Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian had known it wouldn’t last. Wei Wuxian had told Lan Wangji countless times—and the other always agreed—they weren’t compatible with each other. They had always been polar opposites, from the way they carry themselves to their food preferences, to their social standing. They had future plans which are in no way capable of accommodating each other.
They knew, they were just not meant to be.
It did nothing to stop the jab of pain that went through Wei Wuxian’s chest, however, when he received an invitation for Lan Wangji’s engagement party.
It wasn’t even his circle anymore. He had long since been disowned by the Jiangs—before he and Lan Wangji even met—and he knew the invitation most likely came out of politeness. They had been roommates and odd friends for Lan Wangji’s last year in university, after all. Lan Wangji probably sent an invitation to their whole batch. Wei Wuxian was most likely just one of those names, listed out of courtesy, a name not even worth a second thought in a list of so many people who are so much more than him.
That said, it was still no question whether he wanted to go. The last time he had seen Lan Wangji was more than a year ago—in his local supermarket buying carrots, imagine that—and any circumstance to see Lan Wangi was as good as any. He had accepted long ago that they weren’t for each other—he had told himself and Lan Wangji countless times, after all—so going to his engagement party should not even hurt as bad.
That does not mean it doesn’t hurt at all.
Wei Wuxian is not sure whether he was wrong, or if the stabbing pain in his chest is already a watered down version of what he’s supposed to feel.
He stayed seated throughout the whole dinner, only talking to people who approached him, far from his usual galavanting self who would have gotten through the whole ballroom by now with his boisterous laugh in tow. He couldn’t, not with the weight on his chest. He had decided last night that tonight was only for staring at Lan Wangji from afar, and nothing else. Nie Huaisang, his supposed company for the night, had just disappeared with the excuse of grabbing a drink with Jiang Cheng, who also stopped by his side with this weird sorry look on his face that just made him look even more constipated.
It was the one thing that gave him comfort for the night. It was nice to know that Jiang Cheng still carried a soft spot for his ex-sibling, somehow.
He had watched as Lan Wangji paid courtesy from table to table for a whole hour and a half. The crowd had moved on to dancing now, but Lan Wangji still had this polite yet completely bored look on his face, looking from one corner to another from time to time, and Wei Wuxian wants nothing but to startle him into showing one of those rare smiles he gives Wei Wuxian sometimes.
But he also decided, last night, that he will not talk to Lan Wangji. Any other time, he can strike a light conversation and drop jokes here and there, no matter their shared past. He had been doing that every time they saw each other in passing the last five years, after all. He approaches him like they’re old friends, like there is no special history between them, like there were no nights of shared kisses and warm beds.
Not many knew about that after all. That they were almost lovers.
Almost, because Lan Wangji is beautiful and perfect, backed by his stuffy, old-rich, strictly conservative family, with his uncle being one of their professors who disapproved of Wei Wuxian since day one of finding out that he’s gay .
Wei Wuxian thinks they weren’t even supposed to meet at all. He had spent three years in university not knowing Lan Wangji existed, and it would have probably gone on like that if the other had not chosen to avail of the university dorm rooms last minute. Wei Wuxian’s usual roommate—Mo Xuanyu, bless him and his gay heart—had gotten an overseas internship for his greatness in fashion designing. Suddenly, Wei Wuxian has a hot straight roommate he loves to occasionally annoy.
Not that he had a lot of time for that. It was considerably harder for him after getting disowned by the Jiangs, having to find ways to support himself. The time he didn’t spend inside the university was spent on the numerous part-time jobs he had to keep to pay for his studies. His grades would have been eligible for a scholarship, but he had a bad record after getting into a fight with his sister’s fiance.
Surprisingly, Lan Wangji had been the one to look out for him the whole year after seeing him bury himself with work. The other had stocked up their grocery supplies, cooking him meals after noticing his unhealthy diet of instant noodles five days in a row. It had gotten to the point where he had been carried and shoved on his bed after Lan Wangji found him sick and napping on a bus stop on the way to work.
It was very easy, falling in love with Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian tried to keep it in. It didn’t feel fair for Lan Wangji to have a gay roommate scretly pining for him. Friendship would have been enough, and already more than what Wei Wuxian could ask for.
But Lan Wangji had confessed, one semester later, with his red ears and hopeful eyes and Wei Wuxian couldn’t say no, not with Lan Wangji looking at him like that.
So they started being something, secretly. They would hold hands under tables and sneak kisses in empty hallways. Wei Wuxian would calculate just how much touching he can do in public that can still pass as him just being a clingy friend. Lan Wangji had it easier, with his naturally stoic face and nothing but his almost unnoticeable blushing ears to give him away. And then they come home to their small dorm room after a long day, and Wei Wuxian would be napping on Lan Wangji’s lap, and Lan Wangji would be kissing him senseless while cooking their dinner, because hidden by the four walls of their dorm room, they could.
They never talk about going official or public. Wei Wuxian couldn’t ask Lan Wangji of it, after all. Not when Wei Wuxian’s own coming out had costed him his family.
And it wasn’t like it was the only thing. They weren’t meant to be for a lot of reasons. So many reasons that it was so much easier to just accept that the universe did not want them together, rather than try to fight. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji spent their last six months of being roommates sleeping next to each other instead of their own beds, cuddling into the night with whispers of I love yous and I’m sorrys. They made the best of their time together, until it dwindled from months to weeks to days and eventually, had completely run out.
Wei Wuxian had come to terms with it. Better to love and to be loved than to never love at all, as they say.
Wei Wuxian silently laughs at his own corny thoughts, the first time he does that night. Something pulls his eyes and he looks back on the dancefloor, just in time to see Lan Wangji looking at him, like his laugh had somehow travelled across the wide ballroom and it’s the only thing Lan Wangji was looking for the whole night.
He freezes. He made sure to stay out of Lan Wangji’s sight the moment he stepped inside the venue, going as far as leaving for the restroom when he saw Lan Wangji heading in the direction of their table with his fiancee.
This is the first time Lan Wangji has seen him in over a year, and Wei Wuxian is frozen in his seat as Lan Wangji leaves Luo Qingyang — his fiancee — in the middle of a dance, heading towards his direction with nothing but a determined look on his face.
Wei Wuxian tries to take a deep breath, but even his lungs feel like they’re failing him. He feels like he’s on fire. He lets go of the air shakily as Lan Wangji stops right in front of him.
Lan Wangji is still as beautiful as he remembers, this close. His navy blue suit and powder blue tie probably would have looked plain on anyone else, but he carries it with the air that only he can.
He forces on a smile as greeting, his voice still stuck from the growing lump in his throat.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji holds out a hand. “Dance with me.”
Wei Wuxian could do nothing but stare. This was not the plan. He was supposed to just look from afar, as practice for all the years there is to come that it would be all he’s allowed to do. Being close to Lan Wangji and still not being able to have him is something he’s not sure he can handle. Not now.
“Take my hand. People are staring.” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Wuxian feels the hair on the back of his neck stand.
They’re staring because I’m the local gay and you’re supposed to be straight and getting married. Wei Wuxian thinks, and this is the only time he has any malicious intent on Lan Wangji — he wants to whack the back of his head. In the several months that they were something, it was always Wei Wuxian who initiated public affection, and he made sure to never be too much. He had to calculate it perfectly to make it something that can be dismissed as Wei Wuxian being a touchy person and Lan Wangji a very tolerant friend.
And now he’s asking him to dance with him. In his own engagement party. To someone else.
Wei Wuxian is torn between wanting to cry and kiss him or cry and throttle him.
He takes the hand anyway. It would be more unusual if he doesn’t, is his excuse. He doesn’t even fool himself.
Lan Wangji’s hand is warm and familiar in his as he takes him to the middle of the dance floor, and Wei Wuxian registers the old love song playing. He had been worrying about Lan Wangji and his family and his engagement party, but he loses all thoughts when Lan Wangji intertwines their fingers and places another hand on his waist.
Everything is so familiar, and for a second Wei Wuxian is back in their small dorm room, and all that matters is Lan Zhan and Wei Ying , both barefoot, dancing with their chests pressed close to each other as someone croons about life in rose colored glasses.
It had started out as a joke. Wei Wuxian had been teasing Lan Wangji about never going to prom, and not knowing how it would have felt like to slow dance with someone he liked. Wei Wuxian thought the other had been barely tolerating him the first few months, but he hadn’t let it stop him from teasing. Lan Wangji is beautiful when he blushes after all. He couldn’t pass up the chance.
And then one night, the joke had somehow revived itself, and Lan Wangji is suddenly asking him for a dance and Wei Wuxian is frozen in his seat, because Lan Wangji had wanted to experience how it feels to dance with someone he liked , and he’s asking him.
He took one look at the other’s blushing ears and wide golden eyes before holding his hand.
They spent many weekend nights like that after. Wei Wuxian was not the type to like croony old love songs, but he developed a lot of favorites from dancing with Lan Wangji.
The memories flash through his head like a mirage of videos played in an old overhead projector. They danced a total of 31 times — he counted — and soon enough it was the last time playing through his head, with boxes lining up their dorm room ready for moving out. Lan Wangji had landed himself a scholarship for a masters degree in a university a continent away, just like his initial plan, and Wei Wuxian had to go out to the world alone and figure out how to somehow get a living with his art degree.
They were not meant to be then, and they were not meant to be now.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji is somehow so close Wei Wuxian could feel his breath on his ear. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
What could Wei Wuxian tell him? That he’s happy for him? That they weren’t meant for each other? That he told him so? That he is still so damn in love with him that he just spent the last two hours — the last five years, even — silently watching him from afar because that’s all he could do?
“What do you want me to say?” He asks instead. His voice sounds foreign, even to him.
Surely Lan Wangji does not want him to say ‘ congratulations’ , because it’s just a hundred shades of cruel, and Lan Wangji is the least cruel person he knows.
Lan Wangji stays quiet, expecting. The silence between them is filled with expectations and failed dreams and a once upon a time that was set to end with an unhappy ending.
“Please don’t make me say it.” Wei Wuxian says, after a while. He ignores the way his voice breaks, and he hopes Lan Wangji does not notice. “I can’t.”
Whether it’s ‘congratulations’ or any variation of the ‘I miss you, I love you, I still want you’ running through his veins every single second of the day, he can’t say it.
The first one, because for all the lies he had to tell other people to save them from pain and worry, he’s not strong enough to lie right now. Not when he’s in Lan Wangji’s arms for what’s most probably the last time.
The second one, because for all the growth he had been doing the last five years, he is still as much a coward as he was five years ago, and he will freeze hell over before he asks Lan Wangji for anything like that .
So he stays quiet, and lets Lan Wangji pull him close.
“You’ve always told me,” Lan Wangji starts, after a while. His voice is soft but his words are clear. “That we’re incompatible. That I’m too neat and you’re too messy. That I’m too rigid, and you’re too free. That I’m too good and you’re too much trouble.” A pause. “That the world wouldn’t want us together anyway.”
Wei Wuxian swallows a whimper, his heart squeezing inside his chest, because despite lamenting that same fact ever since he arrived two hours ago, he was not ready to hear it from someone else — much less from Lan Wangji.
“You always agreed with me.” He says, a tear or two meeting his cheeks, and he hopes no one sees. The last thing he wants is to cause any more issues for Lan Wangji at his own engagement party.
He feels Lan Wangji shift closer. “I never did.”
He freezes. “What?”
“I never did.” He says again. Lan Wangji leans away from him, only to stare at his eyes. “I only stayed quiet, because I do not agree. I think we’re perfect.” He sounds so determined and certain and sure , and Wei Wuxian feels himself crumple at the gaze directed at him. “And maybe the world didn’t want us together then. Maybe it doesn’t want us together now.” Wei Wuxian wants to interrupt, because they’re at Lan Wangji’s engagement party to someone else , and that’s a dead obvious giveaway of what the world wants, but Lan Wangji looks at him with so much love and so much certainty that all rational thoughts flew over somewhere he could not see them. “At this point I don’t even want to know. I do not care. If the world does not want it to happen, it needs to suck it up because I want it and I will make it happen.”
It’s the harshest way he ever heard Lan Wangji speak, and his gold eyes are staring into him looking so warm even as they fill with tears and Wei Wuxian feels nothing but overwhelming love. “Lan Zhan.”
Lan Wangji blinks, a tear falling down his face. “I’ll make it happen. Just say yes.”
Wei Wuxian just stares, and he realizes he had been doomed from the start, because not once in his life was he able to say no to Lan Wangji when he looks at him like that.
“I’ll have to say sorry to Miss Luo then.” He says instead, a silly smile on his face, his head still trying to catch up with his heart from everything that’s been said.
Lan Wangji shakes his head, the beginnings of a small smile on the corners of his lips. “Say yes, and I’ll be the one saying sorry for you.”
The statement is so silly that Wei Wuxian finds himself laughing through his tears. “Yes.” He manages to whisper, and suddenly Lan Wangji’s lips are on his and his arm goes at the back of his head to pull him closer. It’s a kiss filled with the bitterness and longing of the last five years, but it tasted as sweet as the pure happiness that filled Wei Wuxian’s chest, seeping through his bones.
If he were even just a bit less preoccupied, he would have heard the scandalous gasp the whole ballroom had just let out. But alas, Lan Wangji’s kiss is so much better to pay attention to than anything else.
They had to part at some point, both catching their breaths, and Lan Wangji presses another soft kiss on his forehead before putting himself in front of him. It wasn’t until he managed to take his eyes off Lan Wangji that he realized he’s shielding him from his uncle, red on the face with every intent to make his anger known.
“Lan Wangji!” Lan Qiren had managed to call out, but Lan Wangji replies before he can even say anything else.
“Uncle,” A dramatic pause. “I am very, very gay.”
Wei Wuxian wants to burst out laughing right then and there, because it was so un-Lan Wangji to just blurt it out like that in a ballroom of people invited to his engagement party, yet the statement was also so Lan Wangji in the sense that, well, he is very very gay .
But he remembers that it is an engagement party , so he holds it off and scans the crowd for the other half of the supposed couple. Luo Qinyang, Mianmian, had been one of their friends back in university, and while she never showed interest in Lan Wangji that way before, getting this whole drama on your engagement party could not be good for the heart.
But Mianmian stands not even three meters away from them, a huge smile on her face, holding both of her hands in a thumbs up sign. If Wei Wuxian is being brave, he’d bet she looks even more thrilled than he is in this turn of events. Almost like she has been expecting it.
He sends her a confused smile and she had the audacity to actually laugh, loudly , taking the attention away from them for a few seconds, just enough that they could break into a run through the crowd and out of the ballroom, Lan Wangji’s hand still in his.
They stop running when they reach the underground carpark, Lan Wangji heading straight to the two figures beside what he’s guessing is his car.
“Ah-jie?”
Jiang Yanli greets him with a tight hug. They see each other at least once a month, as per her request, but it still takes him by surprise. He hadn’t even seen her in the ballroom. “Xianxian, I’m so happy for you.” She lets go, just in time for Wei Wuxian to see Jin Zixuan handing Lan Wangji a duffle bag.
His duffle bag.
“You planned this?!” He turns to Lan Wangji, the shock and incredulity of the whole situation has him reeling.
Lan Wangji, the audacity , sends him a smile. “Mn.”
“A-Xian, you can hardly elope without a plan.” Jiang Yanli says, tone both admonishing and fond. “A-Sang had to break the drawer in your apartment to get your passport. I’m sure you don’t mind.”
Wei Wuxian just stares, his eyes starting to warm again and his eyes drift to Jin Zixuan — “I’m just here to help your sister. Don’t thank me, I might barf.”
“I couldn’t tell A-Cheng, he’d be a total giveaway.” Jiang Yanli says with a laugh. “Now go. Your flight is in two hours and you still have to drive.”
He almost cries as he gives her another tight hug, and he even manages to smile at Jin Zixuan because it’s the happiest day of his life and he’s feeling generous.
And then Lan Wangji is pulling him close and opening the passenger door, and off they go.
Lan Wangji does not let go of his hand unless he absolutely has to, and Wei Wuxian stares at him from the passenger seat with stars in his eyes.
He sends a squeeze on the other’s hand, trying to get his attention. “Lan Zhan.” He calls out, and even just saying the name sends a warmth through his chest. “Where are we going?”
He pauses, a slight frown marring his forehead. “I don’t know. Your sister booked the tickets and planned the trip.”
It somehow sends Wei Wuxian laughing uncontrollably. “Did you really plan this? Or were you just roped into it by my sister pointing a canon to your face?” He jokes, and a crease appears in between Lan Wangji’s eyebrows. He stops laughing.
“I was too worried,” Lan Wangji says, his voice faltering. “That you would say no.”
Wei Wuxian holds his hand tight, pressing a kiss on the back of his hand, and Lan Wangji glances at him with a smile as they reach a stop light. “And Huaisang was starting to get mad, because I had too many specifications on what I want for the trip.”
Wei Wuxian laughs again, because Nie Huaisang is the most detail oriented person he’s ever met, and if he’s annoyed by Lan Wangji being specific then he must have good reason to be. “I should thank him when I get back then.”
Lan Wangji smiles. “He says there’s no need, because soon enough they would need our help.”
It was Wei Wuxian’s turn to frown in confusion. “What? Why?”
“He and Jiang Wanyin--”
Wei Wuxian gasps. “I knew it! I knew they were dating!” He says, the laughter is back again with a vengeance, his sides are starting to hurt from all the laughing and happiness and his eyes feel warm again.
His laughter eventually dies down as they get stuck in heavy traffic, the car slowing down to a stop, and his thoughts finally catch up to him.
He stares at Lan Wangji, his usual cold air filled with warmth, his usual sharp eyes soft and clear.
“Will you not regret this, Lan Zhan?” He whispers, almost scared of the answer.
Lan Wangji turns to him with a smile, his eyes still certain and sure, before cupping his cheek and pressing a soft, deep kiss on his lips.
“I don’t think I will ever regret choosing you, Wei Ying.”