Work Text:
Lan Zhan’s current work schedule is jampacked. With gaining her tenure as an associate professor at Yiling comes more responsibilities. Not only that, but with the loss of two of their tenured professors and the lack of new professors, her work load had doubled for the semester.
From handling several classes of general education course, major courses, and elective course, her courses doubled with the addition of handling two undergraduates who had chosen her as their thesis advisor.
Her weekday schedule once she’d entered the university campus is full. There are always students requesting for assistance or asking questions during her office hours. She couldn’t even dedicate an hour to coo at her precious wife and son. Thank heavens she didn’t have any evening classes assigned to her.
Her only reprieve is that every morning, she is able to cuddle with her wonderful wife and bond with her wonderful son before she leaves for work; and when she returns home tired from work, her wife and son are always there to welcome her warmly.
Just when her wife was on a long vacation from work, she was the one that didn’t have time to stay at home with her.
Still, Lan Zhan had long decided that weekends are her special time for family. No calls would penetrate their happy domestic bubble if she had anything to say about it.
Her favorite days of the week are her Saturdays and Sundays. Years of discipline and lectures of productivity from her uncle are thrown away in the face of her new family.
Without any help from the alarm clock, Lan Zhan wakes at five in the morning but she does not rise from her bed and start the day as she should. Instead of the routine ingrained in her by her uncle’s strict teachings, she follows the routine that she had been accustomed to with her family.
Staying in bed past five in the morning to gaze in the wonderful at the beautiful woman by her side, content and happy with her life. Brushing the stray hair from her wife’s sleeping face, she saw the clock on their bed side indicate that it was turning six in the morning. With a soft kiss on her sleeping wife’s cheek, she carefully stood up and made sure her wife, who exhausted herself during the weekdays being the pillar of their home.
Tiptoeing to her son’s room, she gently woke him. It’s easy to wake A-Yuan. The child taking up her mama’s waking habits over her mommy’s.
“Good morning,” she kisses his forehead and helps him stand up.
“G’morning, mama,” he yawns but dutifully performs his morning ritual. She’s proud of her son, watching how he fixes his bed without any need for prompting. Her good boy also went to brush his teeth without needing her mama’s help. It’s a testament to her and her wife’s child rearing that their son has grown up well.
Moving towards the kitchen, she prepares the ingredients for their meal and pushes a step stool over the kitchen island and prepares smaller plastic bowl and whisk, knowing that weekends are days when she and her son bond over making breakfast.
When her son, quick and eager, hurries to climb the step stool and stand beside her, she does not berate him as her uncle would. She pats his head and helps him wear the apron with rabbit prints that Wei Ying embroidered with their son’s name
“You remember what our surprise for mommy, right?”
“Breakfast in bed for mommy,” he replies with enthusiasm.
“What breakfast do we make for mommy?” She asks.
“Pancakes and juice and berries,” A-Yuan lists.
She taps his nose, listening to his adorable giggle at the action, “That’s right. Which is why mama needs A-Yuan’s help.”
“A-Yuan is here to help,” he grabs the child-sized whisk and salutes just like her mommy often does.
She gives him that smile that’s specially reserved for him and Wei Ying only. “Thank you, A-Yuan, you truly help ease my load.”
Her son beams at her and her heart still fill with affection and pride whenever she sees it.
As the two of them prepare a breakfast fit for their queen, she hums and sings with her son. The two of them dance around the kitchen. Laughter rings loudly in their home.
They are noisy by the Lan Clan’s standards. They waste time exchanging smiles and affections that could have been used to make cooking easier. Her uncle would have been disappointed in her, reciting the thousands of rules in their family and telling her to kneel before their ancestors and apologize for disrespecting their family tradition.
Lan Zhan has long since grown out of the shackles of her old family.
It took her years and years to understand that while those rules were meant to discipline a person, it never should have been cause to scare a child into submission. It took her and her brother reaching adulthood before they were able to see the many errors in the rules that they followed. Following the rules blindly is not how a person ought to live their life. It was also wrong to apply family rules that their ancestors who lived in a different time, a different environment, to their current home life. It was wrong to be unbent in changing, in moving forward in time.
It was wrong to prioritize rules over family.
Lan Zhan had been given a chance to be with Wei Ying, who stood by her side when her family rules had seen her thrown out of the family for whom she loves. She had been given a chance to create a new family with Wei Ying and A-Yuan. She had been allowed to create new family traditions, new memories with her family.
It had hurt, to lose the family that you’ve known all your life.
But, she thinks with a smile, she had not really lost her family. Her brother stood by her side, disowning himself in the process. Wei Ying opened her arms and created a new family with her. Even Wei Ying’s family, who are disorganized and were the last people she’d think to support Wei Ying and her, had been the ones to stand beside them proudly during their wedding day.
She had lost an uncle, but she had found new brothers and sisters.
She had lost the ability to return to her old family home filled with memories of her mother, but she had built a new home with her wife and son.
Yes, if she were given a chance to change her past, she’d still take the road she had traveled to get here.
“Mama, mama,” she felt a tug on her shirt and looked to see her son point at the last of the pancakes they were making.
She quickly turned off the stove and saved the pancake, which thankfully only had a dark shade of brown on one side instead of charred. She kisses her son’s head and brings the plates to the island. “Thank you, A-Yuan,” she says, “you really saved the pancakes.”
Her son giggles and wields a can of whip cream as if a pro. She watches him and stops him before he could put a large portion of it on top of the pancakes. She helps him carefully stick the berries on the whip cream. She scolds him gently, teaching him the proper amount to place. He nods and listens seriously.
Looking in her son’s face softens her. She wonders if her mother felt the same as she does when she looks at her and her brother back then.
“Wow, what’s this?” The two of them raised their head from the tray they were preparing to see Wei Ying with her messed up hair grinning sleepily at them by the door. “My two precious darlings and pancakes? What’s the special occasion?”
A-Yuan jumps down from the step stool and hurries to Wei Ying’s side despite Lan Zhan’s careful scolding. “A-Yuan, mommy’s injured,” she reminds when she sees her son ready to jump and her wife ready to catch him. “And Wei Ying, you’re still injured. Be careful.”
Wei Ying rolls her eyes but a fond smile remains on her face. She picks up A-Yuan up, despite the child’s protest and rebukes that ‘mommy is injured’. “I’m fine, now,” she moves to kiss her worried wife, “Don’t be such a worrywart. The doctors said I only need rest, but they don’t know my body like I do. I can carry this tiny tot no problem.”
“If your injury opens up, I’ll allow Wen Qing to scold you.”
“No, you won’t. You’d punish me yourself,” a smirk.
Lan Zhan shakes her head, utterly fond.
“Mommy, we were supposed to bring you breakfast in bed,” A-Yuan tugs on Wei Ying’s clothes to garner her attention. “It’s special breakfast since mommy works really, really hard and we love her very, very much.”
“Aww, that’s sweet of you two,” Wei Ying says. “But we can eat here and it’ll still be very special since I have the amazing A-Yuan and lovely mama with me.”
A-Yuan giggles and allows her mommy to drop him at his booster chair.
Lan Zhan places the plates on their tray at the table and watches her little family. Wei Ying and she assist They were loud, both her wife and son are. There are stories and conversations to be told in the dining table.
Again, she couldn’t help but compare the differences between her previous home to here.
This is a blatant rule-breaking of the ancient rules of the Lan Clan, but she doesn’t care whether or not the ancestors are cursing her name. She knows her mother would want this warmth for her. She knows that in this little home of theirs with her wife and son, she’s the happiest she had ever been.
“That’s a beautiful smile on your face, Er-Jie,” Wei Ying says, teasingly. “What are you thinking?”
There was no need to think about the answer. “I was thinking, ‘what a beautiful family I have’.”
“Ah, Er-Jie,” Wei Ying swoons dramatically, “I keep telling you to warn me when you’re going to smile. You’re far too beautiful for us mortals.”
“No. Wei Ying is more beautiful.”
“Ay,” she laughs. “What do you think, baby, who is prettier? Mama or mommy?”
A-Yuan, thinking it seriously, looks between the two as if truly perusing them. Then, he answers with a bright grin, “Mama and mommy are both very pretty!”
Yes, as she listens to the laughter surrounding her home, she does have a beautiful family.