Work Text:
Wei Ying doesn’t know when it started, or how, but he looks at Lan Zhan and feels a gut-punch of something kick in his ribs, and thinks, oh. Oh.
“Hm?” Lan Zhan puts down his phone and looks up at him. They’re at a new cafe two blocks away from the school—it’s Instagram-pretty, done up in white and clean beige with a glossy swiss cheese plant in the back corner—sitting on stools at the low bar that runs along the length of the glass front overlooking the street. Lan Zhan finished writing his college personal statement last night and Wei Ying has just taken the hardest calc test he’s ever taken in his life, sixth period today, so they’re out for celebratory boba now. Celebratory boba that has severely backfired onto Wei Ying, if this recent revelation is anything to go by.
“What?” Wei Ying jolts up with a start, guiltily. He’s zoning out. It’s been a long week and Seoul autumns are windy, which means that the breeze coming in through the cracked-open cafe door is pulling at Lan Zhan’s hair in a very distracting way.
“Did you say something?” he asks.
“Ah,” Wei Ying says, fixing his stare on the pearls in Lan Zhan’s drink instead of his hair. There’s not a lot left—Lan Zhan always tries to eat all the pearls first, because he hates fishing around the melting ice after he’s finished his drink, and the cup is already nearly half-empty. “No.”
Lan Zhan tilts his head at him a little but lets it go. “Okay,” he says. “Would you like a sip of my boba?”
One person shouldn’t be this pretty, or this funny, or this good to him. It’s awful. Lan Zhan nudges over his taro milk tea with golden pearls and Wei Ying dips his head to catch the straw in his mouth. His perfectly serviceable vanilla latte has to be pushed aside for the angle to work, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for… things. For, and in the name of vague and unspecified things that have something to do with Lan Zhan letting Wei Ying steal his drinks, which? Means something, or maybe not. Results inconclusive. “Love you,” he mumbles around the tapioca and suddenly the phrase feels different and more significant than it has, ever. It’s objectively ridiculous. He’s been saying it to Lan Zhan since they became friends at the end of freshman year; he doesn’t love Lan Zhan any more or less than he had previously. Of course the meaning hasn’t changed. Wei Ying is the one imbuing it with some other needless connotation because he decided to realize three minutes ago that he might actually like Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan gives him a small smile, and his eyes blink into pleased half-moons for just a second. That’s how Wei Ying knows he’s happy.
Like-like, that is. Like as more than a friend. Like as—like as? A boyfriend? He thinks about dating Lan Zhan, what that would be like, and feels his brain physically leave his body.
“Boys,” he says out loud.
Lan Zhan takes back his boba and stirs it with the straw. Then he takes a sip, which Wei Ying had not been ready for, because his mouth had been on that straw about ten seconds ago, and if Lan Zhan’s mouth is also on that straw, now, then—“Boys?” Lan Zhan repeats. His tone is questioningly amused.
Then. Profit?
“Hhhhhhh.”
Straw? Mouth? Mouth? Lan Zhan chews on a pearl thoughtfully. “Take your time,” he says, swallowing. The bob of his throat under the white choker he’s wearing today can ruin entire cities, Wei Ying decides.
—
Wei Ying [10:23 PM]
i’ve connected the two dots
Nie Huaisang [1:02 AM]
you didn’t connect shit
Wei Ying [1:30 AM]
i’ve. CONNECTED THEM
—
“My life is so difficult,” Wei Ying tells Jiang Cheng, who is listening to the stoichiometry video they’re watching in class today with a cover teacher, and taking notes with a satisfyingly smooth pen. Wei Ying has left his pencil case in his locker so he does not have any pens to take notes with, satisfyingly smooth or otherwise.
“I’m going to kill you, and slowly,” Jiang Cheng hisses, because that kind of dialogue is normal for them; jiejie would be so disappointed. He copies down the sample equation that they’re supposed to be balancing—too many hydrogen atoms in that one, bad vibes—instead of paying attention to his suffering brother, so Wei Ying prods him frantically in the shoulder to rectify that.
“I think I like someone,” he says. Jiang Cheng doesn’t understand the urgency of the situation here. Chemistry is one of the classes he doesn’t share with Lan Zhan, and he needs to tell someone about it before he dies of queer repression. “Jiang Cheng, a-Cheng, didi—”
“If it were not for the laws of this land—” Jiang Cheng begins in Mandarin, and Wei Ying says, “No, it’s not as funny when it’s not in English,” also in Mandarin, and then their cover teacher for the period, who happens to be fluent in Mandarin, who also happens to be Lan Zhan’s fucking uncle now that he stops to think about it, looms behind the two of them and snaps, “English on campus unless you’re in a second language class. Focus on your work.”
They shut up. They focus on their work. Wei Ying has perhaps miscalculated in attempting to explain how he wants to hold hands with Lan Zhan in a bisexual kind of way while Lan Zhan’s uncle is in the room.
After class, he loops an arm through Jiang Cheng’s and follows him all the way to his locker on the fifth floor next to the art rooms. Jiang Cheng eyes him suspiciously as he slides his Chemistry textbook onto the top shelf to join three other textbooks, a stack of index cards, and a blue-purple energy drink that has been in there for far longer than is probably safe. “You like someone?” he asks grudgingly, and Wei Ying beams at him. He believes in positive reinforcement. Then his brother says, “What about Lan Zhan?” and Wei Ying is too surprised to keep beaming.
“What about Lan Zhan?” he echoes.
Jiang Cheng fishes around the bottom of his bag for a stick of gum—cinnamon, judging from the smell, and possibly caffeinated, because he’s just high-strung like that—which he unwraps and starts chewing furiously as if that would alleviate the inherent and intense uncomfortableness of this conversation. “Have you gotten over your whole thing for him? Who’s the new person?”
Wei Ying crosses and uncrosses his arms, leaning against the locker, as he tries to process the implications of this. Huh. There are many implications. Too many of them. “About that,” he says.
Ten excruciating minutes later, the contents of which Wei Ying has completely purged from his mind on account of the emotional toll associated with the mortifying ordeal of having your brother and apparently half the grade aware of your big gay crush on your best friend before you yourself were aware of it, Jiang Cheng sighs, snaps his nasty cinnamon-caffeine gum in a way specifically designed to be annoying, and says, “You should just ask him out.”
Wei Ying is duly horrified. “No!”
Jiang Cheng snaps his gum again and doesn’t say anything. The bell rings like an accusation—Jiang Cheng has Chinese lang next, and Wei Ying has to run all the way down to the humanities classrooms on third for psych.
“I hope Lan-laoshi gives you detention for chewing gum in his class,” he says spitefully, and flees for the safe haven of the nearest staircase.
—
During the one free period they share every week, Mianmian bumps her shoulder against his and grins brightly in a way that means she wants something. Her ponytail swings as she leans in. “Physics study session today after school?” she says. “Everyone’s coming, we have to study for that test on Friday.”
Ugh. The quiz on fields that Wei Ying has also not studied for—he had been planning to rope Lan Zhan into calling later tonight or something, but it’s not a bad idea for him to go out with the rest of the group if they’ve already planned something. “Where are we going, Starbucks?” he asks, surreptitiously booting up iMessage on his laptop and opening up his thread with Lan Zhan. The last message on there is a good night! 🍜 received at 10:31 PM last night.
Wei Ying [2:45 PM]
might not b able 2 call tonight :((
phys group wants 2 study
He hesitates. He had promised Lan Zhan first, after all.
Wei Ying [2:46 PM]
tbh i COULD skip & call u though still?
“Aw, did you have a date today?” Mianmian says, reading over his shoulder. “Also, you’re not allowed to skip on us. I’m about to fail out of this class and you’re the only person who can explain why gravitational potential is negative in a coherent way.”
“Lan Zhan and I aren’t dating,” Wei Ying says, possibly overly defensive about this shortcoming.
Mianmian lifts a single eyebrow very slowly. The muscle control she can exert over the left side of her forehead is truly impressive. “It was an expression, but now I’m even more convinced that you are. Wait, or that you want to be.”
“Mianmian, please—”
“Look, he sent you a goodnight text with an emoji! Who does that?”
“It’s a joke! He sends me random food emojis sometimes because—because! I just think they’re neat!” Wei Ying protests. It’s true. Wei Ying tends to go slightly hysterical over the food emojis on iOS (they’re so little—they’re so little and they’re food!) so Lan Zhan will sometimes send him texts with strings of completely off-topic food emojis attached to the end. It doesn’t mean anything, it really doesn’t.
Wei Ying’s current favorite is the loaf of bread one. Lan Zhan likes the bento box. It also doesn’t mean anything that he knows these things.
“Peak couple energy,” Mianmian says.
“Listen, do you and your boyfriend text each other good night?”
“No, we don’t, and his name is—” Wei Ying blacks out a little here, because for some reason he has never successfully managed to process Mianmian’s boyfriend’s name—yes, they’ve been on-off dating for five months now, but in his defense, the guy goes to a local school in Daechi and they’ve only met in person once before, at a sports thing Mianmian dragged him to—so he certainly isn’t going to start now.
“Exactly, so how is it couple energy if actual couples don’t do it?”
“You’ve gone straight past the regular couple energy into, like, honeymoon territory,” Mianmian says, as if that makes any sense at all. Sometimes Mianmian is bad at making sense. “Also, I think”—Wei Ying doesn’t mean to keep missing Mian-man’s goddamn name, he swears—“and I have broken up for good this time but that’s got nothing to do with it. We didn’t send each other good night texts when we were dating, either, we were never that bad.”
The screen pings with a new message before Wei Ying can even begin to unpack everything about that statement, and he hastily turns down the volume as he clicks open iMessage again.
Lan Zhan [2:55 PM]
it’s okay!
go study physics, jiayou jiayou!!
Wei Ying [2:55PM]
babeyyy
i owe u one
ilyy 🥙
When he turns back, Mianmian has opened a notes document on her own laptop and typed, hypothesis: food emojis as love language 🍆🤩 into the title bar. Wei Ying very deliberately resists the urge to backread his chat with Lan Zhan and catalogue every single emoji-related interaction they’ve had since they started texting; to be fair, that would take him a very long time. They have had a lot of emoji-related interactions.
—
Wei Ying [3:01 PM]
what does it mean??? what does it all MEAN???????
Nie Huaisang [3:01 PM]
🥺
—
They end up going to the GS25 on the next street, the one with the English-speaking cashier and old grapefruit Chamisul advertisements pasted on the walls. They here means the long-suffering Chinese diaspora physics students who need to study for the test on Friday: Wei Ying and Mianmian; Qin Su, who is scarily good at the class for a planned arts major; Xiao Xingchen, who is scarily terrible at the class (even) for a planned humanities major but least extremely cheerful about it; Wen Qing, a chronic overachiever; Wen Ning, the only one other than Wei Ying who is on an engineering track and therefore actually needs this specific class, conclusive proof that everyone else is, in fact, a masochist. It’s an eclectic group, and only passable functional at the best of times. Wei Ying loves them all.
That afternoon, Wei Ying sweeps the snack aisles with Wen Ning, who wordlessly stacks two packs of buy-one-get-one-free Shin Ramyun noodles into his hands and snags a mini cup udon of an unidentifiable brand for himself. Wen Ning gets it.
“Don’t eat both of them at once,” Wen Ning warns him solemnly.
Wei Ying contemplates doing just that, or maybe really going wild and getting another one. Three packs of instant noodles. What a thought. “If you see me wrecking my health with Korean junk food to get through the inherent unsexiness of studying things on a Wednesday afternoon, no you didn’t.”
Wen Ning nudges his wandering hand away from the Ottogi Snack Ramen and hustles them both to the cashier to pay and pick up chopsticks; he’s surprisingly stubborn for such a quiet guy, given how he remains entirely unmoved by Wei Ying bitching at him.
“A-Ning. A-Ning, if I drink a lot of green tea afterwards, do you think the health benefits will cancel out?”
“I don’t think food works like that,” Wen Ning replies. In line behind them, Mianmian says, incredulously, “Like in a video game? Do you think food gives you health points, Wei Yingying? How have you lived this long?”
Wei Ying gives her a choice finger and takes his two (not three) packs of noodles to sit down at the large central table their six-person study group has taken over. Wen Qing and Qin Su are peaceably reading from a textbook at one end, and Xingchen is fighting an underclassman girl over what appears to be a jumbo bag of Haitai plum candy at the other. Two types of people, and all. He sits down squarely between them and heaves out the class notes he has to review.
“Heard you were missing a date to study for this, what a responsible student,” Wen Qing says, looking up from her discussion of parallel plates with Qin Su. The underclassman girl on his other side (Liu Jing? Liu Qing?) starts hissing at Xingchen like a cat, which doesn’t seem to deter him at all from patting her on the head and firmly taking the bag away from her.
“We’re not dating!” Wei Ying exclaims, an incriminating second too late only because he was distracted watching the plum candy confrontation go down and didn’t process the accusation properly, but Wen Qing would never believe that.
“They’re definitely dating,” she predictably assures Qin Su. Qin Su rounds out her eyes in an innocent way when Wei Ying flicks an eraser across the table at her.
“Lan Zhan wouldn’t be so mean to me.”
Not the right thing to say, here. Significant looks are exchanged. Wei Ying hates this. “You know what, please just keep talking about parallel plates.”
He flips open his notes and tries to concentrate. The thing is, he really does like Lan Zhan. With boys it’s always a little more complicated to differentiate between friendship and attraction and possibly just jealousy-attraction, so he’d had to spend a few days thinking about it. Lan Zhan is his closest friend. Wei Ying thinks he’s the best person he’s ever met, and he doesn’t want to lose him, ever. He could see himself going out with Lan Zhan, spending time around him, doing things to make him happy. Holding his hand. Kissing him, if that’s what he wants, too. That all means something, doesn’t it? The realization doesn’t scare him as much as he feels like it should; it feels like fireworks. It feels pretty and new and light.
—
“I come bearing gifts,” Mianmian announces, cutting through the ongoing table-wide debate on how centripetal motion fits into whatever they’re supposed to be studying and whether this is even relevant. It’s nearing seven; the sun has just gone down in a blaze of light, leaving the fluorescent lights of the convenience store even harsher than before. Wei Ying has finished three full problem sets so far and if he has to read one more question about the escape speed of satellites, elbows pressed onto the blonde wood of the suspiciously sticky table as he punches numbers into his calculator, he really might lose it.
“Coffee?” says Qin Su.
“Illegal answer keys?” says Xingchen.
“A reprieve from the endless torment of existence?” says Liu Qing, who had left and come back about twenty minutes ago with a new bag of Haitai plum candy and told them all to call her a-Qing. She’s now perched on Xingchen’s corner of the table chattering about the Sky Castle finale; her Chinese has an endearingly strong southeastern accent.
Wen Qing yawns and puts down her pencil. “Guys, she walked like five meters away to buy ice cream from the freezer. You all watched her do it.” Someone boos her.
“A girl can hope,” a-Qing says petulantly. “Anyway, the East Asian ideals of academic and professional success are heavily influenced by the conformist, unit-based nature of its societies, and possibly also a misplaced belief in the Westernized narrative of an American dream that has proven itself to be false. Stream Sky Castle, qianbei.”
Mianmian lets an armful of ice cream bars cascade onto the table with a series of thunks. In the ensuing rush of reaching hands, Wei Ying snatches a twin popsicle off the edge of the pile before anyone else can—it’s a local brand he still doesn’t quite know how to read the name of, and the wrapper is colored in with blocky reds and yellows. “Mianmian, split this with me?”
Mianmian gives up on trying to take a Melona off Xingchen and throws herself back into her seat next to Wei Ying. “Give it here,” she says, crooking a finger at him as he rips open the wrapper. “You always split it unevenly.”
“What do you mean I always split it unevenly—”
“Every time.” Mianmian takes the popsicle from him and unceremoniously twists the two sticks away from each other, so that the bar separates in the middle. She thrusts the left-hand piece at him.
“Aw, you gave me the bigger piece.”
“There is no bigger piece, that was the whole point of me splitting it, not you!”
“You gave me the bigger piece, that means you love me!” Wei Ying singsongs, and examines his side of the popsicle with a critical eye. “Hey, who wants to see how much of this I can deepthroat?”
A-Qing looks at them beadily, apparently finished with her surprisingly insightful critique of higher education systems in East Asia. “Are you dating Luo-jiejie?” she asks, just as a solid wedge of chocolate ice cream hits the back of Wei Ying’s throat. He is not the only one who chokes. Mianmian, a horrible, horrible person, starts laughing.
“Don’t be heteronormative,” Xingchen admonishes in a mild sort of way, as if that is the only problem with this situation. Mianmian is still laughing and has to take several sips from Qin Su’s water bottle to calm down.
“I am not dating Luo-jiejie,” Wei Ying wheezes. He swallows frantically several times, and shakes his head to underline the point.
“It’s only a shuang-bar, they share one all the time,” Wen Ning says to a-Qing, who doesn’t look even remotely appeased by this explanation. Every day, Wei Ying suffers the consequences of actions he isn’t even responsible for.
—
“Are you dating Qingyang?” Lan Zhan asks him, out of nothing and nowhere while they’re eating lunch in the cafeteria. Wei Ying had been trying to inhale his watery school-lunch carbonara as fast as humanly possible on the grounds that if he ate it fast enough, he wouldn’t have to taste it and therefore it would be a better experience for everyone involved. It is not a better experience for anyone involved. As it turns out, choking on penne pasta is actually a significantly worse look on him than choking on a chunk of deepthroated ice cream, especially when Lan Zhan is sitting right in front of him, looking progressively more worried as he coughs. Every day, Wei Ying suffers the consequences of actions he isn’t even responsible for.
“What the hell?” he demands between coughs, wheezing for the second time in two days.
The corners of Lan Zhan’s mouth turn down, for some reason; it’s subtle but it’s there. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Where did you hear this? Have you been interacting with an exceptionally talkative sophomore called Liu Qing?”
“Liu Qing?”
“Yeah. Short, thick glasses, she hangs out with Xingchen and eats a lot of candy. Like, so much candy. No, okay, wait, back to the question. Why do you think I’m dating Mianmian?”
“Huaisang said he thought—”
“Huaisang? Huaisang Nie? Nie Huaisang?” Wei Ying says out loud, surprised. The next bite of carbonara tastes awful, even more so than usual, as it goes down. “Well, I’m not.”
“Oh.”
“And if I were…” Lan Zhan’s hand flinches on the table, and he quickly squeezes it into a fist as Wei Ying’s gaze flicks towards the movement. His lunch—he’d more sensibly decided to go for fried rice with egg soup, the other menu option that day—looks mostly untouched even though the cafeteria doesn’t usually mess up rice dishes too badly. Is Lan Zhan upset? Something about Wei Ying possibly going out with Mianmian is making him upset. Maybe it’s because he thought he’d had to hear from someone else about it, even though Wei Ying is supposed to be his best friend. Wei Ying would want to know, too, if Lan Zhan started dating someone; even the thought of it right now is making something odd twist in his stomach.
“And if I were, I would tell you about it!” he blurts out, putting one hand on Lan Zhan’s. “Of course I’d tell you if I was dating someone—I wouldn’t wait for you to hear through the grapevine! We’re friends, aren’t we, Lan Zhan? Best friends?”
“Yes, we are.” Lan Zhan acknowledges this with a dip of the head, but his hand remains tense and still. He looks vaguely upset again for a brief moment before he pulls it back and asks about Wei Ying’s day. Wei Ying folds his fingers over his palm under the table, staring down at his tray and trying not to miss the warmth of Lan Zhan’s bony fingers too much.
—
Wei Ying [12:12 PM]
i thought u were a bro!!!
Nie Huaisang [1:00 PM]
???!??^#?!?~
Wei Ying [1:33 PM]
u told lan zhan mian² & i were dating ?
& now lan zhan is???? awkward? mad? idk
Nie Huaisang [1:33 PM]
:/
I Want You To Use Your One (1) Brain Cell
And Think About Why Lan Zhan Might Be Mad
Wei Ying [5:14 PM]
that mian² = dating me??
—
Wei Ying [8:45 PM]
.
Wei Ying [8:47 PM]
Does Lan Zhan Like Mianmian.
Wei Ying [9:50 PM]
wait Nie Huaisang Fucking Answer Me Does Lan Zhan Like Mianmian
Y/N Check One
Nie Huaisang Please
huaisang
huaisang
Wei Ying [9:51 PM]
huaisang :((((((((
Wei Ying [9:54 PM]
[gun.png]
nie huaisang :( answer me right the fuck now
—
Okay, so maybe Wei Ying is having a crisis.
So maybe Wei Ying is in this a little deeper than he expected and now he’s consigned himself to a tragic eternity of pining while his friend dates his other friend. It makes sense that Lan Zhan would like Mianmian, of course it does. They’re an excellent match; smart, dedicated, passionate about the same kinds of things, and now that Mianmian has officially split from her boyfriend, there’s absolutely a possibility that she would reciprocate Lan Zhan’s affection for her. Not only that, Mianmian can make him laugh. Wei Ying makes him laugh, too, but—if Lan Zhan wants someone else, then Wei Ying will support him in that. It doesn’t matter if he’s jealous. It doesn’t.
Wei Ying [9:55 PM]
zhanzhan
do u. do u mayhaps
like mianmian
Wei Ying [9:56 PM]
is that why u were so off 2day??
were you jealous
Wei Ying [9:57 PM]
i won’t make fun of u! mian² is great !!!!
& you’re great too!!!!!!
u 2 would b good together
really
Lan Zhan [9:57 PM]
wei ying
i don’t like mian² 🍞
Wei Ying [9:58 PM ]
🍞👀
ok???
but like if you did it would be fine. absolutely fine. so so fine
she’s a nice person! i would support u!!
Lan Zhan [10:01 PM]
thank you for the reassurance but there is no chance of that happening :)
she is a very nice person though :)
The more Wei Ying looks at the smiley face, the more passive-aggressive it seems. Lan Zhan likes emojis—the actual colorful unicode ones—an abnormal amount. He never uses typed shortcuts.
“What,” Wei Ying says to himself, staring at the far wall of his room, and then another text comes in.
Lan Zhan [10:02 PM]
i’m going to go to sleep now
good night, wei ying 🍧
Wei Ying [10:02 PM]
zhanzhannn
sleep well 🍮
—
Wei Ying [10:10 PM]
what does it mean??? what does it all MEAN???????
Two minutes later, Jiang Cheng opens the door to his room and makes a noise like an exploding grenade. “What does what all mean? I live in the same house as you, for fuck’s sake, what are you texting me for?”
Wei Ying is lying completely facedown on the bed with his phone in one hand; he shifts so that he’s lying only a little facedown on the bed. “Yeah, but what does it mean?”
“Is this about Lan Zhan? Am I going to have to get a-jie for emotional support?”
“No,” Wei Ying says, like a liar, and goes back to lying completely facedown on the bed. His brother slams the door on his way out. Wei Ying likes to think of it as an affectionate slam—door-slamming as a love language?—because he is extremely distressed right now. Maybe he should have taken Jiang Cheng up on that offer to get Yanli.
—
Nie Huaisang [4:10 AM]
Why Are You Threatening Me With Gun Dot Png I Don’t Know Anything
I Simply Don’t Know
It’s A Burden ! (Being This Pretty And Not Knowing Anything)
Nie Huaisang [4:11 AM]
also can you send me the answers to your chem hw lol
and your notes from class
thank youuuuu wei-xiong
Wei Ying [7:26 AM]
you’re???? not? in my chem class???
you don’t take chem???? at all??
Nie Huaisang [7:26 AM]
Who Are You To Stop Me In My Pursuit Of Education
Wei Ying [7:30 AM]
[chem1.jpg]
[chem2.jpg]
[chem3.jpg]
haha does this have anything to do with my brother bitching about stoichiometry
Nie Huaisang [7:40 AM]
Yes <3
Mind Your Own Business <3 <3
Wei Ying [7:40 AM]
wH- yo uwere supposde 2 say no 2 that i wasn’t fucking serious what the UFCK
—
The physics test goes okay. Far from his best performance, but not really his worst, either, and he gets distracted in the middle thinking about Lan Zhan’s hands more than once. It’s not his fault they’re so pretty and flexible. Lan Zhan should invest in rings, the plain stainless steel kind that can be stacked up; they would suit him. Also, he had gotten Tainted Love stuck in his head halfway through the period, which he’s going to inflict bodily harm onto Mianmian for, because Mianmian had been showing them vines before third period, and there had been one with Tainted Love in the background that had made Lan Zhan laugh, and—and he’s back at Lan Zhan again. Listen. It’s an ongoing problem and Wei Ying is trying.
“Your hands are a crime,” he informs Lan Zhan, still coasting on a post-test adrenaline rush. He is so powerful. He could fight God in the parking lot like this. He could commit unspeakable and atrocious actions, the least of which include telling Lan Zhan that his hands are pretty.
Lan Zhan blinks. “How so?”
“They’re too pretty.”
He’s greeted by more blinks, rapid this time. Wei Ying grabs his hand and brushes a thumb over the lines of his knuckles. “Too pretty,” he says again, just to underline the fact. “You should wear rings. I can buy you a ring!”
Lan Zhan stops blinking. Completely. Wei Ying rewinds what he just said about rings; something deep in his primal hindbrain starts flashing sirens. This unfortunately manifests in his subconscious defaulting to Mianmian showing him vines before third period, and it yells, sometimes I feel I’ve got to! (Dun dun!) RUN AWAY! It is not inaccurate, but it is decidedly unhelpful.
Before Wei Ying can actually (dun dun!) run away, or maybe just cautiously ask if everything is alright, because it has been a while and there has been no further blinking, Lan Zhan lets out the softest sigh, almost just an exhalation but with added yearning, and says, “A-Ying, do you have time today? It’s Friday, I was thinking we could go to Hongdae.”
Wei Ying smiles despite himself and throws an arm around him. “Yeah, of course!” The thought carries him through the rest of his classes, and after school they shoulder their bags and take the 7711 to Hongdae Station.
It’s a chilly day. Browned leaves skitter along the pavements as they get off the bus and slip into the crowds of late Friday afternoon, chatter mingling with the sounds of traffic—Wei Ying loves it here, the pulse of activity on the streets and the clamor that rises high into the air. A group of teenagers in uniform push past them, shouting in Korean, and Lan Zhan holds onto his arm so that they don’t get separated.
“Side streets?” Wei Ying says, pitching his voice over the din to be heard.
“And then food,” Lan Zhan confirms. They’ve been here enough times to have settled into a routine. They pick a street to go down and hit as many tiny, interesting-looking shops as they can—there’s always new ones cropping up here, and Wei Ying is a known hoarder of random trinkets—and then they go somewhere for dinner and watch the street dancers perform in front of the open-air chimaek restaurants and possibly go shopping again, digging through the sale racks of big-brand clothing stores.
“Okay, which direction? And can we go to Wonderplace after dinner?”
Lan Zhan nods in agreement for Wonderplace and points over his shoulder. “Do you remember the street on the way to all the nice karaoke places? The tanghulu vendors like to sell there.”
“Lan Zhan has the best ideas,” Wei Ying says, and before he can think about it, he takes Lan Zhan by the hand, interlacing their fingers, and tugs him in the direction of the nice karaoke places. When he glances back for just an instant, Lan Zhan is looking at their joined hands with a soft smile that he doesn’t know what to do with.
—
They go to a kitschy burger joint for dinner. Even Wei Ying has to admit that the faux retro-diner vibe is overbearing—it’s got the checkered floors, the neon signage, the red and white slapped loudly all over the place, and all three of those things viewed at once tends to induce feelings of mild eye strain—but there are comprehensive English menus and it’s quiet, the two of them the only patrons eating in.
Wei Ying is restless, brimming full of nervous energy. He moves from the seat across Lan Zhan, to the one next to him, and back again, and then tries to play footsie with him under the table (in a platonic way, hahaha, unless…?), then gets up and poses against the wall under a gaudy yellow sign so that Lan Zhan can take a picture of him to put on Instagram. That creates a whole ordeal where he swipes through the photos and asks, thoughtlessly, “Do I look good in this one, Zhanzhan?” and Lan Zhan looks at him, quiet and steady with those light eyes of his, and tells him, “A-Ying looks good in all of them. All the time.”
“Oh,” Wei Ying says, his throat going dry. He scratches a nail along the shiny plastic surface of their table, tracing the gleam of the overhead lights. Lan Zhan continues looking at him and suddenly he feels like he’s going to collapse under his own weight.
Their order gets served. Wei Ying says, “You know, I’m really not dating Mianmian.”
“We have established that neither of us are currently dating Mianmian.” Lan Zhan picks up a fry, dips it into the little bowl of ketchup, and eats it in small, regular bites. It’s stupid, how much Wei Ying wants to kiss him.
“I, yes, um, when you say currently—” he begins, and then Lan Zhan wipes his fingers on his napkin and makes that little yearning-sigh noise again, and cuts him off.
“I have no plans to date her, currently or in the future. I like someone else.”
Someone else is a dangerously, ambiguously, neutral term. There’s more chance that it wouldn’t be Wei Ying than that it would. He doesn’t know how he would be able to stand it if Lan Zhan doesn’t mean him—still, he makes an encouraging noise like a good friend should, and takes a bite from his burger so that he has an excuse to hide his face. The red-patterned wax paper it’s wrapped in crinkles noisily between them.
“He is a good person,” Lan Zhan continues on, ruthlessly persistent in the way he gets sometimes when he wants to say something, and wants other people to take note of it. “He is kind beyond belief, and cares so much, and I trust him.”
And Lan Zhan is looking right at him, and it means something, he knows it has to mean something. Wei Ying just has to respond, or show that he feels the same way, but then—if it isn’t him. If it isn’t him, what would happen then, and before he can even fathom opening his mouth, the moment is gone and Lan Zhan has turned back to his food, his head lowered, and Wei Ying doesn’t know what to do.
—
Nie Huaisang [8:43 PM]
Some Of Us Are Not In Denial About Things <3 <3 <3
—
“Lan Zhan,” he says, once they’ve finished their meal in a dull silence and Lan Zhan has paid using his card and Wei Ying has recompensed him for his part of the check in cash and they’re walking down the road back to the main street, which should be lighting up in shadow and neon for the night now. He folds his fingers into the crook of Lan Zhan’s arm.
“Lan Zhan,” he says again, and Lan Zhan moves away from him, keeps the distance between them with a perfunctory gentleness that scalds.
“It’s okay,” he says, low. “You don’t need to make it up to me.”
“No—” Wei Ying breaks stride so that he can situate himself in front of Lan Zhan, halting their walk, and puts both hands on his shoulders. “Back there. Back there—I panicked. You’re so good to me. I can’t lose you, okay? Not you. But you meant me when you were talking about that person, and you really meant it, and—Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan, Zhanzhan, I like you so much. I should have said so sooner. Every time you were looking at me—I was looking back.”
Lan Zhan’s breath hitches. He’d stayed perfectly still through the whole of Wei Ying’s rambling confession, and now he finally tilts up his head to reveal soft, liquid eyes. The streetlight turns them molten gold.
“Wei Ying,” he says, but the way he says it makes Wei Ying feel like it means something else entirely.
He reaches up to touch his face with a brief cupped hand. “Yeah?”
Lan Zhan smiles beautifully at him. “I just wanted to say your name,” he says, and Wei Ying tries very, very hard not to make some kind of incoherent keening noise.
“If I kissed you here, some God-fearing homophobe auntie would try to yell at us.” Wei Ying really is so intensely regretful about this.
Lan Zhan takes his hand and presses the back of it to his lips in a decisive movement. His eyes blink closed, then open again. “You can owe me a kiss later, then.”
“Oh. Oh my God. Okay,” Wei Ying almost yelps. “We can work with that.” Lan Zhan’s mouth had been so soft. He feels giddy and light, something expanding inside his chest until it threatens to burst for the sheer joyful newness of it.
—
Wei Ying gets off at Lan Zhan’s stop on the 750A circuit, which is actually five stops before his, not that this matters right now, and walks him all the way into his apartment building. They kiss in the stairwell between the second and third floors—Lan Zhan flushes so nicely when Wei Ying drapes his arms over his shoulders. Wei Ying nearly doesn’t make curfew, but it’s okay. It’s so okay that he doesn’t know how to keep the smile off his face as he goes home and lets himself in and checks his phone for the time and then promptly gets distracted by a message from Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan [10:23 PM]
second date ideas??
i am taking suggestions
Wei Ying [10:57 PM]
hhhHHHNG
Lan Zhan [11:00 PM]
🥞🥮🍰🧁🍭
Wei Ying [11:02 PM]
2 many food emojis
i think you broke me
i’m gonna cry now
🍱
—
“I’m actually missing a date to do this this time, which makes all of you homophobic,” Wei Ying says as he runs into the GS25 ten minutes late clutching his physics binder and a stack of annotated question banks. There’s an EXO Christmas album B-side playing on the speakers even though it’s only the middle of November. The afternoon shift cashier, who he belatedly remembers is fluent in English, throws him a weird look; Wei Ying feels so sorry for her. She has to deal with this nonsense every time they come here to study physics and cause problems.
“I have a boyfriend and you don’t see me being late about it,” Xingchen says. Wei Ying does not feel sorry for him in the slightest.
“Who said I was late because of him?”
A-Qing loiters by their table in a public-menace kind of way and puts three lollipops in her mouth at once—they’re all different flavors. “Nobody at this table is cishet, ge.”
“You can be gay and homophobic if you’re not a coward with self-respect,” Qin Su says diplomatically, taking out her earbuds. A-Qing considers this through her three lollipops.
“Okay, well, Lan Zhan—” Wei Ying begins, dropping down into his usual seat, and Mianmian punches him in the arm hard enough to make him stop talking.
“Don’t be insufferable. Some of us don’t care.”
Wei Ying huffs and slings his bag onto the floor. “That sounds like a you problem. I’m going to get noodles, and then we can figure out the electromagnetic spectrum or whatever.”
“Be quick about it,” Mianmian says, magnanimously waving him off.
In the noodle aisle is Wen Ning carrying his usual cup udon to the hot water dispenser and also Nie Huaisang, who is wearing huge fuck-off sunglasses and carrying a folding fan the size of his head. The sun is going to set in less than half an hour; it’s fifteen degrees Celsius outside.
“Gay person I do not respect,” he says, instead of starting off with hello like a normal person.
Wei Ying sighs. Doesn’t mention either the sunglasses or the fan or the exact amount of disrespect he has for both of those choices. “Fellow associate.”
“Wei-xiong, you have to tell me all the details. And I want your chemistry notes again from this week.”
“Sometimes Lan Zhan sends me random food emojis because he knows I go crazy over them,” he says. “Those are the details.” He decides not to address the chemistry notes thing because thinking too directly about Huaisang trying to win over his brother by learning organic chemistry for him (and succeeding, by the looks of it at this point) is discomfiting.
Huaisang gives him a look over the tops of his sunglasses. “You Know What, I Do Not Want To Know The Details.” The beginning letter of every word in that sentence is capitalized. In a series of rapid motions, he bundles every Samyang fire chicken noodle on the shelf into the crook of one arm, snaps closed his fan, and pats Wei Ying on the shoulder with it like he’s knighting him. “But Zhan’er really does like you,” he adds as he goes to pay for his twelve (twelve) packs of Samyang noodles. “He’s so happy all the time now.”
Wei Ying watches him scoop up a packet of cinnamon-caffeine gum at the counter and add it to the very top of his pile of ramen, slightly bemused. Maybe it really is Huaisang’s world and they’re all just living in it.
—
Wei Ying [5:20 PM]
aww babe u like me???? you’re happy all the time bc of me??
that’s EMBARRASSING
Lan Zhan [5:21 PM]
wei ying
.. We Are Dating
Wei Ying [5:21 PM]
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yes we are !!!!!!!
