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Wei Wuxian has always had a complicated relationship with death—and, frankly, life as well.
The first embers began when he was a child, young and silly. He used to play games with the quiet neighbor boy who never smiled, but his eyes always did a sweet thing when he saw Wei Wuxian, so he knew he didn’t mind. Block towers and play-doh in between his fingers, Wei Wuxian had a good childhood.
He baked pies with his mother. Cakes, too, but the pies were the best ones—cinnamon apple, spiced chocolate, raspberry and cherry and rhubarb. They would experiment with flavors, flour dusting their cheeks and sugar in their hair. He could not remember a single day where he did not smile, nestled into a warm kitchen with his mother and her sweet smiles, joy a better taste than any of the sugar and berries.
It was just the two of them, in their sweet little house. Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have had it any other way.
He was still young the day he sat in his backyard with Lan Wangji, dirt under his nails and sweat at the back of his neck. Lan Wangji never looked anything less than perfect but today there was dirt on his pants from sitting next to Wei Wuxian, softness in his eyes and mouth as Wei Wuxian talked and talked and talked as he was wont to do.
Wei Wuxian remembered looking over at Lan Wangji, at his golden eyes and round cheeks and the hint of a smile. When Wei Wuxian leaned over and kissed him with the clumsy mouth of a child, Lan Wangji had tasted like sunshine.
He pulled away and Lan Wangji’s eyes were wide. He opened his mouth as if to ask why.
Wei Wuxian flushed from the top of his head down to the tips of his toes.
“You’re pretty,” he told Lan Wangji because he was, because he was too young to say I don’t understand love but I love you. And Lan Wangji, because he was also far too young to understand that some words go unsaid, did not understand the warmth in his chest either.
“Oh,” Lan Wangji said.
“Am—am I pretty?”
Lan Wangji’s ears were red but he didn’t hesitate to nod. And then, he leaned over and kissed Wei Wuxian, a quick peck.
Wei Wuxian had run away then, bashful and blushing and giggling. He never looked back, though he would come to wish he had.
The next morning was when the world stopped. Or began, depending on who you asked.
Wei Wuxian found his mother on the ground. There was a pie in the oven and her eyes were closed.
He didn’t understand it at the time, but there was such a thing as brain aneurysms, tricky little things that come with no warning and take everything away like a thief in the night. Wei Wuxian, who only understood death in the terms of his father having gone away and never came back, did not understand. He simply thought she was sleeping.
So he woke her up.
He touched her cheek, felt an electric shock, and her eyes opened.
“Oh,” she said, confused. She saw Wei Wuxian standing above her and blinked. “Oh, A-Xian. I must have fallen asleep.”
He smiled. He could fall asleep anywhere, and he was happy to share that with his mother.
A part of him knew she had been more than sleeping. He did not mention it.
His mother pushed herself back up, bustling around the kitchen and laughing at her own silliness. They were too distracted, too unaware to notice a minute mark was passed. They were in their own bubble in their happy, sweet little house and they did not know that next door, Lan Wangji’s father dropped to the ground and never got back up.
They ate pies and watched cartoons. Wei Wuxian told her that he kissed the neighbor boy and she laughed so loud it rang in his ears for years. She told him that he should give Lan Wangji some flowers. Wei Wuxian thought that was a marvelous idea. A lovely beginning.
That night, she went to tuck him in. She smiled down at him with endless love.
“My sweet boy,” she murmured, and kissed his forehead.
A spark between their skin.
And that was how Wei Wuxian learned the limits of his powers through the simple, devastating effect of trial and error.
He could bring a dead person back to life, but only for one minute. If they lived longer than that, it would be at the cost of another life. And if he touched the dead person again, they would return to their eternal rest.
Family friends took him in. They moved him away and gave his mother a beautiful funeral. He heard his auntie mutter at some point about how it was a shame, that there were new orphans next door too.
He never saw Lan Wangji again. Wei Wuxian tried not to be bothered about it.
And life, as it tends to do, moved on.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Wei Wuxian found his place in the world, and learned how to balance the things he cared about.
First were the pies. He opened a bakery with the last of the money he inherited from his mother and specialized in strange, delicious pies with food combinations that shouldn’t have worked, but Wei Wuxian always found a way. He drew people in with the delicious treats and kept them with his charm, a laugh like his mother’s.
Second were the dead.
Wei Wuxian was clever, inarguably so. He discovered the limits of his powers through the heavy loss of his mother, as well as the death of Lan Wangji’s father. He did some accidental experiments on wild animals as well—it was unforgettable how a roadkill possum could stand up and walk away, only for a bird to fall inexplicably out of the sky at the sixty second mark afterward.
Jiang Cheng had gone on to become a private investigator. And how better to solve a case than to ask the victim?
So Wei Wuxian learned to use his powers for good, and always made sure to touch the dead again before the minute was up. He did not dare make the mistakes of his youth, and he did not forget the boy he once kissed in the sunshine of the last regular day of their lives.
He had a gift that gave and took. He learned how to use it wisely.
Wei Wuxian knew many things about death, though perhaps less than he did about life. That did not prepare him for the day Jiang Cheng walked through the door of his bakery, wet with the rain and pale with bad news, and said, “Lan Wangji is dead.”
Wei Wuxian knew many things about death, and about grief.
He knew far, far less about being in love.
~*~*~*~*~*~
And that was how he found himself standing in the rain outside a funeral home four days, six hours, and thirty-three minutes after Lan Wangji died.
“It probably wasn't foul play,” Jiang Cheng finally had to admit, kicking at dirt so he didn’t have to see whatever look was on Wei Wuxian’s face. He had never met Lan Wangji but he had listened to Wei Wuxian talk about him like he loved him, and that was enough to make Jiang Cheng’s chest ache in quiet, sorrowful sympathy. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“I have to,” Wei Wuxian said, because he had to.
Wei Wuxian had loved Lan Wangji, in the way that children loved. Open and honest and sweet, buttercream and sugar. Wei Wuxian had never loved again—and perhaps there was another mystery there to solve instead of Lan Wangji’s death. Perhaps Wei Wuxian simply needed one more minute to know why he loved this man still, after all of these years.
Wasn’t love the greatest mystery, after all?
(Well. Perhaps that honor still went to murder.)
Jiang Cheng, who loved his brother with something that looked like rage, knew him best. Wei Wuxian didn’t have to lie to him but he would anyway, and Jiang Cheng would do him the honor of pretending to believe it.
Jiang Cheng sighed, leaning against the stoop. He didn’t smoke anymore but he patted his pockets as if looking for a pack anyway. “Well, then go. I’ll keep a lookout.”
They’d done this a hundred times. He had never gone alone before.
Wei Wuxian had never been afraid before, either.
He left his brother with a smirk before slipping through the door, letting the rush of the cool air conditioning blast his damp clothes and hair with a deathly chill. It was one of the nicer funeral homes, lavish silks and plenty of quality tissues. Jiang Cheng had slipped the director a few bills when they’d arrived and the man had made himself scarce into the basement. They were always so willing to give the dead an audience.
There was only one room whose doors had been left open. Wei Wuxian felt like a ghost, drifting forward step by terrifying step.
Wei Wuxian had been carrying around a heavy bubble in his chest since he found out Lan Wangji was dead. It was as if a ball of heavy lead had formed next to his heart, pressing against his lungs and ribs uncomfortably. He had originally prescribed it to dread. As he looked down at Lan Wangji, asleep in death, calm and cold and as beautiful in a white casket as he has ever been in life, Wei Wuxian realized that it had worked its way up from his chest to his throat. It tasted like grief, like the tears he’d shed at his mother’s funeral, like the phantom of loss that had followed at his heels since the moment his mother kissed him on the forehead.
He was beautiful, and he was dead.
Wei Wuxian had lost touch with Lan Wangji on that fateful day that their families fell apart. He had never known how to contact him, had never realized how short of a distance it really was between Gusu and Yunmeng.
He stared down at the body of the beautiful boy laid out for a funeral and he would only have one minute.
He took this moment to look at Lan Wangji, to memorize the ways growing up had touched him, had shifted him from cute to handsome. His hair was short and neat, his golden eyes closed. He had always been pale; it was almost hard to tell the difference between life and death, under the glow of the funeral home lights.
Wei Wuxian had loved him and so he had imagined a million ways in which Lan Wangji had grown up to look and be. He’d read the obituary on the drive over, had stared at the picture for far too long and felt a deep, roiled turbulence in his stomach like the ocean in a hurricane.
Lan Wangji. Survived by an uncle and his elder brother. A neighbor boy who had grown into a man who worked in a library, shelving books and teaching children how to read. He simply went to sleep and never woke up one day. His heart gave out and no one knew why.
He was twenty-eight years, two months, seven hours, and fifty-six minutes old.
They had dressed him in beautiful silks, a sky blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had a white ribbon with a blue cloud pattern tied around one wrist. And, strangely, he had a ratty red ribbon tied around the other.
It was odd. Wei Wuxian used to wear ribbons like that in his hair.
He almost touched his hand. Instead, clicking the timer on his watch with shaking fingers, Wei Wuxian decided to indulge himself. Stomach flipping, sorrow quiet, he touched the soft skin of Lan Wangji’s cheek.
Zap.
Lan Wangji’s eyes flew open, gold like sunlight and riches and the most beautiful day of Wei Wuxian’s life. He looked down, jerked in panic when he saw the casket. Looked up with those eyes and saw Wei Wuxian staring at him and froze.
He paled as if he was the one seeing a ghost. Opened his mouth and choked out, “Wei Ying?”
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian whispered, and tried to smile reassuringly. “We only have a minute, Lan Zhan. Just one.”
Lan Wangji was always so intelligent, so clever. His eyes darted around the viewing room, looked back at the casket he was lying in. He closed his eyes when he realized, shuddered with an aching grief that nearly shattered the world to pieces.
“Wei Ying,” he whispered again, and then asked, “how?”
Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure what he meant. He didn’t know the answer anyway, so he simply shook his head.
“Lan Zhan,” he said instead, the fissure inside himself cracking open.
Lan Wangji wasn’t blinking.
(He was too afraid to blink. He did not want to blink and realize it was a dream, or blink and it be gone. Sand at his fingertips, a memory he could not chase. He would steal this moment from time.
If he would die again, and he would, then he would do so looking at the boy he loved.)
Lan Wangji’s voice broke when he whispered, “Where did you go?”
Wei Wuxian was used to questions of the dead asking where they would go. He usually ended the conversation before he could answer, but this time, he opened his mouth.
And then he realized the question. Not where will I go. Where did you go.
He was always so kind. Wei Wuxian nearly fell apart right there.
“Family friends,” he replied. “Yunmeng.”
Lan Wangji realized how close he had been. How he could have run into Wei Wuxian in line for groceries or in the halls of his library.
Wei Wuxian did not know what to say so he said, “I opened a bakery.”
Lan Wangji stared at him as if surprised. And then, so soft he almost missed it, Lan Wangji smiled.
Lan Wangji was still smiling, a little sad, when he said, “You were my first kiss.”
“You were mine, too.”
Lan Wangji swallowed. He blinked as if he was holding back tears.
“Will you be my last kiss?” asked the man in the coffin, a last request. He had mere seconds.
Wei Wuxian felt the burden of all of those seconds. He felt the dreadful weight of goodbye like it was choking him.
He hoped the devastation didn’t show on his face when he smiled, hoped it reassured Lan Wangji’s aching heart just a little when he murmured, “Of course. Lan Zhan.”
He took an impossible step closer. Lan Wangji, in his beautiful white coffin, watched him. Unblinking. Transfixed.
Wei Wuxian now knew what it looked like Lan Wangji was waiting to be kissed. He closed the last of the distance between them, heart thudding in his chest, countdown on his wrist. Five seconds.
Lan Wangji stared at him for one more second. Two. Wei Wuxian leaned forward and he finally, finally closed his eyes.
Wei Wuxian wondered if he would taste like sunshine.
He leaned forward to kiss him—and didn’t.
Three.
Two.
One.
(And in the basement, a funeral director who liked to pocket the belongings of the deceased was dead before he hit the ground.)
Wei Wuxian’s watch finished its countdown. And Wei Wuxian was still hovering an inch away from Lan Wangji’s lips, their breath mingling. So close he could almost smell the summer day.
When their lips didn’t touch, Lan Wangji’s face fell. Crushingly disappointed. He swallowed again and, without opening his eyes, whispered, “You do not have to kiss me. If you don’t want to.”
Oh, Wei Wuxian wanted. Wei Wuxian knew the cost and still he had hesitated. He knew what he had done and he still asked, careful and shaken, “Lan Zhan, what if you didn’t have to be dead?”
Those eyes opened again. Wei Wuxian would never tire of looking at them. They felt like home, like a happy memory he could live over and over.
Lan Wangji knew there must be a cost. Knew Wei Wuxian would never tell him. And he still whispered, “Yes.”
And so, Lan Wangji’s second life began.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It turned out, it wasn’t as easy as allowing a dead man to walk free.
He had to explain the rules first, quick and hushed. Wei Wuxian was all too aware that Jiang Cheng was waiting for him, that he had only expected him to be a few minutes that were now on the verge of becoming closer to ten. It seemed like too much to cover in such a short amount of time but Wei Wuxian was very good at talking in the same way Lan Wangji was good at listening.
Ultimately, Wei Wuxian was not very good at plans. He told Lan Wangji what they were going to do and the man, elegant and polite, nearly rolled his eyes.
They didn’t have the time to argue.
(Lan Wangji didn’t exactly have a good plan, either.)
Wei Wuxian returned to his brother. He did his best to remain calm.
Jiang Cheng looked up. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. His brother shrugged away from the wall he’d been leaning against, brushed his hands down his jacket front and prompted, “So?”
“Nothing,” Wei Wuxian blurted out.
Jiang Cheng stared at him. “Why are you sweating?”
He was. Profusely. “Don’t worry about it. It was a little warm in there.”
Jiang Cheng, who had felt the burst of air conditioning when Wei Wuxian opened the doors, narrowed his eyes.
“Wei Wuxian,” he snapped. “What did you do?”
“Uh,” Wei Wuxian said. “I need you to bring the car around back.”
“Why.”
“No time to explain,” Wei Wuxian replied, although he was fairly sure he knew whose life had paid his price. “It’s important.”
Jiang Cheng stared at him for a long moment and then, very reluctantly, turned for the car. Wei Wuxian turned and sprinted back into the building.
And that was how Wei Wuxian climbed into Jiang Cheng’s car, closely followed by a dead man.
Jiang Cheng gaped into the backseat, where Lan Wangji stared back.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Jiang Cheng finally thundered, whirling on Wei Wuxian. “You—you really just—”
“Yeah, it’s, uh,” Wei Wuxian replied. “Yeah.”
Jiang Cheng looked like he was going to punch him, or perhaps just leap into the back with Lan Wangji and finish the job Death had started. But Wei Wuxian knew him well enough to know he would never actually do either of those things. Lan Wangji, who didn’t, looked ready to fight back.
After a long stare, Jiang Cheng breathed aggressively out of his nose and demanded to Wei Wuxian, “And when they notice he’s not there?”
“Uh,” Wei Wuxian said.
“I asked for a closed casket,” Lan Wangji informed them. “In my will.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jiang Cheng said and pulled the car away from the funeral home.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Jiang Cheng left the two of them at the curb to the bakery with a growled “later” meant just for Wei Wuxian, who was sure his brother would not be merciful. Wei Wuxian waved goodbye as Jiang Cheng peeled away, because he was raised to be polite.
Lan Wangji didn’t speak as Wei Wuxian let him into the bakery, closed for the day after Wei Wuxian had heard the news. Wei Wuxian made sure to keep the majority of the lights off, turning on the kitchen lights instead. In the gray day bleeding into a gray night, the glow was a little like firelight.
And it was only now, seeing Lan Wangji sitting on a barstool in his bakery, wearing his funeral clothes, that Wei Wuxian realized exactly what he had done.
He had known the consequences of his actions—or, in this case, in action. That he’d had the opportunity to steal Lan Wangji’s afterlife, and then had… he didn’t know what had come over him.
(He knew exactly what had come over him. He knew the blossom of yearning, of that great and terrible grief in his chest. He knew every memory of Lan Wangji like the lyrics of his mother’s favorite songs. He had been greedy, reaching for more of something he had no right to.
Wei Wuxian had stolen from Lan Wangji before. He’d stolen his father’s life for one more day of his mother’s. Wei Wuxian could not yet fathom the guilt of stealing Lan Wangji’s rest as well.)
Wei Wuxian did not know what to say. It was a new feeling for him.
In an attempt to break the tension in their silence, he leaned forward onto the counter. Shot Lan Wangji a flirty smile.
“So,” he drawled. “Come here often?”
Lan Wangji blinked.
Wei Wuxian nearly punched himself. He felt the flush start at the top of his head and make its way down. “I don’t know why I said that,” he informed Lan Wangji, wishing he could die on the spot. Being grateful that no one would be able to wake him up if he did. “It just—I don’t know. It’s been so long, I guess. Since I saw you.”
“Mn,” Lan Wangji hummed. He put his hands on the counter, interlocking his fingers. “You mentioned… we would not be able to touch.”
“The second I touch you, you’ll go back to being dead.”
“Skin on skin touch.”
“Yeah.”
Lan Wangji frowned. His gaze was on Wei Wuxian’s lips.
Wei Wuxian felt suddenly very self-conscious. He turned around in an attempt to hide his face.
“Want some pie?” he asked, a little desperate.
“Can I even eat?”
Wei Wuxian glanced back at him and thought about it. “Oh. I don’t know.”
“You made it seem like you had done this before.”
“Yeah, like, for one minute. Before it becomes a whole thing. You know. I’ve only done this once and I don’t remember the details.”
Lan Wangji looked as though he might ask more. Wei Wuxian waved his hands around.
“Ah, who knows,” Wei Wuxian tried to derail, doing an adequate job of it. “We’ll figure it out as we go, how about that? All I know is that I can’t touch you, and you can’t touch me. If you do, it’s lights out, and that’s not what we want. Right?”
Lan Wangji nodded. He seemed to be thinking hard about something.
(A part of him wished Wei Wuxian had kissed him, just to feel his lips one last time. The other part, the larger part, thought this would be better. That stealing these moments from fate and the universe might fill the void of touch.)
Another much worse thought occurred to him all once. His shoulders slumped and something ached in his chest when Lan Wangji said, “I cannot tell my brother.”
Wei Wuxian wished he could reach out and smooth away that sadness with the tips of his fingers. “No. I don’t think you can. Not unless you want to have a lot of uncomfortable questions about the supernatural and morality and mortality. Like, most people would probably say what I did today was super wrong, you know? I didn’t exactly ask your permission to be alive until after I’d already done it. And you’re supposed to be dead, so. Then they’ll ask about fate and all that. I’m not much of a philosopher but I’m sure someone would accuse me of, like, grave-robbing or something if they ever found out—”
He realized he was still talking and slapped his hand over his mouth. He felt a rush of embarrassment but Lan Wangji was simply watching him as if he was interested. As if Wei Wuxian could fill the silence talking about anything and Lan Wangji would listen.
But the word grave-robbing hung in the air and Wei Wuxian couldn’t bear to leave any room for doubt, so he said, softly, “I didn’t go there thinking I would do this. I just—I heard you were dead and I wanted to see you. I wanted to make sure you were okay. If you needed help. I don’t know. I was going to do it and then I… didn’t.”
Lan Wangji did not need him to explain. If the roles were reversed, he knew he would drop everything for one last moment. He would have hesitated, too. Lan Wangji would not have been able to smother Wei Wuxian’s smile like snuffing out a candle.
Lan Wangji, who had waited for Wei Wuxian to come back to that sweet, small house next door, who had looked for him in every face in every crowd, would have been selfish, too.
Wei Wuxian was unaware of this. To be fair, Wei Wuxian was unaware of many things.
“I understand,” Lan Wangji promised. Wei Wuxian took his word for it and smiled again, soft in the diluted kitchen light.
“I know you were just dead,” Wei Wuxian began, “but I’m exhausted. I feel dead on my feet. I promise I’ll stop with the death puns, I really don’t mean to—”
Lan Wangji got to his feet. He looked like he might be smiling.
(He was.)
“I suppose,” Lan Wangji said, thoughtful and quiet, “that dying is a good excuse as any to start living.”
Wei Wuxian stared at him. Lan Wangji moved as if to hold out his hand, and then remembered and pulled it away. A complicated set of expressions passed over his face like the headlights through the windows, scattered and refracted.
He was so handsome. He was so, so sweet.
Wei Wuxian loved sweet things.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Wei Wuxian’s apartment was just the right size for him, a little extra space but not enough to feel large. With Lan Wangji standing in the middle of his living room, it must have looked like a dingy cardboard box.
“Uh,” Wei Wuxian said. “It’s not much.”
Lan Wangji was examining it closely, twisting his whole body around to see it all. He drank in every detail for a moment, from the organized chaos of the kitchen to the mismatching furniture to the pictures on the walls, paintings of clouds and skies and sunshine days with Wei Wuxian’s signature on the bottom corners. He swallowed hard.
“It’s nice,” he said, finally. “Warm.”
“Warm,” Wei Wuxian echoed as if he had never heard the word before. “Yeah, that’s true. I guess it is.”
He had never thought of it like that. He only ever looked at his apartment and thought about how to bring in the things like his mother did to make a home. He only ever walked through the door and thought it didn’t smell like the lotuses of his adopted home, how it always smelled a little like flour and dirt from the pots of wild flowers on the window sill.
Wei Wuxian always seemed so confident and wild. Here, in the walls of his home, he looked sleepy and soft. Lan Wangji fell a little further in love.
“I’ll take the sofa,” Wei Wuxian said, throwing himself onto it as if using his body to get Lan Wangji to fold to his courtesy. “You can have the bed. I insist. I re-alived you, it’s the least I can do.”
Tentatively, Lan Wangji asked, “What now?”
Wei Wuxian, thankfully, did not need him to elaborate. Wei Wuxian, unfortunately, did not know at all how to answer.
“We’ll figure it out,” he assured him. He didn’t have the answers but he pretended to be confident, smiled wide and happy like he was hopeful. Lan Wangji, who fell in love with that smile at the age of nine before he even knew what love was, forgot for a moment how to breathe.
“Mn,” he agreed. “We will.”
It felt like so much, to have lost everything in the blink of an eye. It felt like so much, to be given everything he’d never been able to have without even having to reach for it.
Wei Wuxian muffled a yawn behind the back of his hand. “I’m telling you, Lan Zhan, raising the dead is a lot of work. Just kidding, it’s actually not. I’m tired because I was up until late last night making bread. It’ll ruin my reputation if you tell anyone, though.”
Lan Wangji had no one left. It was as crushing a relief as much as a bursting grief. He thought about his brother and his patient smile, how the last memory he had was his brother dropping him off at his apartment and telling him he would see him tomorrow. It was a quiet, horrible sorrow when he realized his brother hadn’t, that he would never see him again. That his brother, as broken and abandoned as Lan Wangji, would spend the rest of his life half-turned toward the door, waiting for a miracle to pass through.
He would not let it crush him tonight. Maybe another night, when his head was a little clearer and the world made a little more sense. When he could reconcile that an otherwise healthy twenty-eight year old could go to sleep one night and simply… never wake up.
He would not think about who found him. He would not think that it must have been his brother.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji murmured—and realized Wei Wuxian was already asleep, head tilted onto the arm of the couch and limbs sprawled, dressed in his day clothes and asleep at the drop of a hat.
He stared at him for a long moment. He let the silence settle in.
If Lan Wangji could have one last day on this world, he was glad it had been with Wei Wuxian. If he could be brought back to life, he was glad it was by him.
(He wanted to touch him. Gods help him, he wanted—)
Lan Wangji took a deep breath in. Held it, and let it out.
“Wei Ying,” he whispered again. Wistful. “I would kiss you if it wouldn’t kill me.”
Wei Wuxian, deep asleep, didn’t so much as stir.
Lan Wangji stole a few more moments in the living room, standing over this man he desperately loved like a ghost. He stole as much as he thought he deserved before turning for the bedroom door, wondering if he could sleep. Wondering if he would dare, knowing that he might not wake up.
Eventually, he drifted off into a restless sleep.
(He woke to Wei Wuxian standing over him with a happy smile and a good morning. And it was, indeed, a good morning.)
~*~*~*~*~*~
It was shockingly simple for Wei Wuxian to find room for Lan Wangji in his life. It was as if he had always been there.
Nie Huaisang had asked, when he found Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji exiting the apartment at the same time. Well, Nie Huaisang had stared, eyes darting between them as if astonished. Wei Wuxian had tried not to feel offended when he told his friend and neighbor that Lan Wangji was there to stay and Nie Huaisang had nearly lost consciousness.
Jiang Cheng had taken it well, all things considered.
(He had dragged Wei Wuxian out of Lan Wangji’s earshot and stared at him with building rage until Wei Wuxian had explained himself. How now he lived with the burden of not knowing if it was the right call. If it was morally sound. How he had looked down at Lan Wangji lying in a casket, waiting to be kissed, and had not been able to say goodbye.
Wei Wuxian had handed Jiang Cheng the obituary for the funeral director. It had not helped.
“How does it work, exactly?” Jiang Cheng grated out, eyes narrowed. “This life-for-a-life thing. How does it choose?”
“Ah,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m—not sure? It seems proximity-based.”
A brief pause, and then Jiang Cheng had roared, “I WAS IN PROXIMITY.”)
Even if he hadn’t approved from the beginning, Jiang Cheng quickly came around when he realized Lan Wangji was an unexpected resource in their strange little mystery-solving partnership.
It turned out Lan Wangji knew a great many things.
He credited this knowledge to books. His uncle had a huge library and he had expected Lan Wangji and his brother to read through and educate themselves in their free time. So Lan Wangji had spent the time after his father had died throwing himself into learning new things, like languages and facts and histories. Lan Wangji knew a little bit about everything, and he spoke at least six languages that Wei Wuxian had counted so far.
He was also smart and very clever. Having his brain help solve the mysteries was an incredibly valuable resource.
Jiang Cheng complained even less when they kept the split at fifty-fifty. As Wei Wuxian had explained to Lan Wangji, whipping up pancakes at eight-thirty in the evening, “We don’t need the extra money, do we? You already have my credit card to buy anything you want. Since, you know. You don’t have a bank account anymore. What’s mine is yours and all that.”
“Hm,” Lan Wangji had replied, and he had never argued it further.
At some point, humiliatingly, Jiang Cheng started referring to Lan Wangji as Wei Wuxian’s “undead boyfriend”.
“First of all, it’s not undead,” Wei Wuxian had argued once Lan Wangji had wandered away with some excuse for something he had to do. “That’s a bad take. He’s… alive-again. Secondly, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Is that right,” Jiang Cheng replied dryly. “Is that why he lives with you?”
“It’s not like he has anywhere else to go.”
“It’s not like he’s complaining, either. Are you really this dense? Do you really not see the way he looks at you?”
Wei Wuxian blinked. “What? Does he look mad at me? Do you think I did something to make him mad?”
Jiang Cheng stared at him. Shook his head slowly.
“Hopeless,” he’d decided.
(When Lan Wangji had returned with a bouquet of flowers for Wei Wuxian, a softly sweet smile on his face, Jiang Cheng had turned and given him a Look. Wei Wuxian, in the honor of all siblings, ignored him pointedly and showered Lan Wangji in thanks instead.)
It wasn’t always easy. Sometimes Wei Wuxian found himself caught in his own web of thoughts, a spiral of what if and should have. If he should have left Lan Wangji to rest. If he had done something far too selfish in recalling him to life. If Lan Wangji even wanted to be there. If Wei Wuxian should have just kissed him.
How much he wanted to touch Lan Wangji. How he couldn’t, if he wanted him to stay.
Wei Wuxian had always been a little in love with Lan Wangji. But having him like this, kept just to himself, going on his adventures and working in his kitchen, sleeping in his bed… Wei Wuxian wanted more than anything to reach for him. To run his hand down Lan Wangji’s bicep, to put his hand in his hair. To touch his fingertips to the softness of Lan Wangji’s lips.
He wanted to kiss him. Wei Wuxian wanted to kiss Lan Wangji more than he wanted to breathe.
There was one simple problem—Lan Wangji did not want Wei Wuxian to kiss him.
(This was, of course, incorrect.)
Wei Wuxian had loved a memory, a ghost of the man Lan Wangji could have been. But now he knew him, and he knew that Lan Wangji is better than he ever could have imagined. His dream person times infinity, an impossibility in human flesh.
Wei Wuxian wished things had been different. He wished things could be different now, too.
It didn’t help that Lan Wangji, in all his cleverness, had figured out safe ways to touch him.
A hand in an oven mitt, reaching out to brush the flour from Wei Wuxian’s hair baking on a quiet Sunday evening. The gardening gloves Lan Wangji kept at the front door so he could put them on the moment he stepped in. The way he would take a sip from Wei Wuxian’s mug of coffee, lips right where Wei Wuxian’s had touched like an indirect kiss.
So, sure. Sometimes, Wei Wuxian wondered. He dreamed.
But there were the bad parts, too.
It was the look on Lan Wangji’s face when Wei Wuxian touched a victim again and sent them back to eternal rest. It was the way sometimes he caught Lan Wangji looking out the window like he was imagining a different view. The way Lan Wangji sometimes walked to the phone box down the street and stood there for hours as if he wanted to make a call, as if a call wouldn’t be enough but he couldn’t help but to stand there anyway.
Wei Wuxian knew that, someday, they would cross the impossible distance and meet Lan Xichen again. He remembered how Lan Wangji had been an extension of his big brother, how they had known each other like they shared a heart. Lan Xichen would welcome him back with open arms and a few thousand questions. Wei Wuxian was simply waiting for the day it happened—and then the inevitable moment in the days after where Lan Wangji quietly murmured that he would like to stay with his brother instead.
Wei Wuxian would let him go. He should have let him go when he was nine years old and Lan Wangji’s father dropped dead so Wei Wuxian could steal one last day with his mother.
(He told Lan Wangji about it, after a long month of their simple companionship. Wei Wuxian had been ready to lose Lan Wangji forever but, instead, Lan Wangji nodded and said, “I understand.”
And that had been the end of it.)
But, looming in the back of his mind, there was always one realization—that, while Wei Wuxian had brought Lan Wangji back, there would be someday where he would have to let him go. That, no matter what he did, he would have to free Lan Wangji before he himself died, lest he doom the man to wander the earth in an endless purgatory.
No matter what, Wei Wuxian would always have to say goodbye first. He would have to experience the loss of his heart before he could pass on. He would have to learn how to be prepared for that, when it came.
But not today. Not today, when Lan Wangji was standing in his kitchen when he came home from work, brow furrowed as he concentrated on the meal he was making. Not when Lan Wangji was wearing his gardening gloves, reaching for Wei Wuxian’s hand.
This would have to be enough, he decided.
(It was. And it wasn’t.)
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lan Wangji had been a beekeeper.
“For a hobby,” he had admitted one night, ears blushing from his spot on the couch. Wei Wuxian, in the chair across from him, merely grinned.
“With the gear and everything?” he demanded, as if Lan Wangji was an exception to the rule of self-protection. “Wow, wow! You surprise me every day, Lan Zhan! You must have been the most gorgeous—I mean, most patient and accomplished volunteer beekeeper that place had ever seen, ha, ha.”
“In the gear,” Lan Wangji said, and looked suddenly thoughtful.
Wei Wuxian nodded back. “Safety first!” he replied, not knowing why.
He hadn’t realized the reason for Lan Wangji’s considering gaze until several days later, when Lan Wangji herded him to his car and gave him an address to drive to. When they arrived, Wei Wuxian started to laugh when he realized Lan Wangji had brought him to a bee farm.
And there, Lan Wangji taught Wei Wuxian how to bee-keep.
While they worked, decked in heavy and hot protective gear, Lan Wangji told him stories from his volunteering days. How they used to work at a flea market on the weekends, how he was always asked to man the stall and didn’t understand why (Wei Wuxian, through laughter, replied, “it’s because you’re handsome, Lan Zhan, oh my gods”). He told Wei Wuxian how he had taught the children how to handle the bees and not be afraid of them. It was sweet, so kind and thoughtful and good, and Wei Wuxian was hopeless. A ship sinking under the waves, drowning in how much he loved this untouchable man.
Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian worked in quiet for a long time. And then, once the silence had dragged on for long enough Wei Wuxian felt like he would burst with it, Lan Wangji had offered Wei Wuxian one of his hands and quietly, shyly asked him to dance.
They danced to the chorus of the buzzing bees, at the movement of their boots against the dirt. Lan Wangji had leaned his mask against Wei Wuxian’s, staring at him through the mesh like he wished he could close the distance. Wei Wuxian hadn’t stopped smiling even when he’d gone to sleep later that night, hours and hours later.
Wei Wuxian thought for days about the solidness of Lan Wangji’s body against his. About the smile Lan Wangji had offered him as if it was his heart in his bare hands, waiting to be broken.
It was a wonderful thing, he eventually decided, to share that man’s second life.
It was an even more glorious thing, he decided, to fall in love with him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lan Wangji was alive-again for three months, two days, and four hours, and twenty-one minutes when it happened.
Wei Wuxian liked to bake at odd hours. Even when he was younger, trudging through the grief-filled days of losing his mother, one of his siblings would go looking and find him baking in the kitchen at odd hours in the middle of the night, food splatters on his shirt and under his nails. He always found the best way of working out the tension in his shoulder was to make bread, to use his aggression to knead and slam and roll the dough. It used to be a quiet, solitary affair. Lately, ever since Lan Wangji came into his life, he’d preferred to join him.
That night in particular, Lan Wangji sat on the opposite counter and watched Wei Wuxian work a mound of dough. He kept his full attention on the roll of Wei Wuxian’s shoulders, on the movement of his fingers.
Wei Wuxian, his back turned, had no idea that Lan Wangji was looking. It worked out well for both of them.
After a long stretch of time, Lan Wangji murmured, “I want to ask you something.”
Wei Wuxian stopped and turned. He offered a tired, indulgent smile, silently urging Lan Wangji to continue.
He hesitated for a moment. And then he asked, quiet, “Why did you keep me alive?”
Wei Wuxian felt his smile fall. He cleared his throat, an awkward attempt to fill the silence.
“Ah,” Wei Wuxian said, buying himself a few more seconds.
Lan Wangji replied, “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I do,” Wei Wuxian insisted. “It’s your life. I’m the one that played with it. I’m the one that made you stay. That makes you stay.”
Still, he hesitated. It was after hours, the bakery quiet and dark. The lights were only on where they were, the same lights as that first night, but it was a different glow. This time it wasn’t firelight, soft and gentle. It was a spotlight, a confession chair.
If it were anyone else, Wei Wuxian might have turned on his heel and ran from his problem. But it was Lan Wangji, so he stayed.
He took a deep breath. “I kissed you. When we were young.”
“You did,” Lan Wangji murmured. Breathless.
“And I really liked you. Like, a lot,” Wei Wuxian assured him, self-conscious. He could feel his face burning. “But then everything happened, and you were lost in the shuffle and I—I think I spent a lot of my life wondering what I would say to you, if I saw you again. If I would tell you the truth about why your dad died. I wondered if you would forgive me.”
Wei Wuxian paused. Just for a moment.
“I thought I might kiss you, if I saw you again,” Wei Wuxian admitted, quiet and slow and painfully sincere. “Even if it had been anywhere. The grocery store, a hospital room. Walking down the street. I would’ve just ran up and kissed you.”
Lan Wangji stared at him, speechless. Swallowed, loud and harsh in the quiet room.
Wei Wuxian continued, “And then Jiang Cheng told me you were dead. He’d heard me talk so much about you that he knew your name by heart. It’s a little sad, I guess. A lot lonely. So he just walked through the door and said, ‘Lan Wangji is dead’, and I thought well, this is it. I never got my moment. I never got to see him grow up and I never got to kiss him so good he forgot his own name. I might as well say goodbye.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji gasped. As if he was holding his breath.
“And then you were there,” Wei Wuxian whispered. His voice broke. He tried to bite back the tears, too. He couldn’t tell if he failed. (He did.) “You were alive for one more minute and I—I wasn’t ready.”
Lan Wangji stared. He said nothing. Wei Wuxian looked away, throat burning.
“It was selfish,” Wei Wuxian admitted. “So selfish, Lan Zhan. But you were looking at me and I was half in love with you and I couldn’t say goodbye.”
Nothing.
He had already lost so much. If he had lost this, too, Wei Wuxian would at least say his piece. He would crack open that last vulnerable spot in his chest. He would offer it to Lan Wangji with no reservations, because he loved him.
He loved him. Wei Wuxian loved him.
“I just thought—” Wei Wuxian’s voice caught. “I just thought my world would be a better place with you in it.”
He felt raw. Exposed. Wei Wuxian braced for impact, braced to lose—
Lan Wangji crossed the room in three quick, powerful steps. Wei Wuxian looked up, startled—and Lan Wangji’s lips crashed down onto his.
A brief moment of panic. A rush of grief and terror and a crushing sadness all at once until. Until.
Wei Wuxian pulled away. Opened his eyes.
From the other side of the plastic wrap, Lan Wangji looked at him with a smile on his lips and joy in his eyes. Golden like sunlight.
“Wei Ying,” he whispered, and leaned forward again.
It was a brush of warmth. The hint of lips. Lan Wangji’s hands were shaking as he moved away, still so close that Wei Wuxian could still feel his lips moving against his through the plastic, when he murmured, “I love you. I have loved you. I will love you. For the whole of my life, and then the rest.”
Wei Wuxian was grateful he could see the look on Lan Wangji’s face through the plastic. Grateful that Lan Wangji could see his, the tears in his eyes and the relief in his laugh and the rawness of his throat when he whispered, “I love you.”
Lan Wangji finally breathed out. Wei Wuxian smiled as he pecked him on the lips.
“In life.”
A kiss.
“In death.”
And again.
“And in life again.”
And again.
(It did not magically solve the problems they had yet to work out. It did not fix the past, and it did not make the future any less uncertain. But it was Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji against the world, against life and death, against the challenges they will face.
There was family to reconnect with. Answers to difficult questions. Shortcuts to be found. Risks to take and days to fill.
They would do it together. A pie-maker and a dead man and their twin beating hearts.
It was a marvelous, lovely beginning.)