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Jiang Cheng gets as far as making a photo collage on the wall above the ratty twin bed on his side of the dorm room before he flops down on the mattress and begins, once again, to question every decision in his life that led him here. The headache that has threatened to overtake him for the last week grows more insistent as he tries to focus on the mysterious water stain on the ceiling and decide if it looks more like a drunk octopus or a squashed cake and if the stain indicates a problem that will smack him in the face in the middle of the night.
Well, it won’t be the first time life does him dirty like that, and it won’t be the last.
“Baby bro?”
Jiang Cheng squeezes his eyes shut because of course, of course Wei Ying wouldn’t be able to leave him alone for one goddamn day. He should have taken a gap year. He should have gone to any of the other schools to which he’d been accepted. He should have—-He should have at least locked the door, he thinks as the end of the bed dips under his brother’s weight.
“Hey.”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t flinch away from the hand that rests on his knee, and he thinks that’s progress, at least.
“Can I help you?” he asks, mostly not sarcastically.
“I came to see if you wanted to get dinner with me and Lan Zhan and a couple other people.”
Jiang Cheng lurches upright, surprised to see the last gold of sunset filtering through the crooked blinds. He rubs his eyes.
“Uh, maybe,” he says. “I should put the rest of my shit away.”
“You can do it later. It’s too early to get into bad dining habits. You gotta at least hold off ‘til midterms for that.” Wei Ying scoots over until he can sling an arm around Jiang Cheng’s neck. “Come on. Let me show you the best seats in the dining hall, where the cool kids sit—“
“So not where you sit?”
“Aye, be nice.” Wei Ying pokes Jiang Cheng in the ribs.
“You first,” Jiang Cheng shoots back, but he’s grinning.
“Seriously, though. Food. Friends. Fun. Let’s go!”
“Tomorrow?”
Wei Ying sits back so he can study Jiang Cheng. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he starts, but Wei Ying levels a glare he learned from their sister, so Jiang Cheng relents. “I have a headache, and...I’m overwhelmed.” He looks down at his hands.
Wei Ying is uncharacteristically quiet for so long, Jiang Cheng looks up, afraid that he’s going to see judgement or scorn, but his brother’s expression is soft and a little sad.
“Okay,” he says at last.
“Okay? That’s it? You’re not gonna keep bugging me?”
Wei Ying shrugs. “Do you know when your roommate is supposed to get here?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Wei Ying smiles at him. “Do you want me to bring you some dinner?”
“I’ve still got some things in that bag Yanli packed—no!” He sees the gleam in Wei Ying’s eye. “No! You absolutely aren’t getting your dirty paws on any of that!”
Wei Ying pouts, but unlike Lan Wangji, Jiang Cheng is immune to it.
“Fine,” Wei Ying huffs when he sees Jiang Cheng is unmoved. “I’ll let you have space to settle in tonight. We’ll have coffee in the morning, and you are coming to dinner with us, even if I have to get Big Bro Xichen to pick you up and carry you out.”
Jiang Cheng has no doubt Wei Ying will follow through on this threat, so he simply nods, and this seems to satisfy Wei Ying for now.
Wei Ying stands and pulls Jiang Cheng up with him, into a fierce hug. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says.
Jiang Cheng clears his throat, but the words won’t shake loose, so he hugs his brother back. Wei Ying clings a moment longer and brushes a kiss against Jiang Cheng’s temple.
“Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Wei Ying.”
“Night, baby bro. Sleep tight.”
Jiang Cheng closes the door behind his brother and locks it. Then, he squats down by his suitcases and digs around until he finds it — a lamp, a cheap plastic thing shaped like the moon. They’d kept it in the treehouse he and Wei Ying had convinced his father to build for them when Jiang Cheng was ten. Wei Ying saved his allowance to buy the lamp after a disastrous sleep over when Jiang Cheng had such bad nightmares he broke a finger trying to claw his way out of the treehouse. Since then, the soft glow of the lamp had been a constant reminder that someone cared about him.
He had been ashamed when he packed it. He’s eighteen, far too old to need a nightlight, but he swears he can still feel Wei Ying’s comforting hold and the ghost of the kiss he also thought he was too old for, but maybe he’s not. Not yet anyway. He smiles as he plugs in the lamp and turns off the overhead light. The soft glow banishes the worst of the shadows as Jiang Cheng shakes out his duvet and crawls into bed. His phone, which rests on the edge of his desk, buzzes with an incoming text from his sister: goodnight moon :)
Maybe things will be alright after all.