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Chapter Text

The moment Lan Zhan opens the door, Wei Ying is talking. Even through the sequence of events that follows – being led into the living room, waiting for Lan Zhan to return with a nest of towels for the couch, settling in with the bundle of squirming, mewling kitten inside – Wei Ying barely pauses for breath once.

It seems, from Lan Zhan’s limited experience, like the default state for Wei Ying. To the extent that now, four weeks into Intro to Psychology, Lan Zhan’s older brother now recognizes Wei Ying’s name. Ah, Lan Huan will laugh, every time Wei Ying comes up in a story about their small-group section, the loud one, yes? Lan Zhan does not tell many stories about section. Certainly not that many about Wei Ying. He’s not sure how he feels that this is the name his brother remembers.

But sitting on Lan Zhan’s couch, gently wafting the blowdryer’s lowest setting at the orange tabby in his lap, his usual frenetic monologue has slowed. It’s a half-whispered laugh, like water lapping at a shore. “You like that?” he says. “You’re making so many biscuits. You’re a champion at biscuits. The biscuit king.”

The kitten kneads deeper into the hoodie Wei Ying has him wrapped in. He’s mostly dry now, eyes closed and ears relaxed. Wei Ying, on the other hand, is down to a soaking wet t-shirt. His hair is dripping, half-fallen and plastered to his neck. He’s shivering. The central air on Lan Zhan’s floor is still faulty, wired to his next-door neighbor’s controls – and Mr. Zhao has a heavy hand. Lan Zhan briefly, vividly imagines knocking on his door.

“You’re cold,” Lan Zhan says.

“What?” Wei Ying blinks, smiles. His teeth are chattering a little. “Oh, Lan Zhan, I’m fine. It’s still basically summer.”

“Be that as it may,” Lan Zhan says, more insistently. (Wei Ying is visibly freezing. What’s the point in denying it?) “You will catch cold. You should put on dry clothes.”

Lan Zhan can see the gears turning in Wei Ying’s head. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “Oh,” he says. “You mean—I should borrow some?”

Lan Zhan feels the unfamiliar urge to squirm. “We are the same size.”

Wei Ying lights up like a lantern. A flicker, then a glow. “Then can you look after my liege while I change? He needs to dry a little more.”

“‘My liege’ is—” Lan Zhan says.

“The cat,” Wei Ying chirps. “His Majesty the Biscuit King.”

Lan Zhan has no way to counter that except to settle on the other end of the couch. He accepts the blowdryer in one hand and the bundle of hoodie and kitten in a careful arm: His Majesty the Biscuit King blinks sleepily up at him.

“Keep drying him,” Wei Ying says, “he likes it.”

The request is barely half-processed before Lan Zhan flips the switch to the gentlest setting again. His Majesty sighs and settles. Lan Zhan has never been drunk, but he imagines this is what it must feel like: everything completely incongruous, yet somehow working together.

“Why did you come here,” Lan Zhan says. He only realizes how clipped it sounds when Wei Ying freezes. “Your dorm isn’t much further away,” he amends, softer.

“No pets allowed in the dorms.” Wei Ying grimaces. “And the RA has a third ear. Sorry, Lan Zhan. I didn’t mean to barge in.”

“You didn’t barge,” Lan Zhan says. Even he’s surprised at how much it’s true. Wei Ying had been patiently huddled by complex doors, dripping in the breezeway. When Lan Zhan flicked on the front buzzer camera, Wei Ying had been half-turned away, ready to try something else. “What will you do?”

“Haven’t quite thought of that yet.” Wei Ying clambers to his feet, gathering the wet towels behind him. “But I have a ten-minute walk back! I’ll have a plan by then.”

“You’ll be written up if residence staff catch you,” Lan Zhan says.

“I’ve been written up for much stupider reasons.” Wei Ying smiles sunnily. “The hard part will be convincing Jiang Cheng. I’ll figure out the rest.” He starts down the hall, then hesitates. “Oh, and—is there anything of yours I shouldn’t take? I don’t want to get kitten hair on anything nice.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t speak often. But he doesn’t often scramble for words, either. Here, down the barrel of Wei Ying’s smile, holding the animal he’s willing to be written up for – he’s scrambling.

“Take anything you like,” is what he says.

Wei Ying laughs. “You might regret that,” he says, and then disappears into Lan Zhan’s bedroom.

Lan Zhan stares into his lap a while longer, at the nest of Wei Ying’s hoodie. His Majesty rolls onto his back, baring his white tummy, and watches, waiting for the inevitable.

Lan Zhan lifts his phone with his free hand, loads the e-mail with the scan of his lease. And he scrolls to the section on pets.

Chapter Text

Wei Ying almost can’t tear himself away that night.

To be fair, that’s nothing new. Put him within fifty feet of Lan Zhan and it’s like a higher power takes control of his mouth and begs for attention with all it has. Get yourself under control, Jiang Cheng had grumbled, just the other day. Don’t you feel embarrassed?  

Well. Here he is, kneeling on Lan Zhan’s beige carpeting, trying to guide his unwilling fingers through gently prying the Biscuit King from the expensive-feeling sweater Lan Zhan made him wear. So apparently there were new heights of embarrassment just waiting for him.  

“My liege,” Wei Ying croons, “you need to let go now. This is cashmere, I think. I don’t know fabrics.”

With a sorrowful little mewl, the Biscuit King pushes in closer, and Wei Ying slides in a finger to detach his claws. When the cat teethes at his knuckle, he laughs. “What are you so mad about, huh? Didn’t you hear Lan Zhan’s keeping you? You should be preparing for some seriously fancy living, Your Majesty. Memory foam cat beds. Organic cat food. You’ll be much more comfortable here than you would have been—”

Oh no. He’s swallowing around a stab of tightness now. Just in case it wasn’t obvious that he’s stalling.

Lan Zhan blinks. A quick, soft gesture, but Wei Ying reads surprise into it nonetheless. “Wei Ying,” he says.

“It’s fine, Lan Zhan, it’s fine.” Wei Ying laughs again, this time around a grimace. He has known this cat for less than two hours. There was almost no chance Jiang Cheng would have let Wei Ying keep him. The fact that Lan Zhan was willing to take him on such short notice was amazing, really. The best luck he could have hoped for.

Finally, he unlatches the Biscuit King from Lan Zhan’s sweater, hands him over to the real thing. “There you are,” he says. “Go to your dad.”

The Biscuit King squirms a little, apparently unsure of that. But when Lan Zhan adjusts his grip, he settles.

Lan Zhan, on the other hand, doesn’t look quite settled yet. “He will miss you,” he says, at length.

“Oh, Lan Zhan.” Wei Ying smiles a little wider. “He won’t remember me by tomorrow.”

Lan Zhan considers that for a moment. And as he does, the line between his eyebrows smooths. “Then come see him tomorrow.”

It’s Wei Ying’s turn to blink. Lan Zhan clears his throat, a harsh little un-Lan Zhan-like sound. “I’ve never cared for a cat,” he says. “I’ll—your help would be appreciated.”

Wei Ying sits back on his knees. And he sees this for what it is: a kindness more than a real request. He should refuse. He’s not so lonely that he needs to be here, invading Lan Zhan’s space.

But here’s that higher power again, taking control of his mouth. Thinking I like how he’s looking at you. Make him keep doing it.

So he smiles. And he says, “What time?”  

Chapter Text

All things considered, His Majesty The Biscuit King is a considerate roommate. He sleeps unobtrusively at the foot of Lan Zhan’s bed. He keeps his scratching to the cat tree, leaves the furniture alone. And he rarely makes demands He’ll meow once first thing in the morning, when Lan Zhan enters the kitchen. But it’s always sounded more like ‘good morning’ than ‘feed me.’

Lan Zhan thought the Biscuit King would be a quiet cat, at first. That lasted about an hour.

But he doesn’t make noise to want things. He just seems to make noise to make noise. He winds in and out of Lan Zhan’s legs when he walks. He butts up against his fingers when he types. Once he scales Lan Zhan’s sleeve and perches on his shoulder like a parrot, chirping all the while. Lan Zhan has amassed an impressive collection of cat toys in two weeks, some he bought and some gifted by Wei Ying. But even exhausted, the Biscuit King is a talker. He’s only still and quiet when he’s asleep.

There is, however, one person capable of turning His Majesty into a lap cat. This is how Lan Zhan excuses himself from his review session with Wei Ying to take a call and returns twenty minutes to find Wei Ying napping on the couch, the Biscuit King curled on his chest.

Lan Zhan freezes. Wei Ying sighs and twitches in his sleep. His Majesty, true to his namesake, kneads the front of Wei Ying’s hoodie and looks up at Lan Zhan with an expression he’s trying valiantly not to read as smug.

Here’s the thing. Lan Zhan is not in a competition with his cat.  

His cat is, in fact, demonstrating completely normal cat behavior. And whenever Wei Ying is at the apartment, His Majesty sticks closely to his side. Lan Zhan suspects that he would even without Wei Ying’s now ever-present treat bag, or the toys he keeps impulse-buying. Wei Ying laughed once that he was too fidgety for most animals to like. But His Majesty’s chatty pinball energy matches Wei Ying’s perfectly.

Besides – Wei Ying draws things in. If Lan Zhan were to begrudge anyone that, he’d have to start with himself.

And yet here he is. A grown man. In a standoff with a kitten.

Lan Zhan looks down at the Biscuit King. The Biscuit King looks back. His lazy kitten stare somehow conveys an entire raised eyebrow. This could be you, if you weren’t a coward, the kitten is absolutely not thinking.

“Don’t wake him,” Lan Zhan finally says.

The Biscuit King blinks sleepily. And then slowly – Lan Zhan reminds himself not to call it pointedly – he nuzzles close to the hand folded across Wei Ying’s chest and begins to lick at Wei Ying’s fingers.

Wei Ying’s laugh is smudged with sleep. His eyelids flutter but stay closed, his eyelashes a sweep of coal black across his cheeks, his free hand pawing until it finds soft fur. “Kisses for your Wei-gege?” he mumbles. “Thank you.”

Lan Zhan wonders what it would look like, to hear those words in that voice from Wei Ying and not be affected. However it feels, he tries to make that face.

“I’ll make you tea,” he manages. “We can review chapter fourteen when you’re ready.”

Wei Ying’s eyes open to contented slits. “You’re so good to me, Lan Zhan.”

The Biscuit King stops grooming him, turns his cheek into Wei Ying’s clumsy scritches. Lan Zhan walks to the kitchen a little faster than strictly necessary. And the cat – who he is absolutely in competition with – watches him the whole way.

Chapter Text

Jiang Yanli texts about five minutes after the e-mail comes through: I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to.

Coming from her, that has only one meaning. The first time Wei Ying had heard her raise her voice had been at her own engagement party, to one of the peacock’s horrible cousins. He had seen the look on her face in the aftermath: the surprise, the faint thrill. She won’t start a fight if Wei Ying doesn’t want it. Especially not with her mother. But she knows that she can, now.

Let’s just leave it, Jiejie , Wei Ying texts back, in the end. And she doesn’t push again.

Jiang Cheng, on the other hand, does. It’s not the most comfortable week in history for the Jiang siblings groupchat. The e-mail from Yu-ayi comes in on a Monday. Wei Ying breaks the news to the siblings on a Tuesday. Jiang Cheng’s anger lasts until the following Wednesday. Probably further. His rage is an ill-contained thing – as always, it bleeds.

It’s her house, Jiang Cheng. Wei Ying tries to tell him. She doesn’t need to let me visit.

Visit? is all Jiang Cheng spits. Wei Ying, are you fucking—

The argument moves quickly from there. Wei Ying never finds out why, exactly, that word set him off. He refuses to talk about it very much at all after that, actually.

By the time they make up—or at least, wordlessly agree that they’re both too tired to sustain a fight— it’s the last day of classes, two and a half weeks until winter break begins. And Wei Ying has to plan.

Thankfully there’s not a lot to plan. Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng live in the dorms, which will stay open for break. There will only be one open dining hall, across campus, which will be—fine, it’ll motivate Wei Ying to get fresh air. He even picks up the holiday shifts at the lab, which means none of it has to fall to the new tech, Wen Ning. Wen Ning asks Wei Ying at least once a day over the next week if he’s really sure. Wei Ying reminds him, every time, to go have fun with his sister.

He doesn’t think he makes a big deal of telling Lan Zhan about it. It just kind of slips out one day, while he’s dangling his own hair ribbons for the Biscuit King to play with. He’s not even thinking about it too deeply at the time. They’re halfway through their study session for the Intro to Psychology final. So most of Wei Ying’s brainpower is redirected towards trying to forget that the one class he and Lan Zhan are likely to share is almost over.

But when he looks up again, Lan Zhan is giving him an odd, narrow-eyed look. “Alone?”

Wei Ying just laughs and tugs the ribbon up before the Biscuit King can accidentally catch his wrist. “You know me. I’ll find something to keep myself occupied.” And when Lan Zhan watches him a moment longer but says nothing else, Wei Ying assumes that’s the end of it.

The next day, for the first time since Wei Ying has known him, Lan Zhan calls him first.

“I transferred my ticket,” Lan Zhan says. He barely waits for Wei Ying’s ‘hello.’ “My train ticket home, until spring break. I—decided His Majesty is too young to travel.”

Wei Ying’s surprise bubbles into laughter. Lan Zhan, ah, Lan Zhan. The Biscuit King isn’t really Wei Ying’s cat, hasn’t been since he left him at Lan Zhan’s apartment that rainy night. But it’s nice, when Lan Zhan treats him like a coparent anyway. “You can’t spoil him like this, you know. It’ll go to his head. What did your uncle say?”

“He had several thoughts,” Lan Zhan says, dry enough that Wei Ying keeps laughing. “But Ge will visit him the first few days, then spend the rest of his vacation staying with me.” He pauses. “There will be plenty of space. Even once he arrives.”

There’s a meaningful pause. And all at once, Wei Ying realizes what he’s being asked.

“Lan Zhan.” Wei Ying laughs weakly. Tries to gentle his voice, in case Lan Zhan has somehow forgotten who he’s talking to. “There’s plenty of space because you like your space. And I take up quite a lot of it.”

“No more than anyone else.” He’s using that voice that’s becoming more and more common the longer Wei Ying knows him. Like if two feet firmly planted was a tone. “Wei Ying, if you’d prefer to be alone, I understand. But if you would like company, please come stay with me.”

Wei Ying tries, and fails, not to squirm in his chair. That’s just cheating, really. Anyone who’s known Wei Ying for a day knows that he doesn’t want to be alone.

So he splits the difference. “Okay,” he says. “But I’m making other plans for after your brother gets here. There is only so much Wei Ying time you can be expected to handle.”

(It’s not exactly a lie. He does have other plans. He has very, very big plans to return to his dorm and not interfere with Lan Zhan’s time with his family.)

And that’s how two and a half weeks, three finals, and one paper later, Wei Ying packs a duffel bag and starts the familiar ten-minute walk to Lan Zhan’s apartment.

Campus is largely quiet and still: yesterday’s snow flurries have already melted, but the frost settled in at dusk, and the grass crunches under Wei Ying’s feet. Jiang Cheng has been gone for two days already, which was too quiet for Wei Ying’s liking, but also a guilty relief. Jiang Cheng has been varying levels of agitated for days. And he never stopped questioning if Wei Ying didn’t have anyone better to stay with than Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying would cut out a real organ for Jiang Cheng. Maybe two. But he’s never liked Lan Zhan, which speaks to a disturbing lack of taste.  

The walk is short, but Wei Ying is shivering by the time he arrives, his jacket thin and damp against his arms. He reaches for the intercom with his free hand, but he’s buzzed in before he can touch the button.

Wei Ying smiles, his gaze flicking to the empty window three floors up. Lan Zhan must have been watching for him.

He thaws a little in the usual boiling heat of the elevator, so uncomfortable just a few weeks ago, and by the time he reaches #302, he can feel his nose again. Out of habit, Wei Ying wriggles through the smallest possible opening as Lan Zhan lets him in. They know now that the Biscuit King has no interest in escaping – only in rubbing against every available inch of his new guest. But it pays to be careful.

“My liege,” Wei Ying croons as the Biscuit King stumbles in his hurry to fling himself at Wei Ying’s shins. He’s a little more gangly now. His head bumps Wei Ying’s knees in his enthusiasm. “Lan Zhan, you should be ashamed. This cat has never had a scrap of attention in his life.”

Lan Zhan’s watching them with that smile that isn’t quite a smile, that slight softening of his eyes. Wei Ying learned months ago that Lan Zhan wasn’t as staid as he looked: only reserved, a little quieter in his expressions than others. But to earn even a slight shift of his face still feels like a victory. Even if most of it is for the cat.

“Dinner is almost finished,” Lan Zhan says. That softness lingers. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll take your coat.”

“Lan Zhan, you don’t have to fuss.” Wei Ying sets the duffel on the floor and shrugs off the jacket, batting at Lan Zhan’s hand when he tries to take it. “I know where everything goes. What are you making? Am I too late to help?”

“Trying a new recipe. It just needs to simmer.” Lan Zhan bends and, before Wei Ying can react, plucks the bag out of his reach. “Go sit, Wei Ying. Warm up.”

Wei Ying pouts at Lan Zhan’s retreating back as he sets Wei Ying’s duffel by the futon. “He spoils us rotten, you know,” he says to his feet. The Biscuit King, for his part, chirps and winds around Wei Ying’s leg. When Wei Ying reaches down to scratch his head, he leaps into the touch. “Alright, alright, my liege. I’m crossing the room. If you trip me, just try not to break anything important.”

Stepping into the living room, two things are immediately clear: it’s uncharacteristically disheveled, and it smells overwhelmingly of pine. Wei Ying blinks, shifts the pieces into focus: there’s a pile of cardboard and packaging stacked neatly in the corner, a stack of unopened, glittering packages of red and gold ornaments, and on the hardwood, laid carefully across a blanket, are a dissembled tree stand and a pre-lit fake tree laid neatly on its side.

Lan Zhan watches him from the kitchen entryway, looking faintly pink. “I thought I’d have time to assemble it before you arrived.”

Wei Ying blinks, first at the chaos and then at Lan Zhan. “I didn’t know you wanted to decorate.”

“I hadn’t planned on it, at first,” Lan Zhan admits. “But you said you and your sister always decorate together. Last month when you—when we talked about it.”

When you thought you were going home , he was about to say. Lan Zhan’s words are so carefully thought-out, always. It’s not like him to stumble like that.

Wei Ying’s cheeks prickle with his smile. Oh, Lan Zhan. How Wei Ying ever thought he was closed-off is beyond him now.

“Can I put it together for you?” Wei Ying says.

Lan Zhan’s long hair is pinned back into a braid. It leaves both of his flushed ears bare. “It was meant to be a surprise.”

Another laugh escapes Wei Ying. He hopes it doesn’t sound unkind. It’s just hard not to laugh when Lan Zhan is being so cute. “You succeeded! I was very surprised! And now I’m going to earn my keep.”

Lan Zhan hovers, nonetheless. “If you need any help—”

“Don’t worry about me,” Wei Ying says shooing him with a hand. “The Jiangs have only ever had fake trees, too. The setup’s never really very different.”

Wei Ying settles cross-legged among the pieces of tree stand, breathing in the rich, warm scent from the kitchen: it smells like the little alleyway of Japanese restaurants where Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng used to study in high school, dashi, stock, and steam. But the pine smell cuts it as he pulls the tree toward him. The fake scent is coming from a separate piece, long and thin like a cinnamon stick, its green matching the branches. The Biscuit King carefully pads onto the blankets to sniff at it.

“I love these things,” Wei Ying says. Lan Zhan doesn’t ask, but his silence is a question, somehow. “The little fake scent thing. I think if we ever got a real tree I’d miss it.”

Lan Zhan hums. From anyone else, it might sound like a dismissal. From Lan Zhan, Wei Ying has found it means go on . “How do you decorate with your sister?”

“Jiejie keeps it subtle,” Wei Ying says. “Yu-ayi doesn’t like anything ostentatious. But she lets Jiejie do what she wants, as long as it looks nice. Lots of red ornaments and white lights. And Jiejie gets to play with different color themes, sometimes.” He tucks in a stray branch before the Biscuit King can take too much interest in it. “I mostly do what she tells me. And put things on high branches.”

“Do you add anything of your own?” Lan Zhan asks.

“Yu-ayi and I don’t really see eye to eye on aesthetics,” Wei Ying laughs. “But Jiejie always makes me choose at least one thing myself. Ah, ah, my liege,” he scolds as the Biscuit King takes a swat at his arm. “Fingers aren’t toys.”

“I should feed him.” Lan Zhan looks apologetic when he appears at the door, like he’s interrupting something.

Wei Ying can feel his nose wrinkle as he grins. Trust Lan Zhan to feel bad about stealing his own cat. “Good. I need the opening to get this tree upright.”

He gives the cat one more scratch between his perked-up ears as Lan Zhan disappears back into the kitchen. A minute later, Wei Ying hears the crunch of a can lid, and the Biscuit King peels away from his side, a tiny orange blur speed-trotting across the living room.

Wei Ying watches him go, still smiling. The Biscuit King may follow him around like a little fuzzy shadow, but he never forgets who the food parent is.

Well. Not that Wei Ying is his other parent. He tries to catch language like that before it leaves his traitorous mouth. He may have charmed his way into Lan Zhan’s good graces somehow, but that doesn’t mean he gets to take more space than he’s offered. And now that the semester is over—well. He won’t have study dates to bring him over here anymore.

That doesn’t preclude daydreaming, though. If he thinks one too many times about an apartment just like this, with space for two – about being woken up by the Biscuit King’s cries too early in the morning, about stumbling into the kitchen like he belongs there, about accepting a cup of coffee from Lan Zhan like he’s allowed, welcome, expected – that’s not imposing, exactly.

But that’s a well he hesitates to sample from. Otherwise he might find out how deep it really goes.

He blinks, hard, and clambers to his feet to lift the tree. He doesn’t have to be the other cat parent. ‘Cool cat uncle’ is probably sufficient.

He’s lost in the final touches for the next few minutes, adjusting the screws on the tree stand so that the fake trunk stands straight. By the time he looks up, Lan Zhan is watching again, his eyes soft and dark in the low light. The Biscuit King sits in a loaf by his feet, licking his chops.

“It looks good,” Lan Zhan says.

“Doesn’t it? I have the touch.” Wei Ying fluffs some of the branches to cover a few bare spots.  “I’ll light it up.”

Dropping to one knee, Wei Ying plugs the end of the pre-assembled lights into the wall outlet, and the tree alights in soft white. They’re not the multi-colored, visible-from-space set that Jiang Cheng has insisted on since he was four. But this is a better fit for Lan Zhan, anyway. More—elegant.

Wei Ying turns to meet Lan Zhan’s eyes again, grinning. “Passes inspection?”

Lan Zhan is still looking Wei Ying over, not the tree. But he inclines his head, almost a nod, so that’s all the confirmation Wei Ying needs.

“Dinner is finished,” Lan Zhan says.

“I thought it might be,” Wei Ying says. The scent of the dashi is spilling through the apartment. “We’ll decorate after dinner?”

With a hum of affirmation, Lan Zhan moves aside to let Wei Ying into the kitchen, where he looks once at the stove, then whirls to face Lan Zhan. There are two pots of homemade ramen on the front burners, a light gold on the left and a reddish-brown on the left that smells of spice and simmering pork. The broth is homemade. Wei Ying can smell it in the depth, the richness.

“Lan Zhan ,” Wei Ying gasps. “Did you make two different broths?”

“You eat vegetarian every time you visit,” Lan Zhan says. “I wanted to try something you liked.”

“I like everything you give me.” Wei Ying’s faintly aware that he’s gushing, now, but it doesn’t seem within his power to stop, either.  “If you made it, I’ll eat everything. I’ll eat the bowl.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says. “Just the soup will suffice.”

Wei Ying jabs the serving ladle in his direction, mostly in the hopes that it’ll distract from the warmth spilling across his face. “How did you know what to do with the meat?”

Lan Zhan’s adorable ears flush a deeper red. “I watched a few videos. But if there’s room for improvement—”

“Impossible,” Wei Ying says airily. “You’re Lan Zhan, so it’ll be perfect. Go on, get your food, you’ve worked hard. Come on, my liege—ah ah ah,” he adds as the kitten bumps his head against Wei Ying’s ankle. “If I fall and die, you don’t get any pork.”

Wei Ying barely has the patience to get settled at the table before he samples the broth. And if he tears up a little, it’s his own business. “Lan Zhan,” he says, “I might die right here at your table. You’re going to have to move my body. I’m very sorry.”

“You like it?” Lan Zhan says, like he hasn’t just ruined Wei Ying for all other food.

“Like it?” Wei Ying lets his eyes flutter closed, the spices crackling against his tongue. “Are you going to take responsibility for upping my standards? My dinner last night was a packet of Milano cookies. Now I’m going to have expectations for my food.”

“You should have been eating more to begin with,” Lan Zhan says.

“I usually eat real food,” Wei Ying says with a wave of his hand. “Just, you know, finals. My liege, does he always feed you like this? No wonder you’re growing so fast.”

“Not exactly like this.” The soft line of Lan Zhan’s mouth twitches just a little. “I don’t make his meals from scratch.”

Wei Ying laughs, ducks to rub his thumb against the Biscuit King’s cheek. He’s still lurking at Wei Ying’s feet, watching his hands with interest. “Give it time. By spring semester you’ll be showing up to class with a baby björn full of cat.”

Lan Zhan lets out a soft huff. It could nearly be a laugh. “Eat your soup. It’ll get cold.”

Wei Ying eats in silence for a while, briefly determined to respect Lan Zhan’s house rule of No Talking During Meals. In the end, though, his resolve only holds out until Lan Zhan has finished his own bowl. Something about him just makes Wei Ying want to keep talking.

He swallows his perfectly soft-boiled soy egg, takes a moment to savor the salty-creaminess. And then he asks, “What would you be doing, if you were home?”

Lan Zhan sets his own chopsticks in the cradle. He looks so still when he’s thoughtful, like any movement might ripple the words away. “Not decorating,” he eventually decides.

Wei Ying laughs. “Somehow I didn’t think so.”

“Winter break is usually quiet, in my household,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying rests his chin on his interlaced fingers, and doesn’t say that Lan Zhan’s house, from what little he knows, seems quiet all the time. “My uncle’s work keeps him busy. But when Ge and I are both home, we try to have dinner together every night.”

“Ah.” Wei Ying knows the stab of guilt he feels isn’t exactly rational. Lan Zhan stayed for the cat, not him. Though he owns the cat because of Wei Ying, so maybe it’s not irrational , either. And he can’t reach across the table and smooth that little wrinkle in Lan Zhan’s brow with his thumb. So guilt it is. “I’m sorry you had to miss that.”

The flicker of melancholy lifts from Lan Zhan’s face like fog. “I’ll see him for spring break. And I’ll see Ge in a few days.”  

Wei Ying sits back in his chair and tries to look as if he’s not searching for signs of sadness on Lan Zhan’s face. He doesn’t know much about Lan Zhan’s relationship with his brother other than the bits and pieces he’s hoarded over these past few months. That they’re three years apart, but look so much alike that people call them twins. That he smiles more easily than Lan Zhan, is quicker to warm to people – sometimes too much for his own good. That they were alone together a lot, when they were young.

What Wei Ying doesn’t know is what it’s like for Lan Zhan, being so far away from his brother. It’s probably not something he can know. The itch of missing Jiang Yanli is different from the nauseous twist of missing Jiang Cheng. One isn’t more painful than the other. They’re just different kinds of hard.

But Lan Huan will be here in less than a week. To sleep on Lan Zhan’s futon, drink his homemade broth, meet his cat nephew. Lan Zhan won’t have to miss him for much longer.

And if that means Wei Ying will be back at the dorms—well. That was the plan from the start. Anything else is extra, really.

Wei Ying gives the house rules one more try. And he finishes his meal in silence.

***

Decorating with his siblings is a sprint, not a marathon. Jiang Yanli and Wei Ying may do all the prep-work, but Jiang Cheng jumps in for the third act with a fervor. Once the lights are up, the Jiang household doesn’t rest until all the ornaments are on the tree.

So Wei Ying is a little taken aback when Lan Zhan turns on a movie they’ve both been meaning to watch, instead. Wei Ying even suggests getting started on the tree while he watches. But Lan Zhan looks back and forth between Wei Ying and his cat with one elegant eyebrow arched. “He’ll want his pick of laps,” is all Lan Zhan says.

Sure enough, the Biscuit King lap-hops for the first half hour, getting comfortable first with Wei Ying, then Lan Zhan, then Wei Ying again. He settles in for good that second time, purring like a little generator. Under his warm, rumbling weight, the movie’s dialogue is in danger of blurring. But Wei Ying’s still paying attention.

He would swear he’s wide awake until the second his head slips downward.

Wei Ying jerks sharply upright, jarred awake by the movement. But the fuzz at the edge of his consciousness is undeterred, washing over him like a wave. He starts to slump again. A hand catches him first, warm around his forehead.

He blinks, disoriented. Lan Zhan has a very secure grip. It figures he would have a very secure grip.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. Then pauses. “If you want, you can lean on me.”

That sounds good, actually. That sounds even more secure than hands. Wei Ying shifts blindly until his cheek bumps something rounded and solid. That steady grip moves to his cheek, adjusts his head more securely. It’s not a very effective pillow. Wei Ying shifts closer to it anyway.

“I’m awake,” he mumbles. “Good movie.”

Lan Zhan huffs again. Oh. That really is what it sounds like, when he laughs. Somewhere above Wei Ying, the movie’s dialogue blurs into a series of unrecognizable consonants.

I should make him laugh more, Wei Ying thinks. And the next thing he knows, he’s blinking awake to a dry mouth and claws digging into his jeans.

“Ow,” he says. His voice crackles.

The weight against his cheek shifts. “He lives up to his name.”

Wei Ying drags himself the rest of the way into consciousness. The ending credits are scrolling across the TV. The Biscuit King is in his lap, kneading at his jeans and offering slow, unimpressed blinks. And Lan Zhan is above him, Wei Ying’s face still mashed against his shoulder.

Wei Ying sits up straight. “Lan Zhan, I’m so sorry. I know you don’t like being touched.”

Lan Zhan offers one measured blink, so similar to the Biscuit King’s that Wei Ying almost laughs. Like father like son, apparently. “I offered,” he says.

“Still.” Wei Ying scrubs at his face. He must have been deeply out. He still feels bleary. “I don’t know why I crashed like that. I wasn’t even tired.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says. It’s the kind of Lan Zhan tone he could easily mistake as noncommittal, except that he knows, in his gut, he’s just been very succinctly mocked. Wei Ying would be extremely offended if he didn’t want Lan Zhan to mock him every day. “Do you want to make up the futon?”

“What, now?” Wei Ying says. “It’s 9:30.”

Lan Zhan looks unperturbed. “I go to bed at 9:00 during the semester.”

Wei Ying breathes through a sudden rush of fondness. 9:00pm. Of course he does. “Okay, but it’s not the semester now.”

“No,” Lan Zhan agrees, with the barest hint of dryness in his voice. “So I planned to be in bed by 10:00.”

Wei Ying laughs loudly enough that the Biscuit King startles upright. “Okay, okay, fair enough. I can get up all the earlier tomorrow to get your tree beautiful. I don’t mean to brag, but Jiejie said Macy’s should hire me.” To which Jiang Cheng added as a Christmas clown , but Wei Ying doesn’t need to list that on this particular resume.

Lan Zhan just watches him, his eyes soft and dark. “You should sleep all you want,” he says. “We have time.”

So Wei Ying changes for bed, helps make up the futon, and doesn’t contradict him. He’s right, of course. Wei Ying will be here for days. Objectively, they have plenty of time.

But—well. He doesn’t know, when he leaves in six days, when he’ll next see Lan Zhan’s apartment. Or the Biscuit King. Or Lan Zhan himself. So six days doesn’t feel like much, in the end.

By the time they’re finished with the futon, it’s nearly 10:00. Though it gets dark so early now that it feels like much later. The air has the same winter silence as crawling out of bed in the middle of the night at the Jiangs, padding down to the kitchen to find his siblings already there. Jiang-shushu always calls it ‘the house that never sleeps.’ Wei Ying wonders, nonsensically, if they’ll sleep now that he’s not there.

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan moves into his line of sight, the hems of his satiny pajamas swishing against his heels. His hair is unbraided now, loose and a little wavy against his shoulders. “Is there anything else you need?”

The usual daydream tugs at his ankles. Wei Ying presses it down.

“I’m fine!” he says. “I know where everything is.”

Lan Zhan is watching him steadily. Wei Ying feels suddenly sure, in the blurred edges of the night, that Lan Zhan never used to look at him quite so much. “And if there’s anything else—”

“I’ll come get you.” Wei Ying schools his face into sincerity. “I promise.”

Lan Zhan considers him, for a moment. “I’ll leave my door open,” he says.

The Biscuit King, who has apparently had enough of their dithering, peels away from Lan Zhan’s side to hop up onto the futon. “Oh, poor baby,” Wei Ying croons through his laugh. “Are we keeping you waiting?”

Lan Zhan slips around the corner, but not before his eyes flicker, unreadable, down to his cat. Wei Ying swallows against a squirm of guilt – the Biscuit King, he knows, usually sleeps with Lan Zhan.

“Maybe you should be with your dad,” Wei Ying tries. The Biscuit King, who has less than zero interest in Wei Ying’s attempts to be a good guest, watches him expectantly.  

“Okay, okay,” Wei Ying says. “Tomorrow, then.”

He considers reading, for a while. But Lan Zhan’s door is open, and he doesn’t want to risk bothering him. So he flicks the light off. He’ll read on his phone until he’s tired.

He slides under the duvet, the linen of Lan Zhan’s extra sheets crinkling under him. It sounds emphatic in the silence of the apartment. Even for the past few days in the dorm with barely anyone there, there were always sounds to keep Wei Ying company: the thunk and reel of the old radiators, the creak of old flooring as the RAs and custodians made their rounds. But Wei Ying settles, stops moving. And the quiet settles around him like falling snow.

The Biscuit King snuggles into the crook of his elbow, trapping his arm. So Wei Ying smiles, and gives up on reading.

He lies there in the dark, strokes his fingers down the cat’s back. And it’s hard to say which of them falls asleep first.

***

Wei Ying wakes hours later with a full-body flinch.

He scrabbles to consciousness, blinking rapidly into the dark, and with a sharp plummeting lurch, Wei Ying realizes he has no idea where he is. There’s weight on his chest, and instinctively, Wei Ying tries to sit up. But when the weight sharpens into pinprick stabs, two dots finally connect in the jumble of Wei Ying’s brain.

“Oh.” Wei Ying lets his elbows go out from under him. The Biscuit King makes his way up Wei Ying’s shirt, his claws still out for balance, and bumps his head into Wei Ying’s chin. “Sorry, my liege. Did I scare you?”

Like Wei Ying himself, the Biscuit King rarely holds grudges. But even though Wei Ying can’t see him yet, his movements still feel agitated. He chirps and headbutts Wei Ying’s jaw, which hurts just enough that he laughs.

“Alright, alright,” Wei Ying soothes. “No more moving.” To which the Biscuit King weaves so closely to his face that Wei Ying nearly gets a mouthful of hair for his troubles.

At length, the cat’s weight settles in next to his cheek. He feels something lightly, rhythmically pressing into the side of his head. And he hears the sandpaper sound of the Biscuit King’s tongue. He’s—trying to groom Wei Ying’s hair.

Wei Ying almost chokes on his laugh. Then he lies back and lets him do what he wants.

He sprawls on his back and listens to the low, quiet hum of Lan Zhan’s apartment. Now that he’s fully awake, blinking into the dark, his nightmare doesn’t seem like much. It doesn’t even make sense. He’d dreamed that he’d been in the Jiangs’ living room, decorating the tree with the boxes of perfectly identical red and gold ornaments Lan Zhan had bought, and that Yu-ayi was furious about it for some reason. He can’t remember what she’d said. Maybe his brain didn’t bother filling in real words. But his heart is still rabbiting away in his chest, like they’d been fighting for real.

He laughs weakly at himself. It’s been a long time since a real argument with Yu-ayi upset him this much. It doesn’t seem fair that a fake one should rattle him this much.

But he calms down eventually. Or at least he thinks he does. The Biscuit King, always a sponge for the energy around him, has stopped grooming him and started biting his hair. So at least one of them is still agitated.

“Alright, sweetheart.” Wei Ying unfolds, rolls to his feet, and picks the Biscuit King up like a baby. He squirms a little, at first, but when Wei Ying holds onto him a little more securely, he goes boneless. Wei Ying has never known a cat who loves being held so much. “Let’s go for a walk, then.”

So with the cat tucked in his arms, Wei Ying makes a slow, soothing lap around the apartment. His eyes have adjusted enough that he can see the faint outlines of Lan Zhan’s life around him: the bookshelves, the stack of textbooks on the dining table, the dinner dishes drying. Instinctively, he rocks the Biscuit King a little, then nearly laughs at himself. It’s like he’s up in the middle of the night with a baby.

He slows as he passes Lan Zhan’s door, still standing halfway open. He slows so much, in fact, that it takes him a moment to realize he’s slowed to a stop.

Wei Ying takes a breath, then holds it. Lan Zhan’s curtains are drawn. The room ahead is so dark that it’s as if the world ends at the doorjamb. But somewhere ahead, almost inaudible, Lan Zhan is softly breathing, rhythmic and steady as a metronome.

He doesn’t realize he’s zoned out, standing there in front of the open door, until the breathing hitches. He freezes. But it’s too late.

The sheets rustle. And then a voice smudged with sleep calls, “Wei Ying?”

Wei Ying curses internally. Nice, Wei Ying. Good way to repay his hospitality, by standing in his doorway like a restless ghost. “Sorry, Lan Zhan,” he whispers. “Go back to sleep. Everything’s fine.”

There’s another rustle. He still can’t quite make out any details in the dark, but he thinks he sees the silhouette of Lan Zhan sitting up. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Wei Ying says. “Sorry, I spaced out a little.”

It’s amazing, really. He can’t see whatever look Lan Zhan is giving him right now. But somehow, the impulse to tell the truth is the same. “Weird dream,” he admits quietly. “I’m alright. Go back to sleep.”

“I’m already awake,” Lan Zhan says, close enough to petulance that Wei Ying almost laughs. His voice is still a little blurred, soft at the edges. “Come in, Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying considers pretending that he has not, for a long time now, been helpless to do anything but what Lan Zhan asks of him. But standing here in the dark, in Lan Zhan’s apartment, holding Lan Zhan’s cat—it feels kind of pointless.

So he enters. He tries to enter gracefully, and then almost immediately hip-checks Lan Zhan’s desk.

“Are you alright?” Lan Zhan asks, again.

“All good,” Wei Ying says. He tries not to wince it, but—ow.

“Over here. Follow my voice,” Lan Zhan says. And Wei Ying barely has a chance to have a feeling about that before he’s confronted with the problem of where to put himself. Standing is a little too awkward, but—maybe he should sit on the edge of the bed? Or maybe by the pillow, where the duvet is still tucked in. But maybe that’s too close? He’s already in Lan Zhan’s room in the middle of the night, he doesn’t want to—

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. He does sound more alert, now. But he is, Wei Ying notes with a rush of warmth, just a little more straightforward when he’s sleepy. “You can get into the bed. It’s cold.”

“Oh.” Wei Ying freezes. The Biscuit King, sensing the shift, squirms in his arms. Wei Ying knows the feeling. “I mean—okay.”

He sets down the Biscuit King first, who settles above Lan Zhan’s head on the pillow like a little ginger awning. Wei Ying’s eyes have started to adjust a little: he can make out Lan Zhan and the Biscuit King’s twinned expectant stares, waiting for him to join them.

He sets aside a brief moment to wonder who leaked the script to this particular daydream. And then he slides under the duvet and curls onto his side.

Wei Ying is cautious, at first, about moving in very far. The edge of the mattress digs into his ribs, a little. But the bed isn’t that big. And Lan Zhan doesn’t like to be touched.

“Do you have enough space?” Wei Ying says. He doesn’t have to whisper – they’re all wide awake now. But it still feels as if there’s something left to be disturbed.

The pillow rustles as Lan Zhan nods. “Are you alright?”

“I mean, I am now.” Wei Ying laughs weakly. “Is this what real mattresses feel like? I think I can feel my posture repairing itself.”

“Not that,” Lan Zhan says. “I meant your dream.”

Ah. Wei Ying must be a little more tired than he realized, too. He forgot he’d said anything. He hadn’t meant to.

“I’m fine,” he says. It’s not too much of a lie. Lan Zhan’s duvet is thick and heavy and smells a little like the sachets Jiang Yanli keeps in her clothing drawers. Not the same scent, exactly, but the same idea. It’s coaxing Wei Ying’s heart rate to slow. “You know when you fight with someone in a dream, and then you wake up and it makes no sense, but you’re still angry anyway?”

Lan Zhan hums.

“Really?” Wei Ying tucks his hand under his face and laughs. “I can’t picture you fighting with anyone, even in your dreams.”

“We argued in our first week of class,” Lan Zhan says.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t count. I provoked you.” Wei Ying can’t bring himself to regret weaseling his way into Lan Zhan’s attention, but he does regret the force of it. He recognizes Lan Zhan’s caution with people better now. He wishes he’d been gentler.

Lan Zhan is still watching him, steady. “Who did you fight with, in your dream?”

“Oh, you know. Yu-ayi.” Lan Zhan’s brow crinkles. Sometimes Wei Ying wonders what he’s managed to imply about Yu-ayi for Lan Zhan to make that face. “I think my subconscious doesn’t get that I’m not going back. It’s still trying to prepare me.”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan says again. And then studies him, for a moment. “Wei Ying. You can come in closer.”

Wei Ying stiffens. Really, he’s going to need to look into some kind of daydream info security. Clearly someone got ahold of his notes. “It’s okay,” he says. “I don’t want to crowd you.”

“I don’t mind.” Lan Zhan hesitates. “You’ll be warmer. You’re shivering.”

Oh. Wei Ying uncoils a fraction, watches the minute trembling of his arms. So he is.

He closes his eyes. Wills himself, one last time, to play it cool. And he wriggles in.

Lan Zhan was right. It is warmer. Even here, a few inches away, the heat of Lan Zhan’s body is a tangible thing. Wei Ying’s skin prickles with the thaw.

The Biscuit King, as if he’d been waiting for this, rises quietly from the pillow and flips against the crook of Wei Ying’s arm. Wei Ying adjusts until they’re basically spooning, grinning as the cat curls in with a satisfied little exhale.

“This cat,” Wei Ying muses. “He was so young when we found him. Do you think he was separated from his mother before he learned cats were supposed to play hard to get?”

“Mm.” Lan Zhan is on his side now, the corner of his mouth a little muffled by the pillow. “I don’t know.”

“Poor baby,” Wei Ying croons, rubbing a thumb between his ears. The Biscuit King tilts his head into the touch.

Lan Zhan is still for so long, Wei Ying wonders if he’s gone back to sleep. But when he focuses on Lan Zhan’s face, he can eventually make out his features, watchful and unreadable in the dark. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For what happened with your family. You didn’t deserve it.”

Oh, Wei Ying thinks. Yes. That.

“Mm. I guess.” Lan Zhan’s eyes are narrowing, now. So he should probably explain a bit more.  “I mean—they agreed to ‘raise’ me. That was the original arrangement. It’s not like they were going around telling me ‘when you’re eighteen, that’s it.’ But they never formally adopted me, so.”

Wei Ying absently brushes the backs of his fingers down the Biscuit King’s side. “When I think about it, there’s—not a lot of raising me left to do. Logistically, I mean. My parents left money, for school. I’ve got scholarships and work study for the rest. The Jiangs aren’t paying for anything. And I don’t live there anymore. I have some stuff there, still. But not so much that it’d take long to move.”

Wei Ying moves his attention to scratching the Biscuit King’s chin. The apartment hums its quiet hum. “I know Yu-ayi wasn’t happy during Thanksgiving break. But I thought it was like, normal-unhappy. I didn’t leave that Sunday thinking well, that was that, then.”

Lan Zhan’s quiet, for a while. When he finally speaks, he says again, “I’m sorry.”

“Aiya, Lan Zhan, don’t give me that look,” Wei Ying says. He can’t see the look, but he’s fairly sure he’s getting it. “It’s not like she said ‘never come back.’ I mean, she might, still. But she hasn’t said it yet.”

Lan Zhan gives him that hum – the one that means go on . Which is kind of him, but Wei Ying has exhausted the subject, really. He feels like it’s all he’s been talking about this entire month. And yet here he is, still talking.

“Did I tell you Jiejie sent me a text, right after it happened?” Wei Ying traces little patterns on the Biscuit King’s fur. He’s like a little furnace against Wei Ying’s chest. Wei Ying doesn’t think he could be cold anymore if he tried. “She said she wouldn’t say anything if I didn’t want her to.”

Lan Zhan hums, again – go on – and Wei Ying laughs, weakly. Have mercy, Lan Zhan, he wants to say. Don’t you know that when you do that, I have to keep talking?

“I think she really wanted to.” His voice drops, when he says it. Like it’s somehow a secret. “Say something, that is.”

“Mm,” Lan Zhan says. Not a go on , but an I’m thinking . Wei Ying curls tighter into the duvet and waits for Lan Zhan to put it into words.

“She texted me,” he says, finally. “Earlier. I’d planned to ask you about it tomorrow, but...”

Wei Ying snaps a little straighter. The Biscuit King twitches disapprovingly. “What happened? Is everything okay?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Lan Zhan says. And Wei Ying believes him, but—Lan Zhan isn’t looking at him like nothing is wrong. “She thanked me for doing this. She said you wouldn’t have admitted it, but you would have been lonely by yourself.”

Wei Ying squirms. “Older siblings,” he says, weakly. He wonders, sometimes, how old he’ll have to be before Jiang Yanli stops thinking of him as the boy she used to have to coax downstairs for dinner. Yu-ayi would love for her to stop. Tells her as much all the time. For heaven’s sake, A-Li, she’ll snap. He’s not five anymore .

She’s not wrong , Wei Ying had mumbled once, after Yu-ayi was gone. That was early last summer, actually. Jiang Yanli’s last visit home. Wei Ying hadn’t realized it would be the only time he’d see her this year.

Jiang Yanli had pushed the hair back from his face, looked him over thoughtfully. She’s not , she agreed, easily. But she was smiling. A-Ying isn’t five. He’s three .

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says—and oh. Something really is wrong, isn’t it? “She asked if we’d need anything for the next few weeks.”

Wei Ying actually feels the moment his whole body goes cold.

He clears his throat. There’s no room to deflect, here, not when Lan Zhan is looking at him like that. There’s no room to joke, either. But here he is, trying to laugh. “I didn’t lie to her,” he says. It seems important to specify that. “I just kind of—implied.”

Lan Zhan, however, seems much less concerned with the semantics. “Wei Ying,” he says, again. Wei Ying has never known anyone before who can say his name like it’s a full thought. “You told me you made plans for after my brother arrived. Did you mean it?”

“I meant it,” Wei Ying says. But under the full force of Lan Zhan’s stare, he crumbles. “They’re just not… plans with people.”

If Lan Zhan wasn’t giving him a Look before, he certainly is now. And Wei Ying still can’t quite see well enough to make it out, but he looks kind of—stricken.

“I texted with my brother earlier,” he says. “He’d be very happy to have you stay with us. He told me to tell you he’d be very cross if you didn’t.”

“Lan Zhan, ah.” Wei Ying laughs weakly. “Didn’t you basically say your brother was too nice for his own good?”

“You don’t want to test him,” Lan Zhan says dryly. “His wrath is a thing to behold.”

Wei Ying, despite himself, laughs for real this time, though he never quite relaxes. Lan Zhan isn’t him – he doesn’t try to joke to keep the mood light. But there’s something softly intent in his voice. Wei Ying feels pinned under the weight of it.

“If you’d prefer not to be here—” Lan Zhan starts.

And it’s that, finally, that cracks Wei Ying like an egg. “That’s not it,” he says. Oh my God, that’s not it. If Lan Zhan sincerely believes that anyone could be in his home and want to be anywhere else, they have a lot more to talk about than this.

But he’s so quick to make that clear, he doesn’t notice what he just walked into until it’s too late. “Then why?”

Wei Ying distracts himself with the low engine roar of the Biscuit King’s purr. Lucky cat. Cats never have to worry about lying in bed with perfect boys at 3:00am and trying to say the right things.

“You know the marshmallow test?” says Wei Ying.

Lan Zhan, as always, barely blinks. “The psychological test?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Wei Ying says. “Where the kids who can wait two minutes to eat a marshmallow tend to be more successful later in life?”

“That experiment was debunked,” Lan Zhan says.

“Forget about the actual test for a minute,” Wei Ying says, as if he hadn’t brought up the test with his own stupid mouth. “I’m just saying that—if it was me. I wouldn’t just eat my own marshmallow. I’d eat all the marshmallows around me. It’d just be eleven crying kids and then me, eating all their marshmallows.”

Now Lan Zhan’s eyes are narrowed again. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Food is sacred. You don’t just go snatching it from other people’s hands.” Wei Ying pinches the bridge of his nose. This metaphor isn’t structurally sound. Which means, unfortunately, he’s going to have to just—say it.

“Three weeks is,” he begins. Pauses. Goes with the hilariously inadequate end to that sentence anyway. “A long time.”

“I’m aware,” Lan Zhan says.

“A long time to have me in your home,” Wei Ying clarifies. “And with the new semester coming up—since we’re not going to see each other as much—”

Lan Zhan is looking at him—in the kindest sense of the phrase—like he’s helplessly stupid. Wei Ying is kind of starting to wonder if he might be. “Neither of us are going anywhere. You are always welcome here.”

“Okay, sure,” Wei Ying says, as if Lan Zhan didn’t just take an entire wrecking ball to two months’ worth of stress dreams. “But you’ll be busy, and—I guess we can still keep up Thursday dinners even if we’re studying different things, but—”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. “You like coming here.” It’s not a question. But it asks for confirmation, nonetheless.

“Of course I do,” Wei Ying says. He supposes he should be happy he hasn’t made that blisteringly obvious, but. Right now he’d trade the mortification not to see Lan Zhan look so hesitant.

“Alright,” Lan Zhan says. Not quite relieved, yet. “Then will you explain it to me?”

And Wei Ying nods. Because after that conversational hamster wheel, Lan Zhan deserves to hear it.

So he takes a breath. Rubs behind the Biscuit King’s ear. And says, “I’m not—you can’t just give me an open door. You can’t let me in and say ‘take anything you want.’ You have to set boundaries with me.” Lan Zhan makes a questioning noise. So Wei Ying elaborates. “Or I’ll walk all over you.”

For a long, long time, Lan Zhan meets his eyes. And Wei Ying curls there, half-braced for Lan Zhan to recognize the truth in that.

But finally, he says, “Do you remember the second week of classes?”

Wei Ying blinks. This is—not how he expected this answer to start. But maybe he asked for it with that marshmallow test tangent. “Theoretically?”

“It rained for three days,” Lan Zhan says. His voice thrums like the sleepy sounds of the apartment, low and even. “We had a lecture section on the last day of that front, and it rained so hard you could barely see. We all had our umbrellas stacked by the door, so it wouldn’t soak the carpet. Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao forgot their own. So when class was over, they stole two. Luo Qingyang’s and mine.”

Wei Ying grimaces. He doesn’t remember, but that sounds about right.

“You were a little late leaving class that day,” Lan Zhan says. “And when you realized what happened, you walked us both home. It was out of your way. You got soaked. You didn’t complain.”

“… oh.” Wait. Wei Ying does remember that now. “Lan Zhan, that was before—” you even tolerated me “—we were even friends.”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. Like that’s the point.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says helplessly. The Biscuit King twitches a little, presses a little harder against his chest. “That was twenty minutes and a little water. You don’t have to owe me just for that.”

“I don’t—” Lan Zhan’s first try is swallowed in a yawn. He has to say it again. “I don’t think I owe you.”

Wei Ying laughs, helplessly. Poor Lan Zhan. It’s so, so late. “Then what is it?”

Lan Zhan’s eyes have slid to half-mast. But when he speaks, he sounds awake. “You open your door to everyone,” he says. “I am allowed to open mine in return.”

For a long, horrible moment, Wei Ying thinks he’s going to cry.

The worst part is, it’s not the least bit horrible.

“Okay.” He turns his face into the pillow for a second. If the fabric is a little wet when he turns away, there’s no one but him to know. “Okay, Lan Zhan. I give. You can tell your brother you’re stuck with me, unfortunately.”

Lan Zhan’s smiles rarely leave his eyes. This one does. His mouth curves into a thin, luminous sliver that Wei Ying has already committed to die thinking about. “Thank you.”

“Aiya, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying laughs. He’s entirely too exposed, looking Lan Zhan in the face right now, but he’s not about to look away, either. “Saying that like I’m the one doing you a favor. Is there anything else you’d like to ask of this humble one?”

As if Wei Ying’s heart isn’t already loud enough to hear, Lan Zhan’s smile gentles further, a slow waxing crescent. He reaches across the bed, tucks the duvet in tighter. Wei Ying expects the Biscuit King to protest. But the cat’s breathing is slow and even against his chest.

“Get some sleep,” Lan Zhan says. Like Wei Ying is the tired one.

Wei Ying opens his mouth. Maybe to say God, yeah, Lan bedtime was hours ago . Maybe to say I’ll earn my keep. If you liked what I did with the tree, I can keep doing that. Any manual labor you want. Any labor at all, really. Or maybe to say Thank you. You didn’t have to .

But Wei Ying must be tired after all. Because when he tips his face toward Lan Zhan’s faint, not-quite-faded smile, he forgets whatever was on his tongue.

Wei Ying burrows into the soft, herbal cloud of Lan Zhan’s duvet. And between one blink and the next, he sleeps.

***

This time, Wei Ying dreams of a mosquito biting his nose.

It doesn’t take him long, upon opening his eyes, to figure out where that came from.

“Don’t bite your Wei-gege,” Wei Ying mumbles. The Biscuit King blinks owlishly back at him, one paw smushing his cheek. And then he leans in to delicately bite his ear.

“Okay okay okay.” Wei Ying pushes himself onto one elbow, groaning. “Ow. Bullied by my own nephew.”

He squints at the clock across Lan Zhan’s vacated side of the bed – 6:33am, thank you very much for that, Your Majesty– and makes a brief, bleary attempt to process the events of the night before, then decides it’s entirely too early in the morning to burst into tears.

“6:30,” Wei Ying croons, scratching the Biscuit King’s chin. “Just because your father likes pain doesn’t mean we have to, my sweet boy.”

To that, the Biscuit King responds with a flick to his ear. His attention is now fully fixed on the mostly-closed door, where somewhere beyond, Wei Ying hears the scrape of silverware, smells a heady mixture of strong coffee and canned tuna.

“Aiya. So Lan Zhan was already getting your breakfast.” Wei Ying’s laughter is almost enough to keep him warm. But he still wraps himself in one of the throw blankets on the way out of the bed. “My mistake, my mistake. Of course His Majesty needs all his subjects in line.”

He follows the Biscuit King to the living room to where the white winter light spills into the kitchen, pauses there as the cat peels away from his side to dart to the food dish. Lan Zhan doesn’t see him there, at first. He’s still in his pajamas, pouring coffee into an eggshell blue mug that matches his satin set. His hair is sunlit around his face, the set of his shoulders is relaxed. And if Wei Ying waits there at the doorway for the length of his pour, just to take it in—no one will know but him.

Then Lan Zhan’s eyes flick up to his face. “Good morning,” he says. “There’s coffee.”

Wei Ying shifts into the warmth of the kitchen. If he’s gone a little flushed, maybe Lan Zhan will assume warmth is all it is. “Be careful, Lan Zhan,” he says. “I’ll be here for three weeks now. I could get used to this treatment.”

“Hm.” It’s so matter-of-fact, the way Lan Zhan hands over the mug. Like it’s expected. Like Wei Ying belongs there. “Good.”