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Chapter Text

Five weeks before Nationals

Start with the crisp breath of artificial winter air. Start with the scent of clean ice, the unmistakable wet shine of its expanse as the doors swing open and the main lights flicker on overhead. 

Start with Wei Ying, skates already laced tight, two fingers caught in the gap between blade and boot as his back pulls into an arch and one foot lifts high above his head. 

Warm-up. Fast stretches, active to wake up the muscles, off-ice rotations which should really be done in his running shoes but it saves time this way and he's always had good balance anyway.

Today is Tuesday. Lan Zhan doesn't arrive until 5:47 on Tuesdays. 

For three-quarters of a glorious hour, Wei Ying has the ice to himself.

The hissing rip of a first deep edge cuts the silence as he skates with curling curves across to the sound system; turning, half-skipping with it, flying across the ice with the joy of the first moments of any practice, hair caught in the wind of it as he stops with a flourish no-one will see, a bright smile that's between him and the 5am silence. 

Wei Ying pulls a pocket-sized screwdriver from his jacket and removes the volume limiter from the sound system. Plugs in his phone, pushes the slider all the way up –

– and skates.

Here's the thing; Wei Ying knows you're supposed to warm up on the ice as well as off, knows you start with edges and turns for balance and speed, spin to find your centre, jump with single and double rotations only for at least the first five minutes – knows, and ignores it all, because it's far more fun to slam straight into a triple lutz on the first beat of the music regardless. The thrill of landing is amplified tenfold by the freshness of the first jump of the day; that first breathless pause of flight, the crunch of takeoff – 

– silence – 

– the crackling hiss of effortless landing. 

Why waste it on an unimaginative single rotation? Wei Ying knows what he's capable of.

It's golden. It's effortless. It's exhilarating. Wei Ying flings himself into a combination spin with poised control as the music climbs, perfectly centred, reaching back to catch his own blade and pull up, lights a dazzling blur as he tips his face away from the central axis, trusting hard-won instinct to keep him in the spin even as it begins to feel like falling – and he releases his hold, pulls out and around and down to a tight-crouched ball, one leg extended and arms flung back and out as he folds over his free leg to pull the spin tighter and faster and – 

– all at once pushing back upright, legs crossed at the ankles and fingertips trailing upwards above his upturned face, the spin so fast it blurs. And the release is easy, free and smooth and steady through the momentary whirl of the rink around him; yes, of course is the real answer to don't you get dizzy doing that, but the simpler truth is that every skater adjusts to dizziness long before they learn to spin fast enough for it to be a problem. Wen Qing mentioned a study, once – apparently the place in Wei Ying's brain that recognises dizziness has actually been suppressed, turned down like a volume control by all the years of training. 

(But only clockwise – the inconveniently unusual direction of his spins and jumps – when he spins Lan Zhan's anticlockwise way for a laugh, it's like he's four years old again and stumbling sideways from the dizziness of his first ever baby-steps spin.)

The red-glowing numbers on the clock tick over to 05:47, and right on time the door at the far end of the balcony swings halfway open with a familiar movement. 

"Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying calls above the breathless peak of the music, flying through the third new variation of his step sequence, and from the corner of his eye he catches Lan Zhan's pause and thinks oh, let's try it this way – 

– and slides, one knee dropped to the ice and both arms thrown wide behind him, fingertips gathering snow-dust as he leans back for an upside-down view of the curved ceiling and laughs with delight at the effortless success of the movement. He turns as he lifts out of it, forward inside edge to back outside with the crisp flick of counterrotation, step forward again with fresh energy straight into a tight-pulled double axel – and the centre's just a little off due to the unusual entry, which turns the landing wild, but that's okay because saving wild landings is practically Wei Ying's speciality, and his double axel's been consistently clean since he was nine years old besides –

Lan Zhan isn't even looking at him!

Wei Ying skids to a stop with a deliberate spray of snow, shakes ice crystals out of his hair, sticks out his tongue at Lan Zhan's elegantly curved back as he stretches and skates over to the sound system to switch over to best playlist ever (all the songs lan zhan hates <3).

That gets his attention – with a glare so cold it could almost match the tips of Wei Ying's fingers after that slide. Wei Ying grins. 

"Lan Zhan," he calls above the music, "Tuesday mornings are my favourite! Are Tuesday mornings your favourite?"

"Ridiculous," says Lan Zhan, low and sharp and so familiar Wei Ying can't help but love it. He pushes off from the barrier on one leg, crosses the other over his bent knee as he glides and runs chilled fingers along the blade of his skate to gather wet flakes of ice – and flicks the entire handful gleefully at Lan Zhan's icy face just to watch his eyebrows pull tight at the edges with rage. 

"Sh–"

"Shameless!! Aiya, Lan Zhan, you need some new vocabulary! You know, I really think –"

"Turn that shitty music down or so help me I will throw you out," crackles the loudspeaker above their heads, and Wei Ying throws his head back and laughs until Wen Qing shoves the boot store shutter up with a pointed rattle and flips him off. 

"Qing-jie!! Will you sharpen my skates later? I keep slipping on my triple loop –"

"That's because your triple loop is so sloppy it should be coned off and mopped up," snaps Wen Qing. "I'll do them after patch if you bring me McDonald's for breakfast and put some decent music on for once." 

"Aiyo, so demanding." Behind Wei Ying, the hissing crunch of Lan Zhan's first strokes – the sound a touch more traditional than the tight rip of Wei Ying's carbon-fibre-mounted blades against the ice. Lan Qiren doesn't approve of the new technology; Wei Ying thinks Lan Zhan is secretly jealous of it. "Give it ten seconds, Lan Zhan will rip out my aux and put on his boring field moves practice playlist and then you'll wish you'd never asked."

"I like the boring field moves practice playlist," Wen Qing says archly. "It helps me get a boot store nap in before the managers arrive."

"Be mean about my triple loop again and I'll tell," says Wei Ying, propping one skate up on the barrier and sliding into a split stretch. Wen Qing raises one eyebrow.

"Rat me out for napping and I'll fuck up your edges on purpose next time I sharpen them."

Wei Ying gasps theatrically and swings his leg back down. "You wouldn't dare!"

"Try me." 

Wei Ying opens his mouth – and the speakers pop obnoxiously with the Lan Zhan is pulling out the aux cord as slowly as he can to make a point about volume levels intermittent eardrum-punching Wei Ying knows all too well. 

"Ah, Lan Zhan, ahh – you've made your point!" he yells, hands pressed over his ears – and smooth as anything, faint classical string music slots into the space left behind as the assault on all their eardrums ceases.

Wen Qing smirks. She's wearing the ear defenders issued to her for sharpening skates – has somehow retrieved and utilised them within barely a blink.

"Where do you even keep those," says Wei Ying irritably, and skates off without waiting for an answer.

Here's the real reason Wei Ying likes Tuesday mornings: none of the coaches arrive until 9am. Everyone but Lan Zhan takes it as the opportunity for a lie-in – which means, all the more glorious for its rarity, empty ice.

Or near enough.

"Lan Zhan!" 

Wei Ying skates wide circles around Lan Zhan's elegant figure, moving easily with the pattern of his turns. He's running through an exercise from a test he passed sixteen years ago (boring).

"Wei Ying," he says, disapproval dripping from the blankly spoken syllables. "This is a warm-up." 

"Is it?" Wei Ying grins as he glides backwards, leans his weight from one side to the other in a swooping change of edge, dips a little further and tucks his free leg in and flicks into a brief walley jump where the next edge change would have come in the rhythm of the curve. "Doesn't look much like one to me, in fact it looks like your level nine field moves from when you were literally eight years old, how embarrassing –"

"Warm-up," repeats Lan Zhan coldly.

"Nah, I know what a warm-up is and it's not this, this is so boring –"

"Do you?"

Wei Ying bursts out laughing. "Lan Zhan, ah, you're so mean to me, it's like you want to be my new coach! I'll tell Baoshan Sanren to mentor you starting next week, she'll be so pleased – aiya, but your uncle won't be happy about me stealing his star skater…"

There's just the barest hint of a lift around one corner of Lan Zhan's lips as he turns to face away for the next section of the exercise. Wei Ying skips sideways on his toe picks to reorient himself in Lan Zhan's new field of view and continues to chatter aimlessly through the rest of the familiar sequence of old field moves patterns.

"Lan Zhan," he says again, skating a little wider to make space for the spins he knows come next in Lan Zhan's warm-up, "let's do our mirror triple axels today."

"Single and double first," says Lan Zhan implacably. 

"But we know the pattern by now!" It comes out whiny, and that's fully on purpose – Wei Ying pouts, flops sideways over the barrier as he watches Lan Zhan's textbook-perfect backspin, kicks his heels against the boards until Wen Qing does the muffled tap-tap-tap of the speaker system that usually is intended to subtly get the attention of other rink stewards but on patch sessions actually means fucking stop that, Wei Ying.

"It is complex," says Lan Zhan as he exits the spin, by which he means you get the turns in the wrong order three times out of five, which may be true but is still deeply unfair considering Wei Ying has never missed the triple axel itself in the mirrored mini-program he's bullied Lan Zhan into making with him. It's harder to skate together when you spin and jump the opposite direction to your partner – but the payoff is worth the choreographic work, because when it's done right it's gorgeous. 

The mirrored triple axels are gorgeous, and Wei Ying knows it, and Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan knows it. He widens his eyes, pouts a little more, flutters his eyelashes in Lan Zhan's direction until the tips of his ears turn pink.

"Correct order first time," Lan Zhan says after an extended pause, and Wei Ying grins as he shoves away from the barrier and races to the opposite end of the rink while Lan Zhan finds their music.

The first notes echo in the chilled air, because Lan Zhan actually likes it when Wei Ying takes the volume limiter off even if he won't admit it – and it starts. 

It's barely thirty seconds, really – thirty-three, to be exact – yet every single time it's the best half-minute of any practice. They move together, opposite corners of the ice, mirrored choreography, right hand reaching towards left, paths crossing once twice again again as the pattern claims the ice for its story. It's fast – inside bracket, outside counter, cross and turn and pass each other with barely a whisper of air between outstretched fingers – and it's slow; fluid drawn-out loop turns at their furthest point from each other before the pace begins to build again. Three backwards crossovers, slow-motion steady, wide and crisp with power to build speed – and they fly past one another again as they turn, Wei Ying curling around the left corner of the rink while Lan Zhan takes the right for opposite synchronised setups, and it's an unusual one-footed entry, back outside edge with a counter turn to forward outside and go, skid the takeoff edge to fly higher –

Wei Ying's seen it filmed. He knows the arcs of their twinned flight cross the centre line of the rink mid-air in opposite directions, and even separated for safety as they are it's stunning. 

It feels even better than it looks. 

A shrill, enthusiastic whistle cuts the air as Wei Ying pulls his landing edge into a dizzying run of twizzles to give motion to the wild delight of it – and he skips sideways, pauses, looks up at the balcony to see Nie Huaisang dangling through the half-open doorway and waving.

"Gorgeous!!" Huaisang calls, and releases the doorframe to drape himself across the balcony railing instead. "I keep telling you to go in for pairs, but do you listen?"

Wei Ying grins. "As if Lan Zhan could put up with me – besides, I'm unfortunately not still the size of a literal twelve year old. Remind me again how many of the juniors are taller than you?"

"Yingying," says Huaisang, deeply affronted, "I just gave you a compliment."

"Pointless," Lan Zhan says coolly as he glides past, and three seconds later the boring field moves practice playlist is back on, to Wei Ying's general despair. 

"Huaisang," he says with deep sincerity, "I need you to divorce the coffee machine and stop skiving so we can come up with a plot to break Lan Zhan's phone."

"Nope." Huaisang pops his lips on the p and shakes his head for additional emphasis. "Da-ge doesn't get here until 8:30 today, so I'm not going near that ice until 8:29 at the earliest." 

"You're the worst," says Wei Ying cheerfully, and resumes the next item on his morning to-do list: attempting to goad Lan Zhan into a spin competition before the coaches arrive and he switches off every secret part of his personality to leave only boring and sensible still showing.

Lan Zhan with no coaches around is much more fun. 

7:45 is when the rink finally begins to fill up in preparation for the end of Tuesday morning freedom. The juniors arrive, first and all at once – Yanli's terrible boring husband has brought them in his minivan, and he shoulders his way through the doors with two pull-along bags with light-up wheels trailing awkwardly from each hand and another wedged over his shoulder in what looks like a very uncomfortable position as five adolescents spill down the balcony ahead of him and clatter down the stairs to start their warm-up race around the outside of the rink. 

"Wei-ge!!" shouts Jingyi, waving enthusiastically as he almost trips on the rubber matting and gets overtaken by A-Qing (embarrassing for him, she's two years younger). "Show us your quad flip!!"

Wei Ying laughs. "Not until you land your triple more than twice in a row – you know it's only five weeks to nationals now?"

Jingyi groans theatrically as he runs. "Don't remind me!"

"I landed a triple yesterday!" yells A-Qing from her position at the front of the group – she does this every time, sprints the first half of the lap and falls behind in the second, and the pattern's the same in her programs – but to be fair to her, at eleven years old Wei Ying had also been entirely appalling at pacing himself.

(He still is, really, but determination and unbreakable will goes a long way towards keeping the second half of a program together in spite of it. Who needs sensible pacing, anyway?)

"Aiya, so impressive!" Wei Ying skates alongside the group as they run, lazily increasing their pace as they push to keep up with him. "Which one?"

"Toe loop!! Zewu-jun says," she punctuates her sentence with gasps for breath now as Jingyi overtakes her again, "if I do it again every day this week, I can put it in my next program!"

"Excellent! I want to see it before 8:30, you've got half an hour to warm up." 

A-Qing gapes at him. He grins. "You know you'll have more chance of landing it clean if you do it before you start getting tired. Backspin with the hops to start, then five doubles in a row and backspin on the landing of the last one for as long as you can, you know how it works."

"I hate that, you're so mean!!"

Wei Ying shrugs. "Just wait until you have to do it with the triple. A-Ling, how's that double axel?"

Jin Ling, trailing a little behind through the disadvantage of being only ten years old, puts on a burst of speed to catch up with an adorably determined frown on his round little face. "Rubbish," he says sulkily when he's level with Wei Ying. "I fell eighteen times on it yesterday."

"Ah, baobei, how many times do you see me fall every single day?" Wei Ying slows, letting the others pass ahead and Jin Ling return to a more maintainable jog. 

He shrugs. "Some."

"Some?! Yesterday morning I fell at least twenty times before you even arrived!"

There's a reluctant little smile on Jin Ling's face now. Wei Ying grins and reaches over the barrier to poke his cheek as he runs. "You know it's part of it. When I was getting mine consistent I had a bruise on my hip for three weeks!"

Jin Ling looks at him suspiciously. "You've always had it consistent."

Wei Ying bursts out laughing. "You think I came out of the womb with a double axel? When I took my first steps on those baby hire skates with the rocker sharpened all the way off, the first thing I did was the hardest double jump there is?"

"Shut up," snaps Jin Ling, red-faced. "You're so annoying!"

"The first thing I did was fall over, A-Ling," Wei Ying says fondly. "I know it doesn't feel like it, but one day that double axel will be one of the easiest things in your warm-up. I know you can do it."

"Whatever, go away, I don't even like you," says Jin Ling in that over-emotional stop talking to me tone he's definitely picked up from Jiang Cheng, and Wei Ying grins and ruffles his hair as they reach the end of the lap together. 

Sizhui is first onto the ice as always, swiftly followed by Zizhen, and they run through an almost identical sequence of warm-up exercises to Lan Zhan while Wei Ying teases them for it and Lan Zhan shoots him disapproving looks regarding the fact he's spent the last half hour bothering the juniors instead of running his program like he'd planned. It's unfair, really – it's not Wei Ying's fault they're so irresistibly adorable! 

"A-Qing," he calls with a wave as she finishes a double axel-double toe loop combination, "let's see it!"

Her first attempt is badly underrotated, and she falls – Wei Ying sees her mouth for fuck's sake and tries not to laugh – and the second goes wild and pops into a single. 

"It's stupid!" she yells, and kicks at the ice with her takeoff toe pick, and Wei Ying skates over to examine the tracings with her. 

"Aiyo, don't get cross with it," he says, a little gently. "Look here – your takeoff is good, you've got the skid on the end of your edge and you're picking in the right place. Here's your first landing – it was only a quarter under, that's why you fell so hard, you know it's easier to save it when it's worse."

"Yeah," says A-Qing sulkily, and wipes her nose on her gloves. 

"Gross. Try again – go and do three more doubles first, then that combination with the double axel, then show me."

"You're not my coach," A-Qing grouches, but she does it. Wei Ying sees the set of determination on her face as she sets up for the next attempt, using the full length of the ice to gather speed, smooth long edges down the central axis in the best and cleanest entry for power and height – forward outside, backward inside, step down to back outside and reach back with the toe pick and –

– she lands it, a little off-balance and fighting for the edge, landing position stiff and tight with effort, and Wei Ying joins the rest of the juniors in their whoops of delight and applause as she punches the air and runs on her toe picks down the middle of the ice with a shriek of victory. 

"See," says Wei Ying authoritatively, "this is why you all need to listen to me. Who's running their program first today?"

"You," says Lan Zhan, appearing from nowhere with his phone in his hand, and Wei Ying realises the aux has been left unclaimed. "Then Sizhui."

"Excellent. Lan Zhan, give A-Qing her victory throw jump from me?"

Wei Ying fully expects Lan Zhan to decline – in fact, has even started skating in A-Qing's direction to deliver their traditional congrats on the new jump reward himself – but all at once he's there first, and A-Qing says double loop with pleased confidence and they're off.

Lan Zhan doesn't skate pairs. Wei Ying, in fact, has never seen Lan Zhan skate closer to anyone than the brushed-fingertips contact of their own mirrored mini-program. But he must have practised this somewhere, with someone, because the quiet confidence with which he arranges A-Qing in position beside him as they glide across the ice doesn't come from a first attempt – and Lan Zhan wouldn't do a first attempt at anything with an eleven-year-old anyway. 

Wei Ying, watching Lan Zhan's firm hold on A-Qing's waist, suddenly wants to know who he's been practising with.

Lan Zhan says something quietly to A-Qing, and she nods. Wei Ying sees their lips move as they count together – three, two, one –

It's a good one. A-Qing flies high enough for double the number of rotations, position loose and open to keep from overrotating, and lands easily and smoothly with a breathless whoop of excitement at the rush of boosted momentum. Wei Ying smiles to himself as he plugs in his phone and opens his program music. 

"Lan Zhan," he murmurs as he skates to his starting position, "ah, you…"

The music starts. Wei Ying forgets everything else he was thinking about.

*

"McDonald's delivery service!" Wei Ying yells into the boot store, and Wen Qing appears from around the corner just in time to catch the incoming paper bag as it sails through the air. 

"One day," she says conversationally, "you're going to do that when I'm not there to catch it, and then it's going to make a disgusting mess which you will be cleaning up."

"Wei-ge," says Zizhen from behind him with audible horror, "did you walk to McDonald's in your skates?!" 

"Aiyo, calm down, I'm wearing my guards!" 

"That's not the point –"

"You know I could have been sharpening them while you were gone," interrupts Wen Qing with her mouth full, and Wei Ying rolls his eyes and swings one leg up onto the counter to start unpicking the tight knot of his laces.

And then he gets distracted, because Lan Zhan is running his program.

Everyone else is here by now. All the coaches have arrived – Baoshan Sanren is leaning on the barrier looking up at him with a distinctly unimpressed expression, presumably as a result of his forty-five minute absence from the ice, while Lan Qiren stands stiffly in his usual spot beside the sound system and radiates forbidding disapproval in the direction of anyone who might dream of such outrageous activities as deliberately unscrewing the volume limiter on the main slider. Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan are conspicuously absent from rinkside, but Wei Ying can in fact already hear them (or Madam Yu, at least) all the way from the main reception. Today's argument is something related to price alterations which Wei Ying does not care to eavesdrop on in the slightest – if it's anything important, he'll hear about it from Huaisang later. 

Most of the usual morning skaters have shown up by this point as well – Yanli is dusting powdery ice off a red-faced Jin Ling's clothes while Jiang Cheng patches an obvious hole in the ice beside him, and Nie Mingjue is practising off-ice pair lifts with Huaisang at the far end of the warm-up space beside the rink. Jin Ling's baby sister is there too – little A-Yan, six years old, currently watching with wide eyes from Jin Zixuan's lap with her skates halfway on in readiness for her 9:30am lesson with the Lotus team. Wei Ying's already seen Jiang Cheng putting together the harness pole, so he's guessing A-Yan will be learning what a double salchow feels like – she landed her single axel last month, and over the past week it's been starting to settle as beautifully consistent. 

Lan Huan and Meng Yao are halfway through one of their signature combination pair spins, but as Lan Zhan's music begins they pull out of it and glide to the barrier with the same swift automaticity of every other skater currently on the ice – it's akin to that old experiment, the soapy finger placed on water to disrupt the surface tension and send pepper flakes sliding instantly away to the edges of the bowl.

Lan Zhan skates. 

Wei Ying watches.

He knows this program back-to-front by now. It's Lan Zhan's most ambitious yet – three quads in the second half, with two in combination, and a step sequence of the kind of horrifying technical difficulty that borders on insane – and Wei Ying knows the only way he'll beat it is on the program component score. He still hasn't finalised his own jump layout for this season, but he knows it won't match Lan Zhan's on base value – for a start, Lan Zhan has a consistent quad lutz while Wei Ying has a near-permanent bruise on his hip and five embarrassing fall deductions last season. 

(Wei Ying is not currently on speaking terms with his quad lutz.)

Really, Wei Ying should be watching for technique. He should be analysing Lan Zhan's performance to compare it to the videos he's seen of himself; he knows they have complementary strengths and weaknesses, and if he could only find a way to pick up a little more of Lan Zhan's technical precision on jumps he'd pull ahead on the combined score every time.

Wei Ying isn't watching for technique.

Wei Ying is watching the flow of movement all the way out to Lan Zhan's extended fingertips as he glides through the transitions between jumps. He's watching the way the wind of his speed catches at stray tendrils of hair escaping his tight braid, the way light glints on his blades as he flies into a perfectly centred spin, the way every movement is sharp, precise, defined and deliberate and crisp. 

He's watching the expressions on Lan Zhan's face – the ones the judges say he doesn't have. 

The judges are wrong. Wei Ying could get lost in the tiniest shift at the edges of Lan Zhan's features, the slightest part of his lips or widening of his eyes; the way determined concentration blossoms out into the satisfied bliss of achievement after the final cleanly landed jump and the last fifteen seconds of choreographic work come alive with the delight of a program perfectly completed. 

The music ends. Wei Ying blinks, dazed, and doesn't have the self-awareness to dodge when Wen Qing smacks him on the side of the head.

"Four and a half minutes of my life you just wasted. We all know he's hot when he skates, now get those off so I can sharpen them."

"He's not," Wei Ying tries, a little weakly, but he's long since known that's a lost cause. 

The thing is, well, it's just that –

It's just that actually, Wei Ying might be a little bit in love. 

He's known it for a while. Since – well, if he really stops to think about it, if he's honest with himself in the way his teenage self had no idea how to be, since approximately two minutes and forty seconds into their first competition together on the junior circuit at fourteen years old.

It took him a while to figure it out. And by then, well – by then he knew Lan Zhan wasn't interested. 

Lan Zhan isn't interested in that with anyone, and least of all Wei Ying. 

He made that very clear, at the –

"Wei Ying," says Baoshan Sanren from unaccountably right beside him, "if you're getting your skates sharpened, you do in fact need to remove them from your feet."

"This is what I've been saying," says Wen Qing, and Wei Ying groans and rolls his eyes and immediately stands in a wet patch as he pulls his foot free and switches legs to get the other skate off too.

"Put your trainers on," says Baoshan Sanren. "I want to see all your off-ice triples."

"You're the worst person in the world," says Wei Ying, and she smiles and reaches up to pat him on the head and walks with meaningful intent towards the warm-up area. 

*

"Move," says Wen Qing, and shoves past Wei Ying to vault the barrier in the way she, as a rink employee, is authorised to kick out and ban members of the public for. She lands with an easy sideways skip and pushes straight into a fast lap, alternating turns and steps and tight slaloms to warm herself up at close to three times normal speed.

Wei Ying can see she wants to jump. There's irritated self-control written in her every movement. She's changed into her usual leggings but hasn't bothered to switch out the dark blue polo shirt of her work uniform before heading for the ice, or to put her hair up properly from its current falling-out-of-ponytail status – it's obvious, she's been watching them all morning, what skater wouldn't be desperate for it?

"Get on with it!" he calls across the ice, and hops up to perch on the incongruous wooden picnic table beside the barrier and unwrap his midday sandwich. "Triple loop, ten seconds from now!"

Wen Qing flips him off and flies into a series of dizzying twizzles which end in an illusion spin – and then, inside the final upright backspin of the combination it ends up as, opens out her position and slows and then pulls up into an honest-to-god actual triple loop from nothing. 

It's Wei Ying's least favourite exercise. He has no idea why Wen Qing would actively choose it for her cathartic post-shift energy release.

"Lan Zhan," he says, tilting his head in the direction of where Wen Qing is doing it again, "I think it should be illegal to combine spins and jumps like that. It's bad and gross."

Lan Zhan raises one eyebrow the tiniest fraction imaginable. 

"Double axel without axel-backspin," he replies, and Wei Ying makes a face.

"All right. Okay. Revised statement – combinations where the jump comes first and the spin after are allowed. But that –"

"Useful for quadruple loop," Lan Zhan says placidly, which Wei Ying knows is deliberate because his own quad loop is worse than the lutz and Lan Zhan's has been competition-ready for three months now.

"Pointed comments about my jumps are banned until you can go from a layback into a Biellmann without needing to see a chiropractor afterwards," he says, and takes another bite of his sandwich. 

"Your Biellmann spin is exceptional," Lan Zhan says instead of sniping back, which Wei Ying thinks is actually quite rude because it does something warm and melty to his stomach and makes him want to sit in Lan Zhan's lap. Which is not allowed.

"Lan Zhan," he says with great seriousness, "you have to stop saying these things to me."

Lan Zhan doesn't say anything, but Wei Ying has known him for over a decade now and he knows exactly what smug looks like on that ridiculously beautiful face.

"Triple axel Qing-jiejie!!" yells A-Yan from her position also eating a sandwich while wrapped in Jin Zixuan's enormous puffy coat, and Wen Qing pretends like she's not smiling at the nickname before curving around the end of the rink into the setup for it.

It's tight still, the rotation hard-won and just barely qualifying as clean, but it's consistent. Last year Wen Qing was the only woman at nationals to land it – it's not quite so rare on the international circuit any more, but it's still a significant boost to her technical score that has her on the podium more often than not. And it doesn't end there; she's been eyeing up the quad salchow for a while now. Wei Ying caught her trying it last month at 5am on a rare Tuesday she wasn't working, but Baoshan Sanren won't give permission until her triple axel is big enough to make space in the air position for another round of pull in tighter to spin faster.

Wei Ying is familiar with this. Baoshan Sanren is one of the most annoying coaches for not until you're ready – second only to Lan Qiren, who supervised Wei Ying at enough competitions through his inconsistently coached teenage years for them both to develop a mutual understanding along the lines of if you don't watch me, you don't have to tell me off for it. 

(Wei Ying has no idea how Lan Zhan puts up with him.)

Personally, Wei Ying's current argument with Baoshan Sanren relates to the quadruple axel. This is quite possibly the absolute pinnacle of not until you're ready – every single one of Lan Zhan's other quads is clean and consistent, and he still doesn't have permission from Lan Qiren to attempt it. 

Baoshan Sanren's criteria is very simple: a triple axel-quad loop combination, landed clean at least three times in every five. It's impossible. No-one's ever landed a combination with a quad as the second jump in competition.

(Lan Zhan's done it twice in practice.)

Yes, Wei Ying can spin better than literally anyone else he's ever skated against. Yes, Wei Ying has achieved program component scores less than two points from perfection. But spins and artistry don't have a base value of 12.50. 

Wei Ying's been thinking about it too much. He drops the sandwich back into his bag and steps back onto the ice, barely remembering to remove his guards in time (an oversight which has the potential for incredible hilarity; the most recent occurrence was Jingyi on Wednesday last week, but Wei Ying's personal favourite will always be Yu Ziyuan going down like an inelegant sack of potatoes directly after screaming at him for falling three times in a row on his triple loop at age twelve) and catches Lan Zhan's attention again with a wave. 

"Lan Zhan," he calls, suddenly antsy with determination, "triple-quad?"

Lan Zhan, of course, knows exactly what he means. They've both been trying for it. 

From the corner of his eye, Wei Ying sees Baoshan Sanren watching.

"Quad loop first," says Lan Zhan as he skates over.

Wei Ying pouts at him. "Triple axel first."

"Alternate them," calls Baoshan Sanren casually, and then pretends like she's not looking. It's not something they're spending coaching time on – not with the start of the season creeping closer every day – and it's not something Baoshan Sanren actually thinks he should be doing, but it's obvious she's at least a little invested in the outcome (possibly against her own will).

They alternate the jumps, and take turns to watch each other. Lan Zhan gives Wei Ying the same correction five times in a row on his quad loop and it makes him absolutely want to scream – but the sixth attempt becomes the first time in two weeks he's managed to hold the landing edge instead of stepping out to avoid a fall, and it's so blissful he does it again three times in a row. 

Baoshan Sanren gives him a pointed look. Now, she mouths, and Wei Ying's stomach does a butterfly-leap of anticipation because this, right now, feels different. 

He ignores the feeling. Too much excitement throws the rhythm off and often ruins a jump just as badly as hesitance. He doesn't even tell Lan Zhan he's about to try it – but from the carefully attentive expression on Lan Zhan's face, he thinks his intentions have been guessed.

Start with more speed. The triple axel has to carry the momentum for the full combination, has to climb higher than usual, has to fly. And it does – time slows only just enough to recall the intention of the combination as his toe pick makes contact on landing and he softens, opens while maintaining tension in all the right places, then pushes up and pulls in and – 

– it pops into a triple, Wei Ying feels the blur of quadruple rotation disengage just a flicker of a moment too early, and the same determination that drags him through the second half of every exhausting program kicks in mid-air because this was going to be it, this should have been it – and in the final moment before landing he thinks no, this will be it and pushes up again as he makes contact with the ice.

It's the tightest he's ever rotated, and now finally he understands how Sizhui can pull in for a triple salchow barely two inches off the ice because there's absolutely no way the third jump of a combination would ever have enough height for a quad but somehow as he lands clean and smooth and fully rotated he realises that's what's happened. 

Lan Zhan is staring at him.

Baoshan Sanren is standing extremely still at the edge of the rink, and Wen Qing is saying something that sounds very much like what the fuck was that, but – Lan Zhan is staring at him like he's not planning on ever looking away again. 

"Mm," says Wei Ying, instead of kiss me. "That was fun."

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying says mm again and backs away just a little because otherwise, right now on the electrified high of an impossible triple-triple-quad combination, he is going to do something extremely stupid.

"Your turn," he manages after a long moment of silence, and then starts giggling hysterically.

*

"Well," says Baoshan Sanren, leaning over the barrier with a steaming cup of coffee while Wei Ying tests out how long he can balance on one toe pick, "I suppose we'll be redoing your jump layout to add a quadruple loop if you can do it like that." 

Wei Ying makes a face. Baoshan Sanren lifts one hand before he can speak. "Don't tell me it's inconsistent after that performance. Your quad lutz is inconsistent." She pauses, looks him in the eye until he wants to squirm. "You have a mental block on the quad loop."

Wei Ying groans. "I do not."

"My mistake. You don't have a mental block on the quad loop." 

Wei Ying narrows his eyes suspiciously. He can guess what's coming.

"You have a mental block on the loop, quadruple or not," says Baoshan Sanren, and Wei Ying groans again even more loudly and slumps down across the barrier. If Baoshan Sanren's clipboard gets accidentally knocked to the floor during this event that is absolutely no concern of Wei Ying's.

She raises her eyebrows at him but doesn't comment. There's a look on her face Wei Ying knows all too well – it's the expression she wears right before she comes out with an idea that will put Wei Ying either on the top of the podium or in the first aid room. 

This is why she's the only coach he's ever stuck with, really.

"You struggle with the traditional loop entry," she says carefully, and Wei Ying shrugs but doesn't contradict her. "So. How do you feel about making history?"

"One of my favourite hobbies." Wei Ying grins. This is going to be good.

"Show me the biggest quad salchow you've got," she says, and it's the first half of a conversation Wei Ying suddenly very much wants to know the ending of. 

He can guess it, really. Which is why he lands the salchow into a backspin, tight and fast to loose and open and then up into the horrible triple loop exercise Wen Qing apparently likes so much. 

Surprisingly enough, he makes the rotation and lands it still centred in the spin. It's not so bad, on the end of another jump rather than isolated as its own event. 

This has nothing whatsoever to do with any hypothetical mental blocks or lack thereof.

Baoshan Sanren nods as he skates back over. There's a pleased sparkle in her eyes. 

"Your first jumping pass in the free skate is now quad salchow-quad loop," she says, and Wei Ying bounces on his toe picks with excitement. "You can put it on the clipboard when you land it." She pauses, fixes him with the familiar look that says here's your challenge, that says here's the push you've asked for. "You have three weeks to get it consistent enough for nationals or I'm taking it back out." 

"Done," says Wei Ying, and dashes away to get started.

*

Wei Ying lands it twice that day, right at the end of the afternoon session when his legs are halfway to jelly and it's only willpower left pushing him through. 

"Underrotated," says Lan Zhan blandly, and Wei Ying sticks his tongue out and doesn't bother to save the fall when he trips because really he could do with a lie-down anyway.

"Wei-ge," calls Jingyi from the picnic table, "we're going for pizza to celebrate A-Qing's triple, you coming?"

"I'll meet you there!" Wei Ying reaches out his hands without looking, wiggling gloved fingers in a deliberately pathetic plea. "Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, pull me off the ice and help me stretch."

Lan Zhan drags him by one ankle to the edge of the ice and leaves him there, which is pretty much to be expected, and Wei Ying bounces upright and dusts ice off his stomach and follows Lan Zhan out to the far end of the warm-up space where there's less water on the floor and they can stretch undisturbed. 

This, Wei Ying knows, is the most selfish thing he regularly does. 

Lan Zhan doesn't like touching people. Lan Zhan doesn't like being touched. But when Wei Ying braces against the boards and lifts each leg behind him in turn, Lan Zhan catches it and pushes it up high above his head to deepen the stretch. When Wei Ying sits on the floor with his legs spread wide enough to almost qualify as box splits and reaches forward, Lan Zhan kneels behind him and presses warm hands to his back to push him flat against the rubber matting. 

Wei Ying pretends he's only breathless from the steady burn in his muscles. He wants – he wants – 

He rolls over to lie flat on his back and lifts one leg. Points his toes in Lan Zhan's direction and wiggles his eyebrows, because if it's all a bit of a joke then no-one needs to know what it's actually doing to him. Lan Zhan wraps one hand around his calf, settles the other against the back of his thigh, leans close to put his full weight into pushing Wei Ying's leg up until his foot brushes the floor above his head.

Wei Ying bites his lip to hold back an extremely embarrassing noise. Lan Zhan's face is not usually this close to his own. His leg is not usually pressed between their shoulders, Lan Zhan's hand is not usually burning warmth against his thigh, and there is not usually a deeply satisfying stretch going on inside his hip in combination with every one of these other factors.

Lan Zhan releases him and holds out one hand for his other leg. Wei Ying takes four deep calming breaths and does not whine. 

The tips of Lan Zhan's ears are red. This is either from the cold or from discomfort at the situation, and Wei Ying tries not to feel guilty about the possibility of the latter. He knows Lan Zhan – he knows, if Lan Zhan really didn't want to do something, he wouldn't. Lan Zhan doesn't –

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying suddenly, as Lan Zhan's long fingers wrap around the muscle of his calf, "who did you skate pairs with?"

Lan Zhan stills. There's a long moment of silence, where Wei Ying has the distinct sensation he's missing something obvious, and then Lan Zhan says, "Think for yourself," and pushes his leg all the way up in a single relentless movement that draws a gasp from Wei Ying at the inescapable burn of the stretch. 

He squirms, just a little, and Lan Zhan's hand tightens on his thigh to hold him still. For at least five seconds his entire brain whites out at once. 

"Lan Zhan," he breathes, and then clamps down on the rest of the sentence before it can escape because he knows he can't have more than this. And this – time with Lan Zhan in any form, orbiting their mutual centre like twinned suns, early dawns bickering over the sound system and competition nights in shared hotel rooms, patch sessions spent taking turns to jump and spin and critique and tease, side-by-side through every season – is far, far too precious to lose.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, almost a warning, and it shivers in Wei Ying's core like electricity. And then – 

Then Lan Zhan releases him, and walks calmly back to the barrier to complete his own stretches and cool-down routine, and Wei Ying lies on the floor with his hands over his face until the permanent chill of the rubber matting creeps all the way through his clothes.

Chapter Text

Two weeks before Nationals

"Show me," says Baoshan Sanren, and Wei Ying does. 

The first landing is two-footed, both toe picks scraping the ice as he stumbles out of it – but it's fully rotated, and the next two are clean. It's taken three weeks of solid work to get here; he's exhausted, sick to death of loop and salchow both, hasn't even glanced at the second half of his program in over a week – but he's done it. It's consistent enough to bet on.

A risky bet, sure, but no-one ever made history with a safe one.

Wei Ying grins as Baoshan Sanren holds out both hands for a rarely bestowed double high-five. 

"Well done," she says. "You've worked hard."

The words are simple but genuine – praise from Baoshan Sanren is as infrequent as the admittedly ridiculous high-fives, and Wei Ying knows that's what makes it actually matter. It's earned, not freely given to shore up poor self-esteem as many coaches mistakenly use it. 

"We're doing it?"

She nods. "Oh, we're doing it."

They pause, then, while Sizhui runs his short program. Practice is disjointed today; every few minutes someone else takes centre ice, and the atmosphere is tense with the first stirrings of nervous anticipation. Wei Ying only feels it a little; for him and Lan Zhan, nationals are an open door to step through into the rest of the season – but it's still a door they can't afford to stumble too badly at. The same is true for many of the others – Wen Qing will easily place first if she doesn't botch her triple axel, Jiang Cheng and Yanli will go straight to the top of the ice dance podium without a doubt, the only real competition for Lan Huan and Meng Yao will be the Nies – but for Jingyi and Sizhui, it's their first venture into the busy junior circuit. Their first chance to qualify for the international stage – and a door that, rather than lying open in readiness, must be opened by them before they can step through.

Wei Ying remembers his first time in the junior category. He'd come in a year late with a new coach, thanks to arguments and incidents within the Lotus team which had sent rippling impacts through the entire preceding season and which he does not ever think about (and which have nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with his loop jump) – and instantly, irrevocably, the only thing that mattered had been Lan Zhan. 

Somehow they'd never skated against each other as novices. 

Fourteen years old, at junior nationals with an icy-faced boy who took personal offence at being awarded a lower program component score than him despite winning on technical precision and grade of execution – that had been Wei Ying's first silver medal. 

He's been obsessed ever since, of course. He can admit that now.

The following year, they'd shared a hotel room at the junior world championships during Wei Ying's three coaches per season at least phase, and Lan Qiren had refused to sit in the kiss and cry with him at the free skate because he'd ignored every single instruction given to him during the six-minute warm-up. 

Much later, Baoshan Sanren had told him that was the day she first knew who her next star skater would be.

"Your turn," she says now, startling him out of distant memories as Sizhui's music builds to its final dramatic peak. "I want the whole thing clean, and then fast laps for the full length of your music again."

"You're awful," says Wei Ying frankly, and grins when she nods in satisfaction.

*

Halfway through the morning, it turns out to be one of those days. 

Despite the initial success, Wei Ying's free skate isn't clean. Two weeks out from nationals is not the time to still be struggling in the second half – it's not the salchow-loop combination that's the problem (that's a wildcard which will either land or not at its own discretion on the day, and Wei Ying knows there's only so much he can do to influence it), it's the quadruple flip at the end of his step sequence, almost at the four minute mark when his legs are burning and he's running on fumes and pure willpower.

"We can move it," says Baoshan Sanren, "or you can swap it out for a triple. You know it'll be harder on the day, and I'm not putting you out there with a jump you won't land."

"No," Wei Ying snaps. "I've still got time –"

Baoshan Sanren shakes her head. "You know two weeks is when we call it. You've put all your focus into the quad combination, which is exactly what you were supposed to do – of course it's going to come at a cost to the rest of your program."

"My technical score –"

"Will be better with a clean triple than a quad you fall on." She fixes him with a sharp look. "Don't give me any of this base value crap."

"I –"

"If you say Lan Zhan I'll make you do off-ice triples for the next hour." 

They stare each other down. Wei Ying glares but doesn't speak.

"I know your current TES base value is higher than his with the salchow-loop combination. I also know if you swap that quad flip for a triple or move it out of the second half it won't be any more. You do not need to tell me these things." 

"You're so fucking annoying," snaps Wei Ying.

(Baoshan Sanren doesn't even blink. They've been a team since Wei Ying was sixteen – this is far from the worst morning they've had together.)

"Every single time you've placed above him it's come from your program component score. Which goes down if you fall." She untucks her clipboard from under her arm and holds it out to him. "Take. The quad flip. Out." 

Wei Ying snatches the clipboard, scribbles a sharp line through 4F and scrawls 3F beside it instead, slaps it back down on the barrier with enough force it bounces back and clatters onto the ice, and skates off to throw himself into a flying combination spin which goes and goes and goes for at least a full minute, eight changes of position and two changes of foot and it still doesn't even come close to burning out the frustration tearing through his insides.

It's one of those days. Wei Ying knows it's destructive to keep skating like this. He runs his program anyway – the old version, until Baoshan Sanren loses patience with him and threatens to ban him from the ice for the rest of the morning, and then the new version which still isn't clean and he knows that's his own fault for doing it in this mood but he doesn't doesn't doesn't care.

Wen Qing skates to a stop beside him when he falls on his step sequence with the kind of jarring unexpectedness that always leaves bruises. "Get off the ice."

"Piss off." Wei Ying scrambles back upright and skates around her, but she's fast and annoying and knows both him and the pattern of his program far too well for any escape to be effective. 

"Do you want to end up injured two weeks out from nationals? Because this is how you end up injured two weeks out from nationals."

"Literally shut up," spits Wei Ying through gritted teeth, and slams into the triple flip – and pops it, all the way into a wild single that ends in a stumbling almost-fall, and for fuck's sake yes, okay, point taken.

"McDonald's," Wen Qing says decisively while Wei Ying catches his breath from the past quarter-hour of irresponsibly exhausting behaviour. "I'm done for the morning anyway, you know I've been running my short program back-to-back to get the triple axel more consistent."

Wei Ying does know this. The problem with the short program is that the penalties for mistakes are much higher than in the free – so betting on an inconsistent jump is far more of a risk. Maybe next season he'll put a quad lutz in, just to really ruin things for himself.

McDonald's at 11am is crumbs and empty wrappers and silence. Wei Ying props his feet on the chair beside Wen Qing and scoops cream off the top of his milkshake with a handful of fries. 

"You are literally the most disgusting person I know," says Wen Qing, and Wei Ying raises his fries in a toast to her before obnoxiously slurping all the cream off the ends and dipping them all the way back into the milkshake.

They just sit, for a while. Really, they're not supposed to be there at all – this close to the start of the season, it's rice and chicken and vegetables and certainly not milkshake-coated fries for a mid-morning snack. But Baoshan Sanren isn't quite as strict as Lan Qiren or the Lotus team; she trusts them to know themselves. To make – for the most part – reasonable decisions. 

"Right," says Wen Qing, and leans across the table to steal a milkshake-free fry. "Give me today's bullshit."

Wei Ying wrinkles his nose. "Get your own fries. She made me take out the quad flip."

Wen Qing nods knowingly. "So now the base value of your technical score is below Lan Zhan's again."

"Mm," says Wei Ying with his mouth full. "And his choreo is way better than last season."

"You'll still beat him on program components," Wen Qing says confidently. "So stop being a baby about it. Lan Zhan's not the one with a quad-quad combo in his free skate."

"Lan Zhan –"

"– oh my god, I know, you've been obsessed with him since you were fourteen, every single person at our rink knows exactly which competitions you've placed above him in for the last three seasons at least because you never shut up about it, and actually I'm well aware you care more about beating him than making history with that salchow-loop but I know that you know you can do both so pull yourself together."

"Aiyo, you're so rude." Wei Ying lightly tosses a fry across the table at her. "I'm not obsessed with Lan Zhan."

Okay, maybe he is. And from the distinctly unimpressed expression on Wen Qing's face, he's not the only one who knows it.

"You," she says rudely, "are pathetically obsessed with him. Now give me the rest of your fries."

Wei Ying upends the carton directly into his mouth. "You don't deserve them. I dare you to try your quad sal right in front of Baoshan Sanren when we get back."

"No," Wen Qing groans, "don't make me, she'll be so mad –"

"I said," repeats Wei Ying with a grin, "I dare you."

"You're the worst person I've ever met," says Wen Qing, and sticks her finger in the remains of his milkshake to wipe it on the end of his nose as she gets up. This, actually, passes for affection from her. 

The afternoon is better. Sometimes that's all that's needed – a break, a reset, a chance to throw fries at someone and complain about the unfairness of being imperfect.

Wen Qing gets sent off the ice immediately after her quadruple salchow attempt, which Wei Ying doesn't feel the slightest bit guilty about because last time she dared him to do something he got banned from the sound system for a week. Baoshan Sanren makes her do off-ice triple axels until she can barely stand, which is both hilarious to watch and does in fact bring her closer to readiness for the quad salchow itself, because when she's finally allowed to put her skates back on she does the lightest, most open triple axel Wei Ying has ever seen from her.

It's a good afternoon. It's made better by the fact that it's a Wednesday, by the fact that Wednesday is the evening Lan Zhan drives him home and makes him dinner, by the fact that he can fall asleep in Lan Zhan's car and wake up to chill twilight air coming in through the open door while Lan Zhan stands and waits for him to wake like he's somehow incapable of saying wake up, Wei Ying or like, poking him in the shoulder or something. It's a little bit ridiculous. Lan Zhan is a little bit ridiculous. 

Wei Ying, sprawled out half asleep on his lumpy threadbare sofa with his aching feet in Lan Zhan's lap, loves ridiculous.

*

Nationals: Day One 

"Lan Zhan, oh my god, turn that fucking alarm clock off –"

"That is your alarm clock."

"No," groans Wei Ying, "no it isn't, it's too early."

"Today is the short program."

Wei Ying bounces upright, all traces of sleep fled in an instant. "You mean today is the last time you get to pretend you're going to beat me this year?"

Lan Zhan always scores higher in the short program. Lan Zhan – already dressed for the morning pre-competition skate in flawless skin-tight white and blue, currently doing actual yoga on an actual yoga mat at 4:30 in the actual morning – outscores Wei Ying nine times in ten on technical precision, and that's what the judges value higher today.

Tomorrow's free skate will be a different story. 

Wei Ying's spent the past week pouring the final touches of artistic expression into every heartbeat-moment of it. No wasted movements, no dead transitions – every breath, every push against the ice, every second and every fingertip and every emotion on his own face is accounted for, poised and intentional and dazzling. 

If he lands the salchow-loop combination, he's going to break records. 

Lan Zhan looks at him with something that's probably supposed to read as disapproval, and Wei Ying's stomach does a swooping drop-and-lift that sends goosebumps prickling across his skin. It's deeply unfair for Lan Zhan to be allowed those kinds of expressions.

"Lan Zhan," he says, sharp and bright, "I'm so looking forward to my gold medal tomorrow evening."

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, warning, and Wei Ying pulls the blankets tight around himself and kneels up on his bed to get closer to Lan Zhan's ridiculous yoga mat and grins. He knows what buttons to push today. 

They're his favourite ones, really. 

"Lan-er-gege," he says slyly, and the tips of Lan Zhan's ears flush pink, "won't you show this one your quad lutz? I need something else to help me win, you know, and your technique is just so flawless –"

"Wei Ying –"

"Or is it that you're afraid I'll beat you? Er-gege's superior lutz is the only thing saving that technical score, and if he shares his secrets maybe someone else will win, and then –"

"I have shown you my quadruple lutz," says Lan Zhan blandly. "Many times."

Wei Ying pouts. "I don't remember. Lan-er-gege is a terrible coach."

"Not your coach." Lan Zhan rises to his feet and begins to roll up his yoga mat. Wei Ying groans and flops sideways to dangle the upper half of his body off one side of the bed.

"Lan Zhan ah, Lan Zhan, have mercy on me. I'll never win against you like this."

"Three times last season."

Wei Ying grins, upside-down and gleeful. "So you do pay attention."

Lan Zhan does not answer. Instead he gives Wei Ying an entirely unreadable look – which he would guess was intended to convey exactly how stupid Lan Zhan thinks that comment was, if it wasn't for the fact it clearly has at least sixteen additional layers to it. 

"More than you," says Lan Zhan eventually, and places his rolled-up yoga mat neatly back inside his suitcase before picking up his skate bag and leaving.

Wei Ying rolls over and pulls the blankets back around himself. There's no point getting up just yet. He never bothers with the morning skate on competition days – it's too busy, too full of idiots (Wen Chao) and people who'd enjoy seeing him take a nasty fall (Wen Chao) and people from his past he'd rather not be reminded of (Wen Chao). And it doesn't help that he's almost the only clockwise skater in the field – every jump setup goes against the flow of the rink, each spin is somehow unexpected to everyone around him despite the very obvious signals he puts out; it's somewhere between irritating and downright dangerous, so most of the time he just doesn't participate. The six-minute warm-up is enough. 

(It's bad enough, too, but at least in the warm-up there's only six of them on the ice at once. Easier to stay out of each other's way.)

(If there's an accident in the warm-up, it's usually on purpose.)

This is how it goes, in the end: Wei Ying skates a clean short program. So does Lan Zhan. Wei Ying scores higher on program components, Lan Zhan scores higher on technical elements, their overall scores balance out to leave Lan Zhan in the lead by 0.13 points – so far, so ordinary. It's almost boring in its familiarity. 

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying, in bed in the dark at 9:30pm with sleepless excitement fluttering in his stomach, "you're going to have to start taking more risks in your free skate if you want to keep winning."

There's a brief silence, and then: 

"Both programs clean at every event this season will result in quadruple axel permission."

"Lan Zhan!! Really?!" 

"Mn. Shufu agreed last week."

No-one's ever landed a quadruple axel in competition. It's the hardest of the quads, the unattainable peak of achievement – 4.5 rotations rather than 4, from the forward takeoff which adds another half turn to the jump.

If Lan Qiren thinks Lan Zhan is ready to attempt it, Wei Ying needs to step up his game. 

*

Nationals: Day Two 

This is what it builds to: the heartbeat-stillness of empty, open ice in the moment before the music starts. The deep breath, the centre and release in deliberate relaxation, the anticipation and carefully restrained excitement as every sound fades out and the crowd holds its collective breath alongside him, waiting, waiting. 

Poised, ready to begin.

The first twelve seconds are pure choreography, carefully crafted to disguise the speed he's building for the first jump – for the salchow-loop combination. The first recorded attempt at any combination with a quadruple jump both first and second.

He hasn't done it yet today; didn't attempt it in the warm-up. This would be idiotic with a jump that's new to him and inconsistent – in the beginning, the first one of the day is always at least a little off. But by this point of hard-won familiarity, the first is often the best. 

This combination isn't inconsistent because it's new – it's inconsistent because it's near the very limit of what his body can achieve.

Twelve seconds in, and even the competitors who don't know his program yet can see what's coming; any amateur skater or semi-dedicated fan can recognise the traditional setup for a salchow – and Wei Ying's not usually one for standard jump entries but with the kind of power he needs behind this one it's better to take the reliable option. 

Turn – and step – and pull – 

– fly – 

– land, release halfway for a single fraction of a heartbeat and again – 

– quadruple rotation tight-blurred-fast, holding and waiting and waiting for the suddenness of landing and yes –

– it's fully rotated, tight and clean and barely there but there as he lands with too much force still pulling him around, he's released it just a split-second too late, for the first half of a breath he's made history and the second half is knocked out of him as he tries to save the landing edge and fails and falls. 

It's not even a bad one. He barely feels it, up on his feet again as swift as the next note of the music, keeping time with his own choreography as if it never happened. He'll skate the rest of the program clean just to spite the ice-dust on his glittering costume.

It'll show up on his scorecard as intended. 4S+4Lo, no downgrade for underrotation – but the fall means it won't make it to Wikipedia just yet.

It doesn't matter. Wei Ying still has the rest of the season to land it. 

This is a good enough place to start.

*

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying, sprawled out on the hotel bed still in his costume, "don't I look good like this? Doesn't it suit me?"

There's a ribbon loose around his neck, draped like a necklace with the release from gravity of lying flat. It leads to the gold medal resting heavy in the soft dip of his sternum, catching the light from their bedside lamps and throwing echoes of it out to scatter around him. 

Despite the fall, Wei Ying scored high enough in the free skate to edge out Lan Zhan for the overall win by 0.04 points. It's the closest they've been since their first junior season together.

Lan Zhan looks at him.

Maybe it's the soft lighting, dim against cream walls and closed curtains and Lan Zhan's clean pyjamas. Maybe it's the way Lan Zhan's loose hair falls around his face, framing his features in soft shadow as he looks at Wei Ying like he's studying a slow-motion video of a quadruple axel. 

Like he's something he wants.

Unthinking, Wei Ying's tongue dips out to wet the inner edges of his lips. Lan Zhan's gaze tracks the movement. 

"Lan Zhan," he says, and it comes out barely a breath, and he's going to do something so stupid in a minute if Lan Zhan doesn't stop him.

Lan Zhan doesn't say anything. He watches, eyes dark, as Wei Ying feels his cheeks begin to flush. There's warmth, somewhere low in his belly, harder to ignore with each moment Lan Zhan keeps him pinned under his gaze, and kiss me is on the very brink of his mouth as it always is these days, and he can't stay still any longer but he can't move while Lan Zhan is looking at him like that, and he's holding his breath now because he knows the next exhale will leave him as a whine whether he wants it to or not –

There's a hammer-fast series of bangs on the hotel room door, so loud and sudden Wei Ying startles almost off his bed and even Lan Zhan's eyes widen just a little, and then Wen Qing's muffled voice yells Grand Prix assignments are out!! and everything else is forcibly pushed aside in favour of descending on Nie Huaisang's luxury suite for a full hour of gossip and hotel recommendations and complaints about previous seasons. 

"They never put me with Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying whines from his position on the floor at the foot of Huaisang's bed. Lan Zhan, for his part, is sitting neatly on a chair – still in his pyjamas – looking like he would rather be literally anywhere else. 

He's looking like that, sure, face blank and hands neatly folded in his lap – but he hasn't actually left. He's also chosen the chair nearest to Wei Ying; near enough that Wei Ying's head would rest against his leg if either one of them leaned only a little more in the other's direction. 

Wei Ying is still wearing his costume. He's also still wearing his gold medal, like a five-year-old at his first competition, because it's fun and he's not done rubbing his win in Lan Zhan's face yet. The other competitors might think it's in poor taste, or that he thinks too highly of himself – but Wei Ying doesn't actually give a shit what they decide. Everyone from their home rink knows to expect it of him by now.

Huaisang leans over the end of the enormous bed to smack him on the head with his immediately and mysteriously acquired printout of the assignment list. "The two of you have taken gold and silver in four of the last five Grand Prix Finals. Why the everliving fuck would they put you in a qualifying event together?"

"For fun," says Wei Ying, like this is the most obvious statement in the world (which it is).

Huaisang looks down his nose at him. "If you want to go to every event with Lan Zhan then you have to skate pairs –"

"Anyway," says Wei Ying loudly, because he's had three dreams in the past month about Lan Zhan lifting him and throwing him and spinning him (and doing various other things with him which are certainly not part of any waking-world pairs routine) and Huaisang does not need to remind him of this, "did you see I'm skating against Wen Chao at the NHK Trophy? Literally how did he even qualify, he pops half his jumps and his hands look like two dead fish dangling off the ends of his arms in all his choreo –"

"He's only got one event," says Huaisang dismissively. "It's not like he's going to qualify for the final."

Wei Ying wrinkles his nose. "I still have to spend an entire three days sharing ice with him."

"You managed it for a year," snipes Jiang Cheng, who has spent the past half hour sulking about his and Yanli's assignments for dumb reasons which are definitely less valid than Wei Ying's completely normal reasons for sulking about his assignments.

Wei Ying smiles at him. "Hey, Jiang Cheng, did you know, it's time to shut the fuck up."

"Both of you," says Wen Qing sharply. "Do you see me complaining about my assignments?"

"Your assignments are fine." Wei Ying is currently doing a quite spectacularly bad job of not thinking about that particular year.

Wen Qing snatches the piece of paper from Huaisang and holds it in front of Wei Ying's face. She points at a name. "She tried to kick me during the free skate warm-up at Skate Canada last season." Another name. "She told everyone I tried to steal her skates the season before and almost got me disqualified." Another. "She spread three different rumours about A-Ning and fucked my headspace so badly I popped the triple axel in my free –"

"Oh my god, I get the point, you hate everyone –"

"The point," says Wen Qing, "is that it's one weekend. You'll deal with it."

She's looking at him like she knows what's in his mind right now. Which, to be fair, she mostly does; certainly more than Jiang Cheng knows about it. 

They both had the same coach back then, after all. 

(And it wasn't Baoshan Sanren.)

*

Skate America: Day One
(Two weeks before the NHK Trophy)
(Six weeks before the Grand Prix Final)

Wei Ying's first Grand Prix assignment is Skate America. He's there on his own, in a boring hotel room with boring decor and boring competitors who aren't Lan Zhan, and – shockingly enough – he's bored.

The men's short program isn't until the second day. Wei Ying joins the evening skate, pops every quad loop he tries, gets told off by Baoshan Sanren for skating like a sulky kid and switches to running his free program with all the jumps swapped out for doubles to position it properly on the unfamiliar rink. It's not as though he needs to make any actual changes; it's only the adjustment to blurred glimpses of different things than usual in his peripheral vision to keep himself orientated.

Back in his hotel room with a bag of ice on his hip (at Baoshan Sanren's insistence, after a jarring fall he'd normally ignore – but she does have a point about the short program being literally tomorrow), Wei Ying's phone buzzes with an incoming text. 

Wen Qing: Did u hear the news??
Wei Ying: u gotta b more specific than that
Wei Ying: i dont pay attention at the best of times 
Wen Qing: Zixun pulled out of skate canada 
Wen Qing: Guess who theyve replaced him with 
Wei Ying: nooooooo 
Wei Ying: even with two assignments he'll never make the final 
Wen Qing: Just keep ur guard up at nhk 
Wen Qing: U know hes more dangerous when hes close to something he wants 

Wei Ying does know this. Wei Ying knows Wen Chao is spiteful and petty and pathetic and will stop at nothing to get his own way, and he knows this because he spent the week before his first junior nationals pretending to skive off and not care about training, because getting screamed at by Wen Ruohan was actually preferable to five deliberate near-miss collisions with Wen Chao every other minute. 

Wen Chao never quite seemed to grasp the concept that even if Wei Ying was out of the way he'd still lose. 

*

Wei Ying pops the quad loop in his combination jump into a triple at the free skate two days later, and still wins gold. He takes a selfie with his medal caught between his teeth, texts it to Lan Zhan with an ill-advised winking-face emoji, and spends the rest of the night at the after-party getting thoroughly drunk and telling anyone who'll listen how much more fun the whole event would have been with Lan Zhan there. In retrospect it's a little embarrassing. 

He wakes the next morning to a text message from Lan Zhan saying only Congratulations, and two voicemails from Jiang Cheng yelling at him for a video of him taking his shirt off and dancing on a table which has somehow made its way onto social media. Wei Ying doesn't actually remember either the filming or the uploading, but he's so clearly having an excellent time in the video that he texts Jiang Cheng its ok to b jealous <3 and ignores the next seventeen notifications he receives.

Overall, for an event without any of his favourite people, it's decent enough fun. The NHK Trophy will be both worse and better – Wen Chao is on the competitor list of course, but Wen Qing is too. He'll have to remember to make a joke about a ten-year reunion party.

*

Three days before the NHK Trophy
(One month before the Grand Prix Final)

By this point, both the carefree summer vibes and the nervous start-of-season energy have dissipated from the rink. In their place is efficiency, purposeful effort, no time or space for messing around with new jumps or experimental spins or choreographic tricks that have no bearing on the season's programs. 

That doesn't stop Wei Ying, of course. Sizhui and Jingyi have a busy calendar – placed second and fourth at nationals respectively, they've qualified for many of the major events despite only being in their first year, and under Lan Qiren's watchful eye they've barely got a free minute most days – but the other juniors (novices, really, but Wei Ying doesn't care enough to make the distinction in his mental labels when they'll all be in the same category together soon enough) are more than up for a bit of silliness.

"Like this," says Wei Ying to Zizhen, and lifts A-Qing easily above his head with one arm.

Zizhen gapes. "You want me to do that?!" 

Wei Ying shrugs. "Hey, you wanted to try pairs."

A-Qing, posture still held in a perfect tight curve as per Wei Ying's instruction, folds her arms and looks down at Zizhen. "You'll drop me."

"Duh," says Wei Ying. "He's not doing it on his own yet." He reaches up with his other hand to catch A-Qing as he swings her in a wide cartwheel downwards and steadies her as she lands. "I'll hold you there, Zizhen can just go through the motions until he's done a few more push-ups." 

"How do you know all this anyway?" asks Jin Ling with deep suspicion. He's currently splitting his attention between following Wei Ying around and watching A-Yan practise her axel with the adorable determination of every six-year-old with the level of obsession necessary to achieve it this young. 

Wei Ying doesn't answer. Instead he skates directly in-between Jin Ling and his little sister and says, "Nope, stop thinking it, you know your A-Niang doesn't let anyone pick her babies up on the ice until they're at least eighteen."

Jin Ling wrinkles his nose. "That's rubbish. You have to start pairs young if you want to do it."

"Correct." Wei Ying extends one finger with dramatic precision to poke at every single one of Jin Ling's nose-wrinkles. "Which means neither of you will be doing pairs." 

"Not even for fun?" Jin Ling smacks Wei Ying's hand away. "That's crap."

This is a new word in Jin Ling's vocabulary, which everyone except his parents finds hilarious. Wei Ying, firmly in the category of everyone, entirely fails to suppress his own laughter – which leads predictably enough to A-Qing demanding to be allowed a minor swear word of her very own, and the ensuing argument provides more than enough of a distraction for Jin Ling to forget his original question entirely.

Which is good, because Wei Ying has no intention whatsoever of answering it.

How do you know all this anyway links to you have a mental block on the loop links to your A-Niang doesn't let anyone pick her babies up on the ice links to you managed it for a year and Wei Ying, generally speaking, thinks about exactly none of any of it.

"Wei Ying," calls Baoshan Sanren across the ice. "Short program."

"Aiya, it's clean every time! Let me do the free again instead –"

"Short program back-to-back three times, then," she replies blandly, and Wei Ying groans and rolls his eyes and skates reluctantly out to his starting position. Behind him Zizhen and A-Qing pull out of their carefully slow throw salchow setup and drift to the barrier along with everyone else.

It's sweet, really. Wei Ying's been wondering for a while if the two of them would ask to try – Sizhui and Jingyi have never shown interest in pairs outside of the usual messing around, and Jin Ling and A-Yan are both barred from it out of extremely reasonable caution, but A-Qing has always chased Wei Ying around asking for lifts and throws and spins, and Zizhen's always watched. It's no surprise they're giving it a go. 

What's also no surprise is the memories that come along with this development.

It's uncomfortable. Wei Ying doesn't want to think about it. He's not looking forward to the day Zizhen is strong enough to genuinely attempt an overhead lift.

Zizhen turned twelve four months ago. He's almost the age Wei Ying was, when – 

"You're behind," says Baoshan Sanren with deliberately affected boredom as he passes her mid-step sequence, and Wei Ying sticks his tongue out at her and gains back his half-second delay before the final jump.

Back-to-back run-throughs are brutal. Wei Ying glides straight from his final position to the edge of the rink with his legs bent and hands braced on his thighs, knocks into the boards instead of stopping properly, grabs his water bottle and pours half of it down his neck by accident as he tries to catch his breath. He's so sweaty it doesn't even matter.

Lan Zhan eyes him with disapproval. The tips of his ears are pink from the cold. Wei Ying grins at him as he drapes himself over the barrier and pillows his cheek against the cool plastic. 

"Lan Zhan, aiya, so judgemental. Not all of us can match your stamina."

"All three repeats were clean," Lan Zhan says quietly, and for some reason Wei Ying hears you can in it. 

He smiles, tilts his face a little more towards Lan Zhan's aloof expression, stretches out one hand along the top edge of the barrier to pluck at the open end of Lan Zhan's warm-up jacket. 

"Lan Zhan," he says again, for no particular reason other than he enjoys the cadence of the syllables in his mouth.

"Wei Ying," answers Lan Zhan, and then Baoshan Sanren arrives before Wei Ying's even finished catching his breath to make him do fast laps of the rink for an entire three minutes until his thighs are burning and trembling. 

"If you weren't competing in three days we'd do the same with your free program," she says calmly as he whines and complains from his new position draped over an entirely different section of the barrier. Lan Zhan is no longer there – Lan Qiren has him completing old-style figures with textbook precision, which is possibly the most boring thing Wei Ying can think of to be doing at this point in the season – and A-Qing and Zizhen have joined Sizhui to watch with a critical eye as Jingyi runs both his programs; it's just Wei Ying and his extremely sadistic coach, and his pouting doesn't work on her. 

"Three minute break," she says as Wei Ying reconsiders all his life choices, "then we'll play the spin game."

"Why do you hate me," says Wei Ying with deadpan seriousness. 

The spin game goes like this: Wei Ying selects a song. If it's too short (by Baoshan Sanren's arbitrary and changeable metric), it'll be played twice. And then he has to spin for the entire length of it; entering a new spin immediately after exiting the last until the song ends. If he pauses for too long – or if he falls – it starts over. 

Lan Zhan always watches. Wei Ying teases him for it, says Lan Zhan, ah, you like watching me suffer this much?, secretly enjoys the weight of Lan Zhan's attention on him. There's something about the achievement of it, the triumph of pushing through dizziness and cramping muscles with pure willpower to make it to the end of the music still upright, the way he gets to smile at Lan Zhan when it's done – you watched me to see if I could and I did.

That's what it's all about, really. That's what it's always been about, with Lan Zhan.

*

NHK Trophy: Day Three
(Four weeks before the Grand Prix Final)

It's not like Wei Ying hasn't competed against Wen Chao countless times since leaving Qishan Arena. It's always the same – he skates just a little too close during warm-ups, sneers and makes a disparaging comment about Wei Ying's skating, then turns red in the face and makes thinly veiled threats when he can't withstand the answer he receives. 

Wei Ying shrugs. They're thirty seconds from the start of the free skate. "Don't dish it if you can't take it." 

"You watch," sneers Wen Chao. "I'm going to the final this year."

Wei Ying doesn't dignify that with any answer except laughter. Sure, it's the first year Wen Chao has been assigned to two events, so it's the first year he's in the running at all – but without a medal in both events there's almost no chance, and he came in fourth at Skate Canada.

"What are you laughing at?!" There's a furious vein standing out on Wen Chao's temple. Wei Ying sniggers again, just to see it twitch. 

"Aiya, it's so cute that you think so," he says, in the same cadence he uses with little A-Yan but with an added layer of deliberate nastiness. "I didn't realise you were still so stupid as to think you'd get the points – but even if you did, how embarrassing would it be for the ISU to let you skate at the final?" He shakes his head, eyes wide with deliberately annoying concern. "They'd sooner cancel it than have you there, so you'd better hope you don't qualify."

"You–!!"

"Wei Ying," says Baoshan Sanren tiredly from behind him. "Fifteen seconds; do the salchow-loop with triples."

Wei Ying grins at Wen Chao as he skates off backwards to build speed for the jump. "Can you even do one of these? Last time we met you fell on all your combinations –"

He doesn't hear Wen Chao's reply from mid-air, and by the time he's skating back to the boards the warm-up's over. 

It's going to be a good one. He can feel it – there's a fizz of energy through all his limbs, purposeful and channelled within his control rather than the kind of directionless excitement that would do more harm than good, and calm confidence underpins it in a way that's as familiar as breathing. 

Wei Ying knows this mood. He's going to skate clean.

He's going to make history. 

Lan Zhan, are you watching?

*

The crowd is silent, anticipatory, holding its collective breath through those first twelve seconds – by this point in the season anyone who's been paying attention knows what's coming even if the commentators hadn't been going on about it all weekend. There's only the crisp hiss of ice under Wei Ying's blades, the sound of his own steady breathing, the beat of his heart in his ears as the seconds count down. As the flow of his music and movements smooth as water in a clear stream carry him inexorably across the ice towards the first jump; turn with potential held in the checked tension between shoulders and hips, glide with deliberate relaxation because the rotation always snaps in faster if it comes from a loose and open entry, step with effortless ease in a movement so smooth anyone not looking directly at his skates would miss it, hold the edge and hold it and slowly – slowly – fast pull in tight to take off and –

– fly, land and again, pull tight and tighter and land it, land it –

The crowd screams. Sunburst-brilliant success pours through Wei Ying to set every nerve alight, and this is why Baoshan Sanren makes him practise over and over and over until he could skate both programs with his eyes closed because right now it's pure autopilot keeping the rest of his program on track. His body knows what to do next without any input whatsoever from his mind, which is definitely a good thing because for at least four seconds after landing he's not thinking about anything at all.

"– and just look at his face, he's so pleased with that –"

"– as he should be, that's history in the making right there, the first quadruple-quadruple combination ever landed at an official ISU event –" 

Oops, Wei Ying thinks, and pulls his expression instantly back into the dramatic story of his free skate. The last thing he hears from the commentators before he tunes them out again is pleased laughter at the obvious self-correction. 

*

223.72 flashes up on the screen as Wei Ying sits beside Baoshan Sanren in the kiss and cry four and a half minutes later, and Wei Ying bursts out laughing. This confuses the commentators for approximately eight seconds, until they recall that last weekend Lan Zhan achieved a world record score in his free skate at the Internationaux de France of, well, 224.98. 

"Please pull yourself together," says Baoshan Sanren, but she's smiling.

*

Wen Chao, through some unpleasant miracle, places second. 

In the brief break between the medal ceremony and the exhibition gala, Wen Qing checks the final standings. This was the last qualifying event for the final next month – everyone by now has all the points they'll get, so the top six in each discipline are obvious to anyone even before the official announcement. 

"You and Lan Zhan are in, obviously," she says without looking up from her phone. "We already knew Lan Huan and Meng Yao were going, but the Nies are definitely in now as well, and all the ice dance couples from today were atrocious so it's no surprise Jiang Cheng and Yanli are still at the top –"

"Wen Chao?"

Wen Qing pauses for just a little longer than Wei Ying expected. 

"No way," he starts –

"Seventh."

"Hahaha, oh my god, I bet he's so pissed –"

"It's not actually that funny," says Wen Qing. Her expression has gone pinched and tight in a way Wei Ying hasn't seen in almost a decade. "He's the first backup choice if someone withdraws. Or if –"

She doesn't finish the sentence; leaves it sharply cut off into silence. Wei Ying knows exactly what the end of it would have been. 

There aren't many reasons someone would pull out of the Grand Prix Final, and Wen Ruohan isn't known for instilling upright moral principles in his skaters.

*

Wei Ying loves exhibition galas. They're a chance to show off everything that's fun but doesn't get you anywhere with points, a chance to experiment and mess around and play directly to the crowd, a chance for outrageous costumes and wild creativity and entirely competition-illegal moves. 

This season Wei Ying's outfit choice is a black crop top with thin straps criss-crossing across his stomach and deep red glitter fading inward in exploratory swirls out across the fabric from his wrists, alongside leggings with mesh cutouts that trace spiral patterns around the curvatures of his calves and thighs. With his hair loose around his shoulders and dark glitter smudged across from his eyelids and the high sharpness of his cheekbones to frame his eyes with caught-sparkling light – well, Wei Ying's not modest enough to deny the effect is stunning.

His exhibition skate has a backflip. It has a cantilever so low to the ice he comes up with white-dusted hair every time. It has a single axel – with all the height and flow of a triple, which lets him turn the air position open and wild and barely recognisable as anything remotely classical, and it's sexy and fun and very often his favourite part of any competition.

(It would be more fun if Lan Zhan was here.)

(It would be more fun if Lan Zhan was watching.)

(Maybe he is, on the livestream. Wei Ying has three text messages – two congratulatory, one just a little smug – that heavily imply he was, for the free skate.)

The best thing about the exhibition skate is the darkness. A single spotlight catches Wei Ying as he flows across the ice; the rink is vast and shadowed and ethereal, the crowd a silent hidden presence he feels more than he sees. 

It's so good. It's exhilarating, incredible, beyond anything else in the world.

It's so good, in fact, that Wei Ying forgets to keep his guard up as the rest of the competitors spill out onto the ice and the music turns loud and upbeat for what he and Lan Zhan both – with wildly differing levels of affection – like to call messing around time.

Here's the thing – in the international circuit, most people loosely know each other, and most of these relationships are built at competitions. Not everyone trains at the same rinks; not everyone has the time or energy or spare travel money to catch up outside the main events of each season – so it's nice to have a few minutes of downtime at the end of a long weekend of giving everything (everything) to the ice. Sure, it's observed by cameras and crowds and whatever else, but that doesn't matter when the lights are down and everyone's covered in even more glitter than usual and there's chatter and selfies and people lifting each other who are definitely not official pairs and a very enjoyable amount of light-hearted showing off.

"Show us the quad sal combo!!" yells one of the younger skaters – Mo Xuanyu, Wei Ying thinks his name is; it's his first year on the senior circuit, and he's gone all-out for the exhibition gala with a costume that looks far too bondage-inspired for a sixteen-year-old to be wearing and even more glitter on his face than Wei Ying. 

Wei Ying grins, and builds speed as he flies around the edge of the rink into a space that rapidly clears for him – they're all professionals, they know how to stay out of one another's way –

The quadruple salchow half of the combination is as easy as breathing by now. He takes off – flies through blurred stillness – lands – 

In the split-second heartbeat of connection with the ice before the quad loop takeoff Wei Ying catches a blurred glimpse of Wen Chao sliding backwards out of the crowd, oblivious and laughing and directly into the path of the jump. 

With the speed he's going –

– the momentum of the combination –

– it won't – he can't – 

Wei Ying wrenches sideways, opening out to pop the jump on purpose in mid-air – he's already taken off, it's too late for anything else – and the axis is wrong, he's half sideways with no way to save it, and somehow the landing's forwards as well as unsalvageable and he can't see where Wen Chao is any more as his toe picks connect and catch with wildly arrested momentum and he's falling, he's falling worse than he can remember in a long time, Wei Ying knows how to fall and this isn't it, this is going to be bad –

There's a single moment, where someone gasps and it might have been him, and there's a heartbeat loud in his ears and all the spotlights go dark at once. 

Chapter Text

Sound and light rush back in barely a second later, and it hurts. 

Everything is – a little blurred. There's people all around him, and suddenly the main lights of the rink all come on at once which is even worse, fuck – 

He tries to stand – slips sideways, dizzy – and someone catches him, helps him to his feet and props him upright with an arm around his waist that's somehow both decisively firm and trembling just a little, and then he realises it's probably Wen Qing because she's talking to him.

"Oh my god, fuck – fuck, what the hell happened –"

"'m fine," Wei Ying tries, but it definitely doesn't come out right because Wen Qing makes a half-suppressed noise beside him that sounds somewhere between distressed and entirely panicked. 

"Off the ice," she says with forced calm, and suddenly there's other people holding Wei Ying up as well and he thinks he's moving but he's not entirely sure because it already felt like he was when he wasn't. He definitely agrees with off the ice, though, because he's suddenly quite certain he's about to be sick, which would be really inconvenient for some poor rink steward to have to clean up. Wen Qing's told him enough stories.

Also, if Lan Zhan's watching the livestream, it would be embarrassing. 

He pulls away from Wen Qing as soon as he sees a bin – stumbles and almost falls, but catches himself on the edges of it just in time. Someone follows him, holds his hair back as it happens.

"Call an ambulance," says a voice beside him, and he groans and shakes his head – fucking ow – because that's definitely not necessary. It was just an awkward fall, he'll be fine in a minute, and once he's caught his breath he tries to say as much. 

"If you're trying to tell us you're fine," says Wen Qing with tight-wound tension in her voice, "then you need to shut the fuck up. You hit your head and you're not making any sense."

"Mm," says Wei Ying, not entirely sure what he's trying to convey, and screws his eyes shut against another wave of nausea.

Actually, he really hopes Lan Zhan wasn't watching the livestream.

*

Things blur together a little bit, after that. 

There's definitely an ambulance, which Wei Ying still thinks is an overreaction but he's too tired now to argue with anyone about it. Baoshan Sanren snaps her fingers in front of his face and says don't you dare go to sleep in a sharply worried tone Wei Ying doesn't think he's ever actually heard from her, and someone shines a light in both his eyes and asks questions which seem simple but somehow end up without answers and then somehow, so strangely, he's in a hospital bed.

"Aiyo, don't cut my costume off," he says at this realisation, and then just a second too late notices he's already in a papery hospital gown.

Wen Qing gives him a worried look. He pulls a face at her and the worry shifts just a little towards irritation instead.

"I've got a text from Lan Zhan that just says which hospital, and three missed calls from Jiang Yanli." She fiddles with her phone; unlocks it and then locks it again. "I'm going to guess you probably don't want them to see you like this." 

It takes Wei Ying a long minute to parse this. Things aren't quite so hazy any more – he's aware enough, at least, to realise that it's taking him too long. 

"Lan Zhan," he says eventually. 

"God, you're so obsessed with him." All the energy is gone from Wen Qing's usual biting tease; she just sounds tired. "You want Lan Zhan to come but not Yanli?"

Wei Ying nods, and then immediately regrets the movement. He takes a deep breath, which doesn't help in the slightest as black spots dance across the edges of his vision, and just about manages to spot the little cardboard bowl at one side of the bed in time to grab it and make disgusting use of it. 

On second thoughts, he doesn't want Lan Zhan to see him like this. He doesn't know why he said yes. Lan Zhan coming here would be the worst idea in the entire history of worst ideas.

"Not Lan Zhan," he says, and he can hear how pathetic it comes out as he takes the tissue from the nurse who's suddenly arrived before she can wipe his face for him (embarrassing! he can do it himself!). 

"Too late," says Wen Qing. She sounds annoyed but looks even more horribly worried than she did before. "I just told him where we are."

Wei Ying groans and closes his eyes – which does actually help with how awful everything feels, so he keeps them closed. Maybe if he goes to sleep Lan Zhan will get bored and leave.

At least he hadn't accidentally said yes to Yanli visiting. 

He doesn't think he could bear to see her in a hospital again.

*

Wei Ying wakes to something cool and damp gently dabbing and wiping at the side of his face. Every touch hurts his skin just a little.

"Is it not dangerous for him to sleep?" That's Lan Zhan's voice, quiet and low and concerned. 

"No." Baoshan Sanren sounds exhausted. "They're monitoring his breathing and heart rate and about twelve other things – we'll know if anything changes. He needs to rest."

"I don't," mumbles Wei Ying, and feels the surprised twitch of Lan Zhan's hand through whatever it is that's touching his face. "I actually need to brush my teeth."

"Wei Ying?"

Wei Ying cracks one eye open, instantly regrets it, and closes it again. "Lights off," he groans, the words slipping together with half-asleep discomfort, and ignores Lan Zhan's worried little indrawn breath. 

There's a click, and the glowing red behind Wei Ying's closed eyelids washes out to cool black. He tries again – with significantly more success.

There's a bag by Lan Zhan's feet with fresh air travel tags on it, and two more outlining the deep shadows under his eyes. He's holding a white cloth stained dark with water and blood. 

"Where did you get that," Wei Ying says, a little nonsensically. Lan Zhan's eyebrows tighten just a little in that familiar Lan Zhan equivalent of a frown as he looks at him.

"I asked the nurses for something to clean your face," he says. Carefully, like he's not sure Wei Ying will understand.

"Oh."

There's a slightly awkward silence, where Wei Ying reaches up to tentatively feel around the side of his face and head. It's – ow, yeah, okay, now the rest of the pieces are beginning to fit themselves together. 

He doesn't actually remember what happened. But he's sure – utterly sure, with the certainty of whatever he's forgotten still echoed in his mind like crisp footprints in snow – that it wasn't an accident.

First things first, though: he does actually really need to brush his teeth. 

As it turns out, Wen Qing has been back to their hotel room to fetch some useful things like his phone charger – and yes, his toothbrush – in the five hours or so he's spent asleep. Baoshan Sanren excuses herself to go and get another coffee, and Wei Ying tells her to get some sleep instead because she looks like shit, and she gives him an unimpressed look which very clearly says that's rich, coming from you – and then it's just him and Lan Zhan in a darkened hospital room and Wei Ying realises he's probably too dizzy still to actually make it to the bathroom on his own. 

This hypothesis is immediately confirmed when he tries to stand up and finds himself in Lan Zhan's arms halfway to the floor instead.

"Embarrassing," he says weakly, and then, a little plaintive, "Lan Zhan."

They make it to the bathroom. Lan Zhan stands behind him, hands firm and steadying at his waist, while he brushes his teeth with one hand and leans heavily on the edge of the sink with the other. It's generous, really, to say that Lan Zhan's only keeping him steady – he's somehow taking more than half his weight as well, and abruptly the sensation is familiar in a way it takes Wei Ying a long moment to understand.

Lan Zhan's never held him like this before. Except – 

Those endlessly frustrating dreams. Flying across the ice together in ethereal synchronicity; Lan Zhan's strong hands at his waist as he lifts him, as they set up for a jump together and Lan Zhan throws him into it with perfectly boosted momentum – yes, Wei Ying realises, halfway slipped into the dream already, this is how it would feel.

"Lan Zhan," he murmurs, and drops his toothbrush into the sink. The room is moving just a little; swaying and wavering around him as the edges of his vision begin to fade ever so slightly darker than the rest of the shadowy unlit space, and he thinks he probably needs to sit down.

"Wei Ying," he hears, alarmed yet impossibly distant, and then there's movement and he's not sure exactly what happens but when he comes back to himself he's on the floor half draped over Lan Zhan's lap with his face pillowed on one of Lan Zhan's insanely muscular thighs.

Lan Zhan is sitting on the actual bathroom floor. 

"What," says Wei Ying blearily, and Lan Zhan holds out his toothbrush to him with far more care than a cheap bit of half-chewed plastic really deserves.

"Do not move," he says, and the words reverberate into Wei Ying's pillowed ear through his whole body. "Brush your teeth here."

It's a little bit ridiculous. But he's no longer about to pass out, so he's not exactly inclined to complain.

"Do you need to spit," asks Lan Zhan when he's done with such deadpan awkwardness it's barely a question. 

"Nah," says Wei Ying, and turns his face to look up at Lan Zhan in the dark. "Swallowed." He opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue to illustrate the point.

Lan Zhan does not say anything for a long moment. Then he gathers Wei Ying into his arms and actually carries him back to the bed, which Wei Ying very much wants to be outraged about but by the time he remembers how his face or voice or any of his limbs work it's already – unfortunately – over.

"Lan Zhan, aiya, when did you get so strong?"

"Go back to sleep," says Lan Zhan solemnly, as though this is a very important directive.

Wei Ying doesn't think it's that important. He's feeling significantly better now his mouth tastes like mint instead of a horrible mixture of worse things and he's no longer attempting to stand upright. 

"Lan Zhan," he says again. "Did you watch my free skate?"

"Mn."

"Mn? I land the first quad-quad combo in skating history and all I get is mn?" 

"I have already seen your combination jump," Lan Zhan points out, but even in the darkness there's just a hint of the familiar deliberate blankness to his expression which Wei Ying knows means he's being a dick on purpose. Anyone normal would be smiling. 

Wei Ying sighs. "I didn't beat your new world record though. Outrageously rude of you not to wait until the final so I could have a go on the Wikipedia page first."

"There is always next season," says Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying tilts his head a little (slight mistake, but ignorable enough) and frowns at him. 

"Lan Zhan. There's plenty of this season left."

Lan Zhan looks at him. Wei Ying knows this look; it's called are you serious right now, or look at the facts of this situation, or even in their teenage days you are being a complete nightmare. It's adjacent to ridiculous, which is a personal favourite of Wei Ying's.

Anyway, it's completely unnecessary and unfair. Wei Ying knows the standard recovery times for concussion. He won't give Wen Chao the satisfaction of seeing his pathetic little plan succeed.

He's still going to the Grand Prix Final.

*

Three weeks before the Grand Prix Final 

"No," says Baoshan Sanren from Wei Ying's laptop screen. "I told you ten days minimum."

"But," says Wei Ying, "but. Consider this: I have literally never been more bored in my life." 

"I'd rather have you bored than falling like that again. You're still high-risk." She folds her arms and stares him down. Behind her Wei Ying can see clean ice, can see Zizhen and A-Qing attempting a pair spin together, can see Wen Qing setting up for her triple axel, flying past on a backward outside edge – it's unbearable. He needs to be back there. 

"I'm not going to fall like that again," he says with deep exasperation, "because Wen Chao isn't here." 

He's seen the video by now, of course. It's strange, watching what's clearly himself for a full forty seconds or so he has absolutely no memory of – but it's obvious enough what happened. 

Zooming in and pausing at the right moment results in a clear frame of Wen Chao checking Wei Ying's position around a second and a half before beginning to drift backwards "unintentionally".

"This is not up for negotiation," says Baoshan Sanren, breaking his line of thought.

"What if I don't jump until the ten days are up? I won't even do flying spins – one blade on the ice at all times, I promise." Wei Ying holds up three fingers beside his face and smiles innocently. "Just let me come and do some edge work, please –"

Baoshan Sanren narrows her eyes at him. "You don't want to do edge work. You never want to do edge work."

"I do," says Wei Ying, eyes wide and pleading. "I swear I'm completely fine –"

"Nope. I know you better than that. You'll do a triple the minute my back's turned, and I don't have time to be playing babysitter. I'll see you in three days." 

And then she hangs up. Wei Ying groans and covers his face with his hands. 

It's true that he's completely fine.

It's mostly true. 

Baoshan Sanren doesn't need to know about the lingering dizziness any time he stands up too fast, or the unpleasant tension headache that seems to settle in for good by the middle of each afternoon, or the fact he's been spending evenings dimly lamplit because bright lights still make his eyes ache and his head spin just a little. She also doesn't need to know that earlier in the week he called Wen Qing three times in one day to ask her to buy him spicy Doritos on her way home, and on the third time she snapped are you doing this on purpose to be annoying or do I need to call a doctor and Wei Ying had no idea what she was talking about until he checked his call logs for the day. 

(He'd gone with annoying in the moment, to be on the safe side. Wen Qing also doesn't need to know.)

He's misplacing his phone with around 70% higher frequency than usual. Somehow it keeps turning up in the fridge. Conversations with Lan Zhan are kept to text message, because Lan Zhan is significantly less likely to buy the annoying on purpose excuse. He knows Wei Ying's tells too well.

He's also banned Lan Zhan from visiting. There are dim memories from the hospital – Lan Zhan's hands firm and sure on his waist, Lan Zhan's thigh under his cheek, Lan Zhan's impossibly strong arms carrying him back to bed – that right now Wei Ying just cannot deal with the implications of. He also doesn't want Lan Zhan to see him like this, because it's one thing in a hospital within 24 hours of the accident but it's another in his own apartment when he's supposed to be fully recovered already.

Wei Ying blinks, and somehow it's 4pm. He pokes around in the fridge, ignoring the steadily gathering pain in his head and the black dots scattering themselves across his vision, and finds half a leftover sandwich before he has to sit down on the kitchen floor with his head between his knees. Some of this has got to be his body complaining about the sudden inactivity of being forcibly extracted from his usual routine. Once he gets back on the ice it will be better. 

It has to be, so he can beat Lan Zhan in the final. 

The doorbell rings. Wei Ying drags himself back to his feet, discarding the sandwich on the kitchen counter as he leans heavily there for a long moment to remind his body it knows how to stay upright, and braces himself for the glaring communal-hallway light as he answers it. 

"A-Ying," says Yanli softly. She's carrying a covered pot which smells familiarly delicious. "Can I come in?"

*

It's been a very long time since Wei Ying last lay on a sofa with his head in his jiejie's lap. 

(It's been a very long time since he last called her jiejie.) 

"A-Ying," she says again, stroking his hair gently as the soup heats up in the microwave. "You don't look well."

"Aiya, I'm fine. Did you know Baoshan Sanren still won't even let me come back to do edge work? I even promised not to jump at all yet!"

A wry little smile creeps onto Yanli's face as she listens. "I can't imagine why she wouldn't believe you."

"I know! It's outrageous!"

"She misses you," says Yanli softly. "We all do." She pauses, fingertips brushing carefully across the slow-fading bruise at his temple. "We want you back when it's safe for you, so you don't get hurt again."

"I won't," whines Wei Ying. "Why does no-one listen to me –"

"We're worried about you," Yanli says quietly. She glances around the room, concern pulling her brow into a crease. "It doesn't look like you're taking care of yourself."

"Aiyo, you know I'm always messy. Don't be mean about it."

"A-Ying," she says, and the words are a little careful now, "you know you can always come and stay with us. If you –"

"With the peacock?!" Wei Ying screws up his entire face in disgusted outrage. "He's so boring I would literally go insane."

This is a much easier excuse than the last time I lived with you you nearly died.

Yanli sighs, long-suffering and familiar. "You know A-Xuan tries his best."

"I know he doesn't deserve you."

"A-Ying," she says, just a little sharper. "He's more than made up for his mistakes. You don't need to –"

"All right, all right, everyone's a bit of a prick when they're a teenager." Wei Ying waves a hand dismissively. "I'll allow that he's good with the kids."

Yanli smiles, which makes the disgusting sensation of saying something nice about Jin Zixuan almost worth it. 

"How's A-Ling? I feel like I haven't seen him in literally forever –"

"Oh!" Yanli's smile grows as she reaches over to extract her phone from her bag. "He wanted me to show you this."

The video starts with a close-up of Jingyi's face with his eyes crossed and his tongue out, immediately followed by a loud hey! and Jingyi almost falling over from what looks like a deliberate shove. Wei Ying snickers. He loves these kids so much. 

Then the camera tracks Jin Ling as he glides around his usual corner of the rink on a backward outside edge, face turned in the direction of travel and arms loose and open at his sides, and Wei Ying forgets to breathe in anticipation as he immediately guesses what's about to come next. 

He has to step out of the landing edge to save it, but Jin Ling's double axel is clean and fully rotated – the camera shakes a little as the rest of the juniors whoop and cheer and fly across the ice towards him, and even from a distance Wei Ying can see the brilliant grin on his face.

Wei Ying's own face hurts from how hard he's smiling. "Aiya, I can't believe I missed it. He's such a good kid."

"He's done well," says Yanli with quiet pride. "A-Cheng walked him through a triple salchow on the harness yesterday."

"Has he got it off-ice yet?"

"Almost. You know he hates jumping off-ice almost as much as you do." 

Wei Ying wrinkles his nose. "Doesn't everyone?"

Yanli raises an eyebrow. "You should see A-Yan in the supermarket. Double lutz in the cereal aisle."

Wei Ying bursts out laughing at the mental image, and then the soup is ready at last and they sit on the sofa to eat it and flick through trashy reality TV shows bickering about which one has the most outrageous premise. 

Wei Ying falls asleep on the sofa barely two minutes after Yanli leaves, and wakes at four in the morning to a crick in his neck and an achingly empty apartment still littered with takeout packaging and half-unpacked travel bags.

That's the problem with visitors. They really highlight the loneliness.

*

Two and a half weeks before the Grand Prix Final 

Wei Ying steps in through the rink doors, deliberately does not wince at the brightness of the overhead lighting, and sucks in a deeply satisfying breath of artificially chilled air. 

Finally. 

"Lan Zhan!!" he calls as he runs down the balcony and hops onto the banister to slide the last few steps down to rink level, "Did you miss me?!"

Lan Zhan, mid-jump setup, pulls out of the smooth curve of a precise backwards turn and glides to the barrier in complete defiance of Lan Qiren's outraged expression. 

He looks down at Wei Ying from the extra height his skates give him. They're pressed against the boards from opposite sides; without the thick layer of waist-level plastic between them, they'd be –

"Mn," says Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying sways forward just a little.

He hasn't seen Lan Zhan in ten days. It feels like months. There's a faint scent of sandalwood diffusing between them, magnetic in its familiarity. 

Wei Ying wants to taste it on Lan Zhan's skin.

"Hah," he says nonsensically, and wets the inner edges of his lips with the very tip of his tongue. "Lan Zhan –"

"Wasting time," snaps Lan Qiren from suddenly right beside them. "Wei Ying," he says stiffly, as though it's an acknowledgement on the level of welcome back.

"Aiya, don't sound too pleased to see me," says Wei Ying with a grin, and swings his bag onto the picnic table beside him to pull out his skates.

Baoshan Sanren steps in front of him before he can get to the ice. 

"No," he whines, "please, give me a lecture about being careful after, it's been over a week –"

"You're going to warm up properly," says Baoshan Sanren firmly. "And you are only to do single and double jumps today."

"But –"

"But nothing. Ignore me and you'll earn three more days stuck at home."

"Fine, oh my god, can I please get on the ice now –"

"Wei Ying." She waits for him to pause, to impatiently restrain himself long enough for her to catch his attention and smile with all the warmth she normally keeps tucked away behind the evil sadistic coach persona. "Welcome back."

*

The first time attempting a new jump always feels too fast. There's no time for any careful corrections of technique, no space to think of anything beyond the point of takeoff – no opportunity, in fact, for any thought at all. (This is why the prep exercises are important – so that even without conscious direction, the right movements will occur instinctively.) It's only when the jump becomes familiar that it begins to slow down; to open itself out into precise awareness of every fractional moment. As repeated effort creeps closer towards a clean landing, it begins to feel almost slow-motion.

Flying around the edge of the rink in an easy warm-up with Baoshan Sanren watching feels faster than Wei Ying's first wild attempt at a triple axel.

It's – a little bit terrifying, actually, and Wei Ying's never been scared of anything on the ice. His body knows the movements, automatically follows through slaloms and cross rolls and twizzles at a perfectly normal rate of speed – and his mind feels ten steps behind, dragged along in the wind and scrambling to catch up. He's almost shaking at the end of it – knows, had anything unexpected happened along the way, he wouldn't have had the reaction speed to avert disaster.

This is not great. 

"Fine," says Baoshan Sanren. She's watching him carefully. He straightens a little, forcibly holds himself still. "You look pale. Go and sit down for five minutes, have some water."

"Nope," says Wei Ying cheerfully. "I'm fine. Jumps or spins?"

"Neither. If you won't take breaks when you're told then we'll run your step sequence from the short program instead."

"Cool!" Wei Ying smiles brightly. "With the music?"

Baoshan Sanren shakes her head. "Half speed first. Then you can go help the juniors for a while." 

Wei Ying knows she's trying to keep him from doing anything too exciting on his first day back, but he can't find it in himself to complain when actually he's missed the juniors a truly ridiculous amount and would like nothing more than to spend the next half hour messing around encouraging them to outdo each other with overdramatic choreography.

They run his step sequence three times. Wei Ying is dizzy and panting by the end, leaning heavily on the barrier with black spots prickling the edges of his sight as Baoshan Sanren looks at him with a tight-lipped expression and says nothing at all. 

It's ridiculous. It's only a step sequence. Wei Ying pulls himself together and stands up properly. 

"That was fun," he says brightly, and his own voice sounds distant to his ears. Baoshan Sanren does not dignify this with a response.

"I got an email last night," she says after another thirty seconds of Wei Ying catching his breath in-between sips of water and pretending like he's not halfway to passing out.

"Mm?"

"Mo Xuanyu. He was at the NHK Trophy."

Wei Ying nods. He has a vague recollection of a spectacular exhibition skate following a fairly weak performance in the free. "Fifth place, right?"

"Sixth. He wanted to apologise."

"Huh?"

"Apparently he was the one who asked you to jump at the gala."

"Oh." Wei Ying frowns; screws up his face a little as he tries to sift through whatever scraps of memory still remain from that night.

There's nothing there. 

"It wasn't his fault," he decides. "I probably would have done it anyway."

"That's what I thought. But I wanted to make sure before I reply to the second half of his message."

Wei Ying perks up a little. This sounds interesting.

"He wants to come here," says Baoshan Sanren thoughtfully. "And switch to me."

Here is Immortal Peak Arena, somewhat pretentiously named and founded by world-famous household names Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen eight years ago as a nurturing centre for the finest figure skating talent. Wei Ying has been skating here since he was sixteen, alongside head coach Baoshan Sanren – and within two years of its opening, the Lan family relocated for the superior facilities. 

Team Lotus took three more years after that to join. It was a difficult call; Baoshan Sanren vets her coaches carefully, and she knew enough of Wei Ying's history to be hesitant – but the arson attack and subsequent equipment failure that ruined Lotus Pier Ice Rink turned the situation urgent, and Wei Ying insisted it was all in the past anyway. 

(It wasn't, really, but after a couple of awkward months they all settled into near-normal coexistence without ever actually talking about any of it, which was absolutely fine as far as Wei Ying was concerned. Some things were the same, some things weren't, and some would never be again. They learned to live with it.)

Back in the present, Wei Ying tilts his head in curiosity and says, "Mid-season? Who's his current coach?"

"Jin Guangshan," says Baoshan Sanren with barely tempered distaste, and Wei Ying understands immediately. 

Meng Yao doesn't talk about it, but everyone knows why he left the Jin team.

"Are you going to say yes?"

Baoshan Sanren's expression is still thoughtful. "I'll ask him to come for a trial week. If he's serious about leaving, there's plenty of places he can go – he doesn't need me. So –"

"He'll have to impress you." Wei Ying grins. "You haven't taken anyone new in a while."

Baoshan Sanren looks amused. "You know A-Qing asked me last week?"

"What," says Wei Ying, and starts laughing immediately. "Did she even speak to Zewu-jun first?"

"Obviously not," says Baoshan Sanren wryly. "She's eleven. And I can't believe you've picked up that nickname for poor Lan Huan from the novices –"

"Aiya, I had better etiquette than that at eleven. What did you tell her?"

Baoshan Sanren shrugs. "It's not out of the question. She's very talented. But if she wants to do pairs, she needs to stay with the Lans."

And that puts Lan Zhan front and centre in Wei Ying's mind all over again. 

He still doesn't know where Lan Zhan's quiet confidence with pairs moves comes from. He's seen him do throws and lifts twice more with A-Qing since the first time, when she's asking something seriously rather than for messing around purposes and Lan Huan's busy elsewhere – and every time, he's surprised. Lan Zhan certainly hasn't done pairs since they've known each other. 

Maybe he did it before. Wei Ying feels like there's something he's forgetting.

He wants to know if he could do it again.

It's not like they could pair up for real, with their barely-there height difference – or even like either he or Lan Zhan would actually want to. They're both established skaters at the very top of the world rankings with no desire to change that by switching disciplines at the peak of their careers. 

(And besides, the thought of no longer competing against Lan Zhan – no longer existing in the push-and-pull of breaking each other's records, of caring about medals only inasmuch as they tally up against one another, of junior rivalry turned deeper and better and stronger into something that pulls them together just as much as it ever kept them apart – well, Wei Ying isn't entirely sure he knows who he'd even be, without that.)

But even so.

Wei Ying wants.

*

It's 2:30pm. Wei Ying is lying on the floor of the boot store (having stolen Wen Qing's pass from her bag to get in) with his eyes closed against the fluorescent lighting, out of sight behind the counter and hiding from anyone who might notice the way he's currently incapable of meeting even the most basic of physical expectations (like landing a double salchow, or standing upright).

Baoshan Sanren told him to go home half an hour ago. He doesn't want to go home.

He doesn't want to go home, because going home would mean admitting that he is actually very much not fine. 

This is not something Wei Ying will admit. And so: the boot store floor.

The problem with lying on the boot store floor is that Wen Qing has an unfortunate habit of vaulting the counter when she can't find her pass (for example, when it is located in Wei Ying's pocket).

Two cross-cut toe picks slam into the rubber matting directly beside Wei Ying's head, and Wen Qing lets out a horrified squeaking sound at the realisation that she narrowly avoided landing on his actual face. 

"Hi," he says, and cracks one eye half open as he grins up at her. "I'm playing hide and seek with A-Yan."

"A-Yan has been working on a new step sequence for the past quarter of an hour," says Wen Qing once she's recovered her composure. She does not look impressed with Wei Ying's attempt at an excuse. "You look like shit."

"You're literally so rude to me it's unbelievable," Wei Ying says with an offended air. "Did you hear Mo Xuanyu's coming here for a trial week?"

"Don't change the subject. Get up right now without passing out or I'm driving you home myself."

This is something Wei Ying can do, actually. Years of pushing through the trembling overexertion of the second half of any free skate to finish clean; of Baoshan Sanren's moderately sadistic stamina exercises and spin games and everything else that comes along with the level of training Wei Ying has been accustomed to since early childhood – well, it turns out it's decent enough preparation for ignoring the rush of vertigo and nausea as he stands and pretending he has no particular desire to collapse on the floor as he follows Wen Qing back out to the rink.

It's fine. It's fine. 

Wei Ying discovers that if he lets muscle memory take over and ignores the reactions of his body entirely, he can still land jumps and keep spins centred. He makes it all the way to the end of the afternoon session this way, and then flops down on the bench hidden behind the barrier at the far side of the rink where no-one ever bothers to go and closes his eyes and waits for the room to stop spinning. 

He wakes to Lan Zhan's warm hand against his forehead. 

"Mm," he says, blinking blearily up at what is – as always – the most beautiful face he's ever seen. "Lan Zhan?"

"Wei Ying." Lan Zhan sounds far more worried than should ever be allowed. "Why are you sleeping here?"

"I wasn't," says Wei Ying innocently. "I was just seeing if I could get away with staying down here through the whole kids' session this evening."

Lan Zhan frowns. "Group lessons run on Thursdays and Saturdays." 

"Is it not Thursday?"

"Tuesday."

"Aiya, they both end in 'day', cut me some slack." Wei Ying swings himself upright and ignores the soft buzz of exhaustion in his ears. "Has Wen Qing left yet? I was going to bully her into driving me home, the buses always smell like eggs by this time in the afternoon –"

"I will drive," says Lan Zhan with calm surety, and waits for Wei Ying to blink at him in surprise before walking away around the edge of the rink.

He falls asleep again in Lan Zhan's car, which isn't really his fault when it's so comfortable and warm. Lan Zhan has heated seats. 

*

Wei Ying is drifting.

There's warmth all around him, holding him close, and he's drifting.

He lets himself sink deeper.

Wei Ying, someone says, and he sighs and curls closer towards the sound.

It feels like home.

*

Wei Ying blinks stickily awake to darkness. The red-flickering display of his alarm clock says 03:17. 

He's in his own bed. 

This is a little confusing, because he doesn't remember anything beyond relaxing into the soft warmth of the expensive heated seats in Lan Zhan's car and closing his eyes.

What's even more confusing, he realises as he stumbles through his darkened apartment towards the kitchen in search of a glass of water, is that the apartment is clean. 

Did he do that? Wei Ying can buy the gap in his memory – there's enough of those already – but he can't imagine coming home this exhausted and unwell and actually cleaning. 

The explanation comes when he flicks on the dim kitchen lamp (repurposed from the paperwork-littered desk he never uses, in that first week when all the main lights in the apartment were too much to tolerate) and soft orange light spills through the open-plan archway to the living room and illuminates a blanket-wrapped lump on Wei Ying's sofa.

Wei Ying stares. Is that –

Lan Zhan opens his eyes, glittering in the half-light, and says Wei Ying in a low sleep-roughened voice that immediately embeds itself in the deepest parts of Wei Ying's subconscious without any authorisation whatsoever.

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying weakly, "why are you on my sofa?"

Lan Zhan doesn't answer for a long minute. 

Then, a little stilted with what might almost be embarrassment, he says, "If you needed anything."

"If I – Lan Zhan! Did you clean my apartment too?!"

"Mn."

"Why," says Wei Ying helplessly, and it's not just why did you clean my apartment or even why are you here at all but why did you drive me home and why did you carry me inside while I was sleeping and why, why do you look after me so well and make me feel cared for and wanted and loved and then sleep out here on the sofa instead of –

Well, he knows why.

Lan Zhan doesn't answer. Instead he gets up from the sofa in one smooth movement, walks past Wei Ying to retrieve a clean glass from the kitchen cupboard, fills it with cold water from the freshly replenished jug in the fridge, and holds it out to him with both hands like a gift.

Wei Ying – somehow, impossibly – understands.

It tears up everything he knows. Maybe –

Maybe what happened six years ago wasn't what he thought it was.

"Lan Zhan," he says softly, and it's far too much to think about right now but there's the sudden, soft sensation of an endless mutually orbiting dance switching pathways to become an inward spiral at long last.

Wei Ying drinks the water, and Lan Zhan guides him back to bed with one hand hovering just a breath above the small of his back, and nothing's changed but at the same time nothing is the same.

*

The next day is hard. Lan Zhan drives him to the rink in the morning, and he sleeps in the car – and in the ten-minute break Baoshan Sanren forces on him after barely half an hour, and at lunchtime with his head on Wen Qing's shoulder until she flicks him not-so-gently in the ear and complains that he's giving her a cricked neck by proxy, and then with his head on the table until almost 2pm when he wakes again to Jin Zixuan's puffy coat draped warm around his shoulders. That's embarrassing enough to make him pull himself together.

He works his way through all the triple jumps up to axel under Baoshan Sanren's careful observation, and doesn't tell her that he's still using the trick of blacking out all physical awareness in favour of pure muscle memory just to keep himself upright, and then when she's busy with Wen Qing he slips from the ice to the bathroom and spends ten minutes having an argument with his body about whether or not he's going to keep hold of the pathetic amount of lunch he managed in-between falling asleep. 

(It's not an argument he wins.)

He doesn't even try to fight it when Baoshan Sanren tells him to leave early. And then he sits at the bus stop for two hours and watches eight buses go past and somehow doesn't get on any of them, and then Lan Zhan's car drives past and turns around and drives back and stops. 

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, and Wei Ying climbs into the bliss of expensive heated seats in white faux-leather and doesn't answer any of Lan Zhan's questions and doesn't wake up again until the next 3am arrives.

It's fine. He's still got more than two weeks. It will get better. 

*

It doesn't get better. 

*

Six days before the Grand Prix Final 

"I think we should consider –" starts Baoshan Sanren carefully, and Wei Ying picks himself up off the ice for the fourth time in three minutes and snaps no before she can get the rest of it out.

"If you already know what I'm about to say, that means we definitely need to consider it."

"We don't." Wei Ying brushes ice off his hip and thigh, dusts his gloves together to scatter powdery white in familiar arcs through the air, and pretends like the rink isn't spinning around him as he sets up for the jump again. (By now it's a familiar pretence. He's almost good at it.) "I'm fine." 

"You haven't landed a clean quad since you came back. You can barely even finish your free skate. I can't take you to the final like this –"

"Then I'll go on my own," Wei Ying snaps, and launches himself into a triple axel which lands clean by pure force of will and makes him feel like he's immediately about to pass out. He swerves for the barrier, blinks hard as he grabs it white-knuckled to stay upright, and deliberately doesn't look in Baoshan Sanren's direction.

"If you make a complaint against Wen Chao," she starts after a moment, and Wei Ying shakes his head.

"Wen Ruohan's got his nose so far up the ISU's ass he can smell their dinner before it's even cooked. They won't give a shit."

Baoshan Sanren sighs. There's a heavy silence where Wei Ying still refuses to look at her, and then she skates around deliberately into his field of view and holds out her clipboard.

"Take out all the quads."

"Piss off," says Wei Ying in disbelief. 

"It's that or you don't go. I won't sign the paperwork." 

"You can't –"

"Wei Ying," she says, and it's the most serious he's ever heard her. "I can. Swap them out for triples, today, or you're not going."

Wei Ying stares at the clipboard. Seconds tick past on the clock behind Baoshan Sanren, the one that shows five timezones – including the one he's headed for next week.

There's a lump in his throat of a kind he hasn't felt in almost twelve years. It's frustration, powerlessness, defeat. 

It's knowing you've fucked up, and it's irretrievable this time.

"You do it." His voice comes out too thick. Baoshan Sanren's expression is kind; a little sad as she shakes her head. 

"It's yours. You know how this works."

Wei Ying does know. It's one of Baoshan Sanren's peculiarities, the clipboard – every serious change, whether pulling back or pushing forward to new heights, is made by the skater themselves. She says it gives ownership of the decisions – says it's your program, not mine, and it should feel like your own.

It doesn't feel like his program, as he draws a line through 4S+4Lo and writes 3S+3Lo in its place. 

He puts the clipboard down on top of the sound system – he won't hand it to her, doesn't want to see her look at it (doesn't want it to be true) – and leaves the ice. Steals Wen Qing's pass again and sits on the floor of the boot store between two shelves out of sight of both counters and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes and thinks fucking keep it together and does not, in fact, keep it together. 

Everyone cries at the rink. It's an immutable fact of skating – for the small kids, of course, but for everyone else as well. The frustrations don't change with progression from novice to junior to senior; they only get bigger, with worse stakes. Most of the time it's mid-lesson, embarrassing and in front of at least one coach – and Wei Ying hasn't done it for years and years and years. He gets angry instead, pissy and destructive and rude, and then Wen Qing forces him off the ice and drags him to McDonald's and they throw fries at each other and bitch about this godawful sport they've poured their whole lives into. 

(This beautiful, mesmerising sport that's had its claws in both their souls from minute one of lesson one; that Wei Ying would rather die than lose.)

Right now, dizzy and unwell and exhausted, Wei Ying is thirteen years old sobbing outside a closed hospital room with two suitcases beside him and you're done here ringing in his ears, and he's losing everything all over again.

He cries until he can barely see, until his head is pounding and he can't actually remember how to get back out of the boot store, and then Wen Qing appears at one end of the shelves and says, "Oh, fucking hell," and in the next moment she's beside him with a cup of water and an entire box of tissues.

"Breathe," she says, matter-of-fact and annoying, because what else is he doing really, but it helps. He blows his nose and takes a pitiful little sip of water and manages, across the next several minutes, to halfway pull himself together.

"Can you turn the lights off," he tries, and it comes out as a pathetically hoarse whisper, but Wen Qing for once restrains herself from being a dick about how he's clearly not anywhere close to recovered and just flicks the switch without saying anything at all.

They sit in the dark, in mostly-silence, while Wei Ying sniffs and wipes his face and attempts to piece together something approximating composure from the fragile threads of shaky calm beginning to settle within him. 

"I saw you with the clipboard," says Wen Qing. She's not careful about the words. Wei Ying appreciates it – he doesn't need careful, and it would only set the whole mess off again most likely anyway. "Did she make you take out the combination?"

Wei Ying shakes his head, presses his lips tight to keep from falling to pieces, only speaks when he's sure it won't happen. "All the quads."

Wen Qing purses her lips, looks sidelong at him in the shadowy half-light. "Harsh. You have to admit, though –"

"Aiya, shut up." He tries for lightness; misses by a mile. "I know."

*

Actually, Wei Ying doesn't have to admit anything.

He's officially skating both programs with triples only now. The free skate is clean two times in five.

He arrives early, stays late, runs both programs back-to-back with the quadruple jumps back in when Baoshan Sanren's not around. He still can't manage either one clean.

There's still time. There's still time. 

He won't give in.

Chapter Text

Grand Prix Final: Day One 

"– and we haven't seen Wei Ying since the accident at the NHK Trophy, so this warm-up should give us a glimpse of what to expect from him in the short program –"

"– he missed his interview slot yesterday, do we have a comment on his recovery yet?"

"Not as far as I'm aware, his coach hasn't given us anything either – ah, here comes the setup for what's been a quadruple flip all season, but there's a rumour he's had to downgrade it to a triple – and it's a triple now in the warm-up, that looks like a shaky landing too, but who knows what it'll be when the music starts. He's always one for surprises, if you've been following his career you'll know that already –"

"– yes, twelve years old when he landed that triple loop in his last season as a novice –"

Wei Ying tunes the commentators out as he drifts back to the barrier to wriggle out of his warm-up jacket.

"Don't get any ideas," says Baoshan Sanren. "Skating clean and safe is more important than trying to land jumps you haven't managed in a month."

Wei Ying nods. He's not listening. 

He's watching Lan Zhan flow effortlessly into a quadruple lutz, precise and focused and textbook-flawless, and he's ignoring the glare of the lights and the unpleasant shivery feeling in his stomach, and he's counting down the minutes until the short program will be over.

He'll play it safe. He'll follow Baoshan Sanren's boring instructions, probably place in the bottom three today, and then do exactly whatever the fuck he wants in the free skate tomorrow morning.

Wei Ying has a feeling he's only got one chance left in him for something spectacular. If he spends it now there's nowhere else to go.

He'll save it. 

*

Wei Ying steps off the ice after two minutes and forty seconds of blurred-painful jumps and spins and choreography, held together by adrenaline and willpower alone, and doesn't try to stop Baoshan Sanren when she catches him as he stumbles. His head is spinning and everything is just a little dim around the edges and the only reason he hasn't collapsed entirely is because of the cameras.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan close beside him, tight and horrified, and Wei Ying says mm, nope and pushes his hands away when he tries to help. 

"You're on next," he manages. "You should already be there, go."

"Wei Ying –"

"Go, Lan Zhan. I'll be fine."

"I've got him," says Baoshan Sanren, and Wei Ying is definitely a little bit offended that Lan Zhan listens to her but not to him but he doesn't get the chance to say anything about it because Lan Zhan's gone and Baoshan Sanren has a firm arm around his waist and is half-carrying him to the kiss and cry while the commentators say something Wei Ying can't quite make out but which sounds from the tone like it's surprised and alarmed and definitely about him.

He doesn't hear his score. Baoshan Sanren's expression is tight, and she says well done like it's the last thing she actually wants to be saying, but Wei Ying's too barely-there to care if she's angry or worried or some other, worse thing entirely. It's not his problem. 

There's a very quiet part of him that doesn't really expect these things to be his problem for much longer at all.

He watches Lan Zhan's short program with the last remnants of his wayward attention. It's technically perfect and even more expressionless than usual, and the technical and component scores reflect both these facts. 

When he squints up at the score list, he's fifth and Lan Zhan's first. 

He's come back from worse standing after the short program before; all the way to the top of the podium. He doesn't know if he can do it this time. 

He's going to try, though.

*

"What," says Wei Ying blankly. The hotel receptionist looks at him like he's being concerningly slow about this, which is probably fair enough.

"There's been a problem with our booking system," she repeats, exactly as apologetically as the first time. "We've had to move your room. All your personal items have been transferred –"

"Lan Zhan doesn't like people touching his stuff –"

"It is fine," says Lan Zhan. He sounds a little surprised, though Wei Ying is uncertain if this is directed at him or the rest of the scenario. He can figure it out later – right now he just wants to lie down and pretend not to have a body.

"Okay, whatever. Do we need a new key card thing?"

"Yes, of course, here you are," says the receptionist with a smile as she holds out the requisite plastic rectangle, and then they're off in search of the new room.

Here's the thing. 

Wei Ying has been sharing hotel rooms with Lan Zhan at competitions since they were fifteen years old. It's almost surprising that this is the first time it's happened.

Lan Zhan opens the door, and stops. Wei Ying peers past his outstretched arm to see –

One very large neatly made bed.

"Ah, Lan Zhan, haha – don't worry about it. I'll go and ask for another room."

"It is fine," says Lan Zhan again – and sudden and quiet, Wei Ying is aware once more of the inexorable-gravity pull of that inward spiral path begun half a month ago in the quiet hours of the morning.

It's closer; far closer now than the last time he felt it. They've – it's happened in the background of everything else, as always, as he thinks it might have been for years really. 

As a pair spin pulls in tight together, it gets faster. Wei Ying doesn't quite think that's how this one works. 

Maybe only in the very last moments.

*

Wei Ying is exhausted. 

Wei Ying is aching in every place it's possible to ache and then some more on top of that, and any time he moves the room sways ever so slightly around him, and he's so tired he thinks if the fire alarm went off he would probably just stay here and wait to die of smoke inhalation – and he can't sleep.

He can't sleep, because beside him in the bed is Lan Zhan, and he's warm and smells faintly of sandalwood and freshly washed hair, and worst of all their pinky fingers are touching and Lan Zhan hasn't moved his hand away.

Wei Ying, heart pounding, holding his breath like the slightest movement might shatter the illusion, curls his pinky finger over Lan Zhan's in a tentative little hook.

Lan Zhan's finger curls around his in return.

A wave of dizziness which has nothing whatsoever to do with any lingering head injury spreads from Wei Ying's core all the way out to his tingling scalp. His entire face feels like it's on fire.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying whispers, "are you asleep?"

"No," says Lan Zhan, very low and quiet, and it shivers right through the centre of Wei Ying's ability to think and hits the off button.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he's been wrong for six years. 

Maybe when Lan Zhan, blackout drunk from a single accidental swig of expensive champagne at the Four Continents after-party when they were eighteen years old, answered Wei Ying's teasing Lan-er-gege, have you ever wanted to kiss anyone with a blankly silent stare, when Wei Ying said you should try it, I kiss people all the time, it's nothing serious, just a bit of fun and Lan Zhan repeated nothing serious like Wei Ying had just walked on concrete in his unprotected skates and then turned his face away in disdain – 

– maybe it hadn't meant everything Wei Ying had thought.

He'd been terrified, that night. Spilling over with desperate unexpected feelings he'd barely begun to name or acknowledge but knowing they all pointed in the same direction – and knowing, more than any of it, he couldn't bear to lose Lan Zhan by his side. Couldn't bear to ruin the best part of his life. 

Wei Ying had lied.

He's never kissed anyone.

Maybe he's wasted six years. 

"Lan Zhan," he says again. Something hot and reckless ignites inside him, fizzing in his chest like a sparkler in the first flaring moment of brightness – and on pure impulse he tugs Lan Zhan's hand closer; catches it in both his own and brings it to barely a whisper apart from his lips, so near he can feel his own hot breath reflected back from the delicate skin of Lan Zhan's fingers. 

Wei Ying freezes.

In the dark, Lan Zhan is watching him.

"Do not act on what you do not mean," he says, and it's a low whisper tense with something Wei Ying doesn't quite know how to place. 

"I mean it," breathes Wei Ying. "Lan Zhan. I've never –"

I've never meant anything more.

It's how he means to finish the words. But at never Lan Zhan's fingers twitch ever so slightly, a tiny minute flicker of a movement between Wei Ying's clasped hands – and soft, warm skin ghosts across his lips. 

Wei Ying stops thinking entirely.

He exhales, shaky and wild, and presses an open-mouthed kiss to Lan Zhan's fingertips. 

Lan Zhan –

– sucks in a sharp, cut-off breath beside him, and pushes two fingers halfway into his mouth. 

Wei Ying makes a sound he would never admit to being able to make if he was still in any way capable of coherent thought. His tongue dips under the press of Lan Zhan's fingertips, flattening and curling upwards at the edges as he gives in to every instinct he's ever had – it's almost humiliating, the way between one half-gasped breath and the next he's sucking on Lan Zhan's fingers like it's the only thing he remembers how to do. The tip of his tongue brushes familiar calluses, over skin rough from years of pulling tight the laces on his skates each morning – and it's somehow this of all things that pulls Wei Ying the rest of the way undone.

Lan Zhan's hands, matching Wei Ying's perfectly. 

Wei Ying whines when Lan Zhan pulls his fingers back. It's, quite frankly, embarrassing. 

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan says, low and rough and hot, and all at once Wei Ying abruptly recontextualises at least seventeen different categories of Lan Zhan emotion he's spent close to half his life thinking he knew. 

Not disapproval. Not coldness. Not warning or disdain or detachment.

Not rejection.

Wanting. 

Lan Zhan wants him.

"Lan Zhan," he breathes, and then – finally, after years and years and years of looking at Lan Zhan and thinking nothing but kiss me, kiss me please – finally, finally – Lan Zhan's mouth is on his. 

There's a tiny half-second of awkwardness, where between Wei Ying's desperation and the abrupt release of all Lan Zhan's wanting at once they don't quite fit together right – and then Lan Zhan tilts his face just a little further and presses Wei Ying into the mattress with his whole body and –

– Wei Ying falls apart.

It's electrifying. It's hot and desperate and saliva-messy and it's everything Wei Ying's ever wanted and never even knew existed. It's six years – ten years – of daydream and fantasy and futile wishes all slammed to life at once, and Lan Zhan bites at his lower lip and swallows his responding moan with hungry possessiveness and when Wei Ying tries to tug at his ridiculous bunny-print pyjama shirt he grabs both disobedient wrists and pins him to the mattress in a single swift movement. 

Every fragment of awareness left to Wei Ying whites out in a blissful instant.

They don't even touch each other. They don't need to – Lan Zhan's weight against him, claiming and hot and moving just enough to leave him overwhelmed and desperate, is enough. He wants to say please, to whine and beg and cry until Lan Zhan – until – he doesn't even know what, not yet, but he wants – but he can't speak, he can't even think, there's liquid heat pulled tight in his core and he's still pinned by Lan Zhan's hands and Lan Zhan's legs and Lan Zhan's hips rocking relentlessly against his –

Wei Ying cries out into Lan Zhan's open mouth, high and desperate and entirely involuntary, and Lan Zhan makes a sound which could best be described as a growl and sinks teeth into Wei Ying's lip again hard enough that pain shoots starburst-bright through the exact same pathways already set ablaze with pleasure and oh –

– it's everything at once –

Wei Ying's closed eyes burn sticky-hot with tears as he falls across the brink in Lan Zhan's arms. 

When he comes back to himself he's wearing a fresh pair of Lan Zhan's pyjamas, and Lan Zhan's holding him soft and close and tender like he never even thought to imagine in his dreams. 

"Ah, Lan Zhan," he mumbles, and the words come out heavy with sleep. There's a gentle touch at one side of his face; Lan Zhan lifting a stray tendril of hair to tuck behind his ear. "What about you?"

It takes Lan Zhan a moment to reply. There's something faintly amused in his tone when he does.

"No need."

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying says slyly, "are you telling me I wasn't the only one to embarrass myself before we even got out of our clothes?"

"Ridiculous," says Lan Zhan softly, and it's fond and full of warmth and Wei Ying loves it, loves Lan Zhan, loves him. 

Wei Ying falls asleep in Lan Zhan's arms, happy.

*

Grand Prix Final: Day Two 

Some of Wei Ying's favourite moments in the entire world are the brief anticipatory minutes between warm-up and performance in any competition at Lan Zhan's side. It's one of the best parts of it – second only to taking the podium beside him.

(And that's true whether he finds himself above or below – he's realised, over the years, that it doesn't actually matter.)

(Well, of course it matters. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that it's Lan Zhan taking the gold from him, Lan Zhan left settling for silver at his side, always always always Lan Zhan.)

Of course, they spend almost every day together in an ice rink anyway – but this is different. This is silence, breath still a little heavy from warm-up, side-by-side in glitter and tight fabric and skates already wet around the edges with the first scatterings of ice crystals from six minutes of tightly focused preparation. 

It's closed eyes, headphones in, running a clean program in the subconscious space that decides all the outcomes of the most riskily inconsistent jumps. 

It's the fluttering anticipation of each meeting of their decade-long rivalry, underpinned by everything that's bloomed between them since the first time.

It's watch me, Lan Zhan. See if I can.

They're waiting. Wei Ying's scheduled second – the reverse order of their standings from yesterday, leaving Lan Zhan to skate last.

Seconds tick past. The music ends, the crowd's applause drowns its echo, the scattering of gifts is cleared from the ice by swiftly competent pre-adolescent skaters (only those kids deemed sensible enough not to linger unnecessarily on their first taste of Grand Prix Final ice, but Wei Ying sees the starstruck excitement restrained behind their dutiful expressions nonetheless).

Applause, again. The score is decent, though nothing to comment on (the commentators manage it anyway).

And then it's time.

"– after a disappointing performance in yesterday's short program, there's been speculation about Wei Ying's recovery from his injury earlier in the season –"

"He didn't show us any jumps in the warm-up, and that's an unusual strategy – is he saving his limited energy?"

"We just don't know, there's still been no official statement on the aftermath of the accident, but he is looking a little pale today –"

Wei Ying has one skate guard off, foot dangling above the ice. He's been pretending all morning that he's fine when the truth is he feels mostly like he's been hit by a bus, and even now the warm-up's left him feeling faint and a little sick and it's true that he didn't try any jumps because actually, he doesn't know what will happen when he does. His head aches. The reflected light from the flawless shine of the ice is far too bright. 

But that's none of anyone's fucking business. 

"Lan Zhan," he says suddenly, and grins as the crowd begins to murmur at the delay. "Let's give them something to really talk about."

Lan Zhan takes his meaning immediately. There's just the slightest hint of a smug little tilt at one corner of his mouth as he leans across the barrier and slides one hand into Wei Ying's deliberately messy bun (it's an artistic choice which Baoshan Sanren hates but it's not her program so there) before dragging him into a kiss that sets his lips on fire and his head spinning in a distinctly different way from the unpleasant way it already was.

For around three-quarters of a second, Wei Ying forgets entirely where he is. His eyes flutter closed, lips parting instinctively, and there's a breath trapped between them that might be a sigh or might be something closer to a moan – and then Lan Zhan releases him.

Wei Ying has never heard a crowd make that particular sound before.

He's also never seen Baoshan Sanren speechless. 

He has seen Lan Qiren looking like he's about to burst a blood vessel, but never quite to this degree.

He's laughing as he skates off for the swift lap that's the initiation of his fifteen-second pre-skate routine, and he can't even make out what the commentators are saying above the noise of the crowd but from their tone it's certainly a new experience for everyone involved. 

It doesn't even matter what happens next. He's at the Grand Prix Final, and Wen Chao isn't, and he's just kissed Lan Zhan in front of both their coaches and thousands of strangers and all the judges who are just about to score whatever disaster of a program he's almost ready to deliver – and right now, no matter what comes next, this is a high Wei Ying is never going to forget. 

He settles into his starting position. Catches Baoshan Sanren's steady gaze with half a smirk, in the last moment before he shuts out the whole world for four minutes and thirty seconds of only him and the ice and the music.

She shakes her head minutely. Wei Ying knows that look.

Don't do anything stupid.

There's an echo in the back of Wei Ying's mind, far off and long ago and it's so, so not the time for it right now.

Be careful, A-Ying. 

I can do it, jiejie, don't worry –

Trust me –

The music starts. Wei Ying – breathes, pushes everything else away, comes to life.

Are you watching, Lan Zhan?

*

The problem with putting off decisions is that eventually they still have to be made. 

The problem with running two versions of a program is that the automatic reflex to continue the flow of movement without conscious direction no longer functions as it should. 

Wei Ying's autopilot is broken, and half the manual override is offline.

He's behind. He misses the twelve-second beat for the salchow-loop combination, hits it almost a full second too late, doesn't even know how many rotations he intends but the salchow pops all the way to a single and it's so off-balance he doesn't manage the loop at all. It's all he can do to keep from falling. 

He hadn't realised, playing it safe in the warm-up – today is bad. Today is so much worse than it should be. Yesterday's short program took everything he had left and then scraped out the bottom until it cracked right through. There's a low rush in his ears that fades in and out with each harsh gasp of breath – and that's not right either, every skater trains to the point where each breath is timed and intentional and falls in the same place every single time, a carefully choreographed dance every bit as deliberate as the rest of it, and this isn't it – 

He falls on the next jump. It's jarring, knocking the momentum from him with uncharacteristic force – he knows how to fall, how to turn with the flow of it and redirect the movement to pull himself back up and into the music, he's better than this. 

He's better than this. 

Abrupt and sudden, Wei Ying forces himself back together. Yes – it's bad. Yes, he's shaky and unsteady and the same thing that's been very very wrong for the past month is still wrong now, in the middle of his free program in front of thousands of people and Lan Zhan, and part of him knows what's inevitably coming –

But that doesn't mean he's going to give up. 

He knows how to push through. He flies into the first combination spin, back up to full speed with terrifying ease, and the rink goes dim around the edges as he holds the tension of each spin position for exactly the required number of revolutions plus one more, and he ignores it. He exits the spin on uncertain muscle memory as his head spins with a fresh wave of dizziness – and he ignores it. 

He makes the next two triple jumps. Every landing feels like he's on the brink of passing out. 

He ignores it, ignores it. 

At the end of his step sequence is what used to be a quadruple flip – downgraded to a triple all the way back before nationals, because it wasn't consistent enough in the second half of his program.

An opportunity to claw some points back, now. Maybe not enough to place on the podium – but the surprise of it will be achievement enough.

He flows down the centre of the rink, graceful and dramatic and building speed with every turn, every step, every run of movement leading towards the final push and it will be a fully rotated quad, it will be –

– it will –

The problem with attempting an inconsistent quadruple jump for the first time in months with all the force and momentum of utter desperation –

– is that it doesn't work.

Wei Ying slams into the ice, and everything goes black.

Chapter Text

Twelve years earlier 

"Wei Ying!"

"Aiya, what now?!"

"Level ten field moves," snaps Madam Yu, and Wei Ying immediately skates to the opposite end of the rink and pretends not to have heard. It's extremely unfair that he still has to do anything remotely resembling field moves, when he passed the final test eight months ago –

"Wei Ying!"

"Catch me first!" he yells across the ice, and flies off into a variation of his latest step sequence which takes him in a wide loop around the outer edge of the rink. 

"You–!"

"Hahaha, watch this –"

"Stop being an idiot," shouts Jiang Cheng as he passes – hand in hand with Yanli, setting up for a throw jump. She's a little taller right now, Jiang Cheng hasn't hit his growth spurt yet – but she's still small for her age, and Madam Yu and Uncle Jiang are betting on the differences evening out within the next year or two in readiness for entry into the junior circuit. 

For his part, Wei Ying is already halfway through his most annoying growth spurt yet. It's thrown off his centre of gravity and unbalanced all his jumps – he can save the landings still, but every last one turns out wild and sloppy and gets him yelled at when it happens more than twice in a row. 

He sticks his tongue out at Jiang Cheng, and launches into a triple salchow – his most consistent triple so far; easily more reliable than the toe loop. It's in both his novice programs this season, once in combination with a double loop –

"Wei Ying," snaps Madam Yu from right beside him as he lands, "you do not have permission to jump right now. You have been asked to demonstrate –"

"Aiya, level ten field moves, I know, so boring!" Wei Ying kicks his free leg dramatically out and up, holds it three-quarters of the way to a split until his thigh begins to burn, and pulls from there directly into a series of twizzles on the same foot which spit him out at the entry point for the sequence of incredibly boring exercises he's supposed to be doing right now. 

He flies through them at double speed with textbook precision, Madam Yu following behind with her usual expression of displeasure, and when she snaps fine and glides away to harass Jiang Cheng Wei Ying grins to himself and skates to the far side of the rink to keep working on resettling his jumps.

Before his growth spurt turned everything a little wild, he'd been so close to landing his triple loop he dreamed of it most nights. It's still almost within touching distance, still an obsession locked on at the peripheral edge of his capabilities, still the source of most of his bruises at the end of every day. 

He knows it'll come soon.

*

The dance studio attached to Lotus Pier Ice Rink is an excuse to mess around unsupervised while the seniors have the ice to themselves in the afternoons. Wei Ying bounces and skips in a wide turn, one-two-step- leap into an off-ice double axel and straight up into a double loop from the landing, so tight it overrotates and sends him sprawling – laughing – to the floor. 

"A-Ying," says Yanli, the gently chiding tone betrayed by half-suppressed giggles, "be careful."

"Nah." Wei Ying grins, rolls onto his stomach and kicks his legs up behind him as he props his chin on his hands. "Show me the twist lift, I want to try it!"

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes. "You're not supposed to. A-Niang said –"

"Aiya, you know she just doesn't like me. It's not like we're doing it on the ice."

They can both lift Yanli, really. She's small and light and they've been training since before they can remember – it's no more of a challenge for Wei Ying than it is for Jiang Cheng. Less of one, really, since Wei Ying's growth spurt has begun to arrive early – but Madam Yu's always been extremely clear on exactly who should be doing what on the ice.

Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli are destined for the heights of international competition as pair skaters. Wei Ying is here as a lasting favour to the legacy of his parents. 

Wei Ying skates alone. 

Wei Ying, in the dance studio with Jiang Cheng hovering beside to spot the attempt, catches Yanli at the hips and directs the momentum of her takeoff hop smoothly upwards to a peak – and another boost from them both, her hands pushing off his wrists, and she's weightless in the air for a single half-turn. His hands don't quite leave her – no-one in this situation is ready yet for the additional level feature of Wei Ying's arms coming back down below shoulder level before returning up to catch her – but at the highest point they're barely skimming the fabric of her clothes, light and free of gravity for the single moment before he catches her again, before she returns breathless to his hold and they finish the lift at least as smoothly as a first attempt can ever be.

Wei Ying grins. "How was that?"

"Very good," says Yanli. She's smiling, fond and warm, and reaches up to tap one finger on his nose. "A-Ying is strong and talented." 

"Aiyo, who needs to hear the obvious –"

"More like talented at being annoying," snipes Jiang Cheng with a disgruntled expression. "How are you always so –"

"Ah, ah, Jiang Cheng, watch this, I landed it off-ice two days ago, look –" 

Wei Ying skips away, hops around in a loose backspin position on the spot, frowns a little in concentration because with a new jump there's always so much to think about at once – and springs up into a triple loop, tight and clean and fully rotated with only the slightest stumble on the landing. 

Jiang Cheng and Yanli glance at each other. 

"What?"

"A-Ying," starts Yanli in a softly awkward voice, and then Jiang Cheng interrupts in an uncomfortable rush.

"A-Niang says you're not allowed to do triple loop yet because I can't and it wouldn't look right for our reputations and it's stupid but she said I had to tell you because if you do it in front of her you'll get in trouble."

There's another silence, much more awkward this time. Then Wei Ying laughs lightly and leans in to elbow Jiang Cheng and shove at him until the sulkiness on his face fractures into irritation. 

"Aiya, it doesn't matter." He grins, pokes Jiang Cheng in the side until he slaps his hand away. "You'll just have to work harder to catch me up!"

"As if anyone could catch you," Jiang Cheng says grouchily, but there's no real bite to the words. 

"True." Wei Ying skips away again, twirling across the floor of the studio before kicking up into a split leap – it's not the same as on the ice, nothing ever is, but it's still an outlet for the fizzing energy that only ever quiets after a full day's exhaustion. 

He doesn't actually care at all about Madam Yu's new rule. It's more inconvenient than anything else – if he's getting yelled at for practising, it'll be harder to get it consistent. 

He'll just have to take a risk. 

Well, nationals are next month.

*

It's not actually that hard to swap out a salchow for a loop. The traditional entry setup for each is different, of course, but both begin from a series of back crossovers in the same curving direction – and they're both edge jumps too, with similar flow to their takeoffs despite their many distinctions.

When Madam Yu leaves the rink to buy her lunch, Wei Ying runs his free skate back-to-back-to-back with the triple salchow exchanged for his newly settling triple loop. The rest of his jumps are behaving themselves now – it took another week for them to sharpen up again, and at the end of that week he broke through the final quarter-turn and began to land the loop cleanly enough to avoid an underrotation call. Now, with four days left until nationals, it's clean six times in ten alone and three times in ten in his program. 

Even at twelve years old, Wei Ying knows those aren't great odds. But he'll take them anyway – the day I play it safe is the day I die, he'd shouted once for half the rink to hear during a fight with Madam Yu over which jumps to include in his short program – because he's got a point to make. 

He's not going to hold himself back for anyone else's sake. Jiang Cheng doesn't need to be babied; it's not like they're even competing in the same category.

Wei Ying still hasn't met anyone he could really call a rival. 

(Well, maybe that one kid at the pairs camp two weeks ago. He'd been allowed to go along for the experience, and ended up partnered with the only other solo skater there – an icy, rude boy his own age who spent most of the three days refusing to touch him outside of their specifically-given instructions and the rest of the time lifting and throwing him with such strength and precision Wei Ying couldn't stop thinking about it for a full week afterwards.)

(Wei Ying wants to skate against him.)

*

Madam Yu is furious. 

Wei Ying has a gold medal from nationals and the undivided attention of every single person who bothered to watch the novice categories, and Madam Yu is so furious he's banned from the ice for a week and screamed at for his transgressions and character flaws at least once per day. 

(That's the least of it, really. Wei Ying doesn't bother to dwell on the rest.)

It ends like this: 

You think you're so good, you think you're above everyone else, you think you're so much better than A-Cheng, you want to take his place?! Then you'll take his place!

It ends – and begins – like this: at the end of one of the most unpleasant weeks Wei Ying can remember, he stands on the ice beside Jiang Yanli, and where excitement should be is only guilt and nausea and dread. 

This isn't how it's supposed to go.

*

They already know how to skate together, of course. Madam Yu's tight-lipped expression says she knows it's because they've been doing it when she's not looking for years. But like this it's different – it's not for fun, it's not light and silly and experimental. 

It's you're doing this because you're told to. It's get this wrong and you'll fucking know about it. 

They practise simple lifts off-ice for three hours while Jiang Cheng drills triple loop prep exercises on his own in the far corner of the rink. They practise skating close, mirroring each other's choreography, jumping through each other's pathways as an opposite-direction pair –

Wei Ying can't land his triple loop.

It's gone. It's gone, and not just had a week off the ice gone, not just it'll be back tomorrow gone, not just falling a lot but it still feels close gone –

– all the way gone. 

If he gets into the air at all, it pops into a wild single and he can barely save it from a fall. If he pulls in tight and holds the position despite every instinct shrieking otherwise it's a fall every time – and they're bad ones too, harsh and jarring and unrecoverable. 

Wei Ying doesn't cry often, but he's close to it now. He doesn't care about whatever it is Madam Yu's screaming at him – something about how pathetic it is that Team Lotus' star skater can't even land the jump he embarrassed everyone's reputations and ruined a perfect pair team for, and was it really worth it –

Yes, it was – and now it's gone.

*

Jiang Cheng doesn't speak to him for a week.

Wei Ying practises lifts and throw jumps off-ice with Yanli until his arms tremble when he so much as picks up his water bottle. He lifts her on the ice – not for the first time, but for the first time with Madam Yu watching. She calls his technique sloppy and unrefined, and makes Yanli cry before the end of the morning.

"Aiya, jiejie, it's okay." Wei Ying dabs Yanli's face with a tissue, slings his arms around her and wriggles himself headfirst into her arms too until she giggles through her tears and fusses over his wayward hair and messy outfit with hands only just a little more fluttery than usual. "We'll show her."

Yanli sniffles, sighs ever so softly and quietly, replies in a very small voice. "Show her what?"

Wei Ying reaches out one finger and pokes her nose the same way she always does his. "The twist lift, of course. We can do it off-ice already, so why not? Then she'll have to shut up about my technique –"

"I don't know." Yanli sounds dubious. "It can be dangerous – we should be careful, A-Ying."

"I can do it, jiejie, don't worry – trust me. Let's show her tomorrow."

*

This is how it happens: 

Yanli, nervous and quiet but just as determined as Wei Ying in her own way, puts just a little too much force into her takeoff hop at the entry of the lift. 

Wei Ying feels Madam Yu's forbidding glare on him, all disapproval and disappointment and expectation of unsatisfactory performance – and rebels against it with the same reactive challenge that landed his triple loop at nationals, thinks you don't get to decide my capability –

– and instead of catching Yanli and guiding her back down to reset and try again, boosts her the rest of the way into the lift anyway. 

It feels too fast, just like every other first on-ice attempt at anything – and then, all at once, it's slow-motion.

Yanli, at the peak of the lift as her weight begins to leave Wei Ying's outstretched hands to complete the rotation, tips forward just a little too far above his head. 

Wei Ying shifts his weight, leans back a little and reaches to catch her and –

– his blade catches in the ice, a too-deep edge he wasn't paying attention to –

– they fall.

It's bad, for Wei Ying – sudden and unexpected and heavy, backwards and sideways with ice grazing the side of his face as he catches himself barely fast enough to save it from something worse.

Yanli, far above Wei Ying's head at entirely the wrong angle, can't catch herself at all.

*

"Don't touch her!" screams Madam Yu as Wei Ying scrambles up and turns – and slips again, catching himself in shock, suddenly dizzy as the periphery of all his senses fade out at once and everything narrows to unbearably sharp focus on –

– bright red against white, soaking translucently into the fine-cut lines recorded in each layer of the ice, and Yanli lying pale and still and just a little unnaturally positioned along with it. 

Suddenly the only sound Wei Ying can hear is his own panicked breathing. 

Time freezes. He can't move. He –

Someone grabs him, yanking him back as the fuzzed-out sound of the rink announcement system says something he can't make out and purple-uniformed rink staff run onto the ice as the rest of the skaters pour off it in response – 

– time moves again, shattering, and Wei Ying screams –

"Jiejie–!!"

– and everything, everything, everything falls apart.

*

Wei Ying meets Wen Qing three months later at a public skating session at Qishan Arena. He's slipped in without paying, because the distant uncle he's been sent to stay with thinks figure skating is a waste of time and he doesn't know what else to do to make existence bearable again.

They won't even tell him if Yanli is alive. 

Wen Qing watches him for five minutes and then asks why the hell he's on a public session when he can do a double axel, and he doesn't mean to tell her half his life story but as they skate side-by-side in endless circles of the rink through the hour and a half of too-busy-to-really-jump-safely public ice time most of it comes out anyway. 

He doesn't tell her why he was sent away, and she doesn't ask. But she does give him her phone number, and promises to speak to her coach.

Two weeks later, Wei Ying bunks off school for a trial half-day with Wen Ruohan. He's offered a place on the spot.

The uncle dismissively declines without even looking at the paperwork, but he doesn't bother to stop Wei Ying when he leaves. Wen Qing has a roll-out futon on her bedroom floor and a kind grandmother, and Wen Ruohan – well, as Wen Qing tells it, he doesn't actually care about guardian consent when the chance to capture rising talent for his team is at stake.

He's not allowed to skate in what would have been his first junior season. Wen Ruohan strips his technique back to fundamental basics to rebuild him from scratch in a new image – it's annoying and frustrating and drives Wei Ying absolutely up the wall, but he'll take it. After three months without anything, he'll take whatever he can get.

Wen Qing sends him a grainy picture from the first day of nationals showing Jiang Cheng and Yanli warming up with the junior ice dance teams, and Wei Ying spends almost a full morning silently crying from relief as he runs through endless low-level prep exercises on his own. 

(Wen Ruohan may be at nationals, but Wen Qing warned him last week that he watches the camera feeds from the rink.)

That afternoon, Wei Ying lands a shaky triple loop for the first time in a year.

*

In another year, he meets an ice-cold beautiful boy who seems vaguely familiar in no way Wei Ying can particularly place, and who takes the win from him and acts so mad about it Wei Ying immediately loses all ability to leave him alone. 

"But, Lan Zhan," he says, running after him in his skate guards as he speedwalks away from the medal ceremony, "you won! Are you mad because I got a higher PCS? Has anyone ever got a higher PCS than you before? No-one's ever got a higher TES or total than me before, this is my first silver medal you know, and I bet I would have won if I hadn't popped the triple flip in my free – hey, Lan Zhan, come back!!" 

Lan Zhan is gone.

"I'll see you at worlds!!" Wei Ying yells after him.

Chapter Text

Three days

Slowly, unsteadily, a blurred and painful excuse for awareness filters back in from blank nothing. 

It's gradual. It hurts.

There's a steady beeping somewhere in the background of it – and the half-stifled sniffling noises of someone crying.

Wei Ying, ever so carefully, cracks one eye halfway open. 

"…Jiang Cheng?" 

It's a challenge to get the words out, but he manages it – a little cracked, thick and heavy in his uncoordinated mouth, but easier by the end of the syllables than at the start. "Why… what's wrong with you?"

"Shut the fuck up," Jiang Cheng says reflexively, wiping at his face – then he startles, eyes wide, and snaps around to stare directly at Wei Ying. 

Wei Ying wrinkles his nose. Being awake is making his head throb with every breath. "Stop looking at me like that."

"You're awake again," says Jiang Cheng. "I should – I'm supposed to get someone –"

"No," Wei Ying whines. "They'll turn the lights on and ask me questions. Just pretend I didn't wake up yet."

"You're such a nightmare," says Jiang Cheng, and it comes out choked with tears like an admission of something far more intimate.

There's silence, for a few minutes. Everything hurts. Wei Ying wants – 

"Where's Lan Zhan?" he tries, and it comes out tired and a little pathetic. The room is blurred through his half-open eyes, shifting at the edges and unsteady like an extension of his own unfocused body.

"Baoshan Sanren made him get some sleep," Jiang Cheng says. Wei Ying thinks his tone is a little more pointed than strictly necessary. "Then Wen Qing made her get some sleep."

"And then?" prompts Wei Ying, because this feels like a story which isn't done yet. 

"Then I made Wen Qing get some sleep," Jiang Cheng admits after a momentary irritated glance in his direction. 

This is interesting information. Wei Ying wasn't aware of anyone who could make Wen Qing do anything. 

Unfortunately, his head feels like it's stuffed full of cotton wool which is also on fire, so he's in no particular state to try putting any pieces together right now. This is also why it's taken him until now to realise – 

"What do you mean, again?"

"Huh?" Jiang Cheng looks worried now, which doesn't suit his face at all. "What are you talking about?"

"You said…" It takes Wei Ying a long moment to recall the words, despite the fact they're the entire point of this barely-successful attempt at a conversation. "I'm awake again."

"Oh." Jiang Cheng shifts uncomfortably in his chair. "Yeah. They said you probably wouldn't remember it. It's – you're making a lot more sense this time."

"Ugh. What did I – actually, you know what, I don't want to know."

Jiang Cheng's lip curls. "You cried. Then you told Lan Zhan you loved him."

"Oh my god." Wei Ying covers his face with both hands, peeks out from between his fingers to see Jiang Cheng's expression – which, unfortunately, confirms he was not joking – and slides his fingers shut again to hide. "Oh my god."

"Get over it," says Jiang Cheng. "It's not like anyone didn't already know."

Wei Ying groans. He's been awake all of three minutes and this is already a disaster. 

There's another quiet minute. And then Jiang Cheng says, all in a rush and forced out at once, "I'm supposed to tell you that jiejie wanted to be here and she's very sorry she couldn't but she had a panic attack every time she got past the hospital doors so that's why."

Wei Ying wishes his head was still as fuzzy as it had been three minutes ago. He'd quite like a long delay before that information settles fully into his mind.

"I'm sorry," he says after a minute, and it comes out as a whisper.

Jiang Cheng doesn't say anything.

Eventually, quiet and bitter, he says, "It was your idea, wasn't it." 

It's too flat to be a question. 

"Yeah," Wei Ying whispers.

Jiang Cheng nods. He blinks a few times, eyes red-rimmed like his mind already knew the answer but his body hadn't quite caught on until Wei Ying confirmed it.

"She never blamed you, you know? That was the worst bit – all those weeks in hospital and months off the ice and she never even blamed you for it."

Wei Ying's eyes are stinging now. "And you had to switch to dance," he says wetly, and it's supposed to be an entirely inappropriate joke about the relative inferiority of ice dance when compared to figure skating, and how the horror of switching is definitely at least on par with the rest of the consequences of the fall – but it just comes out miserable.

Jiang Cheng looks at him. "You're such a fucking idiot. We wanted to switch anyway."

"…huh?"

"I can't believe you don't remember all the arguments I had with A-Niang – the only reason she kept making me work on jumps was because of you. Because it would have been embarrassing, if –"

"– yeah," finishes Wei Ying when Jiang Cheng breaks the thought. Neither of them really need to say it.

"Anyway," says Jiang Cheng a few minutes later, "the other thing I need to tell you is that your coach is fucking weird and also definitely saved your life."

Wei Ying looks at him. He hopes he can convey a raised eyebrow without actually raising any eyebrows, because his head – and entire face and body, really – still really fucking hurts. 

"You had – what did they call it – second impact syndrome, or whatever. If the ambulance hadn't already been there you probably would have –"

Jiang Cheng cuts off the words. He's not quite looking at Wei Ying.

"Oh." 

"Yeah, fucking oh, whatever – the point is, Baoshan Sanren called the fucking ambulance before your music even started."

"Oh," says Wei Ying again, because really what else is there to say to that. 

"Did Lan Zhan win?" he asks a minute later, and Jiang Cheng gives him a very odd look.

"Lan Zhan came last, you idiot. He pulled out of the free skate to go to the hospital with you."

Wei Ying blinks. The first layer of this information settles and gives way to the second.

"Last, as in… sixth?"

"What other kind of last is there at the Grand Prix Final," says Jiang Cheng with noticeable irritation. 

Wei Ying grins. Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes at him – then realisation dawns, and he curls his lip and rolls his eyes and is definitely, definitely suppressing a smile by the time he says, "You scored 126.85. Fifth place."

Even though it hurts, even though it leaves him dizzy and fades out his vision at the edges, Wei Ying starts laughing.

*

Three weeks 

They won't let him go home on his own. 

This is a problem, because Wei Ying does in fact live alone and Wen Qing no longer has a spare bedroom now Wen Ning's hockey team have moved rinks again close enough for the split rent to be worth his commute. 

(Also, Wei Ying's been harassing Nie Huaisang for gossip via text message, and the signs are all pointing to don't stay at Wen Qing's apartment without earplugs.)

When Lan Zhan arrives for his daily five-hour visit and Wei Ying tells him all this, he looks at him with a particularly blank expression which Wei Ying knows means you cannot possibly be this stupid on purpose.

"Aiya, Lan Zhan," he complains, "you can't be so mean to me when I have a brain injury. Tell me your magical solution or go and get another bag of Doritos from the vending machine, I can't be bothered to get up again."

(This is because getting up is still a hopelessly embarrassing procedure involving at least one other person. Wei Ying flatly refuses to consider any other options. He won't even have the walking frame in the room.)

"You can stay with me," says Lan Zhan patiently, like this is the most obvious thing in the world.

"Lan Zhan –"

"I have a spare bedroom. Or."

"Or," repeats Wei Ying, and leans suggestively closer into Lan Zhan's space with half a smile.

Lan Zhan's hand catches him gently, cupping the sharp edge of his jaw with tenderness he can't help but soften into. "Mn."

"Lan Zhan," he breathes, and then Lan Zhan kisses him. 

It's soft and careful. Stop treating me like I'm breakable, thinks Wei Ying, and bites at Lan Zhan's lip – half frustration, half tease, all demand. 

Lan Zhan pulls back. His eyes are dark and hot and the warning in his expression sends an electric shiver through Wei Ying's core. 

"Disobedient," says Lan Zhan, low and soft, and Wei Ying grins. 

"That's what you like, Lan-er-gege. I know all your secrets now – ah –" 

Lan Zhan, still cupping the line of Wei Ying's jaw so carefully, splays his fingers apart to make burning-hot contact with far more of Wei Ying's face and neck than he'd expected. He sighs, leans into the touch instinctively, lets his eyes flutter halfway closed at the warmth and the skin-on-skin contact and the brazen possessiveness of the gesture – and then Lan Zhan kisses him again, and it's still infuriatingly soft and careful but Wei Ying feels it now as a test, as a deliberate choice inflicted on him rather than an instinct based on his own perceived weakness, and that's okay. That's allowed. That, in fact, sends sparks flying through his nerves from his fingertips all the way up to his scalp, sets heat alight in his core and slowly smooths out every frustrated ripple of thought in his mind into steady bliss. 

"Not all," says Lan Zhan when he eventually pulls back. Wei Ying feels good-dizzy and warm all over. He makes a vague noise of agreement despite having absolutely no idea what Lan Zhan is talking about.

Lan Zhan frowns, just a little. Well – not frowns, but performs that familiar Lan Zhan equivalent, the faint tightness at the edges of his eyebrows Wei Ying knows so well. 

"My secrets," he prompts, and Wei Ying nods like he knows what this is about. It takes him a long half-minute to even realise he's missing something.

"Lan Zhan," he says after a moment of briefly awkward silence, "ah, I'm sorry."

"No need," says Lan Zhan quietly.

By now this is familiar. The only comfort is that by the third week it's somewhat less frequent than those first few days of barely being able to hold onto anything long enough to carry a conversation. Now it mostly only happens when there's some kind of distraction to pull his attention away from wherever he's trying extremely hard to keep it – like, for example, Lan Zhan kissing him mid-sentence. Forgetting what he was talking about is probably fair enough there.

He's also missing almost half the morning from the day of the free skate. This is the only one that actually gets to him, that shoves itself under his skin and makes him angry at the unfairness of the entire situation even as the rest of it slides away mostly free of regret – because he's lost that kiss. 

Not their first one – Wei Ying doesn't even want to consider the concept of losing that – but the kiss only seconds before his free skate, in front of thousands of people and both their coaches and all the judges and cameras and the whole world; the kiss that said this is me, this is us, we are more than what you think you know.

It's gone. It's a torn hole in Wei Ying's memory, and he can watch the video and see and hear everyone else's reactions but no matter how desperately he tries he can't recall the sensation of his own.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan for possibly at least the second time, and he pulls himself out of that particular spiral of thought to see Lan Zhan holding a folder of paperwork that definitely wasn't in his hands two minutes ago. 

Wei Ying doesn't ask did you go and get that or did they bring it in here, because admitting he doesn't know would only upset Lan Zhan even more.

*

They go back to Lan Zhan's apartment. It's not the first time Wei Ying's been here – or even the first time he's seen Lan Zhan's bedroom – but it's the first time he's been here with a suitcase of his own things, the first time he's watched from a carefully arranged pile of pillows on Lan Zhan's bed while Lan Zhan unpacks his clothes for him into several mysteriously empty spare dresser drawers, the first time Lan Zhan's both cooked him dinner and brought it to him in bed on a delicately patterned tray complete with tiny watercolour-style bunnies around the edge and a brand-new freshly opened bottle of chilli oil at one side. 

It's the first time he's slept in Lan Zhan's bed, curled up warm in Lan Zhan's arms like he belongs there. 

*

Wei Ying sleeps through most of the next day. He wakes mid-afternoon to Lan Zhan on the floor in an uncomfortable-looking yoga position while reading a book about –

– well, of course it's about techniques to improve working memory after a traumatic brain injury. 

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying says tiredly, "it'll sort itself out on its own. I don't need to – do anything about it."

"If you would like to," says Lan Zhan, "I want to be able to help."

"Aiya, so stubborn. Can't you find a book about walking to the bathroom without needing someone else's help?" 

The words come out just a touch more bitter than he intends. Lan Zhan closes his current reading material and indicates a second book on the floor beside him with three leaflets stacked on top of it; Wei Ying can make out the words physical therapy on what he can see of the cover. 

Wei Ying sighs – half exasperated, half fond. "You're too good. Stop being so good, Lan Zhan."

"No," says Lan Zhan solemnly. "Do you need to go to the bathroom?"

"Lan Zhan," whines Wei Ying, "you can't say it like that every time, I'm not three years old. Anyway I bet I can get up on my own now, I feel much better today."

This is mostly a lie. Wei Ying feels approximately the same as he has every day for the past week, with perhaps a slight improvement in his ability to tolerate anything brighter than a soft bedside lamp. Lan Zhan looks as though he knows it is a lie, but he says nothing at all as Wei Ying pushes back the covers and carefully relocates himself to sit at the edge of the bed. 

It's not the same kind of dizziness he'd been putting up with before. That was closing-in dizziness with the rush of his own heartbeat in his ears, nausea and dim-edged vision and everything else that comes with the very brink of passing out from overexertion. But after three weeks of strictly enforced (by everyone including Wei Ying's own body) rest, it's not that way at all this time. It's pure vertigo, nothing else but confused signals through damaged pathways failing to understand which way is supposed to be up. And it's almost worse, like this – the clarity of everything else being actually much closer to all right means it's vivid and overwhelming every single time; no soft edges pull at his consciousness to dampen the experience.

Wei Ying stumbles, clings to Lan Zhan's shoulders as he catches him, shuts his eyes to get away from it and forces them open again because long-term that's definitely not going to help and it doesn't even make much of a difference right now.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan quietly. "I have you."

Wei Ying says nothing. He leans his head forward against Lan Zhan's shoulder, clings there catching his breath with his face hidden, and does not waste any time whatsoever on what if or why or when will this be over. 

He's got better things to do with himself than marinate in self-pity about it all. The faster he pushes through recovery, the sooner he'll never have to think about any of it ever again.

He insists he doesn't need Lan Zhan's arm around his waist (no matter how much he might enjoy it); insists on only holding Lan Zhan's hands instead, gripping tightly as Lan Zhan walks backwards in front of him – and insists on Lan Zhan leaving him still standing in the bathroom, both hands braced on the counter for balance, rather than anything more undignified. 

These weeks should have been the start of everything for them. That night, before the free skate – the match held finally to tinder waiting most of a decade – right now, in Wei Ying's opinion, he should be finding out exactly what else Lan Zhan's been wanting to do to him all these years. Preferably several times per day in a wide variety of positions and locations.

Instead, he can barely make it a single step back out of the bathroom before wavering on his feet and having to grip the doorframe to keep from falling, and Lan Zhan won't do more than kiss him.

It's so unfair. It's the most unfair thing in Wei Ying's life right now.

(This does not include the fact that he is currently entirely and unequivocally incapable of skating. Wei Ying has shoved this knowledge into a box, taped the box shut and shoved it inside another box, and locked both boxes in a cupboard in the back of his mind he refuses to even look at. He's not thinking about it.)

(If he thinks about it –

– well. He's not.) 

*

Lan Zhan has bought a beautiful wooden stool with a curved seat and stylish thick legs to go in his ridiculously large expensive and gorgeous walk-in shower. 

Wei Ying takes one look at it and resolves to never ever touch it.

"Lan Zhan," he says sharply. "Get rid of it."

"Wei Ying –"

"I'll sit on the floor if I have to sit down. I'm not – just no. Take it out."

All the elegant design in the world can't hide the truth of this particular stool's stupid plastic-and-aluminium hospital cousin with grip handles at the side and holes in the seat. Wei Ying had said no to that one too, but the nurse had sat him on it anyway when his legs gave out after barely two minutes of hot water and steam and dizziness. 

Lan Zhan only nods, and two minutes later the stool is gone.

Wei Ying does end up on the floor. It's just for a minute, leaning back against the cold shower tiles to steady himself – and then forward with his head between his bent knees when that does nothing at all to keep the vertigo from worsening, and then it's not a minute at all but something significantly longer, and the moment he swallows his pride and calls Lan Zhan in a pathetically weak little voice the door opens as though Lan Zhan has been waiting right outside. 

Lan Zhan opens the window wide, and the glass door of the walk-in shower too, and the cool air makes Wei Ying shiver but it clears his head enough for him to sit upright under the flow of water while Lan Zhan washes his hair. 

"Showering together is supposed to be sexy," he complains with his eyes closed as Lan Zhan carefully massages bubbles into his scalp. 

"This will not be the only time," Lan Zhan says quietly after a moment, and it sounds like a promise. 

(Wei Ying drags showering together back out of his short-term memory with great difficulty rather than asking the only time what? . It's humiliating how much of an achievement it feels; a gritted-teeth-satisfying win against his own incapability.)

Lan Zhan turns off the water and wraps Wei Ying in an enormous fluffy towel and then actually, legitimately picks him up bridal-style from the floor, and Wei Ying really wants to be outraged about this but despite the circumstances it's really just so nice. Lan Zhan is warm and strong and smells like familiar sandalwood and Wei Ying never ever wants to leave his arms.

Lan Zhan brushes his hair so gently it doesn't even hurt, and Wei Ying falls asleep on the sofa while he cooks dinner.

*

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying after two more days like this, "isn't it Four Continents soon?"

"Mn." Lan Zhan pauses, picks another spicy Dorito out of the open bag between them on the sofa and holds it to Wei Ying's lips until they part. "Three weeks."

(This particular kind of spoiling is only allowed because Wei Ying is very obviously capable of feeding Doritos to himself if he so chose. He has a very strong feeling Lan Zhan would be doing this even if he was still training six hours every day.)

"How has Lan Qiren not killed you yet," says Wei Ying with his mouth full. "You should be at the rink –"

"I will not be competing."

"Lan Zhan." Wei Ying stares at him, horrified. "No."

"Mn."

"You can't –"

"It is my choice," says Lan Zhan calmly. 

"No," repeats Wei Ying. There's a horrible mixture of shock and guilt in his stomach, with something else he flatly refuses to give voice to burning underneath it all.

You still have a choice. I don't.

"You have to," he says instead, and makes it petulant and sulky on purpose. "I want to watch."

Lan Zhan looks at him. Gentle and too-perceptive, like he knows the real reason. 

"Next week I will return to training. Wen Qing or Nie Huaisang will come here –"

"I don't need babysitting –"

"– or if you would prefer," finishes Lan Zhan after a shift in his expression in response to his interruption which Wei Ying knows means this is not up for argument, "I can bring you there with me. To watch."

And that rips the locked cupboard in the back of Wei Ying's mind all the way open. It knocks the breath from him. 

To be at the rink – the crisp artificial cold, the scent of the air more familiar than his own home, the chatter and laughter of everyone he loves – the hiss of blades on ice and the sharp echoes of jump takeoffs beneath the ever-present music –

– to be there, and not be able to skate? 

Involuntary and sudden, Wei Ying's eyes fill with tears.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan with soft concern, and Wei Ying shakes his head. He can't speak. 

Gentle fingers catch the tears as they spill onto Wei Ying's cheeks. He leans into Lan Zhan's touch, draws in a shuddering breath to ground himself, shoves everything back into all the boxes and the cupboard and closes it again. 

"I think I'll stay here," he says eventually, and it's supposed to sound light-hearted but it just comes out a little wet.

Lan Zhan nods, like he understands. Wei Ying thinks he probably does.

They all know it, really. Every skater who's made it this far – well, no-one gets to the top without the kind of obsession that's dangerous to rip away. It's in Wen Qing's impatience by the end of a long shift spent watching the rest of them train without her, it's in A-Yan's wiggly excitement as she runs down the balcony and tries to do her skates up on her own while Jin Zixuan's still untangling himself from everyone else's bags, it's in Yanli's reappearance at nationals within a single year of everything falling apart. It's in Wei Ying's reputation as the most determined patient his physical therapist has ever met.

It's in Lan Zhan, never having known the loss of it, watching Wei Ying like he does. 

They're all afraid, deep down. 

They're all afraid of what Wei Ying's living right now.

*

Four weeks 

"So," says Wei Ying as the door closes behind Lan Zhan and his skate bag, "tell me everything."

Nie Huaisang grins and empties out an entire carrier bag of snacks onto the table. "Have you been keeping up with this season of Bake Off?" 

"Definitely not what I asked," says Wei Ying. "Also no, and don't put it on because I can't hold a conversation if there's background noise. I want rink gossip." 

(It's easier to just get it out of the way upfront. He'd rather not have to explain midway through the afternoon why he's completely lost the thread of whatever Huaisang was telling him because something on TV made a slightly unusual noise that siphoned off the entire pathetic capacity of his working memory at once.)

Huaisang rolls his eyes. "I wouldn't ask unless it was relevant. Two of the bakers are visibly and obviously having an affair which neither of them will admit to –"

"Wait, are you saying Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing haven't told anyone yet?"

"I am saying exactly that. It's the most ridiculous charade I've ever seen."

Wei Ying grabs a bag of popcorn from the table and pulls it open. "Go on."

"So." Huaisang smirks, folds his legs up on the sofa and settles himself comfortably among the cushions. "It started when you were in hospital."

"Seriously?!" Wei Ying doesn't know whether to start laughing or call Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing both here in outrage to demand an explanation.

Huaisang nods, wide-eyed. "I thought it was just a stress fuck, you know? But –"

Wei Ying half-chokes on his popcorn. "Please don't say that about Jiang Cheng."

"Aiya, just because you've never done it –"

"How would you know what I haven't done –"

"Yingying," says Huaisang with deeply weary affection. "I've known you for eight years. If you'd had actual sex that involved actually taking off your clothes, I would know."

Wei Ying opens his mouth to protest – and closes it again. Huaisang nods, satisfied.

"Anyway, it doesn't actually seem to have stopped. Wen Ning says he's had to buy noise-cancelling headphones –"

"– gross –"

"– and they keep going out for lunch together and coming back at least fifteen minutes later than usual. Between that and you not being there I think Baoshan Sanren's bored out of her mind. You know I saw her actually skate one of her old programs the other day when Wen Qing was almost half an hour late in the morning?"

"Wait, really? Have you got –"

"The CCTV? Obviously." Huaisang pulls out his phone. 

"Ah – wait." Wei Ying wrinkles his nose, shifts uncomfortably against the cushions. "Just send it to me."

Huaisang nods. For a moment, there's an expression on his face somewhere adjacent to Lan Zhan's – understanding, sympathy, the briefest hint of borrowed don't-imagine-it-for-yourself distress.

"Is Mo Xuanyu still coming for a trial week?" Wei Ying asks, to break the silence and stop Huaisang from looking at him like that. 

"Oh, yeah, Baoshan Sanren wants to talk to you about that." Huaisang pauses, waits for the question on Wei Ying's face. "She wants to make sure you're okay with it happening while you're not there."

Wei Ying blinks. "What, is she worried I'll think she's replacing me?"

"See," says Huaisang with one finger lifted to emphasise the point, "you wouldn't have actually said that unless it was already in your mind."

Wei Ying makes a face. "Stop trying to psychoanalyse people, you're embarrassingly bad at it."

"I'm definitely not," says Huaisang with an enigmatic smile. "Also, if you feel like hiding in the boot store again when you come back, take a blacklight in there first because I know for a fact there's no cameras in the middle section and I don't trust Wen Qing not to take advantage."

"Ew." Wei Ying pauses. "Are they skating together too?"

"Nah, you know Wen Qing makes too much of a point out of being independent. They warm up together though, and they do that disgusting helping each other stretch thing you and Lan Zhan have been doing since juniors –"

"Hey, that's not inherently sexual –"

"Oh my god, it is and you know it." Huaisang pulls a disgusted face. "You've both been using it like an overdone metaphor ever since your first season together."

This is, possibly, a fair enough assessment.

"Listen," says Wei Ying. "It's not my fault Lan Zhan is so –"

"I actually do not want to hear it," Huaisang replies blandly. "Who else do you want updates on?"

"The babies," says Wei Ying decisively. "Has A-Yan tried her double salchow off the harness yet?"

Huaisang smirks. "A-Yan has thrown a screaming tantrum every day for the past week because they won't let her back on the harness. She's obsessed with it. Yanli's been negotiating terms with her over how many times per week she gets to use it and what she has to work on in-between – but to answer your question, she landed it once by fluke a week and a half ago and hasn't shut up about it since. It's very endearing."

That's endearing in the way Huaisang uses to mean annoying when he's talking about the juniors. Wei Ying smiles.

"Ah, what else – oh, Zizhen and A-Qing are officially training as a pair now. And Jingyi sprained his ankle in a warm-up at some random junior competition so he's off for the next week at least."

"Aiya," Wei Ying starts with a sigh, and he means to follow it with a sympathetic platitude for Jingyi but what actually comes out is, "I'm missing so much."

Huaisang leans over and steals a handful of his popcorn. "That's what I'm here for. You'll be back in no time."

*

Six weeks 

Lan Zhan, stubborn and awful, doesn't go to Four Continents.

He doesn't go to the rink, either, because everyone else has gone and there's no-one left to babysit Wei Ying even though he definitely, definitely doesn't need it by now. Lan Zhan worries too much. 

When Wei Ying points this out, Lan Zhan goes silent and still and then says I watched you almost die and Wei Ying decides to shut up about it.

He can walk around the apartment on his own now (though more often than not he still needs at least the tips of his fingers on one wall for balance). He can spend at least ten minutes in the shower by himself without having to sit down on the floor. It's progress.

Frustratingly, unbearably slow – but progress all the same.

On the first morning of what should have been their next competition, a few hours before the livestream for Wen Qing's short program is due to start, Lan Zhan wraps Wei Ying in a long coat that looks suspiciously like a slightly sleeker version of Jin Zixuan's puffy rink-parent monstrosity and a soft pale blue scarf from his own wardrobe and hands him a pair of sunglasses.

Wei Ying blinks up at him from his seat on the edge of the bed and tilts his head in curiosity. He holds up the sunglasses like a question.

"It is winter," says Lan Zhan with a slight incline of his head towards the gauzy curtains still drawn across the window. "Mornings can be bright."

"Aiya, Lan Zhan, you're too sweet." Wei Ying stands up, drapes himself around Lan Zhan for a slow kiss that turns long and heated and a little sloppy, barely manages not to whine as Lan Zhan pulls back with a soft little almost-smile. 

Wei Ying grins and leans back in for a final brief press of closed lips. He winds his arms around Lan Zhan's neck, sunglasses dangling from his fingertips. "Lan Zhan."

"Wei Ying."

"Are you excited?"

"Mn."

"I don't believe you," says Wei Ying with teasing decisiveness. "If you want me to believe you you have to take me outside right this second."

Lan Zhan looks down at him with one eyebrow lifted infinitesimally higher than the other. "I am trying."

Wei Ying laughs, bright and pleased, and then Lan Zhan plucks the sunglasses from his fingers and slides them ever so gently onto his face and walks beside him out of the apartment for the first time in far too many weeks. 

It's – a shock, at the first step. Winter-cold air floods Wei Ying's senses and makes his head ache at the first half-gasped breath of it, and Lan Zhan's indoor lights haven't been a problem for a week or so now but even with sunglasses the daylight is fucking bright. 

It's exhilarating.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, tight with concern, "are you all right?"

"Huh? Oh – yeah, no, Lan Zhan, it's all good, wow – fuck, I missed this."

Wei Ying is in fact very, very dizzy right now. But it doesn't matter – Lan Zhan's arm is looped through his, solid and reassuring as he leans heavily against him and clings there for several long moments, and when he takes another breath and a single unsteady step forwards it's manageable. It's worth it.

They walk all the way around the block in a slow loop, and then Wei Ying can't bear to go back inside just yet but he's also shaky and exhausted and rapidly losing what's left of his balance so Lan Zhan lifts him to sit on the low wall beside the apartment building and holds him upright as he just exists, outside.

Fuck, Wei Ying missed the rest of the world so much.

*

Wei Ying dozes on the sofa for almost two hours when Lan Zhan finally half-carries him back inside, and when he gradually begins to surface Lan Zhan's laptop is connected to the TV and showing the livestream of what is currently a clean empty sheet of ice surrounded by a quietly expectant crowd. 

It's the first time Wei Ying's even looked at an ice rink in six weeks. Something inside him goes tight and painful and aching at the sight. 

We should be there, he doesn't say. You should be there. 

I should be there.

Wen Qing isn't scheduled until the fourth and final warm-up group. They watch for almost two hours, until even when Wei Ying goes to fetch another blanket from the bedroom he can hear fragments of music and crisp-hissing edges and the echoing snap of jump takeoffs lingering in endless playback through his mind entirely without conscious permission or direction. 

It's so familiar it hurts. He doesn't need to be there for his senses to fill with the rest of it – the artificial chill of the air, the wet scent of damp rubber matting around the edges of the ice, the silent pocket of time between warm-up and program like a private unseen bubble tucked away from the crowd while someone else's music plays.

Wen Qing skates clean. Her triple axel is gorgeous, height and power and flow far improved from the start of the season, and as far as Wei Ying can recall it's a personal best score for her. Unless she really screws up the free skate tomorrow she's all but guaranteed a medal.

The soundscape of competition echoes in Wei Ying's mind long after Lan Zhan turns the livestream off. 

He knows he's quiet through what little remains of the evening. For once he just doesn't have the energy to fill the silence.

*

Wei Ying wakes, sudden and unmoored on the sofa in the dark. Lan Zhan – didn't wake him, didn't say goodnight to him, didn't take him to bed. Lan Zhan isn't there.

Lan Zhan is –

Lan Zhan is standing in the living room doorway with two awkwardly lumpy bags slung across his back together. 

One of them belongs to Wei Ying. 

Wei Ying hasn't seen it in six weeks.

He doesn't speak, in case this is a dream. He doesn't think it is, by the way his head still spins when he stands up and his unsteady legs almost refuse to carry him across the room – but just in case. 

Lan Zhan's arm is warm and secure at his waist as they walk out to the car. Wei Ying's shivering by the time they get there, but it doesn't matter because Lan Zhan immediately turns on the fancy heated seats which usually send Wei Ying straight to sleep. 

They don't, this time. Wei Ying is wide awake.

He's wide awake all the way to the rink.

*

Lan Zhan has a key. Wei Ying doesn't ask how he has a key, or how he knows the code to deactivate the building alarm, or how he's familiar enough with the lighting system to switch on only a single diagonal run of lights across the very centre of the rink; a diffuse glow of white with shadows draped at either side. 

The ice is fresh and smooth and unmarked. Wei Ying stares at it like he's starving. 

When he ties his skates tight, the laces leave red marks on his fingers in the soft places where years-old calluses once were. 

Six weeks, to undo a lifetime.

Lan Zhan presses gentle kisses to every red-bitten finger; hot breath on Wei Ying's skin. 

They look at the ice, together.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying whispers. It echoes loud in the empty silence. 

"Wei Ying."

It's quiet. So quiet here. The shadows tint the ice blue-grey.

"You know I can't do it."

The words are hollow, like the rest of him.

"You will not need to."

Wei Ying doesn't ask what he means. He only watches as Lan Zhan steps onto the ice, as he skates with sure strokes to the sound system, as he plugs in his phone and pushes the slider up all the way and – pauses, just for a moment. 

Wei Ying sees him take a single careful breath.

He taps the screen of his phone once, and skates back to where Wei Ying stands at the open gate with both hands tight on the barrier.

And he holds out his hands.

Wei Ying steps onto the ice, trembling and unsteady, as the first notes of an unfamiliar song echo through the emptiness around them.

Lan Zhan holds him. Lan Zhan takes his weight with one strong arm around his waist, shares his balance with his other arm guiding Wei Ying's like a shadow, keeps him close and safe and steady as they move together. 

Slowly at first, then just a little faster. Just fast enough for the crisp-cold air to catch in the beginnings of a wind so familiar it calls Wei Ying's heart beloved.

Welcome home, it says. You've been away so long.

I never left, thinks Wei Ying with tears in his eyes.

The music builds. Lan Zhan leads him in simple movements; slow crossovers around the corners and long gliding edges down the centre of the rink, through shadow and light and shadow again. Wei Ying closes his eyes and it feels like flying.

Lan Zhan doesn't let go of him even once.

Time pauses for them. Nothing else is real in the whole world but the ice and the music and Lan Zhan's touch.

It's everything. It's a single vital moment, crystallised forever.

The music ends. Wei Ying doesn't realise he's shaking until Lan Zhan guides him gently back towards the barrier.

"Lan Zhan," he says, and it comes out desperate and thick with unshed tears. "Lan Zhan. Play it again."

Lan Zhan pushes up his sleeve, taps at the dark-glass screen of his watch, pulls Wei Ying carefully back out onto the ice as the silence overflows once more with sound. 

It's less dreamlike, this time. Wei Ying feels awake, aware, alive for the first time in months. 

"Lan Zhan," he murmurs, and it's only then he feels the chill of cool air whispering across fresh wetness on his cheeks, "where did you find this song?"

Lan Zhan doesn't answer for a long moment. 

Then, quiet and soft – 

"It is for you."

"Lan Zhan –" 

Wei Ying turns in his arms, stumbling a little – Lan Zhan slows, catches him easily, brings them to a careful stop in the centre of the ice – and Wei Ying kisses him. 

For a long minute, there's only Lan Zhan. Only Lan Zhan, holding him close, keeping him from falling in the very heart of the place he loves best and kissing him like he's the only thing that's ever mattered. 

"Lan Zhan," he says again, halfway incoherent against his lips, "Lan Zhan, tell me who you skated pairs with." 

He thinks he knows. He thinks there's something he's forgotten – something lost in the haze of his whole adolescent life falling apart around him (because of him), something buried by three months of nothing and a full year of far too much – something Lan Zhan remembers, and he doesn't. 

"You," whispers Lan Zhan, hot against his open mouth, and Wei Ying believes him.

*

They don't stop kissing. The music ends for the second time, and silence falls over the twilit rink, and they glide to the edge and then entirely fail to leave the ice because Lan Zhan's hands are in Wei Ying's hair and the only word for the kiss now is possessive and Wei Ying would rather die than move away from him right now.

"Lan Zhan," he pants, pressed against the barrier and hot all over, "Lan Zhan, please."

Lan Zhan pushes him against the boards – and drops to his knees. 

"What –" Wei Ying starts, and then his question is immediately answered by cold air and Lan Zhan's hot mouth and it's an absolute fucking miracle he doesn't pass out on the spot because fuck – 

Lan Zhan's hands, pinning his hips in place with heated, claiming certainty, are the only thing keeping him even vaguely upright as he unravels under Lan Zhan's attention. There's a vague, faint self-awareness in the back of his mind that can hear his own voice echoing high and clear in the stillness of the silent rink – it's something akin to a spotlight, the drawn-in focus of hushed shadow and emptiness all around him, as though – 

– as though the rink itself is watching, and it's that which pulls him all the way undone.

Wei Ying comes apart, and Lan Zhan catches him as his legs give out from the force of it, and then they're on their knees together on the ice with steaming puffs of breath between them and Lan Zhan's lips are shiny-pink-swollen and taste like salt and heat when Wei Ying kisses him.

Thank you hovers on the edge of Wei Ying's tongue – not for this but for everything tonight, every indescribably perfect piece of it – but he doesn't speak it. It's not – it falls utterly, entirely short of everything he wants to say. 

Thank you for bringing me here. Thank you for giving this back to me.

"I love you," he whispers, because even if Jiang Cheng told him he already said it he needs to say it again. He needs to remember it. "Lan Zhan. I love you."

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan, and it's low and quiet and brimming over with emotion Wei Ying – suddenly and to his own surprise – can read almost easier than his own. 

Wei Ying kisses him again. Lan Zhan whispers I love you against his lips with his eyes closed and a soft kind of tension in his features that makes Wei Ying want to cry just a little bit, and they stay there on the ice until Wei Ying starts shivering. 

Lan Zhan carries him out of the rink, and he falls asleep in the warmth of the car on the way home with I love you still soft in the quiet of his mind.

Chapter Text

Eight weeks 

"How are you feeling?" 

It's the first time Baoshan Sanren's visited since the hospital. She's sitting on Lan Zhan's sofa with a cup of tea and an expression Wei Ying can't actually read at all.

He shrugs, rearranges himself a little on the sofa, doesn't quite look at her straight on. "Fine."

"Wei Ying."

There's a long pause. Then Baoshan Sanren puts down her cup of tea.

"You're the best skater I've ever had," she says, and, well – it's not like this is any particular news to Wei Ying. But there's still something about hearing it from her so plainly – Wei Ying knows, deep down as one of the fundamental truths of his existence, that Baoshan Sanren never says anything she doesn't mean. 

Which is why, when she follows it with, "You're talented, you're creative, you work harder than anyone else when no-one's looking, and you're going to get yourself killed."

– Wei Ying, for once, doesn't say anything at all.

"I will accept exactly half the responsibility for what happened. I should never have let you skate that day."

"It wasn't your –"

"Wei Ying," she says firmly, "shut up. I'm talking, you're listening."

Wei Ying closes his mouth and sits still.

"The other half," Baoshan Sanren continues, "is you pretending to be fine. And I'm going to make this very clear – if that carries on, not only will you no longer be skating with me, I will call whatever other coach you find and let them know exactly why they shouldn't trust a thing you say."

The silence this time is the loudest thing Wei Ying has ever heard.

"So I'll ask you again. How are you feeling?"

It takes Wei Ying a very long moment to swallow back fine and force something else to take its place. It is in fact quite genuinely one of the hardest things he has ever done.

"Still dizzy most of the time," he forces out after a minute. It comes out a little cracked; he clears his throat and tries again. "It's not as bad as it was."

Baoshan Sanren nods. "Are you ready to come back?"

As she looks at him, Wei Ying knows immediately it's a test.

He can't actually say it. She must know he can't actually say it. 

She waits. 

Wei Ying, nails digging into his palms where his hands sit tight-clenched in his lap, shakes his head minutely. 

Baoshan Sanren relaxes. She picks up her tea again, takes a sip of it, reaches out to place one hand on his arm with a gentle squeeze.

She doesn't say I'm proud of you, but Wei Ying's known her for most of a decade and he doesn't need to hear it. 

"We'll reassess in four weeks. I know it's a long time, but you're nowhere near right now. If you come back too soon you'll just end up frustrated."

Wei Ying nods. 

They sit in silence for a while longer. It's a light, clear kind of silence now. It feels like – opportunity. Like the day he'd spotted Baoshan Sanren talking to Lan Qiren at the junior world championships; like the moment she'd turned to catch him looking and waved him over with a smile. 

"I want your input on Mo Xuanyu," she says, and Wei Ying leans over with interest as she takes out her phone. "He's been here two days, that's long enough to show something a bit more real – watch this and tell me what you think."

It's a new program, nothing Wei Ying's seen from him this season – and already, it's better than the skating he's shown any judges so far. There's still the occasional technical flaw, of course – Wei Ying pauses the video, drags it back frame-by-frame and zooms in close on the takeoff of a jump. 

"Has he been getting edge calls this season?"

For some reason, Baoshan Sanren looks pleased. "Good spot. He's only had one or two, but that's what happens when your coach likes to bribe ISU officials. I've already told him if he leaves he won't be able to get away with that kind of poor technique."

Wei Ying considers this. "What was his reaction?"

"He doesn't want to get away with it."

"Hm." Wei Ying taps the video again, watches the step sequence three times in a row. "He's got more emotional range than he's delivering right now. He needs to skate to different music, this isn't showcasing his potential – why are you looking at me like that?"

Baoshan Sanren grins. Wei Ying narrows his eyes at her. "You don't actually need my input."

"As much as I always value your opinions," – Wei Ying snorts, and Baoshan Sanren smirks in response – "I have in fact been a coach for longer than you've been alive. I know Xuanyu has a bad flutz and far more expressive potential than he knows how to show yet."

"So you're –"

"Yes. You."

Wei Ying experiences two equally powerful emotions in opposing directions at the exact same time.

The one that wins out first is – 

"I'm not retiring."

Baoshan Sanren raises her eyebrows at him. "Is Lan Huan retired?"

"No –"

"Then don't even think it. Wei Ying."

She stops. Waits for him to look at her.

"I know you're coming back. This is – more. I've seen you with the novices and juniors. I know you want this."

He does. He does. There's a smile breaking on his face entirely without his permission, so wide it makes his cheeks hurt, and there's a future with clipboards and paperwork and kids who skate to the barrier for him at competitions, who follow him around for advice – okay, so they do that already – and spend their lesson time with him too, and –

"Here's what's going to happen," says Baoshan Sanren in the same tone as the very first time she ever said quad salchow-quad loop to him. "I'm going to spend the next month sorting out Xuanyu's basics. Then you're going to watch me fix his lutz takeoff, and I'm going to watch you fix his choreographic expressiveness and teach him how to pick music."

"Yes," says Wei Ying, and Baoshan Sanren –

– pulls out a folder from her bag with a neatly printed label saying coaching application forms stuck on the top right corner. 

"Did you just have that," says Wei Ying.

Baoshan Sanren only smiles.

*

Three months 

It's Wei Ying's first time at the world championships without an ISU-issued competitor lanyard. The media does not seem to care about this distinction.

"Wei Ying, how is your recovery progressing?"

"Will you be back on the ice this season?" 

"Do you have any other quadruple combinations planned for the –"

"Is it true your coach called the ambulance before your free skate even began?"

Wei Ying stops walking. "Who told you that?"

The reporter's answer is drowned by at least five other questions. Wei Ying absolutely cannot be bothered to even attempt to listen to any of them.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan quietly beside him. One of his hands is settled warm and firm at the small of Wei Ying's back; it's grounding, stabilising amidst the flurry of arrival for the first day.

"Wei Ying, have you been back to the ice since the accident?"

"Can you still land the quadruple flip?"

"Is it true that you never fully recovered after the NHK Trophy –"

"Wei Ying, can you comment on –"

"Wei Ying –"

"Here's something for you all to occupy yourselves with," Wei Ying says with an extremely fake smile. "Go and ask Jiang Cheng about his relationship status."

Lan Zhan guides him smoothly away from the redoubled onslaught of overexcited questioning. Wei Ying leans against him just a little, winds one arm around his waist, pushes the awareness from his mind of exactly how strange it is to be walking through this space without his skate bag slung across his back (it's in the hotel room; he couldn't not bring it) and says, "Aiya, Lan Zhan, how slowly do you think Wen Qing's going to kill me for that?"

Lan Zhan pretends to consider this. "She may encounter difficulty meeting her objective."

Wei Ying bursts out laughing, because he knows that's Lan-Zhan-speak for not even hypothetical for-a-bit harm will come to you while I am here and it's actually so sweet he can't bear it. 

And then Lan Zhan has to walk through a very familiar door that this time, Wei Ying is barred from entering.

"Ah," he says brightly as he steps to one side. "Go on, Lan Zhan. I'll go around and watch."

Lan Zhan looks at him. There's understanding in his gaze Wei Ying doesn't actually want to acknowledge right now. 

It's enough just being here. He can't bear to think about it on top of that.

"Go on," he says again with a smile, and Lan Zhan kisses him in front of the cameras which have followed them around the corner and goes.

Wei Ying wanders. He doesn't go straight to the tiered seating around the rink – for a start, Lan Zhan is ridiculously early for the practice session and will probably spend at least fifteen minutes warming up off-ice, and secondly – well, he's avoiding it. 

It's a little bit pointless, when he's come here for the express purpose of watching, but he knows exactly how he'll feel the minute he steps into the rink itself and he's in no particular hurry to face that.

There's a cafe tucked behind the main entrance, above the rink and running halfway along the length of it like a glass-fronted balcony. Wei Ying pays for a hot chocolate with a truly inordinate quantity of whipped cream and marshmallows, picks a seat beside the glass at the far end of the cafe where he's alone amidst empty tables – and watches. 

The hot chocolate is good. It's unusual to find actual high-quality hot drinks at a rink; Wei Ying's spent most of his life subsisting on vending machine coffee and other such unspeakable atrocities – but this is nice. It's warm and rich and smooth and Wei Ying cups his hands around it like they're cold and watches through the glass as the first practice session of the world championships opens without him.

Wen Qing is first onto the ice. Wei Ying sees Baoshan Sanren lean over the barrier and call something after her as she flies into her usual fast warm-up with what looks to Wei Ying like even more determination than usual – she always takes competition seriously, but even from this far above Wei Ying can see the pinched expression on her face. 

He wonders. It's not like it's her first time at worlds – she's placed on the podium or close to it almost every year since moving up to the senior circuit – but there's something. There's some kind of stake in this for her that wasn't there before.

Out of the loop and away from the day-to-day of the rink, Wei Ying has no idea what it could be. 

But he knows who will.

Wei Ying: whats going on w qing-jie?
Nie Huaisang: i have no idea what youre talking about 
Wei Ying: bullshit 
Nie Huaisang: i really dont know 
Nie Huaisang: maybe u should ask her yourself
Wei Ying: so u do know then
Nie Huaisang: i really dont know anything at all 

Wei Ying rolls his eyes and starts typing youre so full of shit, just tell me already – and then stops, phone forgotten until the screen goes dark, because the practice session is in full flow now and the rink is a swirling hive of activity – 

– and there, midway through the ugliest combination spin Wei Ying has ever seen in his life, is Wen Chao.

For a single moment that feels far longer than it really is, Wei Ying is no longer alone in the quiet cafe far above the ice.

He's under a spotlight on a darkened rink, surrounded by bright chatter and cold clear air as he gathers speed and turns and takes off – and the memory's fragmented; disjointed flashes and flickers that make his head spin as they're dragged out from somewhere thought long-lost – Wen Chao slides backwards out of the crowd, laughing – 

Wei Ying sucks in a breath that's more than half a gasp. There's – scattered droplets of hot chocolate on the table, spilled over the edge of his mug as he flinched from the memory, and as he sets it down and wipes the mess with the obligatory stack of thin paper napkins he realises his hands are shaking.

"Wei Ying?"

It's almost embarrassing how much he startles at his own name. It's – he doesn't exactly have a coherent explanation for it. 

Jin Zixuan has a pull-along skate bag trailing from each hand and a carefully concerned expression that kind of makes Wei Ying want to smack him. There's very little he hates more than being looked at like that. Especially after – 

Well, after the entirety of the past several months.

"Hi," he says, and slurps cream obnoxiously off the top of his hot chocolate. "Can I help you?"

"I was just," says Jin Zixuan, and gestures vaguely in the direction of the rest of the cafe. Wei Ying cranes around him to see Jin Ling and A-Yan picking out sandwiches and crisps and arguing over who gets which flavour of juice in the entirely unreasonable way of small children becoming deeply invested in an extremely non-existent problem. It's adorable.

Unfortunately, these particular small children are not the slightest bit interested in having a fun chat with Wei Ying to save him from interacting with their father. Jin Ling plops down cross-legged on the floor directly in front of the glass to eat his sandwich, while A-Yan doesn't even bother to sit – as soon as Zixuan opens her bag of crisps she's pressed up against it to watch the practice below with rapt attention. 

Jin Zixuan hovers awkwardly in the background for approximately forty-five seconds before Wei Ying sighs and rolls his eyes and waves a hand in the direction of the chair across from him. 

"Uh," he starts after an uncomfortable minute of silence, with exactly the level of stilted awkwardness Wei Ying's come to expect from him over the past decade. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," says Wei Ying, because Zixuan is not Baoshan Sanren and therefore does not require or deserve a particularly truthful answer. 

It's not that far from the truth anyway. This past month has been a winding path of worse days and better days and three-steps-forward-two-steps-back – but eventually, so infuriatingly slow it's driven him half out of his mind along the way, progress.

He can take a shower on his own for as long as he wants. He can go outside without requiring either sunglasses or Lan Zhan's arm for balance. He can – usually – remember both where he's put his keys and the thread of whatever conversation he's supposed to be having. 

(This last one is the most tenuous still, but, well – 

– between a functional mind and the ability to skate again, Wei Ying knows which one he'd choose.)

He still ends most days the kind of tired that stains his whole body with weakness, that leaves him brushing fingertips across the wall for balance and curling up in silence with his head pillowed in Lan Zhan's lap – but each good day lets him reach a little further before that limit. 

It's progress. Towards a very specific goal.

Halfway through next week, Wei Ying's calendar is circled in red.

"I heard you're coming back soon?" Jin Zixuan sounds irritatingly polite. It's not even his fault – really, there's no longer any reason for Wei Ying to actually dislike him. He's long since apologised to everyone involved for being such a prick to Yanli in their teenage years – and in actuality, Wei Ying wasn't even around for most of that. 

(Maybe that's why it still bothers him so much. From what he's heard, teen Zixuan was badly in need of a punch to the face, and Wei Ying hadn't been allowed close enough to Yanli back then to do the world a service by fulfilling that particular need.)

"Yeah," he says, without making an unnecessarily rude facial expression about it. Look at me, jiejie, I'm making an effort. "Next Thursday."

Zixuan nods. "It'll be good to have you around again."

This time Wei Ying can't actually suppress the doubtfully askance look he sends in Zixuan's direction. And Zixuan – surprisingly enough, there's wry acknowledgement on his face as he glances up at Wei Ying in return. 

Does Zixuan know he's awkward and bland to interact with? Because that's a hell of a lot funnier than what Wei Ying's been assuming.

Wei Ying grins. "Did you really miss me?"

"I," says Zixuan with a slightly odd expression, and then pauses. Wei Ying tilts his head in curiosity. 

Eventually, Zixuan continues with, "I'm glad you're coming back." And then he pauses again, with a look on his face like he's trying to find the right words for something, and Wei Ying finds himself actually for the first time in his life interested in finding out what Jin Zixuan has to say.

Zixuan says, "Um," and then, "Did A-Li ever tell you I used to play hockey?"

Wei Ying takes another slurp of his hot chocolate (less obnoxiously this time). "Yeah. Until you were seventeen, right?"

Zixuan nods. "Did she tell you why I quit?"

Wei Ying shakes his head. This lack of information is definitely his own fault – he and Jiang Cheng both have excessively dramatic allergic reactions to being told things about Jin Zixuan.

"I," says Zixuan again. "There was an accident."

All at once, a few background pieces of information begin to make a little more sense. 

"There was a kid who wanted to try out for the older age division early," he continues, and Wei Ying's eyes widen as some entirely unrelated other pieces of background information suddenly begin to make a lot more sense. 

That's the thing about the ice – figure or hockey, it's a very small world. 

"Your coach said you should take it further, but you knew it was an accident," Wei Ying says slowly. "The other kid had to switch rinks."

Zixuan blinks. "How do you know –"

Because I was living with the other kid's sister. "Call it a hunch."

Zixuan gives him a doubtful look. "Okay. Anyway." He pauses, glances from his empty hands to the cafe counter with what Wei Ying thinks is a very obvious desire for coffee (or possibly jealousy of Wei Ying's exceptionally high-quality hot chocolate), looks back down at the table for a quiet moment before meeting Wei Ying's gaze again. "I didn't recover well enough. They told me it was too much of a risk to go back."

It takes a long second for the words – the impact within them – to fully hit.

Wei Ying stares at him. All at once, every thread holding them both in position is visible – Wei Ying's, glittering gold and thin, barely a handful left but enough, enough – 

– and Zixuan, adrift amidst snapped dead ends.

"How the hell," says Wei Ying quietly, and it wavers just a little because this is far far too close to a mirror for any comfort, "do you go there every day?"

Zixuan shrugs. "It's not so bad. Your world isn't the same as mine was – I'm sure you could watch a hockey game without caring too much about it."

Wei Ying wrinkles his nose a little. "Sure."

"It's been a long time. A-Li and the kids – that's what the rink's about for me now."

Wei Ying lets out a long breath. He can't imagine – 

Well, no. That's the problem; he can imagine. He's been close enough not just to imagine but to stare it in the fucking face.

"That's why I said it," says Zixuan. "That it's good you're coming back."

"Yeah," says Wei Ying. He's still halfway in shock. All these years – all these years, and he never knew – 

All these months, and one person who truly understood what he was facing. 

"Tomorrow," he says suddenly. "The short program. Do you want to sit together?"

"Sure," says Zixuan, and it's not like there's any incredible moment of clarity or sunshine-rainbows-friendship but the quietly understated recognition between them is enough.

Then A-Yan smacks the glass with greasy crisp-covered fingers and shouts A-Niang in overexcitable glee as Yanli and Jiang Cheng join the practice session, and Jin Ling tells her to shut up so I can hear the music, and Zixuan is immediately occupied with refereeing another argument which ends with a very large slice of cake as a distraction. 

Wei Ying turns his attention back to the ice. Lan Zhan is skating now, and that's more than enough of a distraction to redirect most of the way his mind is swirling around this new information like a hurricane. 

He can't stop thinking about how close he came to never again.

*

It's the morning of the free skate. Wei Ying is lying in bed, stretched out half-awake in the warm space left behind by Lan Zhan's early departure like a cat in sunlight, peaceful and quiet and calm like the tastefully decorated hotel room around him. 

Until the sharp knock at the door in Wen Qing's familiar rhythm. 

"Mmm." Wei Ying rolls over a full turn from one side of the bed to the other, shoving his face into Lan Zhan's pillow along the way and smiling at the familiar sandalwood warmth. "Come in, it's not locked."

There's a long moment of silence. Eventually, Wei Ying cracks one eye open to find out why.

Wen Qing is standing awkwardly just inside the door, already in her free skate dress under her warm-up jacket and with loose unlaced trainers shoved haphazardly over her tights. There's ice dusted over her right hip and all across the palms of her gloves. 

"Okay," she says, when she catches him looking. "This is not an endorsement of your actions."

Wei Ying props himself up on one elbow. "I'm sensing a but." 

"Shut up," Wen Qing says tightly, and then, "I need to ask you something."

Wei Ying wriggles around in the blankets until he's sitting up against the headboard and looks at her properly. "Go on."

"I know the symptom list for post-concussion syndrome. I know you felt like shit every day for weeks before the Grand Prix Final."

"Okay, that's not actually a question –"

"How were you still landing triples?"

Wei Ying pauses, looks at her – looks at her again.

Wen Qing makes a face. "I'm not injured."

"I," says Wei Ying pointedly, "do not believe you."

"I'm not. It's – I'll tell you after the free skate."

"Hmm."

"You're such a hypocrite –"

"Aiya, all right." Wei Ying looks at her carefully. She's a little pale, a little wild-eyed as she stands there with the minutes ticking down between them – the passage of time is never more second-by-second vivid than on competition mornings – but she doesn't look anywhere close to the way he'd felt in those weeks really. 

It's probably fine. 

(And he knows, even if it's not – there's absolutely no point in even suggesting she withdraw. She's easily as stubborn as he is.)

(She's also in second place after the short program. With a gold medal this close – no, there's no way.)

"You know when you land a new jump in competition for the first time and it makes you kind of forget where you are for a second? But you carry on perfectly anyway, because –"

"– autopilot, yeah," Wen Qing finishes for him, impatient in exactly the way that won't help her on the ice at all.

"Right. You have to do that on purpose."

"What, just – not think about it?" 

Wei Ying grins. "How many times has Baoshan Sanren told you you overthink your jumps anyway –"

"Shut up and finish explaining."

He shrugs. "There's not much more to it. Your body knows what to do if you just switch off your awareness of how much you feel like shit and let it happen."

Wen Qing nods. For a moment she looks preoccupied in a very specific way Wei Ying knows from long years training side-by-side – it's the expression she falls into when she's forcibly integrating new feedback or information into her intentions. 

Usually, in their day-to-day at the rink, it's followed by a newly clean jump landing. 

Wei Ying watches as she settles herself, as she breathes out the impatience and finally dusts the remainder of the half-melted ice flakes from her hands and body and closes her eyes for a long beat Wei Ying knows is a clean triple axel in her mind. 

Visualise it, says Baoshan Sanren every time. Listen to your music with your eyes shut and feel yourself skate clean. 

"Go," says Wei Ying when she opens her eyes again. "You've got this."

"Thanks," says Wen Qing with quiet determination, and then she's gone.

*

The men's event is first. Wei Ying arrives early (yesterday he'd put off entering the rink for so long he and Zixuan had ended up stuck right at the back for the short program; he's not squandering his second chance to see Lan Zhan perform up close), climbs down all the way to the frontmost row of seats, and after an interminably long period of waiting finally gets to dangle over the railing separating him from rinkside and wave obnoxiously in the direction of the arriving competitors. 

"Lan Zhan!! Lan Zhan, Lan-er-gege, let me give you a kiss for good luck!!"

Lan Zhan walks over, tall and sure in his skates already, and tilts his face upwards in expectant silence. 

"Hey," says Wei Ying, turning to grin at Jin Zixuan's long-suffering expression beside him, "don't let me fall off."

And then he tucks his feet under the plastic seating behind him to keep from overbalancing – he doesn't actually need Zixuan to hold him, it was just really entertaining to see the look on his face – and dangles all the way over unsupported to catch Lan Zhan's face in both his hands and press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to his rink-chilled lips.

He hears gasps, and several camera-shutter clicks – smiles against Lan Zhan's mouth, because this is definitely creating a stunning picture and he'll have to remember to find it online later – and then Zixuan's hand grabs the back of his jacket in a slightly delayed panic-stricken reaction and Wei Ying starts laughing as he breaks away from the kiss with one hand still halfway into Lan Zhan's hair. 

"Aiya, I wasn't actually going to fall," he calls over his shoulder with a mock-affronted air. "So little faith in my abilities –"

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan below him, and he turns back. 

"– Lan Zhan."

For a moment, everything else fades out around them. There's only Lan Zhan, gazing up at him like there's nothing else important about to happen at all. 

"Lan Zhan," he says again, bright and challenging. "You don't need me to wish you luck."

Lan Zhan reaches up to brush gloved fingers across Wei Ying's cheek. "Mn."

Wei Ying leans down again – further this time, giving his weight to Zixuan's tight grip on his jacket. 

"Show me you can break your own record," he murmurs against Lan Zhan's lips, and gives himself up to Lan Zhan's fierce answering kiss with a sigh that's halfway to a moan. 

There's some kind of announcement over the rink speakers which Wei Ying doesn't bother to listen to, but apparently it's important because Lan Zhan pulls away and returns to looking at him instead. The tips of his ears are flushed pink and his gaze is dark with heat. Wei Ying bites his lip to prevent himself from audibly whining about it.

"Watch," says Lan Zhan, and turns away to head out for the six-minute warm-up.

*

The music starts – and Lan Zhan skates.

Wei Ying watches.

It's the same free program he's seen a hundred times before – and it's not. 

Even before the halfway point, Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan's program component score is about to break records. The same program component score that's always let down his total just a little, that the judges have always marked harshly due to a frankly atrocious lack of appreciation for Lan Zhan's emotional expressiveness.

The commentators see it too, this time, but Wei Ying's not listening to them.

He's watching, transfixed, as Lan Zhan skates for him. 

The jumps – always a focal point, always the showstopping crowd-pleasers – feel barely incidental. Who cares about a textbook-perfect quadruple lutz, when the choreographic steps before and after are delivered with such passion, such emotional depth, such love for the ice – 

Such love for Wei Ying. 

Lan Zhan skates clean. Lan Zhan skates perfect and flawless and it's a dream and a love letter and a challenge as he looks out towards Wei Ying from his finishing pose and Wei Ying hears beat me next time.

226.13 flashes up beside Lan Zhan's name, and the crowd screams loud enough to fuzz out Wei Ying's ears. He's dazed in the absolute best way, lost in the rush of competition despite being on entirely the wrong side of this season's closed door, staring at Lan Zhan as he sits stiffly beside Lan Qiren in the kiss and cry, uncaring of anything else in the whole entire world for at least five minutes. 

And then he realises Lan Zhan's gone, out through the back rooms away from the ice where the competitors for the next event are waiting – and he barely manages to gasp save my seat in Zixuan's direction before he's scrambling over the railing and lowering himself swiftly to drop the final couple of inches to the black matting beside the rink. 

The crowd murmurs, and someone shouts hey, you can't be down here – but Wei Ying's already gone. He's been to this rink before – not last year, but they hosted worlds a few years ago in one of his junior seasons, and anyway they're all the same when you get down to the point of it –

Lan Zhan is walking down a back corridor with long rectangles of water-stained green carpet laid out over concrete and one wall made entirely of unpainted boards, and Wei Ying pins him against it and kisses him and kisses him. 

"Lan Zhan," he gasps, out of breath and frantic, "Lan Zhan –" 

Lan Zhan, ice-chilled and sweat-flushed and – still in his skates, and as much as Wei Ying wishes he was too he can't deny the height difference is a little bit fucking hot – kicks open a temporary-looking door beside him Wei Ying hadn't even realised was there and pulls them both through it. It's not even a real room – just some kind of storage, probably stuff that had to be moved to accommodate the competition, and Wei Ying doesn't even care enough to register anything beyond that because he's the one pinned to the wall now and being kissed until he barely knows his own name, and Lan Zhan – 

– Lan Zhan's hands are on him, and there's cool air against his skin, and he forgets entirely how to think at all because he doesn't need to think when it's like this.

*

Wei Ying tiptoes down the steps between rows of plastic seating and squeezes his way back to his seat as the first skater of Wen Qing's warm-up group takes the ice. 

He sits down – carefully – and smiles at Jin Zixuan with probably the most genuine warmth he's ever shown him. He can't help it – everything is warm right now, blissed-out and soft-edged and golden with lingering heat suffusing every pathway of sensation and concentrated in little peaks everywhere Lan Zhan kissed him or bit him or –

Zixuan looks him up and down with possibly the most disbelievingly offended expression Wei Ying has ever seen on an actual person. 

"Did you actually –"

"Hold that thought," Wei Ying says, because his phone has just buzzed several times in quick succession and he now has to try and figure out exactly which pocket it's ended up in. 

Nie Huaisang: are u actually serious 
Nie Huaisang: i can see how well-fucked u look frm where im sitting 
Nie Huaisang: unbelievable
Nie Huaisang: u know there are people who check the cctv who get traumatised when u do things like this 
Nie Huaisang: at least last time i could warn our poor security guard which section to skip 
Wei Ying: what the fuck do u mean last time 
Nie Huaisang: THE CCTV IS STILL ON AT MIDNIGHT IN OUR RINK U KNOW 

Wei Ying, to Jin Zixuan's lasting incredulity, mouths oh shit to himself and then starts laughing uncontrollably.

*

Half an hour later, it's Wen Qing's turn. Wei Ying leans over the railing with his fingers in his mouth and lets out an ear-splitting whistle as she pushes onto the ice in her usual swift lap to initiate the silent pre-music countdown. Usually, this gets at least a glance in his direction – maybe an eyeroll, occasionally a wave if she's in an excitable mood.

Today she acts as though she hasn't even heard him. 

Wei Ying sits back, worried. She's focused and precise as she glides to her starting position – and as she waits for the music to begin, still just as pale as she looked this morning.

The first notes echo soft and clear across competition-hushed ice. 

Wen Qing skates.

It's – fine. She lands both planned triple axels – tight and small, not the flowing, floating jumps he's seen from her more recently, but that makes sense if she's relying on autopilot and muscle memory; she's done them like that for far longer. 

It's not as expressive as Wei Ying knows her free skate can be. But it's not bad – she stumbles once in the step sequence, which is definitely not on her standard list of occasional mistakes, and Wei Ying glances across the ice at Baoshan Sanren to see tight worry in her expression – but the rest of the jumps are clean too, and the spins are just as precise as everyone's used to seeing from her. 

It's good. It's world-class, in fact – beside Baoshan Sanren in the kiss and cry afterwards, her score sends her flying securely into the gold medal position with only one skater remaining in the group – but it's not a personal best. It's not everything she's capable of. 

And her face when she sees the numbers flash up – well, of course there's excitement, accomplishment, the fluttering joy of knowing the podium's ahead no matter what any other skater achieves – but actually, mostly what's in Wen Qing's expression looks a lot like relief. 

Wei Ying worries. And he wonders.

Chapter Text

Wei Ying takes a single step into the rink that evening, up in the far top corner where the main spectator doors let in – and stops. 

It's dark. There's a single spotlight on the ice, still and silent in preparation for the opening of the gala. 

In the shadows by the edges of the ice, Wei Ying can just catch a glimpse of the glittering rustle of every competitor gathered together at once. The crowd – almost full, with fifteen minutes still to go before it starts – is quiet.

None of this is any reason at all for hot sweat to prickle across Wei Ying's palms and the back of his neck, or for him to – abruptly, all at once – feel dizzier than he has in weeks. 

Lan Zhan, he thinks, but he can't see him in the dark. Zixuan was supposed to save him a seat, but – he tries to take another step, catches himself on the wall beside the door – that's not going to work. He doesn't even remember where they'd planned to watch from. 

Wei Ying makes a decision which he hates every second of. It's far too much like giving in and far too much like surrender and far, far too much like letting something other than his own will win. 

He makes it anyway. Choosing the loss now is better than having it forced on him four and a half minutes later.

*

The lobby of the hotel attached to the rink is empty. Everyone who's anyone is at the gala. 

Wei Ying flops down on a plush gold-velvet sofa and stares at the ceiling for a long minute that might actually be more like ten of them. He feels – almost fine, now, but he doesn't quite trust it. He doesn't know what the hell that was, back at the –

The soft electric whir of the revolving hotel door suddenly activating startles him far more than it reasonably should. He's swinging upright on the sofa before he's even registered the break in his train of thought – and there, standing in the middle of the hotel lobby with what looks very much like Baoshan Sanren's puffy coat thrown on over her gala outfit and one hand half covering her face, is Wen Qing.

She pulls her hand away abruptly. Wei Ying pretends not to notice the slight redness around her eyes.

"What are you doing here," they both say flatly at the same time. 

Wei Ying laughs – or at least attempts it. Wen Qing doesn't. 

They stare at each other for a minute more, and then Wei Ying pats the sofa beside him and Wen Qing shakes her head. 

"Upstairs. I want – I need to lie down."

Wen Qing's room is significantly less tidy than Wei Ying remembers from every other hotel they've ever both stayed in. She glances from the clothing-strewn floor to his face and back, mutters, "Don't even start," and curls up facing away from him on the bed without bothering to extract herself from either the enormous coat or the extremely sparkly jumpsuit which has been her exhibition choice all season. 

Wei Ying sits down carefully on the mattress beside her. "So…"

"Baoshan Sanren pulled me from the gala." It comes out a little muffled. 

"Ah."

"Yeah, ah. You've made her too nervous."

Wei Ying snorts. "Qing-jie, you look like shit. It's not my fault –"

"It is your fault," she snaps, still without turning to face him, "because if you hadn't been so stupid –"

She cuts off, in a horrible thick way that wobbles at the end like she's badly failing at trying not to cry. It stops Wei Ying's outraged retort in its tracks.

Wei Ying hasn't seen Wen Qing cry in years.

"Hey," he says, careful and more than a little alarmed. "What's wrong with you?"

Wen Qing lets out a carefully controlled breath that shudders at the edges. There's a long, long moment of silence. 

"I'm pregnant," she whispers, the words quiet and tense and half held back like she's not certain she's even allowed to say them. 

There's an even longer moment of silence, and then – 

"Oh my god," says Wei Ying. "Oh my god. You slept with Jiang Cheng."

All at once, Wen Qing sits bolt upright and smacks him in the face with a pillow. "You're such an asshole! What the fuck else would I have done to end up like this?!"

"I don't know! You could have –"

"Just because you don't even know how sex works –"

"I so do!! You can even ask Lan Zhan –"

"No thank you –"

"Wait, is that what Huaisang was refusing to tell me?!"

Wen Qing, still holding the weaponised pillow clenched tight between both fists, stops and stares at him. "No-one else knows about this. No-one. I have done eighteen separate favours for Nie Huaisang to stop him telling anyone. And he still can't even keep his mouth shut that he knows something –"

"To be fair, I did ask – wait, how does Huaisang know anyway?"

An irritatedly dismissive expression crosses Wen Qing's features. "How does Huaisang know anything?"

"He knew when Lan Zhan gave me a blowjob on the ice," Wei Ying says thoughtfully.

"I did not need to know that!!"

"Sharing is caring," says Wei Ying smugly, and gets hit with the pillow again for his trouble. 

*

"Okay," says Wei Ying much later when Wen Qing has actual pyjamas on and is curled up in the bed instead of on it with a hot water bottle tucked in the middle of the tight ball of her limbs, "but does Jiang Cheng know?"

"Stop asking me things," says Wen Qing tiredly, and then, "He'll freak out. I don't know how to tell him."

"Does Baoshan Sanren know?"

Wen Qing shakes her head. "She thinks I'm coming down with a bug. Which I suppose is true if you class nine-month parasites as bugs."

Wei Ying pauses. "You know you don't… have to, right? There's – other options, or whatever?"

Wen Qing scoffs. "As if you know anything about other options. But it's not – I didn't mean it like that."

There's silence, for a minute, and then Wen Qing curls up a little tighter and says very quietly, "I do want it."

"Great," says Wei Ying. "Then you need to tell Jiang Cheng."

"Oh my god," Wen Qing groans. "You're such a dick."

"Your favourite –" starts Wei Ying, and then, "wait, ew, no."

Wen Qing snorts. "Gross. But seriously, leave it alone. If I haven't told him by this time next week then you can get on my case about it."

"Aiya, all right. Can I tell Lan Zhan at least?"

Wen Qing rolls over in bed for the sole purpose of narrowing her eyes at him. "Only Lan Zhan. And only because he's so socially inept he wouldn't even know how to tell anyone else if he wanted to."

"Rude, mean, and unnecessary," lists Wei Ying on his fingers. "I hope you won't be teaching your child to use unkind words like that –"

"You're so fucking annoying," says Wen Qing. "Get out of my bedroom."

Wei Ying grins as he gets up. "Do you have any cravings yet?"

"Yes," says Wen Qing ominously. "I have a very strong craving for you to go away."

Wei Ying sticks his tongue out at her, and goes. He knows Wen Qing well enough to know the best way to say the rest of what he wants to say isn't face-to-face.

Wei Ying: u know im here for u etc etc 
Wei Ying: if u need anything just say 
Wei Ying: and if jiang cheng is an idiot about it tell me so i can punch him 
Wei Ying: but rly its more likely hell just start crying bc i know he wants kids real bad 
Wei Ying: so dont worry about telling him 
Wen Qing: Thanks 
Wen Qing: Stop texting me now so I can go to sleep 
Wei Ying: ok <3 
Wei Ying: qing-jie 
Wen Qing: What 
Wei Ying: youve got this 
Wei Ying: youll be amazing 
Wen Qing: Stop saying nice things u know I dont like it 
Wei Ying: <3
Wen Qing: <3

*

Day One 

Baoshan Sanren meets him outside the rink. She's got her skates on and a clipboard with someone else's program on it. 

"I know you won't listen to a thing I say once you get inside," she says without preamble, "so we're doing this out here." 

Wei Ying nods. His skate bag is a familiar weight across his back and the clothes he hasn't worn in three months have activated the light readiness of every muscle through all his limbs – it's the familiarity of the way the fabric sits against his skin, pulling out the this is how we train package from the neglected back of his mind and dusting it off and opening it to find his body remembers. 

He bounces on the balls of his feet a little and feels a ripple of now jump, we're warming up aren't we? through slowly awakening pathways in his calves and thighs and core. Baoshan Sanren looks at him like she knows. 

"First things first," she says. "Rules for today. We are only doing field moves this morning."

Wei Ying makes a noise somewhere between outrage and pain. Baoshan Sanren continues before he can speak. 

"I know you hate it. I know. But you'll do this properly or not at all." She pauses, pins him with an uncompromising look until he nods again. "If it goes well – and you feel ready – I will let you jump up to double lutz this afternoon."

Wei Ying nods again with significantly more enthusiasm. "What about –" 

"I'm not done. General rules now."

"Aiya, you'll need to write me a list –"

"There's only one that matters." Baoshan Sanren waits until he stops fidgeting, until he meets her gaze properly and straightens up just a little under it. "You know what your symptoms are. If you feel anything other than normal and well, stop what you are doing."

She pauses; lets the silence underline her words before continuing. "If it's manageable then you can do low-level field moves or you can help the juniors, and if it gets worse then you can get off the ice. Are we clear?"

"Yep." Wei Ying pops the p. Baoshan Sanren narrows her eyes at him a little.

"I'm trusting you," she says, like a warning. "Don't make me regret it."

*

Wei Ying runs down the balcony and stairs like his life depends on it, completely ignores the various greetings and exclamations from everyone already in the rink, shoves his feet into his skates and yanks the laces tight faster than he ever has before on muscle memory so automatic it's essentially a reflex – and stops, for a single poised moment, at the very edge of the ice.

He breathes in familiar cold. Feels his body sing with it, light and buzzing with energy and ready, ready, ready. 

Wei Ying steps onto the ice. 

It's fast, and it's easy to be fast. There's the occasional split-second wobble as he flies around the familiar warm-up laps – but that's expected. It's been three months, his balance still isn't entirely what it was – it's not going to be perfect. 

It doesn't matter. It feels perfect. 

He's out of breath by the time he skids to a stop in front of Baoshan Sanren. There's a grin on his face so wide it hurts. 

"Welcome back," she says with a pleased smile. "Your stamina is appalling and will probably continue to be appalling for at least the next month. Don't try to run your old programs yet."

"So rude to me," says Wei Ying with deep satisfaction. "What's first?"

"Field moves level one through seven, repeated twice. Xuanyu's going to follow you, so make them perfect."

"Hi," says Mo Xuanyu shyly from beside and a little behind her. Wei Ying hadn't even noticed him there. He's wearing one of Wen Qing's old warm-up jackets, plain black with red edging on the sleeves and collar, and his hair is pinned in a high ponytail uncannily similar to Wei Ying's usual style in his junior seasons, and he's wearing just a little too much black eyeliner to be tasteful – and Wei Ying knows instantly he's a perfect fit for their little world. He grins and wiggles his gloved fingers in a wave.

Then the rest of Baoshan Sanren's words finish registering – and he frowns, opens his mouth and then closes it again, turns back to her – "Are you legitimately making me do level one field moves?" 

"I don't care if you passed the test when you were six months old," Baoshan Sanren says blandly. "I want to see your basics."

Wei Ying gapes at her. 

"The longer you stand there like a goldfish the less time you'll have for jumps later," she says, still bland and boring like she couldn't care less – and Wei Ying almost trips over his own toe picks in his rush to the top of the rink for the first set of exercises.

Baoshan Sanren spends the entire morning being infuriatingly picky about literally everything. She makes him repeat each exercise at least five times in total before she's satisfied, with Xuanyu following behind like a shadow and receiving at least twice as much critique again. 

"Wow," says Wei Ying as they complete a difficult series of linked turns and steps side-by-side with fluid precision, "has she been like this with you the entire time I've been gone?"

"Mostly," says Xuanyu with the facial-expression equivalent of a shrug (neither of them would dare move their shoulders from the correct position while Baoshan Sanren's watching). "I don't mind. I know I have bad habits still."

Wei Ying looks sidelong at him. "I've been watching, you know. It's not bad habits any more – you're fine, she's clearly fixed your basics. She's trying to make you perfect now."

"Oh." Xuanyu blinks, smiles a little with a suddenly bright-eyed expression. "Really?"

"Sure. Also she's being annoying on purpose today."

"I am," says Baoshan Sanren pleasantly from suddenly right beside them. "Have you figured out why yet?"

Wei Ying considers the question. Considers what he would do, with a skater as annoying as himself who needed to be kept within unbearable restrictions for a full morning. 

"If I'm annoyed with you I'm not thinking about how much I want to jump and spin," he says after a moment. "It's a distraction."

Baoshan Sanren smiles. "Correct."

"McDonald's in ten minutes!!" calls A-Qing as she flies past in a dance-style lift with Zizhen. "Are you coming?"

"Yes," Baoshan Sanren answers for him. "Both of you go. I have a feeling I'm about to have an interesting conversation."

Wei Ying turns. Wen Qing is leaning on the barrier in her work uniform, dark blue fleece zipped all the way up and hands tucked into her sleeves. She's pale and tired and clearly hasn't bothered to wash her hair that morning – and she's looking straight at Baoshan Sanren with a weary expression that reads very much like yes, I'll tell you now. 

"Yeah," says Wei Ying. "Have fun with that one."

"If you know, I think I can guess," says Baoshan Sanren wryly, and waves them both away. 

*

"Nope," says Wen Qing, and pushes the brown paper bag back across the boot store counter to Wei Ying. "Extra for you today. And don't eat it right here," she adds as Wei Ying starts to reach in and extract Wen Qing's usual order for himself. 

Wei Ying rolls his eyes but closes the bag again. "Aiyo, so fussy. How did it go?"

Wen Qing shrugs. She's dragged a box out from the back corner of the boot store to sit on behind the counter, and her arms are folded on the rubbery surface as a rest for her head. "She said it was up to me. Up to a point, obviously – but it's not like I'm going to be working on anything new like this anyway."

"I looked online," offers Wei Ying. "Apparently it's safer to skate in the first trimester because the baby's like, more tucked away or something."

"Yeah." Wen Qing lifts her head to prop her chin on her arms instead. "That would be great if I didn't have all-day morning sickness which according to every account I can find will probably last at least all through that convenient first trimester."

"Mm." 

"I'll skate when I can," she says tiredly. "No triples, they feel like shit and I can only do them with that horrible autopilot trick you told me about. I've pulled out of the rest of the season."

Wei Ying nods. He's trying to think of something to say which isn't I'm sorry. 

Wen Qing glances up at him. "It's fine. More coaching time for you and Xuanyu."

"Baoshan Sanren's had shit luck with us this year," he offers, a little wry, and Wen Qing huffs out a brief laugh. 

And then the tail end of it catches in her breath, and her expression twists a little in a way Wei Ying can tell she's fighting – and all at once she's got both hands over her face in a futile attempt to hide what Wei Ying quickly realises is a full-on flood of tears. 

He climbs over the counter. Sits down on the floor and pulls her into his lap the way she did for him the first time he told her what happened at Lotus Pier.

"Aiya, don't – it's okay." 

Wen Qing shakes her head, sucks in a shuddering breath in a vain attempt to claw back some control – lets herself fold into his arms when it fails. 

"No, okay, I know. It's not. But it's – you'll have a kid at the end of it," he says, a little uselessly. "And you already got your gold medal from worlds this year."

"It's not about the medal," Wen Qing says thickly into his shoulder. 

"It is a little bit," Wei Ying insists. "Otherwise you'd have pulled out before worlds instead of after."

"Stop being right about things," snaps Wen Qing, and it's the front edge of a fresh wave of tears that overwhelm her faster than she can sit upright and scrub them off her face with sharp frustration in every movement. "Stupid fucking hormones – fuck –"

"Pregnancy is wild, huh," says Wei Ying with something between sympathy and slightly blank surprise. He really hasn't seen Wen Qing cry like this in a very long time. 

(Not since she was fifteen, and he was thirteen, and Wen Ning's future was in the hands of a hospitalised seventeen-year-old neither of them knew back then.)

"Yeah," she says wetly, and gives up trying to fight it. Wei Ying strokes gently up and down her back as she rests her head on his shoulder. 

"Did you tell Jiang Cheng?" he asks a few minutes later, when she's quiet and still and catching her breath again.

"Last night." She shifts, gets up carefully from Wei Ying's lap and retrieves a box of tissues from a high shelf to blow her nose and wipe her face. (This is accomplished via the standard short rink employee method of boosting off the ground with one foot shoved in beside whichever pair of plastic hire skates is most conveniently placed, and pulling on a higher shelf as a handhold at the same time.) "You were right."

"I'm always right," says Wei Ying brightly, "but go on."

Wen Qing finishes wiping her face and raises one eyebrow at him. "He cried for half an hour. Then he started a pinterest board."

"Oh, no," says Wei Ying. "He's had that pinterest board for at least three years."

"That," says Wen Qing decisively, "is embarrassing. Now get out of here, I know Baoshan Sanren's waiting for you." 

All at once Wei Ying remembers up to double lutz this afternoon. 

"Ah – are you okay, though? Do you need –"

"Wei Ying." Wen Qing smiles like she can see it on him. "Go."

Wei Ying scrambles back out over the counter before she's even finished saying it.

*

"Right," says Baoshan Sanren. 

She says it too slowly. She's looking at him too slowly. Wei Ying is practically vibrating out of his skates with excitement and she's being so slow about everything –

"I need to see a centred backspin first – wait," she says with one hand held up as Wei Ying starts to move. He groans in frustration and barely resists the urge to kick his toe picks into the ice. "It's going to make you dizzy." 

"Okay?"

"This is important," says Baoshan Sanren with firm precision, "because it is the only exception to the rule we discussed this morning. Remind me of the rule."

"Oh my god, I'm not a kid –"

"Remind me of the rule."

"If anything feels bad, stop," says Wei Ying after a slightly-too-long moment of casting back for it. Baoshan Sanren nods. 

"Even if you'd had three months off for a nice fun holiday," she says with the same firmness still in her voice, "starting to spin again would still feel bad. Your brain has to retrain itself out of the dizziness – you know what it feels like to spin the wrong way?"

"Yeah."

"It's going to feel like that all the time for a while. I don't know how long – when I had a break for a few months it only took half a week, but the circumstances were different."

Wei Ying nods again. "So can I start now –"

"I need you to understand that this is the only time you are allowed to ignore your body. And if you feel anything worse than dizziness –"

"Yes, stop, okay, I get it! Please, for fuck's sake –"

"Go on then," says Baoshan Sanren with just a hint of a smile. "Let me see it."

Wei Ying pushes around in a wide forward curve, allows the momentum to turn him at the halfway peak of it, waits half a heartbeat and pulls slowly-gathering-fast in –

It's centred and fast and every kind of exhilarating. His body remembers, holds him in place as the spin pulls blurred-tight, keeps him steady as he releases it –

– and stumbles sideways as the rink spins around him. Baoshan Sanren slides quickly in, catches his arm and steadies him before he can fall. 

"Good," she says after a moment of quiet. Wei Ying's head is still spinning unpleasantly, but that's allowed. It's fading out rather than getting worse. "Single jumps now, salchow through lutz."

"No axel?" says Wei Ying petulantly. 

"Show me the others perfect first."

He does. It takes a couple of tries to steady the axis of his loop, which is actually just annoying, but he does.

"Single axel," calls Baoshan Sanren across the ice, and Wei Ying builds speed, flies easily around the corner of the rink, pushes forward and skids the edge and – 

There's a reason why the axel is special. In the early levels, those first beginner months Wei Ying barely even remembers, everyone thinks jumps feel a certain way. Spacious, slow once they're comfortable, a single step or hop around from backwards to backwards again. 

The single axel changes everything. 

From forwards all the way around one-and-a-half rotations to backwards again, it's the first taste of that tight-blurred-swift feeling that's the essence of every jump beyond the single-rotation category. 

It's the first taste of flying. 

Wei Ying, with all the familiarity of almost two decades and all the breathless excitement of every young child's first lesson, flies. 

He lands. 

"Again," says Baoshan Sanren. "Higher, open up your air position properly."

He does it again. 

Twice more, and then Baoshan Sanren says double salchow, and Wei Ying – pauses. 

He skates in a brief, wide circle; pulls in for a couple of rotation-exercise turns along the far side of it. It's – fine. His body does exactly as it's told, and he's not really dizzy. 

Not really. 

It's just that his legs feel the kind of shaky that usually comes only after back-to-back program run-throughs, and Wei Ying knows that's just his current lack of stamina but he's also got just a little bit of a headache after those last few jump landings and if he really admits it to himself he maybe feels a tiny bit sick. 

He glances at Baoshan Sanren. She's watching him with an unreadable expression. 

This, like everything else, is a test.

In the far corner of the rink, A-Yan falls on a double salchow attempt and lets out a screech of frustration from flat on the ice more appropriate to a three-year-old than the sensible six-year-old she's supposed to be. 

"I'm going to – help with that," says Wei Ying, and skates away towards her before Baoshan Sanren can say anything horrible like well done for recognising your limits.

Ten minutes later, A-Yan is working on her prep exercises again with renewed determination, and Wei Ying gets off the ice. It's barely 2pm. 

He wants to skate. Desperately, burning inside him with unbearable force. 

He knows, from barely a minute after he sits down, that if he tried to jump even a single right now he'd almost certainly fall. 

He doesn't take off his skates. He can't actually bring himself to – just stepping off the ice was enough of a wrench. 

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan gently. Wei Ying hadn't even noticed him arrive – he's been monopolised by Lan Qiren all day, running his free program like he didn't just last week break his own world record – but he's here now, standing in front of Wei Ying with one gloved hand reached out to gently cup the side of his face. 

Wei Ying sighs and pushes his face into the touch like it will fix everything. Maybe it will. Lan Zhan's glove isn't even wet with ice – Wei Ying hasn't seen him fall since before lunchtime. He's so perfect.

"Would you like to go home?"

"No," says Wei Ying. "Yes. I don't know. I don't – Lan Zhan –"

"We will leave," decides Lan Zhan, and – kneels down to unlace Wei Ying's skates for him. 

"Won't Lan Qiren be mad," Wei Ying says weakly, instead of stop making me feel like this. 

"Maybe," says Lan Zhan placidly. "It does not matter."

"Lan Zhan." Wei Ying – giggles, which he really cannot provide any excuse for even to himself. "When did you turn into such a rebel?"

"Four months ago," says Lan Zhan.

Then, like this is a normal thing to admit, he follows it with, "Perhaps twelve years." Wei Ying covers his face with his hands and squeaks.

They don't quite go home. Lan Zhan takes him to a restaurant with soft lighting and a wide variety of bright-red-spicy dishes which fill him up with warmth and love, and they tangle their legs together while they eat and then make out across the table until the waiter leaves the bill very pointedly on a little silver plate between them, and then they make out in the car which Lan Zhan has parked on purpose at the very back of the car park so that the chance of anyone hearing Wei Ying when making out becomes something much more indecent is as low as it can be, and then they go home and do it again in the entryway before they even manage to get their coats off.

When Wei Ying finally gets around to checking his phone, there's a text from Baoshan Sanren reading Well done for everything today. 

He knows what everything means. At least she didn't say it any more pointedly than that. 

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying, lying on the sofa with his eyes closed and his head in Lan Zhan's lap, and there's a fluttering-nervous feeling in his stomach for just the first heartbeat as he says the next words, like the breathless yes, really, now as the opening note of music echoes at every competition.

"I want to skate pairs with you at next season's galas. With the – that song you made. If you want to."

Lan Zhan doesn't answer immediately. Wei Ying opens his eyes, momentarily unmoored by the silence – 

Lan Zhan is looking down at him with a soft, shiny gaze and the smallest, sweetest smile Wei Ying has ever seen in his life. It's beautiful. 

It's early spring, when the dawn comes late but rosy, and the sunlight spills from the high rink windows onto the ice as Wei Ying skates.

"Mn," says Lan Zhan quietly, and it's as close to I love you as a single syllable can be.

Chapter Text

Day Three 

The first day is good. The second day, settling more fully into reactivated muscle memory and still coasting on the high of those first electrifying steps back into the world his soul calls home, is better.

The third day, when Wei Ying rolls over out of bed to a hundred different aches and twinges as the build-up of two full days of everything after months of nothing hits him all at once – 

Well, it's not so good. 

Everything is stiff and sore and uncomfortable. Warming up doesn't help. Stopping halfway through the morning to stretch only makes his legs feel like wet noodles. Every jump he lands feels jarring and sharp and each spin leaves him too dizzy to skate in a straight line for at least a full minute. 

"Wei Ying," says Baoshan Sanren pointedly when he stumbles out of a failed double flip for the fourth time. 

"I'm fine," he snaps – then whirls to face her, suddenly wide-eyed in alarm at what he knows she could say in response –

She's looking at him with both eyebrows raised, waiting. 

"I," Wei Ying says, and clenches his fists at his sides to force it out. "I feel like shit. I'm tired. I don't want to get off the ice."

Baoshan Sanren nods. "Well done. Finish on something good – go and do an axel or whatever you know will land nicely – then go and put your coat on and come back."

Wei Ying does as he's told without bothering to question or speculate. He trusts her enough by now to just go with whatever she's decided he's doing. 

When he returns – in Lan Zhan's long white coat, because his own is at home or possibly nonexistent – Mo Xuanyu is standing beside her.

"Okay," she says brightly. "One of us here has a lutz problem." 

Xuanyu looks faintly embarrassed. "Sorry –"

"Don't be silly," says Baoshan Sanren with a fond smile. "How would I prepare my new trainee coach to take on other skaters if everyone at this rink was perfect already?"

*

"This is important for you to learn," says Baoshan Sanren to Wei Ying as Mo Xuanyu skates away to finish his interrupted warm-up. "You never had a problem with your lutz edge – unless there's more you haven't told me about your childhood – so you've got no idea how to fix it. Tell me what your first instinct is."

"Go back to the single," says Wei Ying after a moment. "There's no point trying to fix the takeoff edge at the same time as worrying about rotation." 

Baoshan Sanren nods. "Good, but go further."

"Straight up-and-down?" Wei Ying guesses. "No rotation, just pick and hop?" 

"That's a better starting point. What else do we need to see before assessing the lutz?"

"Um," says Wei Ying. "Backspin?"

"We always want to see backspin. What other jump is linked to it, though?"

"Flip," says Wei Ying, and then, "wait, do you mean if someone has a flutz it'll show in their flip too?"

"Xuanyu," Baoshan Sanren calls instead of answering. "Triple flip."

"Now," she says to Wei Ying approximately fifteen seconds later, "you tell me what was wrong with that." 

"Too much swing," replies Wei Ying confidently. "The inside edge was too deep." 

"And if the flip has too much inside edge…"

"Then… it has the same effect on the lutz, oh my god." Wei Ying stares at her. "It's all connected."

Baoshan Sanren looks pleased. "So go and fix his flip then."

Wei Ying does. They go back to single rotation, and he makes Xuanyu hold the backward inside edge down half the length of the rink along very nearly a straight line before letting him take off, and it's clearly awkward and uncomfortable but breaking decade-old habits always is, and when Xuanyu does a clean double from a perfect takeoff with both entry edges following the straight central line of the rink – well, the pride and excited satisfaction in Wei Ying's chest is of an entirely different flavour to anything related to his own skating but it's actually just as good.

I did that, thinks Wei Ying as he watches Mo Xuanyu do it again. That's because of me.

It's not the first time a kid's fixed a problem or landed something new because of him. But it's maybe the first time it's felt real.

They try the triple next, and Xuanyu immediately reverts to the wild overly-curved takeoff. Wei Ying says hmm, okay, grins at him with evil intent, and waves Baoshan Sanren over. 

"Hey," he says as she glides up to them. "Can I ban Xuanyu from a jump?"

Baoshan Sanren looks like she's trying not to smile. "Justify it."

"He's just done two perfect double flips with the new takeoff but the triple is a mess still. I want him to embed the new muscle memory with the double before even looking at the triple again."

"That makes sense to me," says Baoshan Sanren. She's definitely trying not to smile now. 

Wei Ying turns to Mo Xuanyu – whose current expression is a very interesting mixture of politely listening and outraged and just a little bit excited – and smiles brightly. "Congratulations. You're banned from the triple flip for one week or until the double is perfect ten times in a row, whichever takes longer. Now show me the double properly again before we finish."

Baoshan Sanren waits for Xuanyu to skate away before turning around and hiding her face behind her clipboard to laugh. 

"Wei Ying," she says after several moments, lips still twitching with suppressed amusement, "I've never seen anyone turn into this particular type of coach so fast in my life. You're a total nightmare."

Wei Ying grins at her. "I was raised by the best."

Baoshan Sanren lifts her clipboard in front of her face again. It doesn't do much to hide the way her shoulders shake with laughter. "I banned you from your triple axel three weeks after we met, do you remember?"

"Oh," says Wei Ying brightly, "I don't think I'd ever been more pissed off in my life."

"Xuanyu's a much nicer sixteen-year-old than you were," she says with affected disapproval. "I need to find you a delinquent as payback."

"I've heard a few names on the junior circuit from Jingyi," Wei Ying says with another grin. "Do your worst." 

Baoshan Sanren raises an eyebrow at him. "Go and have your lunch. I think I need to make a few phone calls."

The third day isn't so bad, in the end.

*

Day Four

"Right," says Wei Ying to Mo Xuanyu as they lace up their skates side-by-side. "Choreography."

It's Sunday. Sundays aren't quite as good as Tuesdays – usually towards the end of the morning patch session all the recreational skaters who can't make it in during the week descend on the ice with endearing levels of effort but absolutely minimal spatial awareness – but no-one actually wants to get up early on a Sunday, so right now it's only him and Xuanyu and Wen Qing pretending not to be asleep in the boot store. 

(Lan Zhan drove him in, but he's waiting in the car for the first half hour at least. Wei Ying's plan requires empty ice.)

Here's the thing. Xuanyu's exhibition skate this season is gorgeous, but not quite up to what Wei Ying suspects his full potential might be. His free program is – in all honesty, lacking. Baoshan Sanren's had him come up with choreography for a new program on his own as an exercise to test his creativity – and again, it's just a little bit flat. 

Here's the other thing. Xuanyu, for all he mostly manages to hide it, is a little bit shy. 

Wei Ying doesn't think the stay inside this tiny circle of ice while your music plays and you improvise pure choreo with no jumps or spins, and you can't leave or stop until you get over yourself and put your entire soul into it exercise Baoshan Sanren used to break him through the expressiveness barrier would work in the same way on Xuanyu.

They warm up together. Then Wei Ying puts his skate guards and Lan Zhan's coat back on (he found his own at home last night, but he's already attached to this one for coaching – and besides, he knows seeing Wei Ying in his clothes makes Lan Zhan want to do things to him) and stands on the other side of the barrier. 

"Pick a song that makes you feel something," he says. "I don't care how weird or inappropriate it is, I don't care if it would give the entire judging panel a heart attack – just pick something real." 

Xuanyu nods. He looks nervous. 

"Put it on repeat," says Wei Ying. "I'm going to face the other way for at least five minutes."

He pauses; takes in Xuanyu's cautious reaction to this.

"I literally do not care what you do in those five minutes. But if I were you – well, how many times do you get completely empty ice with no-one watching?"

Xuanyu looks very tentatively excited now. Wei Ying nods. "At some point I'll turn back around. Don't worry about it."

And then he turns his back on Xuanyu and leans casually against the barrier and occupies himself with counting how many visible pairs of plastic skates in the boot store need their index numbers repainting. He can annoy Wen Qing with it later. 

At least thirty-five seconds pass before any music starts. Wei Ying can almost hear Xuanyu nervously weighing up embarrassing versus makes you feel something for each option. 

Wei Ying grins as the music finally begins. This is definitely not ISU-approved.

He waits for six minutes. He can hear the hiss and echoing snap of jumps, the whisper of centred spins – and between and around it all, the sharp sounds of steps and turns and deep edges held until they crunch. He can hear, at quiet lulls in the music and the brief gap where it loops back to the start, Xuanyu's exertion-fast breaths cut off by the flow of his movement. 

Midway through the peak of the song, Wei Ying turns silently around. 

He looks – and instantly, overwhelmingly, wants to shout with delight and punch the air and fly onto the ice himself for a victory lap. It's worked. 

Xuanyu is skating like Wei Ying's never seen before. From his core out to his fingertips every movement is guided by the swell of the music; every unconscious facial expression is part of the story, every edge and every turn and every choreographic motion is given over to it. He arches back into a stunning Ina Bauer, eyes half-closed and hands outstretched – and Wei Ying quite genuinely feels a chill across his skin inside the warmth of Lan Zhan's coat. 

I did this.

The music ends. The music begins. Wei Ying watches all the way through this time. 

Xuanyu still doesn't even notice he's turned around.

Eventually, Wei Ying switches off the song. Xuanyu gasps, blinking like someone yanked from a dream, then looks instantly embarrassed. "I – oh –"

"That," says Wei Ying with full seriousness, "was one of the most stunning things I have ever seen. And I have both a mirror and Lan Zhan for a boyfriend." 

Xuanyu suppresses a giggle. Wei Ying smirks ever so slightly. 

"Anyway," he says. "That feeling? Catch it, right now before it finishes slipping away, find out where it lives in your brain, and make sure you know how to get there again. Because that is how I need you to skate next season when you make your own programs."

"Okay," says Xuanyu disbelievingly – but Wei Ying can tell it's genuine despite the tone. 

"Well done," he says, and it's far from the first time he's said those words to a kid but again – this is when it feels real. 

He's halfway through the coaching paperwork already. It won't take long to fill up the required hours shadowing Baoshan Sanren. 

It won't take long until it's all real.

*

This is how it goes, over minutes that feel blissfully endless and hours that fly by like seconds: 

On day six, Baoshan Sanren says double axel and Wei Ying falls twice and gets up twice and then lands it eight times in a row. 

On day eighteen, Baoshan Sanren says do you feel ready to start getting your triples back and Wei Ying blurts yes and then pauses and screws up his face and says tomorrow instead.

On day nineteen, Wei Ying lands everything except the triple loop. 

On day twenty-three, Baoshan Sanren holds out her clipboard with a blank sheet of paper on it and says start thinking about next season's music. 

Wei Ying stops counting the days.

*

April 

"Don't miss me too much!" yells Wei Ying back through the rink doors as they swing shut behind him. 

"It's only four days," says Jingyi with what is in Wei Ying's opinion a disrespectfully wrinkled nose. "And almost everyone else is coming with us anyway."

It's a relatively minor competition – novice and junior categories only, with most skaters out of their first junior season not bothering to enter – but it's true that as usual most of the rink has found some way to be involved. A-Qing and Zizhen aren't yet ready to enter as a pair, but Lan Qiren's bringing them along to observe regardless; Jin Ling's entry in the intermediate novice group means the entirety of Team Lotus plus Jin Zixuan will be there (along with A-Yan and all her effervescent excitement at the knowledge that her own first entry into the basic novice category is waiting just the other side of the upcoming summer) – really, Wei Ying is one of the few people without a reason to be attending. 

He's going anyway. So is Baoshan Sanren. 

Part of it is that he hasn't actually had a chance to watch Sizhui and Jingyi compete in person yet this season, between his own competition schedule and – everything that came afterwards. He knows they did well at junior worlds, especially for their first season – Jingyi placed fifth, while Sizhui made it onto the podium for a bronze medal – but knowing it and watching the videos isn't the same as seeing it for himself. He's watched them grow and develop and blossom into incredible young skaters across the past six years – has trained alongside them and laid down next to them on the ice to make them laugh again at the endless frustration of fall after fall – now they're taking their first steps onto the world stage, of course he wants to see it. 

The other part of it is mostly Baoshan Sanren's idea. Wei Ying is almost certain she knows something he doesn't about at least one of the skaters in the novice categories.

*

"You need to put A-Ling up to advanced novice next year," Wei Ying says to Jiang Cheng as they watch Jin Ling land a perfect double axel with height and flow and launch straight from the landing into his step sequence. "He's ready for it."

Jiang Cheng pulls a face. "Go back to your seat already, you know you're not allowed down here."

"Aiya, they don't care at these baby competitions." Wei Ying nods towards the ice again. "He'll have his triple salchow by the start of next season, it's not fair on the other kids to keep him in this group."

"You're so much more annoying since Baoshan Sanren gave you actual permission to act like a coach." Jiang Cheng curls his lip a little. "He's not your skater."

Wei Ying shrugs. "You know I'm right."

Jiang Cheng sends him a familiarly irritated glance. "Shut up and watch."

*

"So," says Baoshan Sanren in an entirely unreadable tone. "What do you think of this warm-up group?"

Wei Ying watches. It's the turn of the advanced novices now – a fairly full category, with plenty of young teens hanging back from the intimidating junior circuit for as long as they can get away with. The six kids on the ice right now are reasonably representative of the group as a whole; three gangly-looking boys clearly midway through their growth spurts, one who looks far too mature and sure-footed to be in the category at all and should definitely have moved up to juniors by now, a tiny kid who hasn't hit his growth spurt yet but can apparently already land a triple flip – and an outlier. 

The outlier looks like he's been dragged through a hedge backwards, wayward-spiky hair sticking up all over the place and a scabbed-over scrape on one side of his face like he's been in a playground scuffle – and as Wei Ying watches, he skates back to his coach for instruction and sneers at her before spinning around and skating rapidly away from the second half of whatever she was saying to him. 

She calls something after him across the ice – and one black-gloved middle finger sticks up in response from the landing position of a wild-but-fully-rotated triple lutz.

Wei Ying bursts out laughing. "Who is that?!"

Baoshan Sanren looks at him with faint amusement. "That is Xue Yang. He's eleven years old and a prodigy and a nightmare."

Wei Ying looks back at her without saying anything. He knows she'll read all of it in the I know why you brought me here smile he can feel pulling on his face.

"His coach," Baoshan Sanren says delicately, "no longer knows what to do with him."

Wei Ying grins. 

"Watch him skate first," says Baoshan Sanren. "See what you think."

*

Xue Yang skates fast. 

"Wrong music," says Wei Ying immediately, and Baoshan Sanren nods. "Who puts a kid like this with Lan Zhan's playlist?"

"He's been through four coaches in as many years," says Baoshan Sanren with half a shrug. "Either they don't take the time to get to know him, or they try to make his skating into whatever they think it should be. You can see the result for yourself."

Wei Ying gives her a sidelong glance. "And how long have you been watching him?"

Baoshan Sanren smiles just a little. "Longer than I watched you before I decided."

Wei Ying considers this. "It's not his skating you're questioning," he says eventually. "You don't know if you want to bring him into our rink."

"Correct."

Wei Ying barely pauses at all. "I do."

"Of course you do," says Baoshan Sanren seriously. "That's why I brought you here."

"But if you're not sure –"

"Two things," says Baoshan Sanren. "One: we're a family. You know this. That's why I'm careful."

Wei Ying nods. 

"With the right support," she continues, a little softer, "anyone can become part of a family."

She waits for Wei Ying to look at her before continuing. 

"That's the second thing. I don't know if I'm the right support for him." Wei Ying opens his mouth to speak, but she holds up a hand to cut him off. "I was the right support for you. He's like an obnoxious little mirror, yes, but he's not actually you. I'm not necessarily what he needs."

She pauses, then, and Wei Ying knows what's coming with a swoop of disbelieving anticipation in his stomach. 

"I think you are, though," says Baoshan Sanren, and in front of them on the ice Xue Yang lands a double axel completely out of time with the music and Wei Ying sees the transparent irritation on his scraped-up round little face and thinks yes. 

*

May 

It's Tuesday morning. Wen Qing is on the ice. 

"Don't tell Baoshan Sanren," she says, leaning on the barrier as Wei Ying pulls his laces tight. "This is pretty much a one-off."

"You had that scan yesterday, right?" Wei Ying stands up, slides into a split stretch on the barrier and folds forward over his leg with two fingers hooked through the space between blade and boot. 

"Yeah. Twelve weeks – officially out of both the high-risk zone and the feeling like shit all the time zone."

"Just in time for it to get big enough to start fucking with your centre of gravity," Wei Ying agrees. He's done the reading.

Wen Qing snorts. "That's already happening. Even a single axel feels weird as fuck." 

"You probably shouldn't –"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I stopped at double lutz. Now get on here and skate with me already."

Wei Ying does. It's like old times, for a while – just the two of them on the ice, needling each other over minor flaws in technique and competing to see who can execute the longest and most difficult set of linked turns without switching feet or touching down for balance – and then Wen Qing glides to the sound system and smirks at him and he knows exactly what's coming. 

It barely counts as a program, really. It certainly doesn't count as pairs – they do it side-by-side in ridiculous to-the-millisecond synchronisation, and none of the choreography would win any favours with any judge Wei Ying's ever met – but what it does count as is hilarity and nostalgia and exactly what Wen Qing deserves for possibly her last good skate for a very long upcoming six months. 

Wen Qing pushes the volume slider all the way up. Wei Ying grins and bounces on his toe picks in the centre of the ice. 

The music starts. Wen Qing skates back to him with little sideways to-the-beat movements, arms outstretched and eyes sparkling. 

When the world, mouths Wei Ying across the ice at her, leaves you feeling blue –

*

"I heard a rumour," says Nie Huaisang with wide-eyed innocence, "that your coaching test is next week."

"Everyone knows that," says Wei Ying from sideways in mid-air. He's held up only by one of Lan Zhan's hands tight on his hip; they're working on off-ice pair lifts, and Lan Huan is currently giving Lan Zhan minor corrections to his form while Wei Ying follows instructions from both Meng Yao and Nie Huaisang which mostly line up with each other and occasionally provide enough variety for him to choose one option that works better for him over another. "What's the actual rumour?"

Huaisang blinks at him. "You're not pointing your toes." 

Wei Ying rolls his eyes and points his toes harder inside his trainers. "The rumour?"

"I heard there's a coach waiting to hear from you once you pass."

"Correct," says Wei Ying, and experiences a brief out-of-body moment at how much the word sounds like Baoshan Sanren as it leaves his mouth. This is then followed by another entirely unrelated out-of-body moment of a different flavour as Lan Zhan gives a brief squeeze of warning at his hip before swinging him back down to the ground in a single weightless movement. 

"Lan Zhan," he breathes from his mostly-pairs-accurate position draped in Lan Zhan's arms, "that was hot."

"Mn," says Lan Zhan. "Tomorrow we will attempt on the ice."

"Mmh," says Wei Ying nonsensically, and tilts his face upwards for a slow kiss that turns heated as it lingers –

"I was trying," says Huaisang very close to Wei Ying's ear, "to have a conversation with you."

"Lost cause," says Meng Yao with amusement. 

"Aiya, what do you want to know?" Wei Ying whines as Lan Zhan releases him. "Baoshan Sanren gave me her number yesterday and told me if I want him to be mine I have to do all the awkward conversations and paperwork myself."

"And by him you in fact mean Xue Yang, the worst behaved child the world of figure skating has ever seen –"

"That's quite a value judgement, coming from the ten-year-old who spent his entire free skate crying over a single missing rhinestone –"

"And yet still skated clean," interrupts Huaisang primly. "I can't believe you're doing this. It's going to be a disaster."

"It's going to be fun," says Wei Ying with a grin. 

"You have a very disturbing idea of fun," replies Huaisang in a deeply judgemental tone. "Now show me the entry into that lift again, I still think you can make it look prettier."

*

Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan would go with him if he asked. He knows Baoshan Sanren would go with him if he asked. 

He doesn't ask. 

Wei Ying wraps himself in Lan Zhan's long white coat and spends thirteen whole minutes kissing him goodbye followed by an entire morning on and off buses and trains to get to his coaching test. 

He walks into the rink on his own and passes at least a full minute in quiet amusement at the rink-employee drama going on behind the front desk before anyone notices him – every rink, deep down beneath the surface-level prettiness (or lack thereof) and modernised machinery (or lack thereof), is the same at its heart.

Full of life. Full of love. 

"Oh my god," says a teenager in rink-employee uniform with a skate bag slung across her back as she glances up from bickering with her co-workers, "is that Wei Ying?!"

Five hours later Wei Ying walks out of the rink into the quiet of early evening with a folder full of official-looking paperwork and a smile so wide his cheeks ache with it – 

"Surprise!!" yells Lan Jingyi as he runs up from the car park side-by-side with Sizhui, and then Wei Ying looks up to see Lan Zhan, and Wen Qing, and Jiang Cheng and Yanli, and Huaisang, and –

– everyone. They've all come. They're all here, with warmth and laughter and joy and honest-to-god celebratory balloons – 

"Well done," says Baoshan Sanren, in the same way someone might say I never expected anything less of you. She's holding something between both hands. 

It's a plain black, empty clipboard. 

Wei Ying laughs, because that will cover up the unexpected wetness in his eyes, and lets himself be loved.

*

June 

Despite the lack of musical creativity shown by Xue Yang's previous coach, she does in fact have some extremely useful information for Wei Ying during their discussions. 

By the time Xue Yang arrives for his first morning as Wei Ying's newest skater, Wei Ying knows he's been kicked out of seventeen foster placements in three years and wound up in an extremely poorly-maintained group home where by all accounts he isn't even the worst kid at the dinner table. Wei Ying knows he'll arrive at the rink each day by faceless taxi with no-one to bring him inside, that the only reason he's allowed to skate at all is through the efforts of the pastoral team at the alternative provision school he attends three days each week who've seen a (legal) way for him to succeed in life and grabbed onto it with both hands – and, less vital to his background but somehow said with more disbelief than anything else imparted to Wei Ying during the conversation, he thinks Wei Ying is cool. 

"You're the only skater he's ever looked up to," she says from Wei Ying's laptop screen with a kind of weary incredulity. "When I told him you'd asked to coach him I think he actually forgot how to speak for a minute."

Wei Ying can see on her face what she isn't saying. 

If anyone can get through to him, it's you. 

Wei Ying makes a joke about his magnetic personality and goes straight to Baoshan Sanren for advice. He's not arrogant enough to think he can handle Xue Yang's particular situation by charm and instinct alone.

"Just be consistent," is what he gets from her after a long moment of being looked at in that too-perceptive way she sometimes has. "Nothing's going to be quite right for him at the moment – but consistent imperfection is far better than you changing the way you relate to him every five minutes because you think you're doing it wrong."

Wei Ying remembers being sixteen and wild and showing up to the same thing day after day after day after years of nothing in his life ever sticking around long enough to settle.

"Yeah, okay," he says, and the next day Xue Yang arrives.

Wei Ying meets him outside. He's full of energy, wired and a little wild-eyed with a smile Wei Ying certainly won't label as either happiness or excitement. 

"Okay," he says. "Put down your skate bag. I want you to do a lap of the rink before we go in."

Xue Yang eyes him suspiciously, like this wasn't at all what he was expecting. "On my own?"

"Yep." Wei Ying pops the p. Xue Yang doesn't move.

"I could run off," he ventures, like a test. He's still smiling a little. "I've run away from everywhere I've ever been."

Wei Ying shrugs. "That's up to you."

They look at each other. Then Xue Yang turns and bolts in the opposite direction. 

Wei Ying waits. It takes about three minutes to run all the way around the outside of the rink and its attached buildings; maybe longer for someone small or unfamiliar with the area. 

After five and a half minutes, Xue Yang reappears. He's out of breath and looking at Wei Ying with that same suspicious expression again. 

Wei Ying wrinkles his nose. "Your stamina isn't great. We'll work on that." He holds out his hand for Xue Yang's skate bag, then shrugs and withdraws it when Xue Yang only grabs the bag closer to himself. "Let's go."

It's a quiet day, inside. This is on purpose, because Wei Ying has no idea how anything about this morning is going to go. 

"Introductions now or later?" he asks as Xue Yang laces up his skates, and Xue Yang makes a face at him like he's stupid.

"I don't need to meet anyone," he says with a disbelieving sneer, and then Wei Ying blinks and he's already on the ice. 

Wei Ying watches for two minutes, then follows. He skates in front of him, behind him, around him – cuts him off mid-step, forces him to swerve out of a jump setup – 

"What the fuck are you doing?!" yells Xue Yang after less than fifty seconds of this. He's the most visibly pissed off Wei Ying has ever seen an eleven-year-old (impressive, considering Wei Ying spent those years of his own adolescence living with Jiang Cheng).

Wei Ying smiles on purpose in the specific way Jin Ling tells him is extremely annoying. "What you're doing to everyone else." 

Xue Yang smiles back. Combined with the anger, it's almost impressively unhinged. "I'm better than them." 

Wei Ying makes a show of glancing around. Lan Zhan, Baoshan Sanren, Nie Mingjue – and Sizhui and Jingyi at the far end of the rink too. "Nah. But even if you were, it's no excuse. I'm better than most of the people who skate here, but you don't see me getting in their way on purpose." 

Xue Yang glares at him. Wei Ying resists the urge to pinch his extremely round face. 

"Do you know the priority order?" he asks instead, as light and calm as if they were discussing the weather.

Xue Yang shrugs. His expression is still murderous. "I don't give a shit."

"All right." Wei Ying skates back to one of the rink exits, taking advantage of the automatic pull of their interaction to bring Xue Yang to the edge of the ice as well. "I'll give you a minute to calm down, and then that's what we'll start with."

And then he turns away to put his skate guards on and steps off the ice and deliberately doesn't look at whatever Xue Yang's doing behind him. He leans on the barrier and occupies himself with texting Wen Qing while watching out of the corner of his eye to make sure Xue Yang doesn't do anything legitimately dangerous.

After six minutes, Xue Yang skates directly (and loudly) into the barrier beside him and stares at him without smiling at all. It's mildly creepy and Wei Ying guesses it was supposed to at least startle him a little. 

"Great," he says. "First priority is whichever lesson has program music playing."

He almost expects Xue Yang to skate away again – even spots a little twitching movement like he wants to – but he doesn't. Wei Ying nods like he's received an acknowledgement of his statement. 

"Second priority is any other lessons. Third priority is anyone running their program without a coach. Fourth priority is everyone else." 

He waits for ten seconds, then points across the ice to where Lan Zhan is mid-combination-spin with Lan Qiren watching. "Which one is he?"

"Second," mutters Xue Yang. 

"Good." Wei Ying points down the rink at Sizhui and Jingyi, who are currently – not doing anything particularly productive, actually. Sizhui seems to be lying flat on the ice while Jingyi skates old-style figures around him. (Wei Ying will excuse them any amount of weirdness right now. It's the last month of their first full junior season.) "Them?"

"Fourth."

"You?"

"…second."

Wei Ying nods again. "So what do you do if you're on a collision course with Lan Zhan?"

Xue Yang looks blank. Wei Ying does not say you're almost a junior, you should know this by now – this is the kind of knowledge that's assumed. That's told once, by a child's first coach, and reinforced over and over by a thousand social cues which Xue Yang has clearly never been included in. 

"If you're the same priority level, you both give way," he says calmly. "And your coaches – that's me and Lan Qiren – should direct you away from each other anyway."

Xue Yang – unexpectedly – actually nods. 

"One more," says Wei Ying. "What priority do you become if you ignore my instructions and skate away to go do your own thing?"

Xue Yang's face screws up in what Wei Ying can best describe as pissy displeasure. He doesn't answer. 

Wei Ying waits.

"Fourth," Xue Yang spits, and kicks the barrier with his toe pick. 

"Good." Wei Ying pulls off his guards and steps back onto the ice. "Show me your favourite jumps now."

*

Wei Ying, of course, sees what every other coach in Xue Yang's life so far has seen. 

"You need to slow down," he says – thoughtfully, not like an instruction. 

Xue Yang smirks at him. They're three weeks in by this point; more than long enough to begin to figure one another out. "How are you going to make me do that?"

Wei Ying hums to himself, makes a deliberately thoughtful face, taps his chin with one finger. "It's a tricky one. I like your speed – it's great for the short program. But it's unsustainable for the free."

"If you give me boring music I'll –"

"Me?!" Wei Ying gasps in mock-affronted outrage. "Give you boring music? Aiya, I already let you pick your own for next season's short program even though it makes everyone else's ears bleed – but here, listen to this." 

Lightning-quick, he sticks headphones in Xue Yang's ears before he can react. Stay still, he mouths with wide eyes – and taps the screen of his watch to start the song.

Xue Yang looks ready to be unimpressed, ever-present smile pulled halfway derisive already. 

As he listens, the smile fades. 

He stands there for a moment when it's over, expression uncertain like he's not quite sure what to do with himself – then Wei Ying snatches the headphones back from his ears and says, "Now go, skate for three minutes with that in your head to get the ideas going before I put it on the sound system."

"No," says Xue Yang suddenly. There's a spark in his eyes Wei Ying likes the look of very much. "No-one else gets to know what it is until I can skate it properly."

Oh, Wei Ying definitely likes that idea. 

"You're only allowed headphones when you're in a lesson with me," he says. "You'll have to practise without music the rest of the time."

"Fine." 

"Go on then. Three minutes –"

Xue Yang's already gone. Wei Ying watches – and knows, as he sees frenetic speed slowly transforming into slow intensity, that he's done it. He hums the opening bars to himself, slow and quiet, and lets the choreography begin to take shape in his mind. 

As Xue Yang skates back to him, he rearranges his clipboard to a fresh clean page.

Chapter Text

July 

The purpose of an exhibition skate is not technical precision. It's not quadruple salchows – or in their newly explored world of pair skating, triple twist lifts – or overly-complex step sequences, or spins with four different level variations shoved in for the sake of the points. 

(Save all that for the short program – Wei Ying's, for next season, has the highest technical base value he's attempted yet.)

The purpose of an exhibition skate is –

– well, really, when you get right down to it, no matter what specific emotion the choreography is designed to convey –

– they're all here for the same reason. Every skater on the ice at any post-competition gala knows what it's about.

The purpose of an exhibition skate –

– is love.

"Lan Zhan!"

Wei Ying points Mo Xuanyu in the direction of the sound system for another round of experimentation with the jump timings in his new free skate, shrugs out of Lan Zhan's long white coat and slings it over the barrier, drops his clipboard on top of it – and flies across the ice to meet him as he arrives. 

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan murmurs as he catches him, and then they kiss until Wen Qing makes a rude noise into the rink speaker system and rattles the boot store shutter at them. 

"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying again. "Let's practise together today." 

"We practise together every day," Lan Zhan points out reasonably, as though this is a well-known immutable fact which does not need stating. Wei Ying pouts at him. 

"Aiya, so I can't have fun suggesting it? I want you to lift me, and I want to get that throw triple loop exactly where it should be because yesterday it was almost half a second ahead of the music, and I want –"

Lan Zhan kisses him again. It's definitely to shut him up. 

Wei Ying smiles against his lips.

*

The hardest part of skating as an opposite-direction mirror pair is the spins. 

Lan Zhan leads the movement, which means Wei Ying is the one spinning in the opposite direction to the one his brain's spent a lifetime training the dizziness out of – and even after weeks and months of it, Wei Ying's head still spins in an uncomfortably familiar way he hasn't felt in any other circumstance since his first month back on the ice. 

He doesn't mind it, though. It's okay, when it's Lan Zhan's arms around him holding him warm and close and firm inside the spin, when it's Lan Zhan's hand in his as they exit on matching edges, when it's Lan Zhan's fingers gently squeezing in call-and-response confirmation of everything's good before the next heartbeat-swift moment of their choreography – when it's Lan Zhan, with him on the ice.

The throw triple loop is the peak of the program – and with the speed and height Lan Zhan gives him, it could so easily be a quad. They've done it as a quad – have even run the whole thing with it as a quad – but it's a little too wild, a little too inconsistent, and with preparation for next season in full swing they don't have the time to spare to get it the rest of the way there.

And more than that – this skate isn't about pushing themselves. No-one's awarding points for additional rotations. It's about skating for the fun of it – for love, of each other and the ice and everything in-between – and it's just more fun with a jump they know will land every time.

(And it does, now. The quad's still better in combination than alone, but the triple – it's settled, for the first time in half Wei Ying's life.)

(Wei Ying doesn't know why. Baoshan Sanren looks as though she does – but she won't tell him. She only smiles, with a softly knowing look Wei Ying loves to pretend to be annoyed by, and tells him to do it again bigger and faster and better.)

On this particular morning, they're adding the twist lift to the program at last. They've practised off-ice until they could do it in their sleep – including, by Meng Yao's precise instruction, deliberate imbalances and falls to embed safe recovery as part of their new muscle memory. 

(Wei Ying spent fifteen silent, private minutes mostly-not-crying in the back of the boot store after the first time they fell on purpose – and woke in the middle of the night in tears for the next week. But the thing about memories is that eventually – with enough determination and endurance – new can finally overwrite old.)

(Now, when Lan Zhan boosts him weightless into the air, Wei Ying no longer sees flashes of Yanli's pale too-still face across his sight.)

They've practised on the ice too; every day for the past week and a half until it's confident and smooth and beginning to develop that floating slowed-down quality of everything familiar enough to rely on. 

And now it's time for it to meet the rest of the choreography. To replace the placeholder lift and send the program from developing into perfecting with almost three months to go still before their debut.

The first time performing any element in the heady context of a new season's program music is always an indescribable rush. It's delight, achievement, anticipation – and something else that sings yes through every nerve ending at once, when it fits with the music just right and it works, it hits that place deep inside that's the reason every skater gets up in the morning – when the energy of movement and music synchronise in perfect illustration of one another, it's everything.

The music plays. Wei Ying loses himself to it, to the firm strength of Lan Zhan's hands and the choreography that's as practised and natural as breathing by now – and of course, with automaticity comes expression, as the need to think about the next action fades to make way for pure emotion in every fingertip-extended movement, and Wei Ying skates with the music and with Lan Zhan and the three of them are for a while one single shared and wordless thought.

Lan Zhan's hands settle tight and sure on his hips, and he pushes up – 

The twist lift is only a single, of course. There's no point in pushing for more rotation in this unfamiliar territory, not when the single can fly through all the height of a triple with effortless exhilaration, when it can float easy and open and weightless at the peak of the turn like gravity is only a fairytale. 

Lan Zhan catches him, strong and careful and so, so sexy about it as they brush close across each other before Wei Ying's landing edge and Wei Ying very nearly forgets the next section of choreography in favour of pushing Lan Zhan up against the barrier and showing him exactly how fucking hot that was. 

He resists – he does, he really does – but then he just happens to catch Lan Zhan's gaze as they lean into a change of edge side-by-side, and it's dark and hot with everything Wei Ying's trying to ignore for the sake of finishing the program – and all at once, in the middle of the ice when they're supposed to be halfway into the next overhead lift, neither of them can resist any more. 

Wen Qing has to come down from the boot store and flick ice shavings down the back of Wei Ying's neck to get them to stop, this time.

(They carry on, of course. Huaisang told Wei Ying two months ago which supply closets aren't covered by the CCTV.)

*

August

Sometimes, Wei Ying just watches. When he's not coaching, when he's not working on his own skating or practising with Lan Zhan or being pushed ever closer to perfection by Baoshan Sanren (and finally, finally the careful transition from her initial caution with him to a full return to the way every lesson used to be is over – the stamina exercises, the back-to-back program run-throughs, the do it again, no, better than that, faster, higher, I'm going to chase you across the ice until you do it properly – everything is as it should be, and Wei Ying can't get enough of it). 

But when he's not doing any of that – when, for a moment, he props his elbows on the barrier and lingers just a little longer than he really needs for a quick gulp of water; when he lets himself be still and just exist in the fresh cold of the rink, amidst chatter and laughter and music and the crisp sounds of sharp edges cutting into the ice – 

When he breathes in deep, filling his lungs with the unmistakable air of home, and doesn't quite think about how lucky he is but doesn't not think about it either – that's when he watches, and listens, and tucks away every piece of the experience as precious memories in the safest parts of his heart. 

(Maybe they won't stay there. Even now, too many things don't. But there's something about the simple act of paying attention that makes it feel like it matters anyway – even if he won't remember it.)

(It matters, that he's here.)

Wei Ying watches.

"You need to go into that faster." 

Jin Ling blinks at Xue Yang. Close by, Sizhui and Jingyi drift a little nearer in cautious curiosity. 

Wei Ying notes that this is the first time Xue Yang has initiated a neutral-to-positive interaction with any of the other juniors. Or any interaction at all, really – last week he spat get out of my way at Jin Ling during a lesson (and was then forced to apologise through gritted teeth before the lesson could continue), but outside of a few other similar incidents he's entirely ignored them so far.

"Um," says Jin Ling. "The combination spin?"

"Yeah." Xue Yang pauses, half a smirk on his round little face. "Your flying entry looks shit."

Jin Ling immediately flushes familiar angry-embarrassed red. From the corner of his eye Wei Ying sees Jingyi stifle a laugh (and Sizhui hiss Jingyi!! in shocked reproach despite the not-quite-hidden twitch of his own lips in startled amusement).

The two boys stare at each other. Xue Yang tilts his head a little to one side, catlike.

And then Jin Ling pushes away with sharp-fast angry strokes against the ice, one-two-three-four-five and push and turn and fly –

– and yeah, okay, the spin looks at least three times better like that.

"I told you," shouts Xue Yang as Jin Ling glides out of it. 

Jin Ling – 

– glances surreptitiously around the rink, clocks A-Yan's ongoing lesson and Jiang Cheng and Yanli entirely focused on their free dance for the upcoming season – 

– and, still red-faced with half a scowl on his features, flips Xue Yang off with one tiny adorable finger. 

Xue Yang bursts into delighted laughter. 

(Wei Ying stifles his own helpless giggles in his sleeve. He can't let them know he's looking.)

"Hey," says Jingyi boldly – and Xue Yang turns to face him and Sizhui, the movement so sharp and quick Jingyi actually startles a little. "Uh. Do you want to come to McDonald's with us today? We're allowed to walk there on our own if we all stay together."

Xue Yang glances across the rink in Wei Ying's direction. Wei Ying pretends not to be looking. 

"I don't care," he says, and then, "but fine."

"You'll come?"

"Whatever. Yeah. Can you do a triple axel?"

"Me?!" Jingyi's voice actually squeaks, abruptly cracking halfway through the syllable – and beside him Sizhui folds in half with laughter, gasping and wiping at his eyes after an extended period of uncontrolled giggling that earns a somewhat disdainful expression from Xue Yang and an outright arms-folded glare from Jingyi. 

"Okay, first of all," says Jingyi very loudly, "that's just rude." He turns back to Xue Yang. "Second of all, why the fuck would I be able to do a triple axel?"

Xue Yang shrugs. "I saw you trying one last week."

"Oh my god, shut up – I'm only supposed to be on the prep exercises," hisses Jingyi with a frantic glance to check Lan Qiren's location on the ice. "No, I can't do a triple axel. Sizhui landed one last month and didn't shut up about it for three entire days – but," he continues with one hand raised as Sizhui opens his mouth, "it was only one, and it hasn't happened again, so I can still win if I get it consistent first."

Xue Yang looks disinterested in this hypothetical competition. He flicks his gaze across the rink to where Mo Xuanyu is currently mid-spin, crouched low to the ice with one leg extended and his body folded down all the way along it in a smooth line, fast and centred with loosely tied dark hair swirling in the wind of it. "What about him?"

"Oh, Xuanyu? Yeah, he's had it since before he came here. He doesn't skid the takeoff properly though, so Wei-ge says –"

"Jingyi," says Sizhui primly. "No gossiping."

Xue Yang looks hilariously disgusted by this interjection, lip curled and eyebrows raised in surprise. He stares at Sizhui for a long minute before turning back to Jingyi as if nothing had been said.

"I want you to show me how to try it," he says with a smile. "Wei Ying said I can ask."

Wei Ying certainly did not say anything of the sort. He carefully catches Sizhui's eye from across the ice and gives a minute shake of his head.

"Um," says Jingyi. "Aren't you like, eleven?"

Xue Yang shrugs. He's still smiling. "I can do a triple lutz."

"I think," says Sizhui carefully, "if Wei-ge meant for you to try it, he might have shown you himself."

Xue Yang looks at Sizhui with utter disdain. "I didn't ask you." 

Jingyi looks exactly the kind of uncomfortable Wei Ying recognises as the pull of at least three different loyalties and desires at once. Wei Ying thinks this is probably when he should step in and pull Xue Yang away for some actual skating work to prevent the situation from deteriorating any further – it's been a good few minutes of successful peer interactions, definitely a step in the right direction, and best to end on a high note – 

"I'll show you the prep exercises," says Jingyi cautiously, and Wei Ying catches his that can't hurt, right? glance in Sizhui's direction as he says it. "But Wei-ge might teach you different ones anyway."

"I don't want to do the prep exercises," says Xue Yang with a sneer – and then, just a single beat later, glances around himself at Sizhui and Jingyi's faces and the rest of the rink and – well, Wei Ying thinks it's actually more of a metaphorical glance around himself than a literal one. 

It's this is where you are. This is how it is. This is what you can be. 

It's even, as unexpected to Xue Yang as that might be, this is who you can be it with. 

Xue Yang shifts uncomfortably, moving his weight from foot to foot and digging the lowest tooth of one toe pick into the ice. There's some mental backtracking going on there, Wei Ying thinks. 

"Go on then," he snaps suddenly. "What are you waiting for?!"

Jingyi blinks, looks at Sizhui with something that doesn't need physical movement to give the impression of a shrug, and skates away to find space to demonstrate.

*

The group lessons for beginner skaters run on Thursdays and Saturdays. The coaches split the rink in thirds for four half-hour timeslots to cover all eight initial levels plus the three that lead into the base of the national test structure – and on Saturdays, Baoshan Sanren, Lan Qiren, and Jiang Fengmian take the classes.

On Thursday evenings the beginners get Jiang Cheng, Jiang Yanli, and Wei Ying. 

It's 6:40pm. Yanli's already gone, picked up by Jin Zixuan with two half-asleep overtired kids in the car, and Jiang Cheng is rooting through his bag for the rink keys while Wei Ying collects the last of the cones from the temporary divisions struck across the ice for the past two hours. 

Wei Ying drops the stack of flimsy ice-wet plastic rings on the picnic table between them as he steps off the ice. "Has Wen Qing gone already?" 

"She left an hour ago," says Jiang Cheng shortly. "There's no point in her being here when I know how to lock up."

Wei Ying glances at the ice and wrinkles his nose. "No-one's going to do a drive? I had the level five kids on the same circle of crossovers for almost the full half hour, it looks a state –"

"She's in again in the morning, she'll do it twice then," Jiang Cheng snaps. 

Wei Ying looks at him askance, one eyebrow a little raised. There's silence, for a moment.

Then Wei Ying laughs, deliberately light. "Aiyo, were your bronze group that annoying today? I had them last month, they're not that bad –"

He almost expects to be cut off – trails off after his mid-sentence breath in anticipation of it. But for a long minute Jiang Cheng doesn't say anything at all. 

"You," he says eventually, and then, "Wen Qing wants –" and then nothing at all. 

"What," says Wei Ying, a little cautiously. 

Jiang Cheng takes a deep, pissed-off breath. "Just once," he says, and it comes out with layer upon layer of bitterness like overwritten tracings caught forever in the ice, "it would be great if something could be mine without it being yours."

Wei Ying, for once in his life – and it's a very long once that stretches out into the silence of the empty rink until it echoes – has absolutely no idea what to say. 

"Wen Qing wants you there when she has the baby," Jiang Cheng says eventually, and it comes out flat and defeated and hits Wei Ying straight in the chest with enough force to steal his breath. 

He doesn't say anything. He only gapes at Jiang Cheng for a moment before snapping his mouth closed in response to the irritated curl of his lip. 

"She said –" says Jiang Cheng, and then huffs and finally extracts the keys from his bag to drop onto the table before zipping the bag aggressively closed again. "I know you lived with her when – after –"

"We've seen each other at our worst already," supplies Wei Ying a little hoarsely. He swallows and tries again. "It's – I guess that's why. I don't know how much she's told you about –"

"Probably fucking nothing," snaps Jiang Cheng, and then sits down hard on the bench by the table and puts his head in his hands.

"Ah," says Wei Ying. He hops up to sit on the table. "Jiang Cheng –"

"Shut up." The words come out muffled. "I don't want to hear about how great everything is for you."

"Definitely not what I was going to say," says Wei Ying, vaguely offended. "Although actually, Lan Zhan says – aiya, I'm kidding, don't look at me like that."

"Shut up then."

"No. Listen." He wiggles his fingers, pokes Jiang Cheng in the shoulder until he gets his hand smacked away for his trouble. "Wen Qing really fucking likes you. She gets this stupid look on her face when she talks about you, it's kind of gross –"

"Have you looked in the mirror even once while talking about Lan Zhan –"

"– yes, actually, because it's really hot to look in a mirror while you –"

"Stop, stop, fucking – stop!" Jiang Cheng shoves at him, red in the face and disgusted. "I don't want to know this shit!"

Wei Ying shrugs, eyes glinting with half a smirk. "You asked. Anyway, my point is – if there's one thing I know about Wen Qing it's that she's got trust issues bigger than Lan Zhan's quad lutz and she absolutely hates letting anyone else know anything about her." He pauses. "Okay, that was two things."

"What's your point," says Jiang Cheng flatly.

"Tell me something about Wen Qing's past," replies Wei Ying instead of answering. 

Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes at him. "What is this, a fucking test?"

Wei Ying rolls his eyes. "Just do it."

"Fine. She broke her wrist on a step sequence fall when she was sixteen."

Wei Ying nods, expectant, like the sentence isn't finished yet. Jiang Cheng makes a face at him. 

"You already know about this," he says, somewhere between accusing and uncertain.

Wei Ying sighs. "Jiang Cheng. I was there. I want to know if she's told you the circumstances."

"Yes," says Jiang Cheng shortly. "Wen Ruohan was making her weigh herself every fucking day."

Wei Ying waits, silent, until Jiang Cheng looks at him again. 

"She told you that," he says, precise and certain, "because she trusts you. Just because she hasn't let you all the way in yet doesn't mean she doesn't want to."

"You know her," says Jiang Cheng. It comes out probably sulkier than he intended.

"Again," says Wei Ying, "I was literally fucking there for almost everything shit that's happened to her. You can't – it's not a comparison that makes any sense."

Jiang Cheng – eventually, stiff and reluctant – nods. 

"Also," says Wei Ying pointedly, "she is literally having a kid with you."

"It was an –"

"– accident, yeah, I know, but I'm telling you right now that if she didn't trust you she would've dealt with it on her own without even telling you it ever existed."

Jiang Cheng stares at him. All the colour has disappeared from his face. 

"So it's not that she doesn't trust you. It's not that she likes me more, or thinks I'll do a better job – can you imagine, once you've got over yourself I am going to need to freak the fuck out about this –"

"Get to the point already –"

"– it's that I've been there for everything else. We're –"

Family, he bites back off the edge of his tongue, because for years and years and years Yanli had said the same to the two of them. 

From the darkly complicated look on Jiang Cheng's face, he hears it anyway. 

Wei Ying sighs. "Go home, Jiang Cheng. Go and run your girlfriend a hot bath or whatever and tell her she's doing a great job of communicating her needs."

Jiang Cheng wrinkles his nose. "Who the fuck taught you to talk like that?"

"The same person who taught me how to land all but one of my quads," Wei Ying says wearily. "She's extremely annoying."

Despite himself, Jiang Cheng snorts a laugh. Wei Ying grins at him. 

"Jiang Cheng," he says as they finish packing the remainder of their things and head for the exit.

"What now?"

"Aiya, so rude." Wei Ying smiles half to himself; leans over to knock their shoulders together as they walk. "You'll be fine."

"Shut up," says Jiang Cheng, but there's no heat to it.

*

September 

Apparently, in the final month of the previous season, Lan Zhan and Lan Qiren had a coldly polite argument about whether withdrawing from a competition counts against the criteria of every program clean this season. 

Wei Ying can only assume that Lan Zhan won this argument, because he's been working on the quadruple axel for four months now. 

Lan Zhan is very good at staying upright and making jump landings look effortless and stable. Lan Qiren is very good at sharp-eyed catches of underrotation that everyone else is too busy gasping at the enormously impressive jump itself to notice.

Wei Ying, through watching Lan Zhan every day, is now also very good at catching it. 

"Downgraded," calls Wei Ying. It's Tuesday morning, and Lan Zhan's quad axel is a full half-rotation under what it should be. "How did you even stay upright on that?"

"Land directly on the toe pick," Lan Zhan says in a bored tone, as he has the past ten times Wei Ying has asked this question. 

"I do that," complains Wei Ying, "but it doesn't work on the triple axel-quad loop combination, Baoshan Sanren still won't let me start the quad axel until that's clean – look at it, watch this –"

Wei Ying picks up speed. He's not even thinking about it, really – the movements are so familiar now, he's been working on this jump every day for months, smooth back outside edge and step forward and triple axel and land and soften and push up again and quad loop and then usually fall – 

– or land?

Wei Ying makes a surprised little punched-out noise, breath leaving him all at once in shock. He stares across the ice at Lan Zhan. 

There's a very faint smile softening the corners of Lan Zhan's mouth. 

"Oh my god," says Wei Ying. "Oh my god." 

The door at the top of the balcony swings open to admit Baoshan Sanren. All at once Wei Ying feels about sixteen different emotions slam into his chest and combine into something very close to hysteria. 

"No!!" he yells, waving frantically at her while trying not to start laughing. "You missed it!!"

Baoshan Sanren pauses, turns, leans both elbows on the balcony railing. She doesn't ask what she missed. "Show me again, then."

Wei Ying doesn't even think about it. Electrified, somewhere ever so slightly outside his body, automatic and familiar and right – 

– he lands it again. 

This time instead of oh my god he just actually screams a little bit, eyes wide and hands pressed to his cheeks and staring in disbelief from Lan Zhan to Baoshan Sanren and back with am I dreaming, did you see that too hovering unsaid in the air. 

Baoshan Sanren isn't just smiling with familiar measured pride. She's smiling with excitement. 

"Overrotate the triple axel and land in a backspin," she says, and Wei Ying's heart is frantic in his chest with a kind of excitement he's never felt before in his life.

It's first day of a new jump – and it's been a very long time since that particular thrill; he was still a teenager the first time Baoshan Sanren let him attempt a quadruple lutz.

It's you could make history with this – and that one's more familiar, but it's still not quite the same. Wei Ying's done that before, with specific jumps in specific competitions and particular combinations never attempted by anyone else – but this is different. 

Everyone knows the quadruple axel is different. 

To have that chance –

– to be the first – 

"Lan Zhan," he says with a wild grin, "watch out."

Lan Zhan looks at him with familiarly arrogant detachment. It's a game they play, this deliberately provocative I'm going to win from him to Lan Zhan and back again; a return to their junior years, all the more precious for everything held inside their hearts between that first time and the present moment.

"No need," says Lan Zhan coolly, and Wei Ying laughs in delight as he curves around the corner of the rink to build speed for his first attempt. 

Whoever gets there first in the end – they'll take the journey together.

Chapter Text

October 

Wei Ying asks Wen Qing are you actually sure about this at least fifteen times before she tells him to shut the fuck up about it and pull himself together. 

Then he reads eight different books in two weeks and memorises Wen Qing's birth plan and even asks Jin Zixuan for advice –

– and still, none of it quite prepares him for the moment, three weeks earlier than expected, when his phone rings at four in the morning and Jiang Cheng snaps you need to get your ass here and then hangs up on him.

Wen Qing is – fine, actually. She's fine for hours and hours and hours, draped forward over a beanbag in the hospital room and occasionally turning quiet and tight and focused, eyes closed and breathing deliberately steady. Wei Ying feels ever so slightly useless. 

And then, first gradually and then all at once, she's very much not fine. 

"Please remind me," Wen Qing hisses through gritted teeth, "why the fuck I thought this was a good idea?"

Wei Ying wipes sweat from her face with a damp flannel. She shoves his hand away. 

"Because," he tries, "you're going to have a baby at the end of it?" 

Wen Qing glares at him. "Stop being – ah – fuck –" 

She curls forward, eyes screwed shut, and muffles a scream in the beanbag. It's not over quickly, this time – more than a minute passes before all the tension slips out of her at once and she turns her face to one side out of the soft fabric to catch her breath. 

She's shaking, just a little. Wei Ying grabs one of her hands and holds it between both his own, and she lets him. 

"Stop being nice," she finishes weakly. "I didn't bring you here to be nice. Why the fuck am I doing this."

Wei Ying grins, just a little. Finally it all makes sense. 

It doesn't matter what the books say, or what advice anyone else might give. Wen Qing doesn't want some hypothetical perfect example of support out of a book. 

If she's asked him to be here, she wants him here.

"Because you're an idiot," he says, matter-of-fact and decisive. "That's the only explanation for why anyone would choose to procreate with Jiang Cheng. Also, all figure skaters are masochists –"

Wen Qing's laughing. She might be crying just a little too, but mostly she's laughing. And she doesn't push Wei Ying's hands away when he gathers all the sweat-damp wayward strands of hair back from her face to the ponytail where they're supposed to be. 

It takes hours, and hours, and hours, but –

– well, they've both had worse hours in their lives. 

*

It's almost four in the morning again. 

"I can't do it," whispers Wen Qing. Her cheeks are flushed and wet with tears, but she's not actively crying – they're just there, just another part of everything else that's happening to her.

"You can," Wei Ying says – shuffles around to the other side of the beanbag to lean forward onto it himself and look her in the eyes, takes one of her hands in each of his own and squeezes them tight. "You can. Second half of the free skate."

"Triple axel in the last ten seconds," Wen Qing whispers back to him. 

"Yeah." Wei Ying smiles. "Why did you even do that? You complained about it all season."

Wen Qing grits her teeth, screws up her face as everything pulls tight all over again. Behind her the midwife says something about pushing. 

"To see if I could," she gasps out, and Wei Ying squeezes her hands again and whispers you can.

*

Jiang Meixiu is tiny and soft and round and cries like the very fact of being alive is a personal insult to her. 

Wei Ying looks at her, and for a moment the world stops turning. 

Oh, he thinks, and then with a sudden rush of self-awareness that's almost shocking in its clarity, I want this. 

"Lan Zhan," he says, half a day later when Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing have had time to themselves with their new arrival and visitors are allowed again – and then he doesn't say anything else. 

He's holding a tiny warm bundle of baby in his arms, and Lan Zhan is looking at him with a stunned, soft expression like it's everything he's ever wanted to see.

Wei Ying smiles, brilliant and hopeful, and Lan Zhan makes a tiny minute movement that could almost be called a nod. 

The future unfolds, warm and bright and beckoning.

*

November 

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying whispers. "Lan Zhan."

The rink is dark. It's not quiet – but it's as close as it can be, with a crowd of thousands hushed around them like the whisper of the ocean through a closed door. 

It's their first event together this season. 

A single spotlight illuminates the ice.

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan cautiously, and it's only then as Lan Zhan takes his hands that Wei Ying realises they're shaking.

"Ah – Lan Zhan, I don't –"

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan says again, softer this time. 

Wei Ying takes a breath which shudders a little more on the way in than it's supposed to. It's not – he doesn't – 

He hasn't felt dizzy like this in months. 

"Lan Zhan," he whispers again. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

"The first time." Lan Zhan's voice is low and quiet. "At the NHK Trophy gala."

Wei Ying wants to object. He wants to tell Lan Zhan that's ridiculous, wants to laugh about it, wants to be fine. 

He shuts his eyes, instead, and kisses Lan Zhan hard enough that he forgets entirely where he is. 

"Wei Ying," says Lan Zhan softly into the breathless space between their lips when they part. Wei Ying still has his eyes closed. "We can exchange the triple loop for a double."

Wei Ying shakes his head. "I want to do it." 

He breathes in, breathes out, opens his eyes. Lan Zhan meets his gaze; a wordless question and answer. 

Together, they step out onto the ice. 

*

It's the final, silent-frozen moment before the music starts. They're in position – Lan Zhan kneeling, his hands at Wei Ying's waist; Wei Ying folded halfway down across him, loose hair like a curtain shielding them in illusory privacy from the thousand-eyed crowd. 

Wei Ying's hands are steady now, and his head is clear. He knows there's nothing wrong. He knows it.

But still – 

– the heart-pounding rush of not-quite-fear that every incarnation of this moment brings is amplified tenfold and more through his entire body. It's every skate he's ever done, each first note he's ever waited for, and more besides that he doesn't want to admit. 

Here, though – here, in their stolen illusion of privacy beneath the spotlight – here, maybe he can admit it.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying whispers, the words barely an unsteady breath. 

Lan Zhan looks up at him in silence.

"I don't want to fall," he whispers like the confession of a lifetime's wrongdoing, and every nerve ending stutters with the flicker of shock at hearing it aloud from his own lips.

"You will not," says Lan Zhan, quiet and calm and sure, and Wei Ying believes him like he can't quite believe himself right now.

The music starts.

They move together. Lan Zhan doesn't let go of him – even when the choreography briefly parts them, Wei Ying feels tethered and grounded and safe. 

The music builds – and crests at the takeoff of the throw triple loop, the timing perfect to the slightest fragment of a second, and Wei Ying soars through breathless silence and stillness as the crowd holds its breath for the landing. 

It's effortless, stunningly light, sublime. Wei Ying can't help the smile breaking across his face as they glide through the next section of choreography; he's watching Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan's watching him in return, and it's everything he's ever imagined it could be. 

The crowd doesn't matter. The darkness – the spotlight – it doesn't matter. 

All that matters is Lan Zhan. He's all Wei Ying can see. Ethereal under the light, otherworldly and breathtakingly graceful – and watching Wei Ying, like he can't bear to look away.

Next – and last – is the twist lift. 

Wei Ying is hardly thinking at all. He doesn't need to; the program is familiar to the point of automaticity, and besides – he's lost in it by now. 

In the movement, in the music. In Lan Zhan.

There's just a single half-formed fragment of thought remaining, as Lan Zhan leads him smooth and sure across the ice towards the familiar placement of the lift.

If he –

But it's not if. Lan Zhan – will, always.

When he catches me, I'll… 

Lan Zhan – 

– pulls him in, close and swift and up as Wei Ying kicks off the ice with his own momentum, and –

– the familiar breathless, weightless moment of flight opens out into forever as the spotlight catches bright white on the ice and Wei Ying flies. 

Lan Zhan, strong and sure and firm at his hips in the way that always sparks heat through Wei Ying's core –

– catches him. 

The music peaks and soars and ends and Wei Ying, kneeling on the ice in the carefully choreographed embrace of their final pose, breaks the performance and takes Lan Zhan's face in both his hands and kisses him like the whole world is watching.

"Lan Zhan," he murmurs against his lips, smiling – and in answer Lan Zhan pushes both hands into his hair and kisses him hard enough to send sparks all the way up and down his spine and out to the furthest reaches of his fingertips. 

They break apart. Lan Zhan's gaze is dark and hot and captures Wei Ying's every thought inside it. 

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying says again, pushing on purpose, electrified with it, "I'm going to break your world record this season."

From the way all the heat in Lan Zhan's expression goes soft around the edges, he knows it means I love you.