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The first time in thirteen months that Wei WuXian sees Lan WangJi, it takes a second for his startlingly perfect face to come into focus.
Wei WuXian is toeing the wrong side of drunk, when he’s edging into sober but things are still spinning more than they’re upright, and when he can’t remember how he got from point A to point B. It seems especially important for him to try to remember that, right now, because Point B is apparently seated on the front steps of Lan WangJi’s place.
For once, in all the time they’ve known each other, Lan WangJi speaks first.
“Wei Ying,” he says, voice low and musical. Hearing it sends a pang through Wei WuXian’s chest.
Wei WuXian blinks, tries to orient himself enough to read Lan WangJi. Even if it has been thirteen months, surely, he can still read his expressions. He used to take so much pride in that skill—reading Lan WangJi when everyone else claimed he was emotionless, too stoic, too cold. Wei WuXian has always managed to insert himself into people’s lives even when they don’t want him to and part of knowing Lan WangJi was learning to read him. He can’t focus enough to do it tonight. His brain is flitting between details too quickly to understand or to make sense of. Everything feels and looks a little blurry. He rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes. What is he even doing here?
“Sorry,” Wei WuXian manages. “I should—go.” He pushes himself up unsteadily—and falls right back onto the cool concrete of the steps beneath him. He manages to get to his feet on the second try, but overshoots and nearly trips down the steps onto the sidewalk instead. A warm hand on his bicep stops him from falling. Wei WuXian blinks down at his sneakers.
“Wei Ying,” Lan WangJi says from behind him, one hand still curled around his bicep, “are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” he says, and pulls his arm from Lan WangJi’s grip. He lets Wei WuXian go, which is surely some sort of metaphor for their whole relationship. “Sorry,” he says again, which is probably another apt metaphor for his whole life, “I shouldn’t have come here. This was stupid.”
“What happened, Wei Ying?” Lan WangJi asks, sounding as composed as ever. Wei WuXian wishes he would break, just a little, to make this whole thing a little less excruciatingly humiliating. “Why are you—here?”
It’s a reasonable question. Wei WuXian looks down the dark street—it’s residential, lit only by a streetlamp at the end of the block. The narrow brick houses are quaint, almost pretty, with widow boxes full of flowers and immaculately shorn grass. No one’s lights are on. He had spent way too much time in this neighbourhood, back then, when he was welcome. For a long time, it had been this street that he’d stumbled down in the mornings to catch the bus with a travel mug of coffee and his T-shirt on inside-out, this block where he’d known every neighbour’s name.
It is kind of funny, Wei WuXian thinks, looking down at his now creased and wrinkled suit jacket, that this is one of the first times he might have fit in with this classy neighbourhood—but also the first time he’s not actually welcome. It’s been thirteen months since the breakup, and yet he’s still not over Lan WangJi, no matter how many times he has told himself it is time to move on. That, more than anything, is probably the reason his drunk mind walked him here.
He looks at Lan WangJi’s face again. He can see past him into the warm halls of his home. He remembers painting the walls the warm shade of yellow that they still are, now. He remembers the way Lan WangJi had looked, wearing an one of Wei WuXian’s old T-Shirts, flecked with paint, and the soft smile on his face.
He shivers.
“Wei Ying,” Lan WangJi says again, and oh no, he sounds worried. This is the opposite of what Wei WuXian wants. He wants closure, maybe, or just to be able to shut his own brain up for once—not to drag Lan WangJi back into all the bullshit he escaped from. “Come inside. You are cold.”
But Wei WuXian has always been weak, when it comes to Lan WangJi. What could Lan WangJi ever offer, than Wei WuXian could decline? What could Lan WangJi give, that Wei WuXian would dare refuse? The word inevitable shakes itself loose in his mind.
He meets WangJi’s wide, concerned gaze from his place on the steps. He already nodding despite himself.
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”
With the haze of alcohol still muddling his thoughts, he doesn’t remember taking off his old sneakers or maneuvering to the dining room. He sits at the breakfast bar and loosens the purple tie around his neck. Lan WangJi is by the sink, filling a glass with water.
Wei WuXian drops his head to the cool surface of the countertop. It helps clear his thoughts a little.
“My sister is getting married,” he says before he can think too hard about the fact that Lan WangJi has no reason to care anymore. He used to listen to all of Wei WuXian’s best shijie stories, let him ramble like it mattered. The water shuts off. Wei WuXian keeps his forehead against the cool marble and doesn’t look up. “It’s in two weeks. We had the rehearsal today. She was beautiful.”
She hadn’t been wearing her wedding ensemble, of course, but YanLi had never needed fancy clothes to be the most radiant thing in the room, in Wei WuXian’s opinion. She wore a summer dress, in Jiang purple, and had tied Wei WuXian’s and Jiang Cheng’s matching ties with patient hands. The peacock had even looked nice. The run-through had been hard to watch, but only because of how soppily and obviously in love with her he was. It had Wei WuXian reaching for glass after glass of the champagne they served afterwards, during the unofficial rehearsal dinner with just the family, and him. Well, that and the fact that he wasn’t technically supposed to be there at all—his presence was purely on YanLi’s generous invitation. The bubbly haze of champagne had made it bearable to sit at the same table with Madam Yu, who kept sending him nasty looks over her dinner, and Jiang Cheng, who hadn’t liked shijie’s plan to invite him in the first place. Bad enough that he’s going to attend the wedding, he had asked, why did he have to come today, too?
That had stung. Enough so that Wei WuXian left early, bought himself a fifth of vodka at the nearest store, and drank that straight, intending to walk home and black out, if possible. He’d cancel his attendance to the wedding tomorrow. Maybe he’d actually, finally, stop pretending that his brother might forgive him or that he had a place anywhere near the family that raised him.
His plan didn’t seem to have worked though. He’s still wearing his fancy once-pressed suit, but his feet have taken him to Lan WangJi’s place instead. He doesn’t know where he dropped the cheap vodka.
“I shouldn’t have gotten so drunk,” Wei WuXian mumbles. “This was stupid. I’m so stupid.”
“Have some water,” Lan WangJi says. Wei WuXian pushes himself upright on the stool, forearms braced on the counter. Lan WangJi places a glass of cold water—with ice cubes, what the fuck—down in front of him.
Wei WuXian blinks at it for a second. “You’re too nice,” he blurts out, but his traitorous hands are already reaching for the glass. He chugs half of it; he hadn’t even realized he was thirsty. He dares a glance up at Lan WangJi, who gazes serenely back at him. “Lan Zhan,” he says, forgetting that he probably shouldn’t use Lan WangJi’s personal name anymore, “It’s—” he squints at the glowing digits on the microwave—“after midnight. You should be asleep or something. Why’d you even let me in?” Lan WangJi looks down at the countertop. “Aren’t you supposed to hate me, anyway? Exes, and all.”
He means for it to be lighthearted, but it misses by a mile. His laugh fades into nothing around the ache in his chest.
Part of the reason it’s been thirteen months since he’s seen Lan WangJi is because it was supposed to be for the best. There was no way that Wei WuXian would have been able to hold out if he and Lan WangJi were still going to try the whole “friends after a breakup” thing. He would have just gotten hurt. So, Wei WuXian deleted his number, put everything that reminded him of Lan WangJi in a box, and bought himself a bicycle, so that there was no chance of running into him on the bus. Now, though, it’s obvious that the distance hasn’t helped at all. He’s still head over heels—literally, since he nearly brained himself on the concrete not long ago—for Lan WangJi, and the distance has clearly only made it worse.
“I could never hate you, Wei Ying,” Lan WangJi says seriously.
Wei WuXian watches his mouth and the way it curls around his name, as though he can keep the sound close enough that it won’t hurt when he never hears it again. “That’s silly,” he says, closing his eyes, “you should hate me. Like, a thousand times over. And not just ‘cause I woke you up in the middle of the night, drunk on your porch.”
Lan WangJi’s gaze is like a physical weight. The fridge hums in the background. “Wei Ying,” Lan WangJi says again. Wei WuXian wonders if Lan WangJi can see what hearing his name in that voice does to him, or whether it’s really unintentional. “Why are you here?”
Wei WuXian sighs and looks up at the ceiling as though he can find meaning in stucco. It doesn’t reveal itself to him, so he lets his eyes close again.
“You know, the whole time at the rehearsal, today,” he says, mourning what little respectability he might still have in Lan WangJi’s eyes, “I kept thinking: we almost had that.” This laugh is even more brittle than the last. “If it weren’t for, well, me—I mean, the peacock was looking at her, right? Through the whole practice vows thing,” Wei WuXian squeezes his eyes shut tighter, so red and orange starbursts play across the inside of his eyelids, “and I just. He loves my sister so much it’s ridiculous and I’m so happy for them, really, but I mean, we had that, too. Or, I thought we did. And I’m not—begging you to take me back or anything. It’s—better, like this, I know that. But.” He exhales. “I miss you. I miss you a lot Lan Zhan, and I know that you don’t want me in your life but I just—I miss you.”
Silence falls in the kitchen. There’s a lump in Wei WuXian’s throat. He wishes he could reach into the air and take back all of the words he just spat out—but it doesn’t work like that. The universe has never been on Wei WuXian’s side. He opens his eyes and is momentarily blinded by the white ceiling above him. He levers himself upright again, stares at the municipal garbage and recycling pick-up schedule on the fridge.
“I never said I did not want you in my life,” Lan WangJi says, just as the silence grows taut enough to snap.
Wei WuXian looks down at the countertop. He waves a hand vaguely. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he says, swallowing down the swell of emotions. “You agreed that I should leave.” Wei WuXian hasn’t revisited these memories, not once since he stepped out the door. He hadn’t even told shijie, when she asked—and then everything got even worse, and he moved out and it almost didn’t matter anymore that Lan WangJi had just nodded, when Wei WuXian explained his reasoning. Words have never been Lan WangJi’s way of expressing himself, so it makes sense that he never said it exactly, but—“you didn’t even argue. So, I think the point stands, you—”
“It does not,” Lan WangJi says, interrupting his pained rambling. Lan WangJi never interrupts. Wei WuXian is so shocked he entirely loses his train of thought and the sentence disappears into nothing. “Wei Ying, look at me.”
Wei WuXian does. Lan WangJi’s eyes are molten gold in the low light of the kitchen. He’s so, so beautiful. Wei WuXian wonders if it’s just the sobriety hitting that makes him want to cry.
“I did not realize,” Lan WangJi says, “that you thought my silence was agreement. I never wanted you to leave. I thought—” Lan WangJi falters. He closes his eyes, briefly, as though in pain, and continues, “I thought that was what you wanted.”
“It wasn’t,” Wei WuXian says immediately. “Well—It kind of was. I mean.” That whole time had been such a blur. Once it was clear that he was going to be disowned, fully and properly, and that that meant there were going to be all sorts of nasty rumours, not to mention the fact that he was virtually destitute and also going to drop out of grad school—well, breaking up with Lan WangJi had been the only right thing to do. “I didn’t want to involve you,” Wei WuXian tells him, “in something was wasn’t your fault. It was a shitshow. I don’t care what people say about me, but I couldn’t—put you through that, too.”
It had been a veritable shitshow, true to his expectations. Once he was disowned, had no protection and no money from the Jiang family anymore—well, any and all of the many people he’d pissed off had had full licence to come after him. He’s pretty sure there are still plenty of articles online from the smear campaign that was run on him, after it came out that he was gone. He couldn’t have just—jumped into Lan WangJi’s arms and asked to be saved. He had to shoulder the consequences of his actions—not be a burden on Lan WangJi, or a blemish on his record that would keep him from all the things he was meant to do. Wei WuXian might be selfish, but he’s not cruel.
“I wanted to be there, for you,” Lan WangJi says now, “but I did not want to trap you in a place you did not want to be. I thought I was giving you your freedom, by letting you go.”
“Exactly!” Wei WuXian tells him. “Freedom, so that the mistakes I make are my own, no matter how big they are. And so you didn’t have to be involved, so I didn’t ruin your reputation too.”
He wonders distantly, horrifyingly, if anyone noticed that he came here tonight. Probably not: now that he’s been gone for so long, despite his bad name, they probably don’t keep tabs on him anymore. He hasn’t dared look up his name in a long time.
“I have never cared about my reputation,” Lan WangJi says.
“I know,” he says. “That’s not—I mean, I was trying to do a good thing. I figured if I left then—I’d, y’know, spare myself some heartbreak.” It had absolutely not worked, but that’s neither here nor there. “You were going to break up with me, once you actually had to—put up with me for a long time, anyway.”
“Was three years not long enough?” Lan WangJi counters. His gaze is intense. “I have never just ‘put up’ with you, Wei Ying."
Wei WuXian wonders if it’s possible for his breath to literally be stolen. His chest aches. His voice wobbles when he says, “careful, Lan Zhan, if you keep saying those kinds of things, I’m going to think you want me back.”
Lan WangJi stares at him across the breakfast bar in the dimly lit kitchen. The numbers on the microwave clock change. There is something electric, in the air, a tension that hadn’t existed minutes before. Wei WuXian is sure he should never have put the thought out there, between them. He should have kept this dream, like every other, locked up deep enough that no one could take it from him.
“I never wanted you to leave, Wei Ying. I have been missing you since the minute you stepped out the door.”
Wei WuXian can feel the breath catch in his throat, but he can’t look away from Lan WangJi’s golden eyes. “Are you sure?” he asks.
Lan WangJi nearly rolls his eyes. He finally moves closer, takes one of Wei WuXian’s hands in his own. His skin is warm and smooth, the pads of his fingers callused from his music but not unpleasantly rough. Their hands fit together just as well now as they did thirteen months ago. Lan WangJi squeezes his hand once, gently, as though in answer to his question.
That’s all Wei WuXian can take. He surges to his feet, leans across the counter to press his lips to Lan WangJi’s.
This, too, is just as good as he remembers.
Wei WuXian knows plenty of bad kissers, but Lan WangJi is not one of them. His lips are soft, his mouth warm. He tastes a little bit like his toothpaste, a taste that Wei WuXian somehow still remembers. Wei WuXian wishes he’d thought to brush his teeth, but only for a second, because Lan WangJi’s head finds the right angle to deepen the kiss in just the way that Wei WuXian likes and his mind goes blessedly blank.
Wei WuXian grins into the kiss. Lan WangJi takes his bottom lip between his teeth and he can only groan.
He pulls back only because he’s feeling lightheaded. He blinks, and Lan WangJi is there, staring at him with a softness that Wei WuXian never dared hope he would see again.
Wei WuXian is a little tipsy and a lot kiss-drunk, and he’s so, so in love. He presses another small peck to the side of Lan WangJi’s mouth.
“Ask me?” he asks breathlessly.
“Wei Ying,” Lan WangJi says, a smile finally at the corner of his lips. “Stay?”