Work Text:
1.
Sometimes Yu Wenzhou felt like other people didn’t give Han Wenqing and Zhang Xinjie enough credit.
Whatever. He smiled. That meant that he had more of the two of them to himself.
2.
Home.
To Yu Wenzhou, it used to be something nebulous. A vague idea.
His parents had not been in the best of relationships; they argued more than they did not, often paired with the sounds of pots and pans being thrown around the house. He spent most of his time at home holed inside his room reading or doing homework––such was the pitiful life of a student in China––and went about his daily life in as normal a way as possible. He got average marks in school, two girls left him perfume-scented love letters, and he threw them in the bin.
He got out of the house and into the school dorms as soon as he could. They were better by a margin. He had lived in a four-person room with two bunk beds; he slept in the top bunk and it rattled every time he tossed and turned inside his blankets.
One of his roommates was not really personable, he remembered; he never flushed the toilet, and he always left his dirty laundry in the washing machine and his half-eaten takeout boxes on his (otherwise barren) desk while he went out gallivanting with his girlfriend.
Yu Wenzhou was pretty close with his other two roommates, though they were not in the room much, preferring to while their time away in the decrepit internet cafe a few hundred meters from the school’s rear wall, playing Glory amid a murky sea of swear words and cigarette smoke.
Yu Wenzhou should know, because thanks to them, he had a new hobby and a gleaming new account card.
They were not home to him, but they had pressed the pivotal puzzle piece into his hands.
3.
Things happened, he was scouted, ended up in Blue Rain’s training camp, and in a few years, debuted as captain.
Blue Rain was… complicated.
The first couple of months were bad. It became worse when Senior Wei left.
After Senior Fang left, he was left with no choice but to take up the mantle.
Sometimes he still marveled at how he could do it back then, how a frail and skinny eighteen-year old teen with “crippled hands” had managed to stand unyielding in the face of criticism and hate.
Years passed, and Blue Rain had become something resembling home to him. They trained together, lived together, and went for supper together at the nearest BBQ joint on some weekday nights. They shared summers like they might share a freshly cut watermelon on the hottest days, slaved over tactical drills and opposing team analyses in the same conference room during the warm winters. Yu Wenzhou had literally seen most of his teammates in their underwear more times than he wanted to count.
Years passed, and people came and went. Some retired out of old age and trembling hands. Some left because Blue Rain could not give them what they wanted most. (Shaotian cried hard when Yu Feng left.) Others came because they believed that Blue Rain had whatever they wanted. Others simply chose Blue Rain because they had nowhere else to go.
And that, along with the knowledge that he would depart from Blue Rain much like how Senior Wei had, was why Blue Rain had felt ephemeral to him, something temporary, although he loved everyone like they were his brothers, long-lost brothers, united by fate herself.
4.
Yu Wenzhou woke up bathed under rays of sunlight peeking in from under their thick blinds.
Xinjie and Wenqing were both up, as usual––the two of them rarely slept in even on weekends. The fragrant aroma of cooked porridge wafted into the bedroom door, left open for a single, specific purpose: to lure him out of the warm mass of bedsheets.
Yu Wenzhou had half a mind to sleep in, if only to annoy Xinjie a little, as any deviation from his ironclad routine was wont to, but he got up anyway and headed to the bathroom.
Xinjie knew that he would be susceptible to that trick, and Wenzhou knew that he would fall for it every time. Wenqing just went with the flow.
Both of his boyfriends were to blame, he thought.
As expected, the two of them were already waiting when Wenzhou ambled out to the living room still clad in the clothes he had worn to sleep the past day.
“Good morning.”
Wenzhou smiled. It had taken years, but he had finally found himself a home.