?”

Lan Zhan blinks out of his daydream to his professor waving at him, an amused smile on his face. “I apologize,” Lan Zhan says, blinking again in another attempt to focus on their meeting instead of thinking about how Wei Ying might look with a dildo down his throat while Lan Zhan fucks him. It is Wednesday, and despite Sunday’s half-promises, their schedules fly parallel, not yet intersecting this week. Lan Zhan hopes Wei Ying ate. Wei Ying has some catching up to do this week, and sometimes he gets caught up in his work and misses dinner, though he does often make up for it with a larger breakfast. Yesterday morning he texted Lan Zhan his and Jiang Cheng’s worrisome McDonald’s breakfast spread with several drooling emojis. Fruit? Lan Zhan texted him. Wei Ying replied, don’t ask me stupid questions. Lan Zhan misses him.

Lan Zhan looks down at his laptop, and opens his student roster. That clears his mind of everything but mild exasperation very quickly.

“All good,” Dr. Lee says. “It’s been a long week. Was just asking what you think of the quiz terms.”

“I think they’re fine,” says Lan Zhan. He gives another look over the emailed PDF. “I do not fully trust that they understand the significance of appeasement, but I will try to go over it on Friday.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Just email me if you think I should remove it. What might we exchange? I think comfort women could be a good one, but I don’t know how far I’ll get in the Pacific theater today.”

“Double V might be good,” Lan Zhan says. He wonders what Wei Ying is up to. He is likely not yet on campus. He TAs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and his seminar is not until the afternoon. Is he even awake? “Several students enjoyed the conversation on double consciousness last discussion.”

“Oh, seriously? I thought they were asleep the entire class. Well, I suppose we never know which strand of students we’re getting with this class.”

“I am enjoying it,” Lan Zhan offers. His professor smiles.

Lan Zhan is in his office after lecture, thankfully alone, and working on this week’s readings for his diaspora and displacements course, when there’s a scattered knock on his door. Lan Zhan freezes and tries not to breathe too loudly. His office hours ended ten minutes ago, and he does not have the mental or emotional energy to extend them any further, certainly not when his students only attend office hours in the week before a major assignment is due. The only possibility more jarring is if a colleague dared knocking on a closed door. Few people he likes are here around this time.

“Lan Zhaaaaan,” he hears behind the door.

Lan Zhan rises to open the door. “Wei Ying.”

We Ying grins and leans against the doorway. “Hey.” He glances around Lan Zhan and pretends to look downtrodden. “Yewande’s not here? Ah, that sucks, I only came here for her, you know.” He shrugs. “Well, guess I might as well—haha, Lan Zhan!!”

Lan Zhan pulls him into the office and shuts the door behind them. He muffles Wei Ying’s bright laughter with a kiss. Natural, already, to drift his hands down to Wei Ying’s waist, hold him close and bite his soft lips. Lan Zhan knows it’s poor form to kiss Wei Ying in his office when two other people and most admins have a key, but it feels good having Wei Ying like this. Lan Zhan wants to have him every way. Knowing he can and yet still hasn’t makes him frustrated, makes him deepen the kiss and press his tongue inside. His hands trail down to Wei Ying’s ass, the movement almost beyond him, and he squeezes under the curve until Wei Ying moans and wriggles upwards onto his grip.

“Okay, wait,” Wei Ying says, huffing out a soft laugh when he breaks the kiss. Lan Zhan drops his forehead on Wei Ying’s shoulder and catches his breath. “Not here, Lan Zhan, imagine if, like, Dobbs or someone gross walks by, can you even begin to imagine my shame? I saw him in the kitchen earlier, he could be standing in front of the door right now, sipping from that ugly veterans cup he has. You know he always tries to listen in on your conversations ‘cause he’s mad Lee got the World War II gig instead of him. Which, fuck, thank god, or it’d just be, what, thirteen weeks of British propaganda.”

“Please do not speak of him,” Lan Zhan says.

“Well, but you’re not getting hard anymore, right?” Lan Zhan reluctantly makes a noise of assent. “See? Hey, you wanna go get coffee with me? But in the cafe in the library? I’m gonna pick up some books. I’ll pay, my parents left us money.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. He grabs his keys and coat and follows Wei Ying to the elevators. “You are here early.”

With his hands buried in his jacket pocket, Wei Ying rocks back and forth on his heels. “Hm? Yeah, I gotta make up office hours since I was going crazy last week and missed everything. Plus my kids have an essay due next week. So I’m going until class starts.”

“Should you go to the library now?”

The elevator dings open, and they step on. There are a few other students in here, but no one that Lan Zhan recognizes, and the descent is fast. It’s cold when they step outside, and Wei Ying walks close by as they trek towards the library. “Lan Zhan, you and I both know no students will show up. Maybe one person will come the day before the essay is due. This chocolate croissant I’m imagining is, like, infinitely more reliable.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says.

“Also I hate my students,” Wei Ying adds. “Except for the ones I don’t hate.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. “History of science seminar today?”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying sighs. The line for coffee is short, and they place their orders quickly. A latte and croissant for Wei Ying and green tea for Lan Zhan. Wei Ying does pay, tongue poked out between his teeth as he holds his phone over the reader and waits for the payment to process. “Unfortunately. We’re reading some… fucking animal history book, which I think could be cool, except that most animal history dudes are all, what, convinced that animal history is the same thing as postcolonial histories. Like, oh, all the dirty third world people have books written about them now, so the natural transition is to write about animals. Isn’t that so fucked? That’s one of the books I’m getting from the library now, and I already know I’m gonna hate it, but I wanna know how much I’ll hate it.”

“Two hours before seminar?”

“And I’m still gonna have better analysis than anyone in the class,” Wei Ying says, which is true.

They make it to the far corner of the fifth floor before Lan Zhan pushes Wei Ying against the stacks and kisses him again. Still a bad idea, but at least no one is on this floor. Wei Ying’s mouth is sweet from the croissant, and Lan Zhan licks inside and wishes he was eating Wei Ying out.

“You’re insatiable,” Wei Ying grins. Lan Zhan cannot argue against that. “My gas bill’s fucked because I keep taking really long showers to clean myself out, as if we’re just gonna table in a quick fuck in a supply closet somewhere.”

Lan Zhan exhales and buries his face in Wei Ying’s neck. “We could.”

“You are out of your mind,” Wei Ying says. He sounds delighted. “Also I tried opening some random ones in the arts building earlier and they were all locked. Hey, can we count that as xenophobia? I’m thinking of filing it as a hate crime. Something about the exclusion act manifesting in daily life.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees vehemently.

“What if I told you I wanted to come over tonight?”

Lan Zhan thinks yes, asks, “are you caught up on reading?”

“Obviously not,” Wei Ying says. “But I’ve weighed the pros and cons, and you know it’s not like anyone ever catches up. Have you ever once been like, oh, things are going at an okay pace for me and I feel comfortable about my academic career? Okay, wait, maybe you have because half your dissertation is written, but some of us are still trying to figure out our topic.”

“Half is not written.”

“Sounds like someone who has half written would say,” Wei Ying says. “Lan Zhan, you didn’t answer my question.”

“What are the pros and cons?”

“The pros are you fucking me and being mean to me in bed. The cons were, hm, nothing important, just how I won’t be able to walk tomorrow because of how big you are. But some risks I am willing to take, so then I added that to the pros list. Are you convinced yet?”

Lan Zhan didn’t necessarily need convincing; he needed time to think through with his head and not his dick. He pulls back to look at Wei Ying. “We will study for two hours first.”

“Ughhhhhhhhhhhh,” Wei Ying groans, tipping his head back on the stacks. “Ugh!! I don’t know how to read!”

“Yet here you are at an ivy, in a doctoral program dedicated entirely to reading.”

“Fuck you,” Wei Ying says, patting Lan Zhan’s cheek. “Don’t be elitist scum.”

“I did not only apply to ivies,” Lan Zhan reminds him.

“Lan Zhan! It was above me! Mom would’ve been—you cannot even imagine, it’s bad enough that I’m in a useless major, imagine I couldn’t at least show my parents the paycheck I’m raking in right now. Wow. You’d use my greed and desire for blood money against me? We’re not all stupid rich, you capitalist bastard!!”

Lan Zhan’s mouth curls up. “I apologize.”

“No, it’s too late, I will never ever recover from this betrayal. Wow, it’s true that the final blow is always delivered by those closest to you, huh? To think I am breaching my contract and left office hours because you wanted green tea. I’m seriously so hurt. I don’t know how to get over this.” Wei Ying sniffs and covers his eyes, perhaps too wounded to even look at Lan Zhan. “You don’t even care to ask how to make it up to me.”

“How do I make it up to you?”

Wei Ying peeks out from behind his fingers. “By letting me come over tonight and not making me read.”

“Two hours,” Lan Zhan says.

“Half an hour,” Wei Ying says.

“Four hours,” Lan Zhan offers.

“An hour and a half,” Wei Ying says, narrowing his eyes.

“Five hours,” Lan Zhan says.

“You’re such an asshole, fine, two hours, are you happy? I’m starting to think you don’t even wanna fuck me. You don’t even care, you don’t even wanna know how tight I am.”

Wei Ying was right about the final blow coming from those closest to you. Lan Zhan is going to have a heart attack. His hands flex on Wei Ying’s hips. “Do want to know.”

Wei Ying curls his hands over Lan Zhan’s and moves them down to his ass. Lan Zhan’s breath hitches when Wei Ying presses down so that Lan Zhan squeezes. He looks up at Lan Zhan through his eyelashes. “One hour.”

Lan Zhan’s resolve wavers. He opens his mouth to repeat two hours before he loses all sense and takes Wei Ying in the library, but then Wei Ying leans in and flicks his tongue across Lan Zhan’s parted lips, and when Lan Zhan tries pulling him into a full kiss, Wei Ying pulls back.

“One hour,” Wei Ying murmurs against his mouth.

His collar feels hot. “One…” Lan Zhan clears his throat. “One and a half.”

Wei Ying grins. “Okay. I win.”

“We compromised,” Lan Zhan says.

“Nope, too late to save face, I won.” He pecks Lan Zhan on the mouth. “Should go back now.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says. Neither of them move.

“Lan Zhan, you have to let go of my ass now.”

“Then remove your hands,” says Lan Zhan.

“Ah…” Wei Ying blushes and uncurls his fingers over Lan Zhan’s. “Fine, I’ll call a draw.”

They worked through some of the details of Wei Ying’s limits and preferences on Monday morning after they woke up. Well, after Wei Ying woke up. Lan Zhan woke up at 5am and did his usual run to the gym, worked out, and ran back. He showered and got dressed before coaxing Wei Ying awake with ibuprofen and a glass of water, and made eggs and bacon for Wei Ying and a fruit smoothie for himself while Wei Ying showered. Over breakfast and on the drive to Wei Ying’s apartment, they spoke. When they got there, Wei Ying brought Lan Zhan upstairs and showed him his vibrator and laughed when Lan Zhan took Wei Ying’s laptop to order more associated paraphernalia. Paying fifteen dollars for two-day shipping from an adult site was worth it.

When Lan Zhan gets home, there are packages on his coffee table. There’s a signature receipt and note with Jin Zixuan’s hurried characters, you owe me big time!!!!!!

Thank you for signing them, Lan Zhan texts him.

Couldn’t you order from somewhere more discreet?????? The nightmare of me and the mailperson avoiding eye contact while I sign for idk knotting dildos are whatever crazy shit your boyfriend is into……………..nauseating.

Didn’t know a signature was necessary. Sorry.

🙄🙄🙄
Have fun, I am currently resting my head on yanli’s boobs tell bitch boy she said she loves my most
/me most, but it is true that she loves all of my attributes more than any of his

When Wei Ying comes over in the late afternoon, Lan Zhan shows him the texts and has to distract him with the primavera pasta and steak Lan Zhan kept warm in the oven before he calls Jin Zixuan to rant for the next few hours.

“Steak just for me, gege? You trying to wine and dine me?” Lan Zhan glances at Wei Ying’s glass of cola soda. “Okay, pop and dine me. Hey, what if we skipped the reading part and went straight to the toys?”

“You think we will use all of them tonight?”

Wei Ying peeks at him through his fork. “Um. Probably not?”

Lan Zhan takes a drink from his water and looks at Wei Ying from above the glass. “Hm.”

Lan Zhan sits on the ottoman at the foot of his bed with his legs spread and Wei Ying in between. He takes a mental deep breath and runs his palms up the back of Wei Ying’s thighs. He looks up. “Safeword?”

“Green to continue, yellow to pause and recalibrate, red to stop. Same thing for you.” Wei Ying braces his hands on Lan Zhan’s shoulders. “We’re just… this is just to feel good, right? Nothing heavy tonight?”

“That is subjective,” Lan Zhan says. “Do you want to know my plan?”

Wei Ying shakes his head. “Nah, I still want the element of surprise part, but… this time, can you just tell me as we go along?” Lan Zhan nods. “This is fine, right? You want… this. Right? It’s chill if you don’t, but, haha, Lan Zhan, but you should tell me now. If you don’t want—this.”

Lan Zhan curls his fingers over the back of Wei Ying’s knee and tries to transmit as much sincerity as he can in his voice when he says, “I want this. Want you.”

Wei Ying grins, smaller than his usual, a little lopsided, but still the brightest thing in the universe. “Who would’ve known you’d be a romantic.”

“Anything for you,” Lan Zhan says.

Wei Ying flushes bright and covers his face with his hands before turning away from Lan Zhan. “Ah, you can’t say stuff like that, come on.”

“Look at me,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying looks at him. His eyes are so bright. Nervous. “Will you…” He remembers Wei Ying’s previous assent when Lan Zhan called him a pet name, and his voice is sure when he asks, “will you take your clothes off for me, baby?” If Wei Ying likes it, there is no reason for Lan Zhan to feel hesitant or juvenile.

“Don’t you wanna take them off me yourself?”

“I do,” says Lan Zhan, “but I want to watch you more.”

Wei Ying reacts so beautifully to praise or affirmation. He is performative in a lot of scenarios, always mindful of expectations and potential outcomes even—especially—when he chooses to ignore them. But when Lan Zhan has him like this… Lan Zhan looks up at him and tells him he is beautiful; Lan Zhan thanks him for stripping and presses a soft kiss to his jutting hip bone, and the soft tint spreading across Wei Ying’s skin is honest and bare. Lan Zhan kisses the long scar on Wei Ying’s thigh from his car accident their first semester. He kisses long-stitched skin around his knee from a childhood break. He turns him around and kisses a thin whip mark that Lan Zhan suspects is from childhood, too. He kisses Wei Ying right above his ass, and Wei Ying exhales and tries to arch back. Lan Zhan holds him still, and practices more patience than he possesses.

Lan Zhan kisses him until Wei Ying’s breathing picks up and he’s squirming from anticipation, knees, thighs, hip, spine, the knuckles of Wei Ying’s pretty hands, and then Lan Zhan pulls back.

“I am going to get something from the bathroom. Can you get on the bed and wait for me?” He stands and steps around Wei Ying, careful not to touch him now. “On your stomach.”

“Yes,” Wei Ying says.

Lan Zhan takes his time in the bathroom. He cleaned and sanitized the toys earlier, and they are dry and charged by now. Not much to do. Still, he lingers. He makes sure that the batteries and USBs work. He tests the vibrations against his palm, and decides which one he will use on Wei Ying. Not knowing, he has learned, matters almost as much as the gratification for some subs. Brats prod and disobey because they want a reaction, and they like it best when it’s a reaction they could never expect, or an expectation they never thought they would get. Wei Ying is being very good, but he can be impatient, and Lan Zhan wants to push him further. See how good Wei Ying can be. How good he’s willing to be.

He returns to the room with only one toy.

Wei Ying is on his stomach like Lan Zhan ordered, head buried into a pillow until Wei Ying turns into his cheek to watch Lan Zhan’s. His cheeks are flushed red. When Lan Zhan gets to the edge of the bed, Wei Ying bites his bottom lip and moves like he’s going to sit up, one knee rising in preparation.

Lan Zhan gently presses a hand to his shoulders, and forces him back to the bed. Wei Ying muffles a shocked sound into the pillow.

Something about Wei Ying’s arms is wrong.

“Did you touch yourself?” Lan Zhan asks. He walks around to the other side of his bed to retrieve his lube from his nightstand and feels Wei Ying watch him.

“Is that a trick question? You didn’t say I couldn’t.”

Lan Zhan stands at the side of the bed with lubricant and a curved vibrator in one hand and looks down at Wei Ying. “Didn’t say you could.”

Wei Ying’s mouth parts. “I didn’t.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says.

“I wanted to,” Wei Ying says. “But I didn’t.”

Lan Zhan is trying to be patient, but it is so easy to lean down and tilt Wei Ying up by the neck and kiss him hard, let him feel how much Lan Zhan wants him even in the midst of this torturous play. “Good boy,” he murmurs. A few times, Wei Ying has said good boy in their regular life, often with a little pat on Lan Zhan’s face and a smile when he’s half asleep and clinging to Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan feels a warm amusement in his chest that makes him pull Wei Ying closer. Wei Ying’s reaction to Lan Zhan is… different. Gratifying. He whimpers into the kiss and angles as far up into Lan Zhan’s hold as he can without lifting up again.

Lan Zhan places the vibrator beside the pillow where Wei Ying can see it and kneels behind him on the bed after placing a pillow under his hips. “I’m going to finger you,” Lan Zhan says, eyes fixated on the arched curve of Wei Ying’s ass. Lan Zhan finds it difficult to breathe when he palms Wei Ying with one hand and spreads him apart, open enough that Lan Zhan can see his hole and how it tightens in the cold air.

“Okay,” Wei Ying mumbles into the pillow.

Lan Zhan uncaps the lube with his thumb and brings the bottle close so that he can drizzle it down Wei Ying’s crease. Wei Ying squirms as it slides down to his hole, but Lan Zhan holds him in place and watches, transfixed, as it dips around, as it drips onto Wei Ying’s balls and onto the pillow. Fuck, he thinks. Fuck. He feels the sort of—hazy elation of his first time when he slicks his middle finger with the dripping wet down Wei Ying’s crease and presses it inside.

Almost immediately, Wei Ying says, “another.”

Lan Zhan ignores him and leans closer in so that he can watch his finger sink in and out with slow movements. “Lan Zhan, add another,” Wei Ying says. Demands. Lan Zhan’s eyebrow twitches. He tightens his grip on Wei Ying’s ass until he yelps from the pain and tries to wriggle away. Lan Zhan wants so badly to slap him still, but Wei Ying is not ready for that and wants to settle into this before they go there. That is fine. Lan Zhan has other methods.

Lan Zhan adds a second finger like Wei Ying wanted, and then immediately adds a third when Wei Ying is still squeezing around the two to adjust. All the way to the last knuckle.

“Lan Zhan! That’s—” He cuts himself off with a moan when Lan Zhan curls his fingers inside, rubbing them against the soft ridges inside. Another angle and Wei Ying cries out and arches his ass high up so that Lan Zhan’s fingers press impossibly deeper. He’s so tight that Lan Zhan’s fingers almost cramp when he scissors them to open Wei Ying up. Lan Zhan thinks he hasn’t taken a breath this entire time. He surely cannot blink, not when that will keep him from seeing Wei Ying stretched raw and pretty around his fingers.

“Lan Zhan, it’s too much, why did you, that was too fast, it hurts, that hurts,” Wei Ying whines, muffled by the pillow. Lan Zhan ignores him. Lan Zhan may be losing his mind, but Wei Ying may be the tightest person he’s ever fucked, his hole small and burning hot around Lan Zhan’s fingers. Makes Lan Zhan’s fingers feel three times larger than they are. When Wei Ying squeezes around the stretch, Lan Zhan’s cock throbs in his cotton shorts, painful with how desperately he needs to be inside Wei Ying. Virgin tight. That’s how small Wei Ying feels.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying starts, but Lan Zhan cuts him off by spreading his fingers as wide as they will go and rubbing a fourth finger along Wei Ying’s shiny and pink rim. “Lan Zhan! You can’t—that’s way too much, that’s too fast, I can’t take that so soon!”

“Color?” Lan Zhan asks.

Wei Ying whines, but all he says is, “you’re gonna rip me apart, you should at least add more lube, it hurts so much, it hurts a lot, I can’t take it, seriously I can’t, I really—”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says.

Wei Ying stops talking.

“I do not like to ask twice,” Lan Zhan says.

Wei Ying makes a weak sound, almost inaudible, clearly very overwhelmed. Not enough, Lan Zhan thinks. Not enough. If Lan Zhan’s sub can still string more than two words together, then they are not yet where Lan Zhan wants them. Wei Ying is the only one Lan Zhan will ever want again, and Lan Zhan wants to fuck Wei Ying until he cries. He will. “Green,” he says.

“You asked for another,” Lan Zhan says. He spreads Wei Ying further apart and watches him stretch around a fourth finger. “Should not speak out of turn.”

“It hurts,” Wei Ying whimpers into the pillow. His voice is so soft and sweet. “Lan Zhan, gege, it hurts.” Lan Zhan pulls back and then twists his fingers hard into Wei Ying. He’s moved steadily closer to Wei Ying’s ass, and it is exhilarating to see so closely how Wei Ying’s hole clenches down around Lan Zhan’s fingers, so desperate to pull it in even if, as he claims, it is painful. “Lan Zhan, please, it hurts.”

“Do you need to safeword?” Lan Zhan asks. Lan Zhan does not believe he does, but for this first time, he wants to ingrain it in Wei Ying that he always has the option, and remind him that those are his only options. In the future, Lan Zhan will likely ignore all pleas that are not a safeword. Wei Ying muffles something into the pillow that sounds like no. Lan Zhan is not positive, so he stops spreading his fingers out. “What was that?”

“No,” Wei Ying says louder. Lan Zhan cannot look away from Wei Ying’s hole long enough to check, but he supposes Wei Ying turned onto his cheek.

“I already said I do not like repeating myself,” Lan Zhan says. “Speak clearly when you are spoken to.”

“It’s embarrassing! You have to know it’s embarrassing, it’s humiliating, I can’t even believe how mean you are!”

Surely, Wei Ying will figure out soon that Lan Zhan presses him precisely because of how humiliating it is. Lan Zhan almost smiles. “Pass me the vibrator.”

Wei Ying’s breath catches, so loud Lan Zhan hears it despite the pillow and distance. “Lan Zhan—“

Lan Zhan sighs. “Do you not want to be good?”

Wei Ying lets out a small and broken noise, and the pleasure of hearing it sinks under Lan Zhan’s bones. “I do,” he breathes, almost devastated, and scrambles to give Lan Zhan the vibrator Lan Zhan has seen him turn his head to a number of times. “I do, Lan Zhan I do, I wanna be good for you.”

“Mn.” Lan Zhan slowly removes his fingers and drizzles a little lube onto the vibrator. He presses the small button at the base so that it turns on, a slow thrum interrupted by three fast pulses. “I am not sure.” It is just a plain purple rabbit, not much different than the one Wei Ying already owns, smooth and curved, but it has more vibration settings and remote access, and Wei Ying said it’s bigger, too, although Lan Zhan thought the toy looked average. Smaller than Lan Zhan, but average; Wei Ying said Lan Zhan’s perception was wildly skewed by his own dick.

“I do—oh, oh my god, oh my god,” Wei Ying gasps. He jolts when Lan Zhan fucks all of the pulsing vibrator inside at once and then jolts again with a wild moan when Lan Zhan bites down at the fleshiest part of his ass, hard.

“I’m going to bite you,” Lan Zhan says. “Color?”

“Green,” Wei Ying says quickly, even as he squirms and tries to free himself from the vibrator. At the same time, Lan Zhan watches his hole pull it in even deeper, until the stop pulls at his rim. “Green, a thousand times green, Lan Zhan, Zhan-ge, please fuck me.”

Lan Zhan does not fuck him yet. “Stay still,” he tells him, and shoves the vibrator further in with his thumb. He’s thought all day about how perfect it will feel to taste and watch Wei Ying’s ass bruise and swell under his teeth, and this is better than his mind’s eye could ever conjure. He digs his teeth into Wei Ying’s flesh and burns with desire when Wei Ying cries out from the pain. Lan Zhan could do this for hours and never tire of it.

Lan Zhan takes his time. He sucks on the skin between Wei Ying’s ass and thighs, deep lines across until Wei Ying will feel the ache of it every time he sits, even if he attempts to arch away from the softest and more sensitive bruises. He nips close to Wei Ying’s crease and tightens his hands on the back of Wei Ying’s knees when Wei Ying moans and tries wriggling so that Lan Zhan moves closer to his rim. Lan Zhan does not move closer. Lan Zhan, Wei Ying will learn soon, does not take orders from brats who do not stay still when Lan Zhan tells them to. Lan Zhan pinches his thigh, hard, and pinches again when Wei Ying yelps and tries moving away. Wei Ying has the best voice in the entire world.

He is so loud in his pleasure, babbles through Lan Zhan’s name and moans and pleads for Lan Zhan to fuck him, to turn the vibrator off, to move it away from that sensitive spot inside. Lan Zhan pushes the button onto the next setting, one where the sharp pulses are ceaseless. Wei Ying grunts with the shock and then shakes around a wanton moan when Lan Zhan stretches him apart wider and nips at his rim, indents of his canines that likely hurt, paired with the vibrator. Wei Ying’s hole is already swollen; Lan Zhan works around the metal stop to make sure it will remain puffy for hours after.

“Take it out,” Wei Ying demands. “Take it out, take it out now, Lan Zhan, take it out now.”

Lan Zhan licks a broad swipe down Wei Ying’s crease and then glances up at him. “Do you need to safeword?”

“Take it out!"

“Do you need to safeword?”

Wei Ying whines with frustration and kicks his leg out. Lan Zhan ignores the urge to slap it back down. “No.”

“Are you sure?” Lan Zhan asks. “I will stop if you want me to.”

Wei Ying hides his face in the pillow. The back of his neck is flushed bright, and his shoulders are tense. “I’m sure.”

“Then I will not take it out,” Lan Zhan says. He sucks roughly on the lower curve of Wei Ying’s ass until it stains red.

“You’re so mean,” Wei Ying says, frustrated and desperate, “you’re so mean to me and you don’t even care, you’re so—ah! Lan Zhan!” Lan Zhan switches to the next setting, and this is even louder than the previous. The site was incorrect about the toy’s silence, so Lan Zhan knows he cannot make Wei Ying wear this in public, but it is good for private play, and Wei Ying’s sounds drown out much of it, even when Lan Zhan is this close. “Oh, please, I’m gonna come, I’m so close, I’m,” until another sudden push in cuts him off. Lan Zhan watches with hooded eyes the way Wei Ying’s hole clenches as he grinds down on the pillow, his moans getting higher in pitch with every passing second, and then Lan Zhan abruptly pulls the pillow out from under Wei Ying’s hips. “What! Lan Zhan!”

Lan Zhan reaches under Wei Ying and tightens his hand around the base of Wei Ying’s cock. He should’ve used the cock ring, too, but he did not want to rush Wei Ying with two toys their first time. “Do not come until I am in you.” He pushes Wei Ying’s hips up when his knees start to slide down. “Hold them.”

Wei Ying shivers. “You—you’re going to fuck me?” he asks, breathy, sweet and wanting.

Lan Zhan is. Lan Zhan bites his teeth with the need to. Wei Ying is stretched and wet and begging for Lan Zhan to fuck him, and Lan Zhan has been patient enough. He can wait no longer. There is no need for him to wait any longer.

When he has his cock pressed to Wei Ying’s hole, the vibrator off and put aside, he asks, “still okay not to use a condom?” They texted each other their most recent tests earlier this week, Wei Ying’s three weeks prior and Lan Zhan’s last month, and neither has slept with anyone else in a long while. This is—not an insignificant decision, not for Lan Zhan who’s never fucked without a condom before no matter how much he wanted to, and certainly not for Wei Ying, and Lan Zhan wants to ensure that Wei Ying did not change his mind. Fine if he did, but Lan Zhan must know.

“Yes,” Wei Ying says. Lan Zhan watches himself push into Wei Ying’s body and holds his breath when Wei Ying almost immediately starts whining. Wei Ying stretches out further around him and the sight makes Lan Zhan pulse out precome even before he’s halfway into Wei Ying. “Yes, yes, oh fuck, oh fuck, yes, oh fuck, oh my god,” Wei Ying babbles. He is so tight. Lan Zhan almost thinks he cannot fit inside Wei Ying, he’s so small and tight even after all the prep, even as he pushes further in and watches Wei Ying take all of him in despite the probable ache.

“Please, please,” Wei Ying says, “please.” Lan Zhan takes in a heavy breath. He pulls out part way and then shoves back in with a rough slap of his hips. Wei Ying keens and claws his hands into the bedsheets, head pressed deep into the white pillowcase damp from his drool and tears.

Lan Zhan cannot stop fixating on how tight Wei Ying remains even as Lan Zhan fucks him rough and hard. He is—Lan Zhan never thought the complaints about condom use were ever as relevant as some people make it out to be, but maybe because this is Wei Ying, definitely because this is Wei Ying, he never wants to use one ever again. Wei Ying is so hot around him, scorching warmth that drives Lan Zhan faster to orgasm than ever before. Lan Zhan wants to come deep inside of Wei Ying and watch it spill out of him. He wants to put him on his back and elevate his hips and come in him over and over again until Wei Ying’s stomach swells with it, until there’s yet another physical reminder of how much he fucked and gave to Wei Ying. Wants Wei Ying to press down on his soft stomach and feel on both ends where Lan Zhan’s seed rests inside of him.

He takes a deep breath and fucks Wei Ying harder.

Wei Ying sobs wetly into the pillow and arches his back lower, trying so hard to press his ass back so he can pull Lan Zhan deeper inside, deeper than should be possible. “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, you feel—Lan Zhan, you feel so good, I never want you to leave, I can’t believe we haven’t been doing this the entire time, I want you inside of me all the time, wanna wake up and fall asleep with your fat cock inside of me, I don’t want anything else ever again—god. Fuck, yes, Lan Zhan, fuck me, fuck me harder, all I ever want is to be fucked by you,” and a dozen of his prettiest mindless and wanting noises.

“Wei Ying,” he says. He feels feral. He feels undone. He feels cruel with how badly he wants to tear Wei Ying apart and force a permanent place for himself inside Wei Ying’s soft and vulnerable flesh, and he does not feel bad about this cruelty at all. Wei Ying’s ass is mottled by bruises and deep red indentations of teeth too sharp, and Lan Zhan only regrets that he did not bite longer, harder. To think Wei Ying wants this, too; to think that Wei Ying lies there and takes the evidence of Lan Zhan’s cruelty and wants it. To think Wei Ying wants this. Lan Zhan wants to sink his teeth deep inside and never take them out. “Baby,” he says.

Wei Ying whimpers and tightens down hard around Lan Zhan’s cock. “I am,” Wei Ying gasps, “I am, I am your baby, Lan Zhan, Zhan-ge, sweetheart, I’m yours, you can do anything you want to me, Lan Zhan, you can use me however you want, I’ll take all of it. I’ll take anything you do to me.”

Lan Zhan’s chest rattles. “Do not… do not make promises you cannot keep,” he says, rough and nearly unhinged.

Lan Zhan slicked himself up before fucking in, so Wei Ying is more than wet enough, the slide sweet and easy as he takes all of Lan Zhan’s cock, but Lan Zhan is overcome by the image of… He imagines if he did not slick himself up, if he pressed in almost dry and kept pressing in when Wei Ying cried out and sobbed from the pain. Fuck, he’s going to come. Yours, Wei Ying said. Lan Zhan wants to possess all of him.

Wei Ying thrashes on the bed, either in motion or rambling through his pleasure. Lan Zhan is in love with him. “Please let me come, I wanna come so bad, I’ve been good, right? I was good, right, Lan Zhan, can I come? Please. Gege, please.”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. He leans over Wei Ying’s body and lets his hips lose their steadiness, more focused on fucking in faster where Wei Ying begs for it. He pants against Wei Ying’s shoulder and palms Wei Ying’s hips to hold him in place and makes sure he takes the last of what Lan Zhan gives him. “So good. Such a good boy. Come for me.”

Lan Zhan wishes he turned them over so he could see Wei Ying’s pretty face as he comes apart, but his sounds are beautiful, too, almost silent, nothing more than soft and breathy gasps as he collapses onto his stomach on the bed, hardly audible from the pillow. Lan Zhan follows him down and doesn’t slow down the harsh motion of his hips.

In Lan Zhan's original plan, he kept Wei Ying on the edge longer, until Wei Ying couldn’t speak anything but his safewords, but it was difficult to spend so long without being inside of Wei Ying. He does not regret it, not as he pants into Wei Ying’s ear and is driven to orgasm by his soft tightness. He bites down on Wei Ying’s neck as he spills inside, pressed as deep in as he can go, pulse after pulse of hot seed fucked raw into Wei Ying’s wanting body, and never wants anybody else ever again.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying mumbles, curled into Lan Zhan’s side. Lan Zhan keeps stroking his hair and hums to let Wei Ying know he’s listening. He must be conscious of responding to everything when Wei Ying is still coming down, so that Wei Ying knows at every level that he has Lan Zhan’s attention and full presence. When Lan Zhan cleaned him up, he kept whining, look at me, Lan Zhan, look at me, even when it was inconvenient, like when Lan Zhan was applying salve onto Wei Ying’s bruised ass. Lan Zhan turned him over and angled his hips up with one hand to avoid more soreness, and made sure Wei Ying knew he had no intention of ever looking away.

“You’re so nice to me,” Wei Ying says, curling closer, a soft reversal of his earlier words. “Make me feel so good.”

“You are good,” Lan Zhan murmurs.

“Am good,” Wei Ying says. Dreamy, out of it. “You liked it? It was—good for you, too?”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. “Yes.” This is Wei Ying’s fifth time asking him that question, but Lan Zhan will never tire of reassuring him. There is nothing more on this earth he could want.

“Okay, good,” Wei Ying says. He yawns. “That’s… I’m glad. Lan Zhan?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says.

“Thank you,” Wei Ying whispers. “Feel really good. Feel happy.” He yawns again and presses his cold nose to Lan Zhan’s neck. “Goodnight. See you tomorrow.”

Lan Zhan kisses the top of his head. “See you tomorrow, Wei Ying.”

Chapter Text

Thursdays hold less routine than most of the week. Lan Zhan does not enjoy indolence, so he attempts to accomplish as much as he can through the day; Wei Ying calls him irresponsible and unhinged for doing anything other than sleeping and watching bad television on his full day off. Lan Zhan prefers films over television, so sometimes he goes to the theater with Jin Zixuan or by himself on these Thursdays, but there is contentment in action.

It is nice, though, that today he can take his morning routine slowly. When he awakes, he stays in bed and continues the electronic monograph on Chinese migrant workers and racialized experiences in the States that he is reading for leisure this week on his iPad. Wei Ying read it during winter break on recommendation of his empire field advisor, and he texted Lan Zhan increasingly lengthy excerpts as he did. Before he reached the halfway mark, he told Lan Zhan he either had to read it or block his number. Lan Zhan is glad he did not block Wei Ying’s number.

6am, Wei Ying shifts on top of him. Lan Zhan adjusts his arm and pauses reading when Wei Ying mumbles something into his chest. “Mn?” He makes out hungry and pee, but Wei Ying does not bother with eloquence this early in the morning.

Lan Zhan convinces him to go to the bathroom, but when he comes back and collapses onto the bed, he ignores Lan Zhan’s suggestions for breakfast. “Spoon me,” he says, so Lan Zhan spoons him. “No phone,” he complains. “Day hasn’t even started, boo, phone away.” Wei Ying texted him at 6am regularly during the summer, although this was usually the end of his day instead of the start. Lan Zhan loves him, so he puts his iPad away and does not mention this.

Lan Zhan suspects Wei Ying had ulterior motives when he wakes up for the second time to Wei Ying grinding back onto his dick and sucking on two of Lan Zhan’s fingers. “Wei Ying,” he manages, voice hoarse. He clears his throat. “You are awake.”

“‘M bored,” Wei Ying says, biting down lightly on Lan Zhan’s nails.

“You are not in pain?”

“Isn’t that the point?”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. His ears burn; he doesn’t know which response he wants more.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says. He rests Lan Zhan’s fingers on his bottom lip, and Lan Zhan feels the soft movements of his mouth. “Ugh, I mean, not in a bad way? I’m just sore. The ointment seriously helped a lot, thank you for putting it on for me.” He pauses, but Lan Zhan feels where his mouth is still parted. Lan Zhan pushes his fingers down until Wei Ying’s mouth opens wider, a little saliva warming his dried fingers. “Sorry for being so annoying while you were putting it. I mean, most stuff goes hazy when I go, uh, under, but I guess my brain wanted maximum embarrassment effect this morning so I remember that part really well. So. Sorry.”

Lan Zhan rearranges their positions so that Wei Ying can see his eyes, Wei Ying on his back and Lan Zhan kneeling between his spread legs. “You were not annoying. Nothing to apologize for.”

“I was at least a little annoying,” Wei Ying says. “Like, super clingy. Second hand embarrassment for past me’s clinginess.”

“I like it,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying closes his eyes. Lan Zhan leans in and presses a soft kiss to his mouth, and then another one, slow and deep as Wei Ying’s mouth parts. He lets himself drop more of his weight onto Wei Ying’s body, and they press together at chest and hip, Lan Zhan’s cock hardening against Wei Ying’s thigh. Wei Ying arches up until his cock rubs against Lan Zhan’s torso. Lan Zhan pulls back from the kiss. “Wei Ying. I like it.”

Wei Ying’s cheeks are pink when he looks up at Lan Zhan, eyes wide and bright. He is so pretty, Lan Zhan thinks. There has never been anyone else. There will never be anyone else. “Really?”

Lan Zhan nods and kisses him at the corner of his mouth. “Like it a lot.” He kisses Wei Ying’s temple. “You can be as clingy as you want, with me. I like all of you.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says. He licks his lips. “Lan Zhan.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan murmurs. He cradles Wei Ying’s jaw, presses close, and kisses him again.

When they pull apart, as Lan Zhan mouths down Wei Ying’s jaw and neck, Wei Ying says, “so I have a plan for this morning.” Lan Zhan kisses below his ear and waits for him to continue. “So I have lecture at ten, right? It’s six something, I think let’s give it twenty minutes for you to fuck me and then time to clean up and shower, I can get dressed here, gonna wear my jeans from yesterday and steal a shirt from you, uh, fuck,” Wei Ying breathes, cut off when Lan Zhan digs his teeth into his Adam’s apple. “Lan Zhan, focus!”

Lan Zhan digs his teeth in a little harder, and doesn’t stop working against the skin until Wei Ying moans and arches up into the touch. “Twenty minutes?”

“Why do you sound so displeased about that?” Wei Ying teases. “Is that too much? You don’t think you can even last that long?”

Lan Zhan narrows his eyes and holds himself up on his elbows so he can look into Wei Ying’s dark grey eyes. “Do not joke.”

“Zhan-gege, sweetheart, you know you’re the only man for me even if you come quick.”

“Not funny,” Lan Zhan says.

“Yeah, but I laughed,” says Wei Ying.

“Am glad you will be a professor and not a comedian,” says Lan Zhan. He leans over to grab the lube from his bedside drawer, and hides a smile when Wei Ying nips beneath his armpit.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying laughs, warm and happy. “You’re so mean.”

“Can be meaner,” Lan Zhan murmurs, and holds one of Wei Ying’s knees up with his hand as the other guides his slicked-up cock back inside of Wei Ying’s body. Still so tight, even after Lan Zhan fucked him wet and open last night, even with the tacky stickiness from Lan Zhan’s come still warming him inside.

Wei Ying moans softly when Lan Zhan presses all the way in, and wraps his other leg around Lan Zhan’s waist. “Mm, Lan Zhan,” he sighs. He tilts his face up until Lan Zhan presses down to kiss him again, licking inside his pretty mouth as Lan Zhan’s thrusts gain force.

For all the talk, it is not a very mean fuck. Lan Zhan fucks into Wei Ying with deep and considered movements, hard enough every time that Wei Ying moves up the bed with the force, his hair fanned out on the pillow, overwhelmed noises falling from his mouth like praise. Each time, Lan Zhan pulls him back down with a grip on his soft inner thigh. It feels incredible inside of him.

“Hngh, god,” Wei Ying whines, bringing a hand up to cover his face when Lan Zhan repositions their legs so that he can press in deeper. He’s still learning Wei Ying’s body, but when Lan Zhan pushes Wei Ying’s thighs higher and fucks up, he shakes beneath Lan Zhan and cries out. Lan Zhan shoves in harder, and Wei Ying’s hands drop to clutch at Lan Zhan’s back, nails digging in deep when Lan Zhan fucks him harder. “Mmhph, ge, please,” mindless little words that don’t connect into sentences but still tell Lan Zhan all he needs to know. This learning, as all others, is a process.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, wait, I’m gonna come, if you keep—there, I’m—” Lan Zhan doesn’t hear how his sentence ends. Wei Ying cuts himself off with a whimper when Lan Zhan ignores his pleas and pushes in faster against what must be his prostate, with how loud Wei Ying’s gotten and how much he’s squirming beneath Lan Zhan.

“You will come this fast?” Lan Zhan asks him, sucking his teeth into Wei Ying’s clavicle. He spreads Wei Ying’s legs wider and almost smiles at the line of swears forced out of Wei Ying. “Are you not embarrassed?”

“Oh, fuck y—oh!” Lan Zhan sits back on his haunches and pulls Wei Ying up with him without pulling out, so that Wei Ying is braced on his lap, knees raised high on Lan Zhan’s sides. Wei Ying fumbles to get his arms around Lan Zhan’s neck, although Lan Zhan is almost insulted Wei Ying thinks Lan Zhan’s grip was ever unsure. When Lan Zhan has Wei Ying in his arms, he is never anything less than a sure thing.

“Hands off,” Lan Zhan says.

Lan Zhan spreads his knees and thrusts up into Wei Ying so hard that he jostles. When Wei Ying parts his lips and looks like he has more to say, Lan Zhan fucks up harder, one hand spanned over Wei Ying’s back and the other tightly gripping the flesh of his ass. “Lan Zhan, I’m gonna fall,” Wei Ying complains.

“You will not,” Lan Zhan says. He bites down on Wei Ying’s shoulder and sucks harshly on his soft and flushed skin until it bruises, sharp pink against the rose of Wei Ying’s flesh. “Hands off.” Wei Ying reluctantly removes his hands. He flails for a heartbeat before realizing, perhaps, that Lan Zhan does have hold of him.

“Hnnngh,” Wei Ying says eloquently, and clenches tight around Lan Zhan’s cock when Lan Zhan continues shoving up harshly into him. Lan Zhan trails his mouth down to Wei Ying’s nipples and sucks softly, just for a few seconds, but just that makes Wei Ying cry out and spurt out onto his torso, so hot and tight as he comes that Lan Zhan has to put more force to fuck deep into Wei Ying’s body.

Lan Zhan removes his grip on Wei Ying’s ass to stroke him through the last pulses of his orgasm, and keeps stroking even when Wei Ying stops coming. Wei Ying makes soft fucked-out noises and squirms on Lan Zhan’s lap, babbling, “wait, hah, it hurts, Lan Zhan, too much,” so Lan Zhan decides to spare him just this time, since he was so good last night. Not a burden to have his hand back on Wei Ying’s ass.

Lan Zhan enjoys the weight of Wei Ying in his arms; how easy it is to keep him held up and held in place for how Lan Zhan wants to fuck him. Wei Ying is a healthy adult man, but so light and easy to carry for Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan would be dishonest to claim he does not like this very much. Lan Zhan will try fucking him while standing up, next time. He anticipates enjoying that, too.

Lan Zhan lets Wei Ying slump forward onto his chest. He continues shoving up into him, heavy pants of breath into Wei Ying’s ear, and cannot help from groaning softly when Wei Ying continues tightening around him from the sensitive shock after his orgasm. “God,” Wei Ying breathes, “your voice is so fucking hot, it’s so deep, Lan Zhan, ah, I love when you talk, makes me so, so hard.” Lan Zhan grunts and bites down on the thin skin under Wei Ying’s ear and moves faster inside of him when Wei Ying moans, soft and long. Lan Zhan regrets not eating him out last night or this morning. He will soon.

Wei Ying peppers kisses over his neck and shoulders and begs Lan Zhan to come in him. Lan Zhan fucks faster into him, tries to press himself deeper inside than is possible. “Please come in me, Lan Zhan. Want, I want you to fill me up, want you to get me wet again deep inside. Will you? Please.” He turns his face to kiss Lan Zhan’s mouth, and it is this, how sweet and overwhelmed and wanting Wei Ying is, that carries Lan Zhan through his orgasm.

In the end, Lan Zhan fucks Wei Ying long enough that they must order breakfast instead of making food. Lan Zhan tries not to look so smug.

From the passenger’s side, the crinkle of Wei Ying unwrapping his breakfast sandwich. “Are you smiling? Are you—are you smirking??”

Lan Zhan relaxes his face. “I am not.”

“It’s not like we kept time,” Wei Ying says. He pauses. “Lan Zhan, did you keep time? Counting down every minute you spent fucking me just to prove a point?”

“I did not,” Lan Zhan says.

“Uh huh,” Wei Ying says, unconvinced and amused.

“Cannot think about anything else when I am inside of you,” Lan Zhan says with easy honesty. Wei Ying sputters out half-words, is bright red when Lan Zhan glances over at a red light, and does not say anything for the remainder of the ride to campus.

Most of the remainder. At the intersection before the architecture building where Wei Ying’s history of gender, race, and medicine course is, he asks, “what are you doing today?”

“Tutoring,” Lan Zhan says. He turns onto the driveway nearest to Wei Ying’s classroom and parks the car under a tree. ”I will lesson prep and finish my reading for the week.”

Wei Ying takes a loud sip from his iced coffee. “Ugh, it’s so sexy how you just say you’ll do things without adding five qualifiers, what is life like living with a Capricorn moon?” Before Lan Zhan can parse through that sentence, Wei Ying continues, “don’t you have symphony tonight? Since it was rescheduled, right? Or am I making this up?”

“You are not making it up,” Lan Zhan says. “Three hours today, until 8:30.”

“Ughhhhhhhh,” Wei Ying says. “Hey, what if you just quit symphony and come over to mine to fuck me instead?”

“Concert on Saturday,” Lan Zhan reminds him.

“I think we should live in the present,” Wei Ying says. “Why worry about two days from now when we can focus on the instant gratification of fucking me to sleep tonight?”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says.

“So you agree to quit?”

Lan Zhan leans over the console to kiss Wei Ying on the temple. “I will see you tomorrow,” Lan Zhan responds.

“Are you serious!! Lan Zhan!”

“I apologize,” Lan Zhan says, mouth tilting up a little. “Baby.” He watches Wei Ying visibly soften, and suppresses huffing out a laugh.

Lan Zhan shushes him with a proper kiss when Wei Ying grumbles about unfair tactics and manipulated data, and then he drives away to the language center, and misses Wei Ying.

There is contentment in activity. Most Thursdays, he tutors Chinese at the language center for a few hours. He began volunteering his first semester here, when he was organizing a worthwhile and well-paced schedule beyond curriculum necessities. Wei Ying and Jin Zixuan join him some semesters. Nie Huaisang is usually here.

“Oh, Zhan-ge, thank god, I almost thought you had this week off, too,” Nie Huaisang says when Lan Zhan reaches the third floor and begins unpacking his belongings. “All everyone cared about last Thursday was where you were.”

“I apologize for the distraction,” Lan Zhan says. He sits at the study table nearest Huaisang, and passes him one of the granola bars he brings for his Thursday students. This morning, before picking up breakfast at Wei Ying’s preferred coffeeshop, Lan Zhan stopped by the grocery store to purchase pre-made sandwiches. The granola and sports drinks he keeps in his car during the winter months. Once, his first semester, he overheard several students complaining about the meal plan fees, and the difficulty of eating regularly when they cancel them. He began bringing food when he tutored, and it was easy to coordinate with the other language tutors throughout the week to keep the small kitchenette here stocked. He keeps extra supply in the trunk of his car for when they run out; sandwiches are replaced daily, and students leave with spares to avoid waste. It expanded beyond just his students quickly, and people regularly come into the language center just to take a meal. Lan Zhan pays for most. Jin Zixuan helps out sometimes, but he is forgetful. Lan Zhan is fortunate not to be in want of money.

Huaisang often suggests making this a bigger endeavor, perhaps strong-arming the university into providing funds, but the issue did stem from the university’s current overpriced system, so Lan Zhan hesitates to bring that bureaucracy in. Students, he finds, particularly those with food insecurity, are not as likely to take advantage of official aid. When Wei Ying lost a semester of funding because of his DUI, he visited the food pantry only once. Lan Zhan had to go over his head and order grocery delivery, so that Wei Ying’s guilt would redirect into an inability to reject the delivery person, instead of manifesting through sparse and irregular meals. Lan Zhan may fund a local food bank when he is no longer on this restrictive student visa. For now, he buys sandwiches and gives out his number more than he is comfortable with and encourages students to send him Venmo requests on the weekends. Today, there are turkey wraps and portobello sandwiches.

“Thank you, it’s fine, it’s fine! You know, I’m almost positive several students only come for tutoring so they can stare at you,” Nie Huaisang says, tongue between his teeth. He twirls a long and swirling pen through his fingers. “Remember the jock who had a crush on you? Ge, I do believe he had his sexual awakening as you reviewed stroke order.”

“Wei Ying claims the same,” Lan Zhan says.

“Wei Ying is a man of great knowledge,” Huaisang nods. “Speaking of, how is he? I tried calling him last night, but his phone was on Do Not Disturb.”

“He is well. He was with me.”

“Ah, I bet he was well, then,” Huaisang says, with the same tone he updates Lan Zhan on his brother’s romantic proclivities. “He did tell me on Monday that he needs to catch up on, hm, a few aspects of his education. How was studying?”

Nie Huaisang is a talented conversationalist, and quite good at cultivating information from others. Lan Zhan is quite good at not providing that information. “Fruitful.” He takes a drink from his water bottle. “Mastery necessitates diligence.”

Nie Huaisang is at the edge of his seat. “I’m sure you are very diligent.”

Lan Zhan hums. Unfortunately for Huaisang’s endless curiosity, their first students arrive.

Huaisang tutors beginners. Lan Zhan most often works with high intermediate and advanced students, but sometimes Nie Huaisang and the other tutors need assistance. Two hours pass this way before they take their lunch break. Lan Zhan did not make lunch this morning, so he makes a large group order of Chinese-American food for his students and calls the restaurant directly to add soup from their less-American secret menu. There is an ease to this routine.

While they wait for the order, he relaxes on a sofa on the second floor and checks his phone.

Wei Ying
10:12: omg the student i hate just asked what the diff is bw gender and sex….ITS WEEK FOUR…
10:12: ik ur thinking—which of the 17 students u hate? but dont wirey, several of them were nodding alon g to his q, so they r all complicit in his stupidity
10:13: dont worry**** ugh i have a minor in emglish lit…. this is decolonization work
10:15: martos just looked at him for a good 30 seconds before he answered 😭😭
10:15: YES!!!!! BRING BACK PUBLIC SHAMING!!!! IN THE NONSEXY WAY!!!

Wei Ying
10:43: speaking of. public humiliation. my ass hurts:(
10:43: can barely sit keep squirming
10:44: 😖😖😖
10:47: gegewas so mean to me :(

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:36: Let me see.

Wei Ying
12:39: see what??? the depths of my suffering?????? how bruised i am n how my hole hurts every time i sit down or stretch my legs?????????

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:42: Yes.

Wei Ying
12:43 lan zhaasssaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan
12:44: cant believe ur askng for pussy pics at noon...sub still out
12:45: omg i meant sun still out but ur sub IS still out in oubkic
12:46 *public. language is kicking my ass today

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:50: Will you go to the bathroom and send me a picture?

Wei Ying
12:50: is that a command :P

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
12:51: It is.

Wei Ying
12:53: oh, well. then
12:55: going

Wei Ying has his gender and sexuality department seminar on the history of the body at 2pm, and then his advisor corrals her students into a writing workshop every week at 5pm. He should be free for the next hour, now that his office hours are over, so Lan Zhan does not feel especially bad for cutting into his lunch time for this.

Lan Zhan recognizes the restroom Wei Ying escapes to; it is a low-traffic corner restroom on the low-traffic fourth floor that Wei Ying and Yewande once marked in second place for bathrooms in their building. Lan Zhan does not have an extensive restroom preference list, much to Wei Ying’s distaste, but the full length mirror in the alcove hidden from the door explains much about this high ranking. Lan Zhan… can appreciate the possibilities this mirror allows.

Wei Ying’s back faces the mirror with his arm twisted back so his phone can capture the swell of his ass, yesterday’s dark blue denim pushed down mid-thigh. Lan Zhan locks his phone and places his palms flat down on his thighs to remind himself he is in public, and must be presentable in ten minutes. He ponders a variety of unpleasant things. His undergraduate advisor, Jin Zixuan’s father, uncooked pork, the drunk colleague that made repeated romantic advances at Wei Ying at departmental end-of-year celebrations.

He looks back at his phone and the pictures Wei Ying sent him. The angle was likely awkward for Wei Ying, but he did—very well. Wei Ying’s ass is flecked by pink and a softer but darkening purple. Teeth marks everywhere. When Lan Zhan zooms in, he can see where his canines dug in. In the second photo, Wei Ying spreads himself open with one hand, just enough that Lan Zhan can see his puffy and red entrance, still loose from their activities this morning and last night. There is a meanness on his skin. Lan Zhan has to close his eyes and focus on not getting hard on the second floor of the language center, only a few steps away from his students and fellow tutors.

In a third photo Wei Ying sends as Lan Zhan stares at the others, Wei Ying faces the front with a knee up on the armchair in front of the mirror, the light blue button-up he took from Lan Zhan this morning open at the chest and revealing the newest marks Lan Zhan left on his flesh. A few hours ago.

Lan Zhan reconsiders quitting symphony.

“Lan laoshi?”

Lan Zhan does not startle, but it is a near occasion. He locks his phone and looks up to one of his students, an anatomy major in her third year studying Chinese. She studied with Wei Ying last semester. Claire is an international adoptee, so Wei Ying invited her to their lunar new year celebrations a few weeks ago and Jiang Yanli taught her how to make homemade jiaozi. She is an excellent student and a kind person. Lan Zhan almost wishes he hadn’t been staring at inappropriate photos of her favorite tutor seconds before.

He blinks twice until he can see his surroundings and not Wei Ying’s photos. “Yes?”

“Um, Yun and I were downstairs, and the delivery dude is here, but they won’t let us take it since it’s such a big order. So you have to sign, I think.”

Lan Zhan nods, imagines his uncle’s reaction if he knew how Lan Zhan is using university internet, and stands. “Thank you for telling me. Let’s go.”

Wei Ying
1:14: wow i risked public indency for u and no reaction?
1:16: indencend.
1:16: INDECENCY
1:17: SEE? im not even thinking properly
1:29: am i too grotesque in the daylight :P

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
1:43: No. You are still beautiful.
1:43: I am sorry, we ordered lunch and I put my phone away.

Wei Ying
1:44: HAHAHAH lan zhan i was KIDDING but thank u anyway 🥺🥰
1:45: did u like it

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
1:47: So much.
1:49: I think often about eating you out.

Wei Ying
1:53: ok goodnight i cant do this w u rn 😑 u know i have class in like three seconds ur so fucking cruel bye

china knower lan zhan 💗💓💞🌿🌨🍵💖💘💝
1:54: Would you not like that?

Wei Ying
1:54: GOODNIGHT LAN LAOSHI GO BACK TO YOUR STUDENTS LAN LAOSHI
1:55: asking me stupid questions
1:55: 😑
1:55: “would u not like it?” when i sit on your face then what
1:56: 😑

Saturday, Lan Zhan has his symphony concert. Debussy and Beethoven are easy choices, but his conductor included some romantic pieces by Saint-Georges and Saint-Saëns and, to Jin Zixuan’s inevitable delight, one brief Ravel movement. The theme is winter romance, and the timing is serendipitous. February’s first snow fell late last night.

Lan Zhan did not see Wei Ying yesterday, in between teaching and a productive therapy session and pre-concert rehearsal, but when Lan Zhan glances out at the auditorium in between pieces, Wei Ying and several of their friends occupy a row near the center. Jin Zixuan and Wei Ying somehow were placed together, but the quiet of symphony fosters cordiality.

Half hidden by first chair and his violin, perhaps because of the music and the rapturous and peaceful look on Wei Ying’s face, Lan Zhan feels a deep fondness warm his body. Mindfulness and the bliss in wanting without shame.

At intermission, Lan Zhan finds Wei Ying leaning against Jiang Yanli and sharing a to-go cup with Wen Ning.

He grins when he sees Lan Zhan. “Hey, handsome.” Lan Zhan nods his acknowledgment. “Was talking about how wild it is that you guys played Bella’s Lullaby from Twilight, and now A-Ning and I are drinking hot apple cider to further bask in the dreamy Pacific atmosphere.”

Lan Zhan’s eyebrows furrow a little. “I’m sorry, I… don’t know the reference.”

“Shouldn’t have told him,” Jiang Cheng mumbles. “Should’ve lied and gone along with it.”

Wei Ying sticks his tongue out at his brother. “Screw you, Jiang Cheng, just for that I’m not gonna talk about it. Don’t, don’t think this was reverse psychology. This is me being a grown up who will not give you the satisfaction of being correct. You can never psychologize me.”

“That’s not a word, fuckface,” says Jiang Cheng.

“Hello, Lan Zhan,” says Jiang Yanli.

“Hello, Yanli-jie,” Lan Zhan greets, tilting his head down and back up. “Thank you for coming, I hope you enjoyed the first set.”

“It was delightful,” says Jiang Yanli. She smiles. It is not as soothing as it usually is. “Are you available for brunch tomorrow morning? There are a few things I would like to discuss.”

Behind Jiang Yanli, Jin Zixuan makes crossing no notions, shakes his head, and mimics a beheading.

Lan Zhan keeps his face blank when he replies, “I will have to check my schedule. I will message you after the concert, if that is permitted.

“Permitted, you’re such a nerd, how embarrassing for me and my brand,” Wei Ying says, done arguing with Jiang Cheng on post-structuralism and the constant making and unmaking of words, and how Jiang Cheng wouldn’t understand his critical use of words that are not real because he’s a colonial architect. Wei Ying and his brother have these conversations often. They love to fight. Lan Zhan learned to compartmentalize. “Hey, sweet bun, come buy pastries for me, I’m very poor and I have no money.” Lan Zhan thanks everyone who showed up for the concert, and then allows Wei Ying to take his hand and direct him to the refreshments line.

Wei Ying leans against his side as they wait. “Hm, I like your suit, you look so nice. Have something I want to say about the historical magnitude of the zipper for gay men, but I will censor myself in line.”

Lan Zhan, who has heard Wei Ying’s drunken praises of the zipper many times before, can imagine. He places his hand on Wei Ying’s lower back, and after a moment’s consideration, slides his hand down Wei Ying’s back pocket.

Wei Ying makes a shocked and delighted noise. “Lan Zhan! Such behavior!” Lan Zhan leans down and kisses his forehead.

Jin Zixuan is… an influence. Lan Zhan is too high right now to determine if this is a good or bad thing.

He made experimental matcha bao with Jiang Yanli, and because the auditorium was only a fifteen minute walk to Lan Zhan’s place, he brought a container for everyone to try after the symphony concert ended. Edibles are best shared with friends and Wei Ying, he said. Lan Zhan typically opts out with Jiang Yanli, but Zixuan was very pleased with how his trial turned out, and Lan Zhan defaults to offering him affirmation. They walked a few blocks down to a cozy bar Wei Ying likes, and now they sit at a corner half-booth with two tables to accommodate their numbers and food.

The lighting is dim. Wei Ying sits across from Lan Zhan and picks through brussel sprouts and fries with Wen Qing and Nie Huaisang, and Lan Zhan marvels at how beautiful he is.

“Claire asked about you on Thursday,” Huaisang says. Lan Zhan resists the instinct to tell him not to speak while eating. “I think if you don’t come to movie night next week, she’s never gonna forgive you.”

“Okay, you miss movie night once, and suddenly you’re the bad guy… How many times have you missed movie night? Bitch boy barely went when he tutored. Surely even Lan Zhan has missed a movie night.”

“I have not,” Lan Zhan says.

“Whatever, Lan Zhan, I wasn’t even talking to you,” Wei Ying says, poking his tongue out. “Wow, fuck, loser brat, how much did you put in this, if Jiang Cheng didn’t stop me from having another I’d be hallucinating right now.”

“I am trying to poison you,” Jin Zixuan says.

“I would desecrate your dead body,” Wei Ying tells him.

“There is already a note in my phone that says ‘Wei Ying did it,’” Jin Zixuan says. “Good thing I will kill you before that can happen.”

When Wei Ying opens his mouth, Jiang Yanli says, “boys,” and he shuts it with a pout.

Lan Zhan nudges Wei Ying’s cola closer to him, and takes a demonstrative sip from his own water when Wei Ying stares at it in confusion. “I swear I know how to drink things,” Wei Ying says, after the straw misses his mouth five times. “Wow, I want a cider.” He takes a sip. “What? Aiya, A-Cheng, don’t look at me, I know not to get cross-faded, fuck off. Can’t I express desires!!” He shifts and taps his nails on the wooden table. “This edible will never finish kicking in, I’m gonna be off the walls crazy all night, sorry to everyone in advance, except demon bitch, who we and my assigned FBI intern have on record as trying to poison me. Wow, I really fucking want a cider.”

He does calm down soon, after Lan Zhan orders him a burger and more fries. “Turns out I was just hungry,” Wei Ying murmurs, grinning lazily at Lan Zhan. He kicks his ankle under the booth, and grins wider when Lan Zhan raises an eyebrow.

Wei Ying rests his chin on his palm. “Jiejie, remember when we had to be Jiang Cheng’s valentines for years because he scared off everyone else in our grade? Wasn’t that so embarrassing?”

“I will not give you the attention you want,” Jiang Cheng says, and turns back to speaking with Huaisang.

“Those two weeks you had a crush on Qing-jie before you realized she’s a lesbian were really funny,” Wei Ying says.

“Be quiet, Wei Ying,” Wen Qing says, rolling her eyes.

“I’m just thinking out loud,” Wei Ying says. “Have you guys ever considered a lavender partnership? Neither of you are getting any youn—ow, ow, okay, I’m sorry, I’ll shut up, Wen Ning, get your sister!!”

“I am sorry, ge,” Wen Ning says, with no remorse in his voice.

“Everyone is so mean to me,” Wei Ying says. He pouts. “I come out to have a good time and to offer camaraderie with all of my dearest single friends and family, including jiejie, who is single, and no one’s paying attention to me. Separate conversations that I cannot hear? Do you guys know what that does to my psyche?”

“You’re just dramatic,” Wen Qing says.

“Being an extrovert is harder than being an immigrant or gay,” Wei Ying says.

“Aren’t you single, too?” Nie Huaisang asks.

That distracts Wei Ying from the rant he was likely rehearsing in his mind. His mouth curls up, and he arches an eyebrow high, head tilted to the side on his palm. He stares at Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan stares back.

Lan Zhan has, admittedly, been disassociated for most of the past hour. Even through the haze and languor of his high, this makes him feel wide awake.

“I don’t know, am I? Lan Zhan, what do you think?”

Lan Zhan’s heart presses close to the skin. “You are not.”

Wei Ying looks at him for a moment more with dark and hooded eyes. Lan Zhan looks back. Lan Zhan imagines the irresponsible pleasure of bringing Wei Ying to the restroom and forcing him on his knees again, forcing his dick into Wei Ying’s mouth and watching him choke and drool around the weight of it. It is so easy to make Wei Ying cry. Lan Zhan dreams of the day he can put Wei Ying over his knee and make him sob.

He snaps out of it when Jin Zixuan loudly clears his throat. Wei Ying bites his bottom lip and turns to face Nie Huaisang with a soft blush on his face. “See? I’m not. Won’t you be more appreciative of the struggles I made to join you when I could be getting railed at home?”

“You will die in nine days,” Jiang Cheng says.

“Yeah, yeah, you said that nine days ago, too,” says Wei Ying.

“The night is still young,” Jin Zixuan offers.

Chapter Text

A week later, the warm glow of the sun setting through Lan Zhan’s window. “Keep going,” Lan Zhan says. He glances up from his book. He uncrosses and then crosses his legs, and then uncrosses them again when Wei Ying looks up and tries to make eye contact with him. He spreads his legs wide, so that Wei Ying can better watch how Lan Zhan’s cock swells in his trousers. Lan Zhan knows he’s watching. Every time Wei Ying manages to look over, his eyes dart between Lan Zhan’s face and his lap, as if he is uncertain which strand of attention he wants more.

“I said keep going,” Lan Zhan repeats. Wei Ying knows he doesn’t like to repeat himself. Wei Ying makes a small frustrated noise and then resumes grinding down into the pillow between his lap. It’s already stained with release, patchy wetness that darkened the white fabric, and Wei Ying is still leaking so much, clear and stringy precome that ensures Lan Zhan will have to throw the pillowcase away. Perhaps he will keep the pillowcase to shove into Wei Ying’s mouth when he’s being too bratty, an easy reminder of how low Lan Zhan can and will bring him. Perhaps.

“I can’t come again,” Wei Ying says, which is a lie.

Lan Zhan shuts the book around his finger and raises an eyebrow. “Do you believe I am a liar?”

“What, no, Lan Zhan, of course not,” Wei Ying protests, eyes wide. When he stops moving, Lan Zhan only has to shoot a sharp and swift look down for Wei Ying to get back to rubbing against the pillow like Lan Zhan told him to.

“You can come again, and you will,” Lan Zhan says for the fourth time now. The redundancy is tedious.

“Do you need help?” Lan Zhan asks. He removes the small remote from his front pocket.

Wei Ying quickly shakes his head. “I don’t, it’s okay, I’ll be g—ahh! Please, hnnnngh,” he cries out, collapsing forward onto his front when Lan Zhan turns the vibrating butt plug back on. With his hands tied behind his back, it is difficult for Wei Ying to maintain enough equilibrium to hold himself up when pleasure overtakes him. This is his third time falling.

Lan Zhan tries not to smile. “Up.”

He turns the intensity of the plug up one setting when Wei Ying attempts to sit back up, and watches him fall once more, noises muffled by the bed. “Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying looks very pathetic when he slowly shuffles himself back into a kneeling position, and Lan Zhan likes it very much. “I can’t,” Wei Ying babbles, “Lan Zhan I can't, I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Sure you can,” Lan Zhan says.

“Next time? Lan Zhan, can we try next time, this time is—Lan Zhan, how about we try next time? I really can’t come again. I’m gonna break, Lan Zhan, gege, sweetheart, are you listening? I’ll be good next time, I swear, I promise.”

Wei Ying loves to hear himself talk when they’re like this. “Keep going,” Lan Zhan says.

Lan Zhan thinks Wei Ying is good now; there’s no need to delay for next time. Besides, Lan Zhan did not initially plan for Wei Ying to come at all. He told Wei Ying to ride the pillow, nothing more, but Wei Ying was greedy and touched his cock and nipples when Lan Zhan told him not to, and came less than ten minutes into their play. He cannot seriously think Lan Zhan cares about any of his pleas. If he wants Lan Zhan to stop, he can safeword. This moment, now, is when he needs to show Lan Zhan that he’s sorry, that he will be good. It is cruel for Lan Zhan to let his sub do anything he wants without repercussions and discipline. That is not Lan Zhan’s brand of cruelty.

Wei Ying wanted to come, so he will.

He only has to put his book back down for Wei Ying to stop stalling and continue grinding into the pillow, which is good progress. Wei Ying is increasingly interested with what boundaries he can push, where he can poke and prod. Lan Zhan enjoys his prodding, but he should know by now that Lan Zhan is going to push back.

“Why won’t you touch me,” Wei Ying asks, breathing heavy and eyes bright, “are you mad at me? Lan Zhan, you can’t be mad at me. I’ll come so fast if you touch me.”

“I am not in a rush,” says Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan is not mad that Wei Ying grinned at him and taunted him and ignored Lan Zhan’s repeated reminders that he shouldn’t touch himself. He isn’t mad that Wei Ying made a show of it, that Wei Ying was loud and rushed while he jerked himself to orgasm. Lan Zhan was not in the mood to stand from his armchair and rectify Wei Ying’s behavior with force. Today, he is trying a gentler approach.

He crosses and uncrosses his legs. He watches Wei Ying ride the pillow. After a few minutes, maybe five, maybe ten, Wei Ying’s desperate noises a continuous background sound, he switches the plug to a low and steady thrum.

Wei Ying sighs out a breath of relief at the transition. This setting is less overt than the last few. Last night, over the phone, they went through the vibrations and Wei Ying described the sensations with as much detail as he could. He was incoherent and unclear near the end, but that gave Lan Zhan just as much information as his fuller sentences. He believes this setting is what sent Wei Ying to incoherence, a slow vibration that caught Wei Ying off guard, that cut him off halfway through complaints that the setting is too high for something so dull. Then he started gasping.

Lan Zhan sees the moment Wei Ying remembers his folly last night. His eyes widen and his entire body tenses, like a sharp jolt throughout his entire body. Half a heartbeat passes, and then he bursts into tears, almost like a switch turned on, and he is so beautiful that Lan Zhan’s chest aches from the sight of him.

Wei Ying shakes his head and then shakes it again, eyes shut tight, teeth digging into his bottom lip. He keeps opening his mouth like he wants to say something, maybe beg for mercy again, but all he manages are sharp gasps. He moans, but the sound itself is senseless.

Lan Zhan lets him sit with this for a few moments. Eventually, he asks, “color? If you are unable to speak, you can snap twice if you want to keep going and once if you want to stop.”

Wei Ying’s eyes fall open, eyelashes wet and pupils blown out. Lan Zhan’s breath hitches. Wei Ying snaps his fingers twice. No more than ten seconds, all of this, but Lan Zhan could have Wei Ying like this for lifetimes and never tire of him.

“Good,” Lan Zhan says softly. Wei Ying makes a sweet and broken noise. “Will you come for me, now?”

“It hurts,” Wei Ying whines.

“Not for long,” Lan Zhan says. “Come, Wei Ying.” Wei Ying is so much better than any of Lan Zhan’s most indulgent dreams. He comes.

“Obviously Yanli-jie is going to kill you,” Jin Zixuan says the next day as they cross the street to the restaurant where Jiang Yanli set their brunch reservations. Last week did not work out, after Jin Zixuan's edibles kept Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng asleep late into the afternoon. Lan Zhan does not mind; today is a bright day, a quiet day, and Wei Ying is still in a good mood. Jiang Yanli walks ahead with her brothers, an arm each linked around theirs, almost tripping over each other in their closeness.

“Since when do you refer to others with respect?” Lan Zhan asks. It is both genuine curiosity and the innate pettiness that Jin Zixuan drags out of him.

“It’s a thing I’m trying out,” Jin Zixuan says. “Mostly during sex.”

“Forget I asked,” Lan Zhan says.

“You’re one to judge. Your boyfriend manages to make gege sound like the sluttiest word in existence. Do you know how fucked up that is? How do you speak to your brother?”

“Forget I asked,” Lan Zhan repeats. “Wei Ying is not—a slut.”

“Who said that? I did not say that,” Zixuan says. “But now that you mention it…”

Lan Zhan cuts him a look.

“I will refrain from commenting,” Zixuan says. “Shall we resume discussion of your imminent death?”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees, curious about how and why he will die today.

Lan Zhan watches Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng go in to confirm their reservation. He checks his watch. They have ten minutes to their time, and the restaurant seems busy enough through the glass windows that Lan Zhan is unsurprised when Wei Ying comes back out with a pager. This restaurant has good Yelp reviews, but even if it did not, it is Sunday, and Americans treat Sunday brunch like a holiday.

“Allow me to set the scene,” Zixuan starts. He puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. His sunglasses are garish, a gradient yellow from his last retail therapy binge at the Louis Vuitton store. Lan Zhan tried very hard to help him reconsider glasses that did not cost a month’s rent, but Zixuan just shrugged and said it was only a third of the rent for their apartment. His compromise was purchasing one instead of the two he intended.

“Please do not,” says Lan Zhan.

“It’s ten AM. We have just entered the cramped apartment of A-Li’s shit brats so that she can bring them to terrorize the underpaid employees of whatever big box store they prefer. It reeks of marijuana. It reeks of marijuana, I tell my beautiful and delicious soulmate. Bitch boy walks out of his room only in threadbare pajamas, a terrible sight for me, a much worse sight for his sister, as he looks like he was mauled by an animal.”

“You’ve barely avoided, like, five different classist jokes,” Wei Ying says, popping up behind Lan Zhan and wrapping his arms around Lan Zhan’s waist. Lan Zhan leans into the touch and breathes him in. “I know you’re aching to call us dirty and poor.”

“You are dirty,” Jin Zixuan says. “But it is not because you’re poor. It is a reflection of character.”

“I did not look like I got mauled by an animal.”

“A-Li said, and I quote, ‘you look… colorful, A-Ying.’ Of course, he looked much worse.”

“You are such a miserable and small man,” Wei Ying says.

“I am in fact taller than you,” Jin Zixuan says. “And more attractive. There are surely many other areas where I am larger than you. Lan Zhan, your input? Or shall I ask your sister to sing my praises in lieu of a comparison? Even her strap is bigger than you.”

“I dream of your death so often it feels like a memory,” says Wei Ying. “How would Lan Zhan even offer input? Lan Zhan, have you—“

“Let us check in on our reservation,” Lan Zhan says, turning in Wei Ying’s arms and leading him away from Jin Zixuan.

“We lived together for a very long time,” Jin Zixuan says. “Shall I make the obvious sloppy seconds joke?”

“Ignore him,” Lan Zhan says, ears burning. “He is still high and speaking falsities.”

At their table, Wei Ying despairs when the server tells them mimosas are not bottomless today. “I do feel that the heavens are embarking me on a long and arduous period of suffering,” he says.

“He’ll have orange juice,” Lan Zhan tells their server. “May I please have a glass of water and the green tea?”

When the server repeats the drink orders back after Zixuan finally decides between an americano or hot chocolate, in favor of the hot chocolate because Jiang Yanli expresses interest, they double back and ask Wei Ying if he’s sure about the orange juice. “What? Yeah, whatever he said is fine, it doesn’t matter what.”

“Great,” their server says, and quirks an eyebrow at Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan stares back until they walk away. When he lowers his head, Jiang Yanli is staring at him, too. Well.

“You really should try getting a water bottle instead of glasses at restaurants,” Wei Ying says. “Who knows the last time they cleaned their filters? When I worked at the unnameable—“

“Must you give the ‘I was a server’ spiel every time we go out,” Jiang Cheng sighs.

“A-Cheng, he just wants to help,” Jiang Yanli says. “You always listen to his advice in the end.”

“Yeah, A-Cheng, plus I learned more life skills serving than you did in all your summers interning at Mom’s firm! You’re just mad that all the legal information you learned is useless and can only be used when, what, I’m on the verge of getting a felony. Which doesn’t happen that often.”

"Does it not bother you that it happens at all?" Jiang Cheng asks. "Like, does that not process for you?"

"If you weren't a colonial architect, you'd understand that legality is nebulous." Wei Ying pauses. "Minus the one time I did actually fuck up."

"Just the one time," Jiang Cheng repeats.

“What’s this nepotism I hear,” Zixuan says, leaning across the table.

Wei Ying scowls. “Fuck you, your dad bought your admission into Chicago, what the fuck do you know about but nepotism.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, at the same time Jiang Yanli warns, “A-Ying.”

“Sorry,” Wei Ying mutters. Lan Zhan cannot tell if he means it.

Zixuan rolls his eyes and sits back. “It’s fine, I’m not going to pout and cry every time someone brings up my father, contrary to what Lan Zhan and A-Li think.”

“It was still rude and unnecessary, no matter how it affects you,” Yanli says.

“I know,” Wei Ying says, less of a mumble this time. “I really am sorry. Zixuan.”

“Ew, don’t call me by my name, go back to being an asshole,” Zixuan says.

“Piss off,” Wei Ying says, but now with the same kindness he uses to swear at his brother. Jiang Yanli looks pleased. Lan Zhan squeezes Wei Ying’s thigh under the table.

Lan Zhan orders a quinoa bowl for himself and an egg sandwich with french toast for Wei Ying. Wei Ying bickers with Jiang Cheng on the merits of over-medium instead of over-easy, the sort of light and meaningless argument that fuels their closeness. Their arguments used to be bad, Wei Ying once told him, drunk and sleepy in Lan Zhan’s room after he and Jiang Cheng locked themselves out after a late bar run. I think Mom sometimes found it funny to press things, and it was—weird. Whatever. It got better when we went to college, because then it was just us two and we had to learn how to like each other, too, instead of just loving each other, as jiejie says, but honestly, most of the time you don’t have to worry when you see us fighting about whatever. When it’s real you can tell.

Lan Zhan remembers that conversation with clarity; he used to resent Jiang Cheng and the seemingly endless arguments he had with Wei Ying, and the tension between them when Wei Ying got his DUI was unpleasant to be around. That night, it was especially unpleasant, as Wei Ying and his brother were both drunk and manifesting it through pointlessly cruel comments, through Wei Ying egging Jiang Cheng’s anger on and laughing when Jiang Cheng’s barbs fell through, laughing harder when they hit. When Lan Zhan parked in front of his apartment complex, he told Jiang Cheng to shut the fuck up, so overcome with anger at the things Jiang Cheng said about his own brother that he could not feign cordiality any longer. This is why Wei Ying never faces consequences for his actions, Jiang Cheng said, whether it’s you or dad or jie, he always has a guard dog there to keep him from having to acknowledge any part of his shittiness. Wei Ying laughed and looked back at his brother through the rear view mirror. Aw, A-Cheng, don’t you wish Mom was here to beat me every time I make you mad? Is that what it is? Jiang Cheng left the car with a slam, and Wei Ying quickly followed after him. That time, it was real. They were better again, after that night.

“Lan Zhan, may I speak with you outside?” Yanli asks.

Wei Ying’s gaze snaps to his sister. “Why? What are you gonna talk about? Do you want me to come, too?”

“Just Lan Zhan is fine,” Jiang Yanli says, smiling. She pushes her chair back and stands. “Lan Zhan?”

The snow outside makes everything brighter, and the windchill bites across Lan Zhan’s face. They stand side by side near the edge of the sidewalk, and watch the traffic lights shift. “Ah, I should’ve come out with my coat,” Jiang Yanli says.

“Would you like mine, Yanli-jie?”

She smiles over at him. Lan Zhan is fairly certain he will not die. “No, it’s fine, thank you, Lan Zhan. It helps me feel more awake.” Lan Zhan nods. “Do you know what I wanted to speak with you about?”

“I have… an idea,” Lan Zhan says.

Jiang Yanli nods. “Initially, I was going to ask how serious you were, but I suppose you both decided last week, hm? Honestly, I feel a bit silly speaking to you about this. Jiang Cheng said I should not, but, well… my brothers are not the best at emotional honesty. Or emotional vulnerability.” She turns her body to face Lan Zhan, so he does the same. “You know this about them, I’m sure.”

Lan Zhan nods.

“I am sure you will be mindful of this,” she continues. “Of course, A-Ying is not delicate, and I know that he can make his own decisions, and I don’t mean to baby him. But… he is soft with you, when it comes to you. Far before you two began your recent… escapades.” She pauses, and her nose wrinkles, just enough that Lan Zhan dreads the next words from her mouth. “I hope you two are being safe. And sane and… of course, you are being consensual.”

Oh my god, Lan Zhan thinks. He puts his hands in his coat pockets, and reminds himself that he is an adult man, and does not need to break eye contact. His ears and the back of his neck burn. “I… yes. We…” What does he even say? He cannot show Wei Ying’s older sister their kink negotiation Notes document. “Talk. We talk.”

“Fantastic,” Jiang Yanli says, her mouth lifting. “A-Xuan also said you talk. Amongst other things, I assume, judging by Wei Ying’s appearance.”

Lan Zhan squints at a point right beyond Jiang Yanli’s shoulder. He understands, now, why Jin Zixuan prophesied his death. The calm lilt of Jiang Yanli’s voice makes him feel like a—pervert, imagining if she knew a third of the things that he has done and wants to do to her brother. “I see,” he finally manages.

“Well,” she says, smiling wider. Is she enjoying this? Lan Zhan suspects that this is funny for her. “Shall we return inside? I’m sure our meals are ready. I hope Wei Ying enjoys the food you ordered for him, hmm?” She pats his shoulder.

Lan Zhan forgets himself and almost bows when she turns away.

Inside, Wei Ying is halfway out of his chair when they seat themselves. “Hello, what did you guys talk about? Was it about me?”

“You will be devastated to realize the world doesn’t revolve around you,” says Jiang Cheng, taking a sip from his coffee.

“False and inflammatory,” Wei Ying dismisses. “Jiejie?”

“A-Ying,” Jiang Yanli says. “How are you?”

When Lan Zhan glances over, Wei Ying looks confused. He blinks. “Um, I’m fine. How are you?”

“Just fine?”

Wei Ying raises an eyebrow, and glances over at Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan's mouth tilts up, and the furrow leaves his forehead. “No, I’m good,” Wei Ying says, still looking at Lan Zhan. “I’m really good.”

“Good,” Jiang Yanli says. She squeezes Jin Zixuan's hand atop the table. “I am good, too.”

“If you guys fifth wheel me I’m calling Mom,” says Jiang Cheng.

“Invite Nie Huaisang next time,” Wei Ying says, finally tearing his gaze away. “Smooch your boyfriend at the brunch table all you want, no one’s stopping you.”

Jiang Cheng flushes a gruesome red. “Fuck you, shut up, I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Language,” Jiang Yanli chides.

“What he said was so much worse!”

“it’s okay to have a boyfriend,” says Jiang Yanli. “Maybe I can speak with him next time.”

“So you admit you guys were talking about me,” Wei Ying says. Jiang Yanli smiles and picks up her silverware, which ends that conversation. “Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan leans close and begins cutting into Wei Ying’s french toast. “Do you like your food, baby?”

Wei Ying blinks rapidly. Slowly, a tint rises up his neck and face. “Bro, that’s so fucked up, I know you’re doing this on purpose.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says mildly.

Zixuan frowns behind his hot chocolate, topped high with whipped cream. “Oh, so he can call you bro and it’s fine, but I do it once or twice and I’m a demonic spirit?”

There is no explanation Lan Zhan can give that is safe to say in front of Wei Ying’s siblings, so he says nothing at all.

“There’s nothing I can say in front of jiejie,” Wei Ying says. “But just know you were already a demonic spirit. Imagine how unbearable the energy gets when you say untoward things.”

“Untoward is quite advanced vocabulary for you,” Jin Zixuan says. “Will we visit college-level language soon?”

“We can visit my foot up your ass,” Wei Ying says.

“You couldn’t top me if you tried,” Jin Zixuan says. It takes a few moments to convince Wei Ying to put down the knife.

A few days later, dusk settles into Lan Zhan’s room. A candle diffuses soft light and sandalwood, the same brand that Lan Zhan defaults to and Wei Ying says soothes him. Lan Zhan sits at the edge of his bed and runs his hands through Wei Ying’s hair and tries to pace his breathing while Wei Ying takes him deep. They’ve been at this for a while now.

Lan Zhan did not expect to see Wei Ying today. They both have a lot of grading to do, and Wei Ying is leading discussion on gender and sexuality for their modern China seminar tomorrow, so his workload is higher than usual. They worked together in the library the past few days, but deadlines are too near to risk distractions. Lan Zhan planned to meet Wei Ying before class tomorrow and serve as a soundboard to help Wei Ying organize his presentation, and maybe kiss him for a few minutes while Wei Ying’s office is empty.

Instead, Wei Ying showed up at his door with a half-finished extra-large iced coffee and bloodshot eyes, backpack partially open and a beanie pushed haphazardly over his scalp. He pushed Lan Zhan into his room, pushed him onto his bed, and only barely remembered to put the iced coffee down before pushing Lan Zhan’s sweatpants down. “I’m having a shitty day and I wanna suck you off,” Wei Ying said, and then he fell to his knees.

All said, Lan Zhan is not surprised when Wei Ying pulls up with a wet breath and says, “yellow. Fuck, red, let’s stop.”

Lan Zhan lets go of his hair. After tucking himself back into his pants, he reaches out to pull Wei Ying onto his lap for aftercare, but Wei Ying flinches away.

Lan Zhan puts his palms flat on his thighs. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be,” Wei Ying says.

He is still kneeling, not far at all, but he holds his body inward and away from Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan watches him for a few seconds, and then carefully moves around him to stand without making contact. “I’m going to get you water,” Lan Zhan says.

“If you want,” Wei Ying says. His voice sounds far off, distant.

Wei Ying does drink the water, after Lan Zhan places it on the counter and steps back so that Wei Ying has the space to pick it up and slowly sip from the glass.

Lan Zhan sits in lotus position on his floor, far enough that Wei Ying does not feel cramped but close enough that he can reach out and touch Lan Zhan if he needs to. They stare at each other.

“I don’t want to be here,” Wei Ying says.

“Here as in… my apartment?” No, Wei Ying says. “Do you want me to bring you home?”

Wei Ying shakes his head.

Lan Zhan swallows down the bile in his throat. He cannot bring himself to process what Wei Ying means. “Do you want to sleep in the guest room?” he asks, voice low.

Wei Ying shakes his head.

“Okay,” Lan Zhan says. “We will sit here.”

Chapter Text

This is what Lan Zhan is used to, with Wei Ying. Usually, it is not a two day encampment in his room. Instead, it is a small and distracted smile when Lan Zhan shows him a video he would otherwise laugh at and demand more of. Lan Zhan texts Wei Ying a screenshot of a particularly terrible analysis from an article for the modern displacements course, something that accepts the settler-native binary without nuance or qualifications that should send Wei Ying on a triple-text paragraph rant, and instead he downvotes the screenshot and messages back haha to be a mediocre white man with a phd and nothing else for several hours.

This tempering is terrible. Lan Zhan hates to see Wei Ying so mild.

The night that Wei Ying scares Lan Zhan the most, they sit on the floor of Lan Zhan’s bedroom for an hour and say nothing. Eventually, Wei Ying says I want to watch TV, so they move to the living room and sit on the sofa and watch competitive cooking shows. After the first episode, Wei Ying moves closer until their knees touch. After the second episode, Wei Ying moves Lan Zhan’s arm over his shoulders and leans in close, until his chin is tucked into Lan Zhan’s neck and Lan Zhan can smell his conditioner. They stay like this for hours.

For the rest of the week, Wei Ying spends most of his time at home in his bedroom. He does well when he leads discussion for class; he sticks to his presentation and doesn’t ask the more challenging questions he was excited about brainstorming with Lan Zhan, and ignores their classmates’ demeaning questions. He is otherwise quiet in seminar. On campus, he sits for office hours and refreshes social media endlessly and says he is not hungry when Lan Zhan suggests they go get lunch in the library. He is fine, he says. Wen Qing texts Lan Zhan and asks him if he’s heard from Wei Ying, because all of her messages have been ignored. Lan Zhan does not know what to tell her. He, too, is at a loss for words.

Wei Ying stays the night every night.

Tonight, they are making bread. Lan Zhan kneads their second loaf while Wei Ying assembles the third and checks on the rise of the first.

“I think it’s almost good to put in,” Wei Ying says, peeking in the fridge. “Another hour, two hours maybe? So by the time these two rise, we can put them all in together.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan acknowledges. They prepared the sourdough last night when Wei Ying got a small swell of energy for the first time in days—they made mapo tofu together, Wei Ying took the risk of making rice without the rice cooker, and then decided that he wanted to make bread from scratch for the first time. Lan Zhan makes most of his loaves from scratch, so ingredients are always on hand. Sourdough takes a longer time to ferment. It is good, Lan Zhan thinks, for Wei Ying to return to something he began and see that it still stands.

Earlier today, Lan Zhan’s therapist told him that he cannot care for anyone’s mental health but his own. Sometimes in the morning, when he awakes and watches Wei Ying sleep, smaller and calm and at peace in physical rest even though Lan Zhan knows he has nightmares—sometimes he catches himself counting Wei Ying’s eyelashes and wondering what he can do to fix him. He catches himself and feels like a bad person for thinking of his boyfriend as a problem. Wei Ying is not a problem. Wei Ying is unwell, right now, and he trusts Lan Zhan enough to show and admit this and not seclude himself after. He knows Wei Ying is trying. Right now, that is all that matters.

“Do you want to knead the third batch while I make dinner?”

“Sure,” Wei Ying says. “Not hungry, though.”

“You still must eat,” Lan Zhan says.

“I guess,” Wei Ying says. He pours a second cup of warm water into the mixture. “What are you gonna make?”

Lan Zhan planned on cleaning out his vegetables with stir fry, since he will restock at the farmer’s market tomorrow. He thought he could invite Wei Ying along this week. Grocery shopping is relaxing for Lan Zhan. Maybe it will help. “What do you want to eat?”

“Nothing,” Wei Ying says. Lan Zhan doesn’t look up from his bread. He turns his face very slightly to the side to push his shirt back up his shoulder when it begins to fall. “I guess I’ll have some bread when it’s done. Do you still have jam?”

“I can make some,” Lan Zhan says.

“You don’t have to.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says. “Strawberry or blueberry?”

“Whatever you’re in the mood for. Do you think the bread is good now?” Lan Zhan motions for him to come check himself. Wei Ying punches it, which Lan Zhan supposes is one method. “Consistency is fine, right?” Lan Zhan nods. “Cool. Almost done.”

They set the second batch aside to rise, and then Wei Ying kneads his third batch. Lan Zhan does not often make this much bread, but Wei Ying wanted to try three slightly different recipes to see how they turn out. The extras can go to his siblings, he said. As Wei Ying kneads, Lan Zhan prepares the jam. Lan Zhan’s last batch was blueberry, but Wei Ying is always most excited for strawberry or blackberry jam. Lan Zhan put too much lemon in his last blueberry jam and ended up pawning most of it off to Jin Zixuan, who somehow prefers tart jams. Strawberry will be good.

Lan Zhan mass prepares frozen spring rolls once a month and then freezes them to warm up as a quick snack or a meal supplement. He got in the habit of making an extra batch with shrimp for Wei Ying, and he takes a few out now and throws them into the preheated oven. He hopes Wei Ying will eat. He wonders if he should purchase pre-made meals for when Wei Ying feels unwell. Cooking helps Lan Zhan when he feels least in his body, but his therapist tells him often that it is not so easy to transplant his treatments onto someone else and expect it to stick or to work at all.

He knows this. Do you? Again, he is reminded often.

Lan Zhan closes and reopens his refrigerator. “Do you want ramen?” He has none of the premade packets that Wei Ying likes, as he makes most of his noodles at home, but it should not take him more than twenty minutes.

“No,” Wei Ying says. So they do their skincare.

Lan Zhan applies for Wei Ying. Wei Ying sits on the lowered toilet seat and tilts his head up while Lan Zhan swipes toner onto his cheeks and down his neck; his eyelashes flutter from proximity when Lan Zhan pats eye cream over the darkening circles below his eyes with his index finger.

“Your skin is beautiful,” Lan Zhan tells him softly. He kneels in front of Wei Ying so he can more carefully rub on the egg foam wash-off mask he bought for Wei Ying. Wei Ying’s skin is oilier and prone to dark spots, but most of Lan Zhan’s products are catered to normal to dry skin, so he purchased these earlier this week for Wei Ying on recommendation of Huan-ge after Wei Ying’s last routine finished. They seem fine now.

“It’s just skin,” Wei Ying says.

Lan Zhan goes through his routine while Wei Ying’s mask takes, and then he holds Wei Ying’s hair back as he rinses off his face. The night cream he puts on Wei Ying is thick and makes Wei Ying’s nose scrunch when Lan Zhan cradles his jaw and rubs it into his cheeks and forehead, but Wei Ying smiles when he sees how brightly his face glows in the morning, as if he is shocked that it could, so Lan Zhan is generous with application.

They put the bread in the oven.

“Do you want to…” Wei Ying shifts on his feet in the middle of the kitchen. He leans against a counter and shakes his head until his hair falls into his face, half hidden. “You wanna fuck?”

Lan Zhan drinks from his glass of water and resists the instinct to furrow his eyebrows. “Sure.”

“Cool.” Wei Ying tucks his hair behind his ear. “I think we could try the hitting tonight.”

Ah. “This soon?”

“That’s relative,” Wei Ying says. He won’t meet Lan Zhan’s eyes, which is new. When he’s initiated sex before, he was teasing and coy. Nervous about some things, but not this much. Not… restrictive. “We could try the face slapping. If you want.”

Not everything is a matter of what Lan Zhan wants. “I will not hit you when you are like this.”

Wei Ying’s face snaps up. “What does that even mean? You’re the one who bought it up before, and now you don’t want to, you’re not into it anymore? We promised to be honest if an allowance changed, you can’t keep that from me.”

“Nothing changed,” Lan Zhan tells him. “Just because I am not interested right now does not mean I will never be interested again.” He brings his glass to the kitchen sink, only a step away from Wei Ying’s tense form. After he rinses it, he places it upside down on the wooden rack to dry. Wei Ying is so stiff. He looks unnatural like this. Lan Zhan steps closer to him until their knees almost touch. “That is… a major thing for you, and I want to do it because you are excited, not because you are unhappy with yourself and think you deserve punishment for existing.”

“You are not my therapist,” Wei Ying says, voice flat.

“You are correct,” Lan Zhan says. His mouth straightens. “You don’t have one.”

The flinch is subtle and fast, just a swift movement of Wei Ying’s left wrist, but Lan Zhan notices.

“We can try blindfolding,” Lan Zhan says.

“If I’m being a bother, I can go home,” Wei Ying says. He finally looks up and makes eye contact with Lan Zhan, and there’s a smile on his face. Of course.

“Do not put words in my mouth,” Lan Zhan says.

Wei Ying ignores him. “If you think that I’m, I don’t know, trying to use you as free therapy, that wasn’t my intention. Obviously my intention doesn’t matter,” Wei Ying says, shaking out his hair again. His smile gets bigger, almost a grin. Some undead version of Wei Ying’s real grin. “I really did just wanna hang out here, with you, but I get that it’s probably too much to be around me every day when I’m a downer. Hey, what did you mean when you said not when I’m like this? You never answered me before.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan starts.

Wei Ying continues talking, “do you think I’m crazy, when I’m like this? Ah, Lan Zhan, no, you wouldn’t say it like that, you’d say that I’m sick or, ha, better yet, unwell. Am I unwell, Zhan-ge? Is it difficult for you, to be around me when I’m “like this,”” air quotes with his fingers and all.

“I did not say that,” Lan Zhan says.

“Lan Zhan, do you say much?”

Lan Zhan’s jaw ticks. He waits.

“If you think I’m too crazy to even wanna fuck right now, as if you’re not always up for it, then I can literally just go home,” says Wei Ying. He swings his arms to rest behind his back and rocks forward on the arch of his socked feet. “Like, I can already guess your answer, but I’d like if you said it.”

“Being unwell does not make you crazy.”

Wei Ying tilts his head. “Oh, so I am sick?”

Lan Zhan blinks for a second longer. “The spring rolls should be ready now. I think you will feel better if you eat.”

Wei Ying’s posture straightens out, firm and stiff once more. No more of the exaggerated ease, now. “Do not treat me like I’m a fucking dog,” he snaps.

“Is that how you interpret it?” Lan Zhan asks.

Wei Ying’s eyes narrow. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I am not,” Lan Zhan says. “I am asking because I want to change my behavior if I make you feel that way.”

“What I want is for you to answer my question,” Wei Ying says.

“What do you want me to answer?” Lan Zhan asks. He tries to keep his frustration out of his voice, but some of it bleeds through. It will not accomplish anything for him to get upset as Wei Ying intends, but he dislikes that they are speaking this way, that Wei Ying thinks that. Lan Zhan hates being misinterpreted so severely, and he hates it most from Wei Ying. “Do you want me to lie and say that you’re not depressed? What do we gain from that? You know—I cannot assume that. But I have never…” He stops, clenches his jaw, gathers his thoughts. “I do not attach any negative connotations to you being unwell or sick, nothing about that makes you crazy, and I am not trying to patronize you.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, still something hard in his voice. Lan Zhan cannot entertain that.

“If I make you feel… caged,” Lan Zhan continues, a dull panic in his throat that he swallows down, “in a way that is not enjoyable for you, I am sorry. I am sorry without qualifiers.”

Wei Ying’s arms fall to his sides. “Why is it so difficult for you to react?”

“I am reacting,” Lan Zhan says. “I’m not going to fight with you. Stop trying to provoke me.”

“I want to try blindfolding,” Wei Ying says.

“Okay.”

“I do not think you treat me like a dog,” Wei Ying says slowly. “I was… you don’t make me feel that way.”

For maybe the first time in several minutes, Lan Zhan takes a full breath. He nods and unclenches his jaw. “Okay.”

“I just think—if you don’t even want to fuck me or, like, do a scene with me, then how am I—if I’m doing so bad, if I am so undesirable when I’m like this—” He stops, a low haze to his voice that does make Lan Zhan want to cage him, keep him here with him, away from everything that makes Wei Ying hurt. Lan Zhan does not want to become that thing. He is trying so hard not to suffocate Wei Ying. Lan Zhan watches him, bangs shading his lowered eyes, posture awkward and uncertain in a way that is unnatural for Wei Ying. “I don’t know that you want me, when I’m like this, and I feel crazy, and I feel grotesque, and you saying that you don’t want to do that with me makes me feel that I have nothing to offer you, and I feel shitty. When I think that. I am overemotional, when I’m—not doing good.” Wei Ying rubs his palm over his face and heaves out a long breath. His mouth tilts up. “Sorry, whatever, I don’t mean to be so fucking dramatic, I’ll be over it in fi—”

Lan Zhan tries not to push, but he can’t help it, and pulls Wei Ying into a hug, wrapping his arms around his back and holding him close until he can smell the mellowness of his shampoo in Wei Ying’s hair. Words fail him. Wei Ying collapses into him, head buried in his neck, and does not cry, although Lan Zhan wishes he would allow himself this. He understands the reticence.

“I do not need to fuck you to love you,” Lan Zhan says. His heart pounds in his chest, and he wonders if Wei Ying can feel it, how every part of him reaches for as much closeness as possible. ‘I am sorry that I have not made that clear. I will be better.”

Wei Ying breathes into his neck. “‘This is embarrassing,” Wei Ying says.

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says.

“I want to try blindfolding,” Wei Ying says again.

“After you eat,” Lan Zhan says.

“After I eat.” Wei Ying wraps his arms around Lan Zhan’s back and presses closer, beyond physical possibility. “Lan Zhan, I like you so much, I don’t think you’re—too much, and I know that you care for me, I just do not want for you to think that I am using you to feel better.”

“I do not mind. It is not bad for you to do that,” Lan Zhan says, although he is not sure if he should. He hesitates, and then continues, “but I am not a doctor or a trained professional.”

“You’re halfway to being a doctor,” Wei Ying says, muffled into his neck.

“Not a real doctor,” Lan Zhan qualifies, mouth tilting up. “A fake thinking doctor, as you often say. I believe a real doctor would be helpful in more critical ways than I.”

“Tried therapy when I was seventeen and they sucked,” says Wei Ying. “Like, they were mean and kinda racist.”

“And now you are twenty-five,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying doesn’t say anything more, so Lan Zhan drops it, and holds him tighter.

They try blindfolding.

Wei Ying straddles Lan Zhan on the couch and opens his mouth when Lan Zhan pulls down his chin so Lan Zhan can feed him the spring rolls by hand, halved so it is easier for Wei Ying to chew. Lan Zhan forgot to prepare a dipping sauce, and baking instead of frying makes them appear dryer than they should, but Wei Ying finishes the bowl without complaint. Lan Zhan carries him back to the kitchen and places him on the counter. He offers him a slice of warm bread with cooled jam. Do you want my help putting them away? Wei Ying asks softly. Lan Zhan shakes his head and transfers the sourdough onto a cooling rack, careful not to let the oiled parchment paper slip.

After, Lan Zhan sits on the couch and holds Wei Ying’s jaw between his palms while Wei Ying kneels between his legs, fed and full with his hair down and framing his face. He looks sad. Lan Zhan does not know what to say. What can he possibly say?

He smooths his thumb over Wei Ying’s eyebrows, and feels his chest swell past fullness when Wei Ying’s eyelashes flutter shut. This should be impossible. It should be impossible to want this much.

He wraps a light blue cotton tie over Wei Ying’s closed eyes and knots it behind and under his hair. “How does it feel?” He checks the tightness in the front, and is satisfied when he cannot slide his thumb beneath the fabric on Wei Ying’s cheek. Wei Ying’s skin is soft and still a bit damp with the night cream. There’s an acne scar on the high line of his cheek, and his lips are cracked and dry from the late winter windchill. Lan Zhan will have to remind him to use lip balm before bed.

“Good,” Wei Ying says, head tilted up like he’s searching for Lan Zhan’s voice.

“Good,” Lan Zhan repeats. He pushes Wei Ying’s head down onto his left thigh, chin angled towards Lan Zhan’s body, and strokes his fingers through his hair. Mindfulness and the stillness of being present in one’s own body. “You are so good.” They stay this way for hours.

Chapter Text

“Don’t move,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying lets out a muffled sound around his cock and tries shifting again, so Lan Zhan sighs and pulls his hair tight until he whimpers and behaves.

It’s been an hour of this. Lan Zhan wants to make Wei Ying feel good, and Wei Ying has spoken and hinted at this enough times that Lan Zhan was certain that it would be good for him. He was right. Wei Ying’s eyes widened and his mouth parted, surprise like he didn’t expect this, like he’d forgotten to expect this.

“Do you no longer want to?” Lan Zhan asked.

“No,” Wei Ying said. “I mean, yes, I still want to, no to the idea that I no longer want to. I didn’t think that you were actually into it, because it never got added to our shared note.”

Lan Zhan frowned. He did not consider this. “I am sorry.”

“It’s—it’s okay,” Wei Ying said. Slowly, his face came alive beyond surprise; a dirty and sly smile blooming until there was an ease and innate warmth to his face that Lan Zhan hadn’t seen in so many days. “Does gege want to fuck my mouth?”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan said. They were in the car then, halfway to the farmers’ market. Lan Zhan glanced over at a long red light, gaze heavy with the sight of Wei Ying in his clothing, light pink sweater sliding off his shoulder and baring his collarbone to the morning light. It felt like a revelation every time. Seeing Wei Ying, knowing Wei Ying, and then remembering he has him.

“Or more than that? Do you like that I’d just be on your dick for hours, unable to move?”

Lan Zhan hummed again. He would enjoy those things, but he knew that Wei Ying was projecting and would enjoy being caught and stuck like that much more.

“Are you not going to respond?” Wei Ying asked.

“I think that you like to let your imagination run,” Lan Zhan said. “I think you like it more when you have to work to know if you are good in that way.” He paused. The light turned green, and he continued driving. He remembered their conversation last night, and turned onto a one-way shortcut. “You know I want you, but you like to find out how much.”

“Zhan-ge,” Wei Ying said, a smile in his voice, his legs kicked up on the dashboard, “you are so forward, speaking so surely.”

“Are you not a sure thing?” Lan Zhan asked.

“I think you like waiting to find out if I am,” Wei Ying said, an easy parallel of Lan Zhan’s words. Lan Zhan’s mouth turned up.

Lan Zhan does not have to wait long. Barely an hour in, and Wei Ying is already struggling to stay still. He keeps shifting under the desk, unsubtle attempts at drawing Lan Zhan further into his mouth, and it would be amusing if Lan Zhan didn’t explicitly tell him multiple times not to. It would be funny if Wei Ying wasn’t being purposefully bad.

Lan Zhan pulls his hair from the scalp, tight enough that Wei Ying whimpers and tries moving away from the pain, as if that isn’t only an incentive for Lan Zhan to pull harder.

“Stay still,” Lan Zhan says. Not for the first time, not as if Wei Ying doesn’t know how much he dislikes repeating himself.

Wei Ying tries muffling speech around Lan Zhan’s dick. Lan Zhan sighs and digs his nails, short and even, into the back of Wei Ying’s neck. He means it to hurt. After twenty or so seconds of this, of Wei Ying struggling and trying to wiggle away from the pain only to choke himself on Lan Zhan’s dick, he goes limp and pliant. “Good,” Lan Zhan says. He wonders if Wei Ying’s eyes are wet behind the blindfold, and his cock throbs.

Lan Zhan is not fully erect in Wei Ying’s mouth, but Wei Ying struggles to fit it all in all the same. They’ve been working on that, and on better days, Wei Ying sends Lan Zhan the articles he’s reading to learn how to master his gag reflex and handle a larger partner. All good research requires considered methodology, Wei Ying texted. Lan Zhan finds these… horrifying, especially since they are often targeted towards heterosexual women and the language reflects that, but he knows the distate is exactly what Wei Ying intends, so he tries to play along. Last week, he sent I am holding office hours. Theory is useless without practice. Wei Ying did not reply for some time. Eventually, Lan Zhan received a message from Nie Huaisang, a photo of Wei Ying with his face buried in his elbows on a coffee shop table, face visibly red where he could not hide. Nerds, Huaisang added.

Today, he’s reading a series of articles on homosocial spaces during the late Qing, both for all-male spaces in migrant camps in North America, as well as the woman-dominated villages they left behind. For comparative purposes, although he dislikes comparative history, he’s also skimming a poorly-written book on Italian migratory patterns around the turn-of-century, and how much he hates the second text does help keep him focused. He is glad Wei Ying convinced him to torrent instead of buying. To be a white person with a doctoral degree in historical thought and analysis, indeed.

It is Lan Zhan’s first time trying cockwarming, too, and while he is not surprised at the level of patience it requires, he does have to focus on cultivating that patience more than he expected. It takes a lot not to fuck up into Wei Ying’s hot and wet mouth. Lan Zhan prefers fucking to blowjobs, but Wei Ying is so good and likes sucking cock so much, and Lan Zhan can never deny him anything.

Well. Almost anything.

“If you move again,” he says, putting his pen down next to his journal, “you will not come today.” Wei Ying’s hands twitch on his kneeling thighs like staying still is his greatest ongoing burden, as if he wasn’t just trying again to pull Lan Zhan further into his throat.

Wei Ying needs to practice patience. A few nights ago, after a full day between the farmers market and the mall and a few hours at a cafe until they closed, finally curled up in bed with the satisfaction of a productive day, Wei Ying admitted that he sometimes wondered if there was an expiration on their relationship, even before they started all of this. “I am in a rush, all the time, but it never feels like—it’s… I’m just always rushing through things, like there’s always a deadline, and it’s really hard not to project that. Onto you.”

“I will be yours for as long as you want me,” Lan Zhan said.

“You don’t know that,” Wei Ying said. Lan Zhan said he did. “You don’t. You don’t know that you won’t get bored of me, and it’s so impossible to put on an act with you, and I’m just me, forever, god, that’s a horrifying thought, first of all, and I don’t know how that’s appealing for you, I don’t know that I won’t crash when you realize how unappealing that is to you.” Wei Ying put his chin on Lan Zhan’s chest and frowned. “Sometimes I like you so much I want to break up with you,” Wei Ying said.

Lan Zhan kissed his forehead. “I won’t let you,” he said. “Not for that. I will never tire of you.” Wei Ying was silent for a long time. He nuzzled back into Lan Zhan’s shoulder, hair brushing Lan Zhan’s face, and they breathed each other in.

Eventually, Wei Ying laughed softly into Lan Zhan’s neck, like he was laughing at himself. “I want to fuck all the time, I just want you inside every day, and I’m convinced I’m seriously going crazy. For real. Always. My sex drive has never been this way before. Sometimes even if I know there won’t be time for it, I still clean myself out and prep before I come over, even if I’m having a bad day. My diet has changed, Lan Zhan, I’ve only had Chipotle once in the past three weeks, and you know I am a regular rewards member, that’s how—are you, are you laughing at me??”

Lan Zhan fixed his face. “Mn,” he said neutrally.

“This is serious! Do you know I had to buy hot sauce last week? I haven’t bought hot sauce in months, I always just liberate most of a bottle into the salsa containers, and I had to buy hot sauce with my money. Lan Zhan, I’m drinking oat milk. For you.”

“Mn. I am very grateful,” Lan Zhan said gravely.

“You don’t understand how instilled Big Dairy propaganda is as a growing child in this country,” Wei Ying said, putting his chin back on Lan Zhan’s sternum. Wei Ying’s chin was sharp, and there was a dull prick where it dug in. Lan Zhan did not mind much.

“You’ve mentioned before,” Lan Zhan reminded him.

“I really like cow’s milk,” Wei Ying said sadly. “I don’t even care that I’m lactose intolerant, like, who amongst us…? Maybe I’m a bad person for that. I hate all the other milks. Oat milk isn’t very good with Frosted Flakes, but it’s the most okay option. I think bottoms are an oppressed minority. Do you even appreciate what I’m doing for you?”

“Very much,” Lan Zhan said.

“You’re the only top I’ve ever met that has a personality,” Wei Ying said. “Except Wen Qing. So you have to mean it, that you’ll keep me forever.”

“Jin Zixu—“ Lan Zhan started, but Wei Ying covered his mouth with his hand. Muffled, Lan Zhan tried again. “Jin Zixuan says—“

“If you finish that sentence, I’ll kill you,” Wei Ying said.

“I understand,” Lan Zhan said, hiding a smile. “Thank you for the previous compliment.” Wei Ying scowled, but after Lan Zhan pecked his mouth, he pouted and relaxed again into Lan Zhan’s neck.

“I know your drive is pretty high, but I don’t think it could be as high as mine,” Wei Ying mumbled.

Lan Zhan’s mouth twitched. He adjusted himself under Wei Ying, until Wei Ying’s knee was between his legs, and Wei Ying could feel the rising swell of his dick.

“Seriously? Are you serious?” Lan Zhan hummed thoughtfully. “Was it the oat milk? Sweetheart, do oats turn you on? Do you wanna try food play, but I suck scorching hot oatmeal off your dick? Wait, I’m gonna—” Wei Ying started moving off the bed, but Lan Zhan tightened his grip on his waist and forced him back down, heart fluttering at Wei Ying’s shriek and giggle.

“It is a good thing that there is no deadline and we are not in a rush,” Lan Zhan said, smiling into Wei Ying’s mouth when Wei Ying leaned up for a kiss. “We have all the time in the world for my arousal to return.”

So they are practicing patience. Wei Ying admitted that he wanted to rush through their lists, like he had to check them off quickly if he wanted to experience everything with Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan… isn’t going to do this twice. Wei Ying is it for him. Lan Zhan could space out their kink by years and still be happy to have spent this time with Wei Ying.

I can’t read your mind, Wei Ying told him last night in bed, sleepy and warm. I know, Lan Zhan said. Lan Zhan often only says a tenth of the things that cross his mind, a quarter when he is with Wei Ying, and he has no desire to speak more or excessively, but he and his therapist have well-established that he needs to be more mindful of which quarter is open. I wouldn’t have known that you liked me unless I asked, Wei Ying said. Which is fine, I needed to control that conversation, but I don’t always want to be the one asking. Sometimes in his desire not to push, he stands still. Mindfulness, Lan Zhan knows, is an ongoing process.

For thirty minutes, Wei Ying is exceedingly good. He kneels between Lan Zhan’s legs, pillow cushioning his knees on the hardwood floor, and keeps still while he keeps Lan Zhan’s cock hard and warm inside his sweet mouth. Sometimes he forgets himself and sucks gently around it, like he wants to more actively feel the shape of it in his mouth. Lan Zhan is indulgent and besotted, and he allows them both this.

When Lan Wangji finishes skimming as much as he can bear of the book’s fascist apologist rhetoric, he closes the document viewer and his laptop and carefully pushes the desk back, enough that he can better see Wei Ying’s face and beautiful form. His breath catches at the sort of… peacefulness on Wei Ying’s face, lines smoothed out on his forehead, jaw relaxed and easy. Lan Zhan runs his thumb down Wei Ying’s cheek and feels the swell where his dick stretches Wei Ying’s mouth. He wonders if it is uncomfortable, but when he pushes the blindfold up to Wei Ying’s forehead, he looks just as content. Lan Zhan’s boyfriend is so handsome.

“You look good,” he says, tracing Wei Ying’s bottom lip and then the line of drool that escapes from his plugged mouth. Lan Zhan could move on to this next article now, but—he cradles the back of Wei Ying’s head and pushes him further down, until he can feel the tender back of his throat, and then he pushes further until Wei Ying starts gagging, eyes blinking wet and open when Lan Zhan keeps pushing his cock in. Looks better.

Up to now, Wei Ying has worked up to getting most of it inside before his choking sounds painful, and Lan Zhan often has to keep himself from pushing too far in. Not now, though, not as he fucks deep into Wei Ying’s throat, short and hard thrusts that keep Wei Ying firmly held in place. “Mmffhghndf heffng,” Wei Ying whines around his cock, pushing back against Lan Zhan’s palm like he wants to get away. Lan Zhan lets him pull halfway off, just enough to gasp a short breath into his lungs, before shoving him back down so that his throat contracts as sweetly as it did the first time.

“You look pretty,” Lan Zhan tells him. He runs a hand through Wei Ying’s hair, pushes back the strands stuck to his forehead with sweat, and rubs his finger under Wei Ying’s eyebrow, at the thin skin covering his eyes. Wei Ying’s eyelashes fan down, full and jet-black on his pale cheeks. With this late winter color, every rush of blood blossoms high, and Lan Zhan loves playing at banter and genuine flattery just to see how easily Wei Ying takes to it all. Wei Ying, too, never lets him keep his hats over his ears. “Good, hm?” Lan Zhan anticipates this summer with Wei Ying, summers with Wei Ying, the high challenge of bringing color to his mid-July tan. There is—so much to be done, with Wei Ying. Lan Zhan cannot imagine running out of patience for this.

Wei Ying makes another indistinguishable noise and attempts to pull away again, but Lan Zhan keeps him pinned there this time. “Can you breathe?”

Wei Ying shakes his head, and then he nods, and then he shakes his head again. The movement slides the head of Lan Zhan’s cock another few centimeters into Wei Ying’s throat, and fuck, Lan Zhan needs a second to catch his breath around how incredible it is, to be this deep down Wei Ying’s spasming throat. Just to try, just because he can, he pinches his fingers over Wei Ying’s nose, just for the few seconds before Wei Ying starts clawing at his thighs and the tears fall faster, heavy droplets that fall around Wei Ying’s plugged mouth. His lips are thinner than Lan Zhan’s, but still plush and soft, and they always get pretty and swollen when Lan Zhan stuffs him with dick, always a pleasure to track the tangible proof of how easily he uses and takes care of Wei Ying.

When Wei Ying’s choking makes Lan Zhan feel like he might come down his throat, he loosens his grip and lets Wei Ying pull off to rest his forehead on Lan Zhan’s knee and gasp for shaky air.

“Color?” Lan Zhan asks, petting Wei Ying’s hair. He pays most attention to Wei Ying’s nape, soft and sensitive behind his loose hair.

Wei Ying is still too conscious of his breathing to reply, but he taps Lan Zhan’s leg three times for green, and Lan Zhan could smile. He offers ascending signals so that Wei Ying can more easily safeword but has to actively admit he likes it even when he’s squirming away from Lan Zhan’s roughness.

“Sit up,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying does, and his glassy eyes widen when he sees Lan Zhan stroking himself, easy swipes up by the slickness of Wei Ying’s saliva. When Lan Zhan lets his dick go to fall and brush over Wei Ying’s nose, Wei Ying’s face turns up to try to catch it in his mouth. He slouches in the process, not much, but more than he knows he is allowed when he is like this in front of Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan slaps his face very lightly, just a reminder, and Wei Ying straightens up at once. His eyes are wide, apologetic, Lan Zhan’s sweet and attentive boy.

Lan Zhan does know that Wei Ying is a sure thing. Still, the chase is half of the fun.

He grips his dick at the base, secure, makes sure that Wei Ying can see all that Lan Zhan’s hand does not cover. Of course, Wei Ying hasn’t looked away for a second; his eyes widen at the reminder. His mouth parts and he sways forward like he’s lost control of balance, but he fixes himself before Lan Zhan needs to correct him. Lan Zhan tries not to smile, but it is a close thing.

“Do you want it?” Lan Zhan asks him. Wei Ying immediately nods. “How bad?”

“Bad,” Wei Ying says, voice croaky and unused. Lan Zhan raises an eyebrow and presses his foot into Wei Ying’s crotch, just on the side of painful, just a warning. Wei Ying whimpers and tries pulling away, so Lan Zhan grabs his jaw and faces him up and forward with blunt nails digging into Wei Ying’s soft skin. Wei Ying doesn’t often eat enough, usually just from forgetfulness rather than illness, but the past weeknights spent at Lan Zhan’s apartment gave Lan Zhan the leeway he needed to sneak Wei Ying snacks, cook what Wei Ying likes best and watch him finish his plate even on the days they hardly said five words between them at dinner. His face looks fuller. His cheekbones are high without the sharp gauntness that makes Lan Zhan worry and prep four dozen spring rolls at ten PM when he cannot sleep.

“Who gave you permission to speak?” Lan Zhan asks.

Wei Ying opens his mouth again, but he catches himself before sound escapes. Lan Zhan drops his hand and watches Wei Ying struggle to hold his head straight. He is trying so hard. Lan Zhan appreciates it. Still. He wants to bring Wei Ying far enough that he cannot hold himself up no matter how hard he tries.

“Good boy,” Lan Zhan says, running his thumb over Wei Ying’s bottom lip. He leans back in his seat and watches Wei Ying watch him jerk himself off. When Wei Ying has to lick his lips to wipe away drool, unblinking for several seconds, Lan Zhan lets go and lets his dick slap onto his stomach. He rests his hands on his thighs palm side down. “Show me.”

Wei Ying lifts his hand. Lan Zhan pushes his arm away with his knee. Wei Ying leans in, mouth parted, and Lan Zhan thinks he gets it, but instead he nuzzles against Lan Zhan’s dick. Lan Zhan gives him a few seconds before pushing his head back by the forehead with two fingers.

Wei Ying looks up at him with frustrated eyes. Lan Zhan places his palms back down.

Wei Ying is a smart boy, so the next time he leans his face in, it is to nudge at Lan Zhan’s fingers like an obedient pet—ah, perhaps Lan Zhan will need to revisit that one—and pull Lan Zhan’s second and middle finger into his warm mouth. Lan Zhan appreciates the effort, so he adds in the third himself and shoves them all deep, down to the last knuckle and Wei Ying’s light gagging.

Wei Ying fellates Lan Zhan’s fingers fine enough, though it is more for him than for Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan knows Wei Ying wants it bad, knows that Wei Ying will take Lan Zhan’s cock like a gift, but he likes watching Wei Ying build himself up—his full lips suckling at the tip of Lan Zhan’s fingers, the heat in his eyes when he looks up through his eyelashes when he takes them deep. Lan Zhan is glad he took the blindfold off long ago. It would be a pity to miss such a sight.

Lan Zhan uses his other hand to pick up and scroll through his phone, idle swipes through his email inbox that serve little purpose other than the indignant noise Wei Ying makes and how much faster he moves on Lan Zhan’s fingers. Lan Zhan glances at him from behind the phone. Wei Ying’s eyes are hot. Frustration and arousal blur.

Wei Ying bites his fingers.

Lan Zhan removes his fingers, pulls Wei Ying’s head back with a scalding pull of his hair, and spits into his mouth.

Wei Ying’s face flushes even redder, but like some final run at disobedience, he bares his spit-soaked teeth at Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan tries not to let himself be goaded by brats, but annoyance flashes through him like lightning, and it is far too easy to spit in Wei Ying’s mouth again and slap him across the face.

Wei Ying moans before Lan Zhan has time to worry about reaction without negotiation, but he still asks for Wei Ying’s color, annoyed, nails digging hard into Wei Ying’s cheek. Wei Ying taps Lan Zhan’s shin three times, eyes wet with prone tears.

“Don’t be such a—“ Lan Zhan stops himself. There are a litany of words he wants to call Wei Ying, that he thinks Wei Ying will like and get off on, but he hesitates to even bring them up for negotiation, much less without warning. Lan Zhan needs to establish a firm line between their play and Wei Ying’s self-deprecation. “Do not be such a brat.” He lets go of Wei Ying’s jaw and sits back in his chair.

He goes back to this phone. “Try again,” he says dismissively.

Wei Ying doesn’t let impatience gnaw him into trouble again. He sucks on Lan Zhan’s fingers with more deliberation now, trying to show Lan Zhan his remorse, to demonstrate want without condition.

Lan Zhan clears out his personal email before he looks back down at Wei Ying. He is so beautiful. Lan Zhan could never grow tired of this. He taps Wei Ying’s cheek until Wei Ying reluctantly releases them from his mouth, lips freshly swollen and red. Lan Zhan dries his fingers across Wei Ying’s cheek, and tries not to smile when Wei Ying leans into it, gaze never departing from where Lan Zhan’s dick curves up against his stomach.

“Do you think you deserve it?” Lan Zhan asks him. “You may speak.”

Even with permission, it takes Wei Ying a few seconds to get the words together. “I,” he starts. “Zhan-ge—”

“Yes or no,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying whines and lowers his face to Lan Zhan’s thigh, and Lan Zhan allows it this time, the break in posture. “Were you good?”

Wei Ying shakes his head. “No,” he answers, muffled by Lan Zhan’s pants. “But I was good earlier.”

Lan Zhan hums thoughtfully. “You were.” He pets Wei Ying’s hair, an indulgent moment before pushing his head back up. “Look at me,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying looks somewhere beyond his shoulder, so he clarifies, “my eyes, Wei Ying.”

Lan Zhan knows that some subs find it difficult to make eye contact when they are under, but this is a first for Wei Ying, and Lan Zhan marvels at how far under he must be. There is an… incredible delicacy to this, the amount of care required for Wei Ying right now, and Lan Zhan feels a deepness rush through him that makes it hard to breathe for a moment, heart pounding in his chest while he stares at his sub, sees his sub try desperately to listen and maintain eye contact even with glossy eyes and a flushed face, somewhere good and beyond that Lan Zhan brought him to.

Lan Zhan did that for Wei Ying. Lan Zhan could make Wei Ying do—anything right now, and he would do it. No questions asked. No one else will ever have this much control over Wei Ying, this much trust from Wei Ying. Lan Zhan’s mouth is dry. The feeling is heady, consuming, and in the dimming light of an early winter sunset, he swears he could count Wei Ying’s breaths, time the pace of his heartbeat from any distance. He could swallow Wei Ying’s entire form whole.

“Good boy,” Lan Zhan eventually rasps, rubbing soothing motions into Wei Ying’s scalp. Wei Ying purrs, the softest and sweetest sound Lan Zhan has ever heard, and it makes his dick pulse with the heavy need to be inside of Wei Ying in whatever possible way.

“Gege will give it to you,” Lan Zhan says. “You won’t let me regret it, will you?” Wei Ying frantically shakes his head.

When Lan Zhan guides his cock into Wei Ying’s open mouth, tongue sticking out and face tilted back, Wei Ying makes a desperate and needy sound deep in the back of his throat. Even when Lan Zhan stops pushing in, willing to let Wei Ying take it at his own pace this time, Wei Ying moves his head closer and closer, hands braced on Lan Zhan’s legs for steadiness as he takes Lan Zhan deep into his throat, eyes closed and eyelashes fluttering.

Lan Zhan holds his breath as Wei Ying works on swallowing him down, incremental but rapid bobs onto Lan Zhan’s cock. HIs movements are ceaseless. Even when he begins gagging on the intrusion, he keeps going, tears falling down behind his closed eyelids, deep red tinting down to his working Adam’s apple and neck. Lan Zhan supposes he should check in and tell Wei Ying not to push himself too hard, but that would be dishonest to them both; with the high of control drowning out his thoughts, he wants nothing more than for Wei Ying to push himself too hard, to prove that he does deserve it, to prove how badly he wants Lan Zhan, to prove with his open throat and runny nose and bright eyes just how much of a sure thing he is.

When Wei Ying can’t get the final centimeters into his throat, he makes a frustrated sound and bobs faster on Lan Zhan’s cock, almost reckless in his desperation. Lan Zhan grunts and tightens his hand at the back of Wei Ying’s hair, eyes fierce and locked on Wei Ying’s efforts.

After a few minutes, Wei Ying makes the same frustrated sound and finally opens his eyes. Fuck. He looks so fucked out. Completely out of mind. Lan Zhan cannot fathom how Wei Ying is still upright; the joy at his dedication to being good for Lan Zhan is immeasurable.

Wei Ying insistently nudges his head back against Lan Zhan’s hand, pretty eyes pleading for Lan Zhan to… ah. Lan Zhan’s dick twitches in Wei Ying’s mouth, and Wei Ying gags at the shift, but he doesn’t move away.

Lan Zhan takes a tight fistful of Wei Ying’s soft hair, freshly conditioned with Lan Zhan’s scent and their long bath last night after he fucked Wei Ying half to sleep. He pushes Wei Ying down, eyes locked on Wei Ying’s face and the way the flesh at his neck expands the further Lan Zhan slides into his throat. There is no discomfort on Wei Ying’s face. His eyes are lidded, blurry and bright, mouth stretched wide around Lan Zhan’s cock. Spit pools at the corner of his mouth, and although Lan Zhan knows it is long gone, he cannot help groaning when he thinks of Wei Ying being forced to take Lan Zhan’s cock with Lan Zhan’s saliva in his mouth.

“Loosen your jaw,” Lan Zhan commands. Wei Ying blinks, making eye contact with Lan Zhan again like he’s just been reminded of his physicality. When Lan Zhan holds him still and presses the last remainder in, Wei Ying looks panicked for one shocking moment, tears falling and hands scrabbling at Lan Zhan’s leg. He gags and makes hurried, muffled noises around Lan Zhan’s cock, and the movement and vibration makes Lan Zhan exhale sharply and spurt precome into Wei Ying’s mouth. “Shh,” he manages, running his thumb over Wei Ying’s eyebrow, “you can, this is what you were made for, relax your jaw for gege.”

When Lan Zhan finally, finally gets all his cock into Wei Ying’s sweet mouth, Wei Ying’s nose pressed tight to his pelvic bone and throat swollen with it, he has to pause and center himself so as not to immediately shoot down Wei Ying’s throat. He wants to give Wei Ying a moment to sit with this and feel proud of himself, but fuck, fuck, it feels so fucking good inside Wei Ying and he wants to come inside Wei Ying every second of every day until his stomach swells with it, until he doesn’t know how to think without Lan Zhan’s cock and come inside him.

“Look at you,” Lan Zhan says, a deepness in his voice that makes his ears burn. “You’re so pretty.” Wei Ying makes a small noise around Lan Zhan’s dick and swallows more desperately around the head. “Even prettier with my cock in your mouth.”

He pulls Wei Ying off and swipes the slick head of his cock over Wei Ying’s cheek and jaw while he catches his breath. The clear viscosity of Lan Zhan’s precome makes Wei Ying’s face glow, wet mouth and highlighted cheeks. Wei Ying nuzzles against Lan Zhan’s cock with a moan, as though it is as good for him as it is for Lan Zhan.

When Wei Ying takes it back in, Lan Zhan relaxes in his chair and tilts his head back, hand resting atop Wei Ying’s head with little pressure, now, instead a reminder of who—owns him, who keeps him. Lan Zhan meant it when he said he will keep Wei Ying for as long as Wei Ying will have him.

He could never give this up. The content look on Wei Ying’s face as he bobs his head on and off of Lan Zhan makes Lan Zhan pulse in his mouth, his body wanting to fill Wei Ying up beyond capacity even when he already has Wei Ying stuffed and held on his cock. He looks down with hooded eyes and thinks of nothing but Wei Ying, of his good sub and his hot mouth.

Wei Ying has said before that Lan Zhan is too big for most tricks, but Wei Ying still tries valiantly to make it good for him, tongue flat and swiping under Lan Zhan’s dick while he works his lips down. Whenever he takes Lan Zhan deep into his trained throat, he swallows and gets a low noise from Lan Zhan. Wei Ying is… transcendent, so good at sucking cock, so earnest and eager to have Lan Zhan in his mouth. On the times that Lan Zhan lets him talk while sucking him off, Wei Ying will tease about waiting for Lan Zhan on his knees at the door, a thin vibrator keeping him barely stretched with a larger toy in his mouth to ensure his throat remains trained for Lan Zhan’s cock. It is relatively standard dirty talk, maybe a little purposefully cliche, but Lan Zhan cannot deny that it… does it for him, imagining Wei Ying like that. At least half of it is the implications for their future together, of Lan Zhan taking care of Wei Ying enough that he doesn’t have to work, and all he needs to do is wait for Lan Zhan at home like the sweetest househusband or housewife. He wonders if Wei Ying would be willing to dress up for him.

When Lan Zhan feels his orgasm approaching, he tightens his grip on Wei Ying’s hair again and fucks in with short, rough thrusts. Wei Ying moans wetly and moves his mouth faster in turn, and Lan Zhan cannot help groaning long and low as the sensation travels through his balls and back up to his gut, hot and sharp. Right at the precipice, he pulls out, swearing under his breath at the line of saliva and precome that connects his spit-slick cock and Wei Ying’s pink lips.

“Jerk it off onto your face,” he demands, vice rough. It almost sounds like he is—growling, which is particularly embarrassing but second to the sudden pressing importance of painting Wei Ying’s face with his come until he’s drowning in it.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, blinking up at him. He looks disoriented and a little overwhelmed, and his mouth stays parted like he’s still expecting to have Lan Zhan inside. Just this once, Lan Zhan repeats himself without condition. “Oh,” Wei Ying breathes, eyes widening. It’s not a comfortable fit with only one hand, so he wraps both around Lan Zhan and slowly begins stroking forward, still distracted.

“You can put the tip in your mouth,” Lan Zhan says, running a hand through Wei Ying’s hair.

“Thank you,” Wei Ying rushes, “thank you, gege, thank you so much.” He pokes his tongue out and places it under the cockhead, and as he jerks Lan Zhan’s dick off into his mouth, precome pools on his tongue. Somewhere in the kitchen, Lan Zhan’s iPad pings with a WeChat notification, but Lan Zhan can hardly hear anything over the wet slap of Wei Ying stroking him closer to orgasm and his heavy breathing in the still air.

When he comes, it’s to the sight of Wei Ying closing his mouth around the tip when his mouth gets too full not to swallow, suckling softly and sweetly while his hands twist at the base. There is no way Lan Zhan could’ve lasted past that. He releases all over Wei Ying’s lips, thick and hot, and replaces Wei Ying’s hands with one of his own so that he can spurt it onto Wei Ying’s face, his cheek, jaw, furrowed eyebrows, more on his parted lips and desperate tongue. Even though they fucked last night, Lan Zhan spends ages coming on Wei Ying’s face, the last bursts inside his mouth, down his throat.

Fuck. Lan Zhan falls back on his chair and pants, unable to catch his breathing, one hand idly caressing Wei Ying’s hair while Wei Ying licks away the few remains on Lan Zhan’s cock and thighs. Lan Zhan has to cover his eyes with his hand, lest his libido convinces him to go again and fuck Wei Ying into the desk.

When Lan Zhan manages to open his eyes and look at Wei Ying again, Wei Ying is staring up at him with hands on his own knees, so fucking beautiful Lan Zhan can hardly believe he’s his. “Come here,” Lan Zhan murmurs, patting his thigh.

Wei Ying scrambles onto his lap. He almost falls over, dizzy and deep under, before Lan Zhan rights him with both hands tight on his waist. “Hi,” Wei Ying says, smiling dopily.

Lan Zhan’s mouth twitches. “Hi, baby.” He wipes off come from Wei Ying’s eyebrows, huffing out a small laugh when Wei Ying immediately leans in to suck Lan Zhan’s fingers into his mouth. “You want to come?”

Wei Ying pops Lan Zhan’s fingers out of his mouth. His eyes go big. “Can I?”

Lan Zhan nods and pulls Wei Ying’s dick from his boxers, shushing him when Wei Ying jolts in his lap and keens harshly. With his own come, he jerks Wei Ying to a fast and messy orgasm, Wei Ying burying his dirty face in Lan Zhan’s neck and panting as he squirms around the pleasure. Lan Zhan trails gentle bites over Wei Ying’s neck and shoulders and lets him know what a good boy he is, how good and sweet and obedient he is for Lan Zhan, how beautiful and easy, how perfect his sloppy mouth is at taking Lan Zhan’s cock. It only takes a few minutes for Wei Ying to come apart with a broken moan, shaking in Lan Zhan’s arms as the orgasm and then aftershocks wrack his sensitive body. “Lan Zhan,” he gasps, “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan.” Lan Zhan loves nothing more than the way his name sounds in Wei Ying’s mouth.

After Lan Zhan makes Wei Ying drink a bottle of water, he undresses them both and pulls Wei Ying into a warm bath. Wei Ying is wrecked, yawning nonstop from his place between Lan Zhan’s legs, head lolling back onto Lan Zhan’s shoulder. He struggles to keep his eyes open, but Lan Zhan wants him semi-conscious of his surroundings before falling asleep, so he uses a mild exfoliator to wash Wei Ying clean instead of the usual loofah that makes him fall asleep quickly.

“How do you feel?” Lan Zhan asks softly, kissing Wei Ying’s shoulder.

“Floaty,” Wei Ying slurs, the same thing he usually says.

“Do you feel good?” Wei Ying nods. Lan Zhan washes between his fingers, soft and clean with the manicures they got yesterday. “I’m glad. You made me feel good, too.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying starts. He yawns again. He turns and lowers his face to snuggle his cheek against Lan Zhan’s elbow. He is quiet for so long that Lan Zhan worries he’s fallen asleep, but doesn’t want to disturb him. Eventually, after Lan Zhan has rinsed out the conditioner from his hair, he mumbles, “love you.” Lan Zhan’s heart pounds out of his chest. He could not want anything other than this. A lifetime could never be enough.

Chapter Text

They melt in the moment where the solstice finally reaches the other side altogether. Time shifts, and the impossible brightness of 5pm in the northern spring drifts then knits a sort of liminal space, the moment where the end of an extended winter begins, the usual call of renewal and birth and the anticipated proof that life and warmth continue again, a yearly reminder of hope.

Lan Zhan thought he knew how to ration that hope, to not let its dangerous snare pull him in too far much earlier in life. Yet, sat on this firm chair in this private study room with Wei Ying, he feels nothing less than that dangerous airy swell of hope in his heart, right where every thought of Wei Ying lives.

This sort of sentimentality was uncommon before Wei Ying. Like so much else in that space, Lan Zhan is not inclined to mind.

“I don’t wanna read this,” Wei Ying whines for the fifth time that hour. “Reading is for losers and virgins. Lan Zhan, do you think so lowly of me? I can excuse being a loser, but I draw the line at implied virginity. I’m, like, two weeks away from prolap—“

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says calmly. Even after all this time, so many things Wei Ying says make Lan Zhan’s ears burn. “Finish reading this so you can finish the book review.”

“Book reviews are for nerds,” says Wei Ying.

“And you are in a doctoral program in the humanities,” Lan Zhan reminds him. Wei Ying pouts at him. Lan Zhan flick his lower lip with his finger.

“I want more coffee.”

Lan Zhan gives him a look. Wei Ying has made so many trips downstairs to the cafe that he got a free muffin on his last visit. Lan Zhan tries valiantly not to seethe at this barista’s obvious affections for Lan Zhan’s boyfriend, but there is only so far he wills himself to go. “Wei Ying.” Wei Ying says that Lan Zhan gets a voice, sometimes, when he wants Wei Ying to listen. Whenever Wei Ying hears that voice, in the initial moments before Lan Zhan eventually makes it worth their while, he only wants to bring it out more. Let Lan Zhan see just how bad he can be.

Wei Ying knows who owns him. In some moments, moments like these, he just needs the reminder.

Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything more when Wei Ying goes for another coffee—he comes back with an iced tea, too worked up to add any more heat—and a chocolate croissant. “Sangtae gave it to me for free,” Wei Ying says. “He’s really nice, isn’t he? Might give him my number so we can be friends, what do you think, baby?”

Lan Zhan glances up at Wei Ying, there and gone. He looks back down at his paper.

“Are you ignoring me?” Wei Ying asks. Incredulous, somehow. When the jealousy and anger release from Lan Zhan’s body, he always thinks about the newness Wei Ying brings to each of his little games. Fresh-faced and innocent every time.

Lan Zhan wants to try something new today.

“You said you wanted me to hit you,” he says, staring intently at Wei Ying.

“What,” Wei Ying says. He seems caught off-guard. “No I didn’t, when did I say that, I would never say that.”

“I have the text.”

“You must’ve coerced me somehow.”

“Where should I hit you? Your face?” He leans in closer across the table, and grabs Wei Ying’s jaw when he starts to open his mouth to interrupt and deflect. “Your cock?” He tightens his grip on Wei Ying’s jaw. “Should I spank you?” At that, Wei Ying’s eyes widen and his breath hitches. He looks mortified. That doesn’t matter. He looks beyond affected.

“Not there,” he breathes. “You—I don’t want you to hit me there, I’m not a child, you can’t threaten me with—that. Lan Zhan! Tell me you won’t do that, it’s so cruel and terrible!” Lan Zhan watches Wei Ying work himself up more and more, without any input from Lan Zhan. “When you do that I’ll never forgive you, I’m serious. Are you listening to me?”

“When,” Lan Zhan repeats. He asked Wei Ying one question and he’s already built a future scenario and all possible reactions and outcomes in his head. He makes it so easy.

“I meant if,” Wei Ying rushes to add. “I don’t—obviously you can’t do that.”

Lan Zhan wonders if Wei Ying realizes how obvious his tells have gotten. His eyes are already darker, and he wets his lips with every other sentence, like he’s already thinking about taking it. He wants so desperately and freely even when pretending not to. How could Lan Zhan ever deny him what he needs?

Wei Ying’s voice goes light and airy and sweet. Tempting. Wei Ying does not have to try to succeed in temping Lan Zhan.

“The choice is yours,” Lan Zhan says.

He doesn’t doubt that Wei Ying understands the meaning, but he still wets his lips again and asks, “what do you mean by that? What’s my choice?”

Lan Zhan goes back to his work. He does not reply. Today, he reads an article using gender as a category of analysis to investigate Mao’s essays on Miss Zhao, women as the primary mode of commodity, and gender as death. It is more modern than his usual, but since global communism is his third field, it is not only an enjoyable read but a necessary one. It also neatly aligns with Wei Ying’s interests and his second field, gender in China. Lan Zhan must remember to recommend it when Wei Ying isn’t actively goading Lan Zhan into spanking him.

Not that Lan Zhan needs to be goaded.

*

Lan Zhan enjoys any and all versions of Wei Ying, so long that he’s not acting in his worst interests. Still, it’s not hard to see that Wei Ying is trying his best to be as absolutely insufferable as possible for the rest of the rest of their study date.

Well, Wei Ying says that it's not a date unless there’s a hand on his ass for at least part of it. Lan Zhan will take care of this in the car. Somehow, Wei Ying gets even easier in the car. Something about transitory existence and semi-public spaces as a gay man; Wei Ying enjoys fitting together theory into every minute and silly thing. It is always amusing watching him connect everything that upsets him even mildly into an intellectual debate and thought exercise. He decided that the mediocre muffin and green tea from the library the other day was racist. Lan Zhan must admit that he made a compelling argument.

“Seriously, can’t believe that you’re still ignoring me,” Wei Ying says. “I even went downstairs two more times!” The confirmation of Wei Ying’s intentions and awareness of how Lan Zhan feels about that godforsaken barista makes him raise an eyebrow. Wei Ying doesn’t need more of a reaction than that to squirm in his seat and lean closer across the table. “What’s that face for?”

“Do your readings.”

“How can I when I know you’re planning and plotting terrible things!”

“It is your choice to make.” In theory. Lan Zhan had very little doubt that Wei Ying would choose to behave this way, demanding and loud and only amping it all up when Lan Zhan expresses disapproval. Or, better yet—disapproval isn’t enough, Wei Ying said before. I want you to get angry.

“I already said that choice is no.” Lan Zhan glances over at him and then back down at his article. “Lan Zhan. Sweetheart. Baby. Honey bear. Mooncake. My good, perfect boy. If you continue ignoring me I won’t be held liable for what I say or do.”

“You are old enough for self restraint.”

“A-Ying is three years old,” Wei Ying says, batting his eyelashes.

“Does age excuse A-Ying’s behavior?” Lan Zhan asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Am I making you angry?” Wei Ying asks, a genuine tone of excitement in his voice. Anticipation. Yet he tries to act as if he doesn’t want it whichever way Lan Zhan wants, as if he’s not gagging for whatever mean thing Lan Zhan will next do to him.

“You require guidance,” he says.

“Will gege offer me that guiding hand?” Wei Ying croons, putting his chin on his hands. “Shouldn’t you begin instruction as soon as possible? Aren’t I so insolent?”

Lan Zhan closes his eyes for the moment. His face feels like it’s burning the flesh off. He wishes they were not in the library so that Wei Ying could truly reap the consequences of his insolence.

Lan Zhan counts to three; he waits a moment.

“Gege~~~”

“Do not speak.”

“What is my mouth for if not to speak? I need to have you in my mouth somehow.”

Lan Zhan counts to thr—no. He gives up. He stands and begins packing up his papers and laptop.

“Let’s go.”

Wei Ying giggles.

-

The second they get back into Lan Zhan’s apartment, Wei Ying beelines for the bedroom, pulling his sweater off as he goes. Lan Zhan prefers to watch Wei Ying remove his clothing, but the tension in the corners of his eyes makes it difficult to care about much else other than burying himself deep enough inside of Wei Ying that it hurts.

“I want it from behind,” Wei Ying says once they’re naked and pressed together on the bed. Lan Zhan hums. Wei Ying usually prefers missionary or riding Lan Zhan, wants to be able to see his face and pepper it with kisses. Lan Zhan prefers every position that gets him inside of Wei Ying, but this one is definitely up there. He wonders why Wei Ying—ah. He resists the temptation to force Wei Ying straight into it. They can try subtle.

“More,” Wei Ying pants. “Lan Zhan, gege, give me all of it.” Of course, he gives Wei Ying anything he asks and more. He holds his breath as the last bit presses into Wei Ying’s hole, and groans softly, beside himself, when it all fits in. The view is… incandescent. Lan Zhan can imagine no better sight than his hands grabbing onto Wei Ying’s hips and holding him steady while pushing inside and in and in until Wei Ying can surely feel it with every exhale, every stilted inhale.

In the midst of Wei Ying’s inevitable rambling about how good it feels and how much he needs Lan Zhan to fuck him forever, all Lan Zhan manages is “good,” low and deeper than his usual register. He grunts when Wei Ying starts moving his body and pushing back into Lan Zhan’s movements, elbows braced on the bed as he rears back to take all of it in without pause.

“Gege,” Wei Ying gasps, moving back more frantically when Lan Zhan pauses his movements to ensure that Wei Ying has to work for it. “Gege, please, ah, ah—! I need it, fuck me—!”

Lan Zhan exhales a big puff of air and gives Wei Ying one firm thrust forward.

“Yes,” Wei Ying moans. “Yeah, yes, just like that for your Wei Ying, you fuck your Wei Ying so good.”

“How badly?” Lan Zhan asks. This is a common enough question from him that he needs not elaborate.

“Bad,” Wei Ying groans. “Need it so bad.”

“Take what you need,” says Lan Zhan. Wei Ying does.

As Lan Zhan watches Wei Ying fuck back onto his cock, the white noise in his mind gets deafening. The slap of skin is loud and persistent, as is the darkening red of Wei Ying’s ass where it hits Lan Zhan’s pelvic bone and thighs.

Lan Zhan has tried subtlety for long enough. The next time Wei Ying takes all of it in, Lan Zhan tightens his left hand on Wei Ying’s waist and uses the other to land a sharp slap on Wei Ying’s ass, right where the flesh is the fullest.

Wei Ying lets out a gutted sound and tightens around Lan Zhan, so soft and hot inside him that Lan Zhan cannot help it when he spanks Wei Ying again. This time, Wei Ying jolts into consciousness and tries to squirm away from Lan Zhan’s hold. “Lan Zhan! What are you—what are you doing, don’t do that! You didn’t even ask!”

“I did,” says Lan Zhan.

“And I said you can’t!”

Lan Zhan hums. Sure he can. He hits Wei Ying again to demonstrate just how easily he can.

“You can’t,” Wei Ying moans miserably. Lan Zhan slaps him again. Every time he does, Wei Ying’s hole squeezes around him with a fierce possessiveness, as if he needs Lan Zhan to stay inside him even in the midst of his complaints. His performance. “No, Lan Zhan, don’t…”

“Color?”

Wei Ying curses. “It’s—I mean, green doesn’t mean that you can just ignore everything I say, Lan Zhan!”

“Mn,” says Lan Zhan. That is exactly what green means. At least when it comes to Wei Ying. Wei Ying is the type of sub that wants to say no and get ignored, entirely at Lan Zhan’s mercy and domain. And Lan Zhan can break him down however he pleases. He spanks Wei Ying again, his cock throbbing when Wei Ying plants his face into the pillow and whines, “It hurts.”

*

It does not hurt. Not much, anyway, Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan isn’t using his full strength, but Lan Zhan doesn’t need to know that. It hurts enough. It hurts Wei Ying’s pride. It hurts his dignity!

“If you hate it so much,” Lan Zhan tells him, a hint of breathlessness that makes Wei Ying excited all over, “safeword.”

Wei Ying scowls into the pillow. “I can’t! You’re being too mean!” Wei Ying knows that does not make sense. That’s the least of his worries when his brain is so compromised whenever Lan Zhan pushes deep inside and—hits him—again…! “Lan Zhaaaaaaan…”

“Wei Ying,” he responds.

“Don’t,” he says weakly. He hates that he keeps clenching every time Lan Zhan hits him, his body a total traitor to what are obviously his real desires. “Why are you treating me like this??”

“You are insolent,” says Lan Zhan. Wei Ying hates when Lan Zhan throws his own words back at him. It is so uncalled for and unkind. “You require guidance.”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” he pleads. “Lan Zhan, I learned, I’ll be a good boy, please.”

Lan Zhan spanks him again, the hardest one yet. “Not yet.”

What is he waiting for, then? For Wei Ying to give up and admit he likes it? He cannot admit to what is untrue, and Lan Zhan should know so much better than to think so. No matter how Wei Ying begs and pleads and attempts to reason with his unreasonable boyfriend, Lan Zhan continues spanking Wei Ying, as if he is a misbehaving brat. Which—okay, whatever, Lan Zhan can think whatever he wants, but he cannot treat Wei Ying this way. It is impossible and forbidden.

Wei Ying insists on this verbally and with his many physical attempts at getting away from Lan Zhan, but Lan Zhan just keeps hitting him. Surely Wei Ying put this on their no list. He cannot imagine that past him would tolerate such cruelty, such humiliation.

The first time he comes, Lan Zhan doesn’t even pause for breath. Just keeps pounding into Wei Ying so hard that his teeth rattle with it, his bones coming undone from his own body. Who else but Lan Zhan could undo him this way?

*

It doesn’t take as long as Lan Zhan expected for Wei Ying to fall into his pleasure without shame or hesitation. After he orgasms the first time, his pleading loses its fervor and he stops trying to get away. When Lan Zhan checks in on him again, he mumbles green into the comforter easily, pillows long since lost to Wei Ying’s half-hearted struggles.

“Good,” Lan Zhan manages. He thrusts into Wei Ying with as much force as he can, and rewards him with a slap right at the crease. When Ying just whimpers and arches his back deeper, a terrible and perfect idea strikes into his head.

He turns Wei Ying over, making sure that his thighs press into Wei Ying’s bruised flesh, slides back in, and then slaps Wei Ying’s dick. Wei Ying gasps soundlessly into the air and arches high, body contorting in confusion and pain. “What,” he gasps wetly, “what are,” unable to finish his words when Lan Zhan slaps him again, this time right at where the head rests on his pelvis.

Wei Ying whimpers. Lan Zhan watches tears well up in his eyes and thrusts in deep, absolutely beyond rational thinking when he gets Wei Ying to cry. “Please,” Wei Ying begs. Lan Zhan doubts Wei Ying knows what he’s begging for.

“Tap me if you need to stop,” Lan Zhan tells him. Wei Ying’s hands remain bunched into the bedspread, the warm paleness of his skin bleeding into the soft gray cotton.

“Please,” Wei Ying repeats. “Lan Zhan, you have to… Lan Zhan, gege, please.” When Lan Zhan doesn’t reply to him, he tightens his ankles around Lan Zhan’s back and pulls him deeper in. “Please be nice to your A-Ying.”

Lan Zhan swears and loses his rhythm. It drives him insane when Wei Ying says things like that, slurred and soft and so far gone Lan Zhan would do anything to get that sweetness to last longer.

He hits Wei Ying’s cock again, and grabs onto it when Wei Ying bursts into tears and spurts out a stream of come from the tip. He’s so beautiful, Lan Zhan thinks, rearing up so that he can stare down at Wei Ying’s lithe body while he fucks him, his toned belly and tapered waist and red face, red knees, all that blood-red, blood-hot wit and strength and genius at Lan Zhan’s feet every other day, under him and owned every single night. He shudders with the rush of emotion that flows through him, and then again when he collapses over Wei Ying’s body and fills him up with everything he has.

*

“‘M hungry,” Wei Ying mumbles into Lan Zhan’s chest, cold toes pressing into Lan Zhan’s ankles. “Feed me.”

“What do you want to eat?”’

“Overpriced Italian, in spite of my decolonial praxis.”

“We are in the metropole,” Lan Zhan rationalizes.

“You always know what to say to make me feel better, sweetheart,” Wei Ying grins, poking Lan Zhan’s nose with a soft boop. So they go for overpriced Italian.

“I feel good,” Wei Ying says once they’ve gotten their drinks. Whiskey ginger for Wei Ying, a non-alcoholic spiced cider for Lan Zhan. Wei Ying always talks over his drink when he first gets it, lips moving over the straw or glass. It also feels good for Lan Zhan to watch Wei Ying like this, his beautiful and kind and smart and ethereal man. “Weightless.”

“That’s good,” Lan Zhan says softly. When Wei Ying reaches his free hand out, Lan Zhan reaches his across the wooden table to take him in hand, letting Wei Ying play with his fingers in the dim light of the restaurant, not letting go even when their food arrives.

“You can never do that again, though,” says Wei Ying, pointing his knife accusingly at Lan Zhan. “So cruel and uncalled for, Lan Zhan.”

“Mn,” says Lan Zhan. It is a very neutral sound.

“Hey, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, after dutifully eating half of his vodka pasta under Lan Zhan’s probing eyes. “Hey, I really love you, you know.”

“I do know,” Lan Zhan murmurs. He says the words less often than Wei Ying does, as it’s easier for him to show than tell. But it feels important to repeat back, “I love you,” into the comfortable quiet of their booth. Wei Ying beams.

“You make me feel stable.” He hesitates. “I… didn’t realize I needed it until you gave it to me. I like being possessed by you. You know I’m yours, right?”

Lan Zhan nods. He does. Despite his initial worries, he now knows this beyond any shadow of doubt.

“Anything is okay when it’s you, Lan Zhan. I mean it. Everything is okay when it’s you.”

Lan Zhan’s heart could burst from his chest. “I know. With you, I know.”

Wei Ying pulls Lan Zhan’s hand closer to place a kiss across his knuckles.

After dinner, they walk back to their car in the full moon of late winter. Wei Ying continues complaining about Lan Zhan’s sexual deviancy in between bites of cannoli and ice cream, every third bite spoon-fed to Lan Zhan.

There is a surrealness to this moment… It is not much different from how things were before their relationship took a romantic glint. They went for dinners often, except now Wei Ying lets go of his pride enough to allow Lan Zhan to pay all of it without insisting on at least getting the tip. When Lan Zhan tells Wei Ying one drink is enough, he listens, orders a cola and doesn’t fight back. They walked this closely before, Lan Zhan’s given Wei Ying his coat before, but never before was it because Wei Ying is still coming down from the sexual high only Lan Zhan gets to give him.

When Wei Ying asks, “do you want the last bite, sweetheart?” Lan Zhan declines as he always would, but now he gets to follow up with a kiss, pushing Wei Ying up against the car, pressing his tongue into Wei Ying’s mouth and sharing the final taste in a way that satisfies them both. An evening like this. So many lifetimes.