Archive of Our Own

You mumble to yourself as you walk down the street.

You're almost running, looking down, not a care in the world. You're late, as you'll always be, and it doesn't surprise anyone anymore. When you tell me, it won’t surprise me, either.

You have a hot cup of coffee in your hands, and I have a nearly empty tea cup in mine.

As we get closer, I steal a glance in your direction, not knowing yet why you interest me so much. Your long dark hair falls on your face in damp strands, and your cheeks look red with the cold. Even then, when I still think you’re a stranger on the street, I want to stop and stare.

I make sure I shift slightly to the side, enough so that you won’t bump into me even if you do not lift your eyes.

But you do lift your eyes. And you see me.

We don’t know each other, not yet, but you look right at me as if we do.

And you trip.

You almost fall, but I catch you quickly, my body reacting to yours even then. When we bump into each other, our drinks spill everywhere.

Our hands brush together for the first time in both our lives, the feeling of your cold skin prickling against my nearly feverish one. You look at me, grey eyes wide, and in the second it takes you to recover your voice, I see it.

Wei Ying, I see everything.

-

"Sorry," you will open your first smile at me, and my hands will tighten on yours. "I'm late."

"I know," I'll say, and your eyes will open further.

The intensity of my gaze will scare you. I'll understand this, but I won't be able to stop looking. You'll laugh to cover up your nervousness, but something will pass through your eyes, and I'll recognize it easily. Because I'll feel it too.

"I spilled your coffee," I'll say, because I too, am rendered nearly speechless.

"And I, your tea. Call it even?"

"No," I'll say too fast. You'll look hurt, but I'll explain myself. "I'll buy you another one."

You will glance at your watch and sigh. You're already too late to make it to the movie you were going to see with your brother and sister. You'll shrug, a gesture I'll learn that you do a lot, and my hands will start shaking lightly.

"What the hell. I'm already too late anyway."

I'll take you to the coffee shop. You'll talk the entire way, and I'll drink it up as if it's my first time hearing it. And my last.

This is how we’ll start.

-

We will become friends first, as it is normally the order of things. I'll tell you where I work, and you'll tell me your entire life. It's my nature to be quiet, but you fill the silence well. I'll learn about your teaching job, and about your charity events. I'll learn about your family, how your mother died, how you were adopted.

I'll learn the things you tell me, and the things you think you don't.

I'll see your fear of dogs when we pass one on the street and you recoil towards me. I'll see your love of art when we sit down at the table and you open a notebook with a cover you drew yourself. I'll see your love for your students when in that notebook you show me a new teaching method you designed.

I'll learn you have an easy way of living, and even easier smile.

As we meet more often and become entangled in each other's lives, I'll breathe in any details you share about yourself. I'll start keeping my own notebook, where I write everything I notice about you, and even the things I don't like.

Don’t worry. There were never many of those, Wei Ying, but I struggle to write them down anyway.

In the few weeks it will take us to become inseparable, I will have filled two entire notebooks with you.

-

I'm observant, so it will be easy to see when you feel down, or when you don't like something. When we watch our first movie together, a sad film that ends in tragedy, you’ll cry, and I’ll reach out to wipe your tears before you even notice they're running down your face. You'll grab my hands and smile softly at me, as if apologizing for making a scene.

Our hands will stay intertwined for the rest of the movie, and the rest of the night.

I will lose myself in you, Wei Ying. I'll never even have a choice.

-

You'll fall in love quickly, completely, giving yourself as easily as you give yourself to anything.

I'll fall in love like drowning, like everything you say to me is a wave that threatens my life, and I cannot - will not - move. Your words will crash into my heart, each and every one of them breaking against my built-up walls until they are worn.

You won't know this, but I opened a hole in these walls for you. I allow myself to be conquered, bit by bit, and watch you with increased passion, every time.

The first time we go on an official date, I'll bring you your favorite flowers. You haven't told me you love lotus flowers yet, but I will know. You'll show to me your biggest smile yet, the one where your eyes are nothing but tiny lines on your face, and I won't be able to stop staring.

In my awe, I will not smile back.

There will be other chances, but I'll always remember that one. Your first full smile to me, and I won't reciprocate.

I'll regret it all my life.

-

We will be in my kitchen when we kiss for the first time. We'll be baking a cake to bring to my brother's Sunday lunch - well, I'll be baking a cake, and you'll be making a mess around me.

I'll pretend to focus on the task at hand, but my entire focus will be on you. The morning light reaching through the window and falling on your hair as if by an indescribable pull. The way the air around you feels still, like time itself moves slower so it can see you better. And think about it, Wei Ying. These things, nature itself, react to you as if you were their sole purpose of existing, as if you were a force drawing everything in, and who am I to think I would ever be able to resist?

I would choose you again and again, over anything. Over myself.

In that moment, as you let your phone fall on the bag of flour and the powder goes everywhere, making your entire face white, I'll know this to be true with every fiber of my being.

My heart will be singing when I make my way to you, your smiling face, trying to wipe the flour from yourself. You'll glance up at me with that grin, my favorite one, and this time I'll remember to smile back. I'll never forget again.

I will put my hands on your face - not the first time, not the last, but the most important one. Feeling like I have a hummingbird for a heart, because it beats against my chest with the speed of their wings, and I know, I know, that if it ever stops beating like that I’ll faint, and I’ll never recover.

I’ll draw you in slowly, giving you time to pull away. And even though I know you won't,

(I've seen it, Wei Ying, as I've seen our entire future)  

I often forget it, putting the memories in the back of my head and storing them like precious jewelry.

Your face will soften, your lips will part. They will be dry, chapped, because you never stop biting them. I will lick them first, unable to stop myself, and the tiny gasp that escapes your mouth will make its way into my soul and settle there. I'll know that gasp, even then, as I hear it for the first time. I know every sound you'll make before you make them - I've heard them all before, in my mind, long ago when we met. Still, I’ll shudder, because the thrill of hearing them for the first time in real life can never be replaced.

I’ll spend my life anticipating your laughter, your moans, your growls. I’ll never stop hearing your sounds of pleasure in my head, Wei Ying. Even when we meet, even as we meet, it's all I can think about.

You'll kiss like you do everything. You'll kiss like you talk, like you teach, like you walk, like you fall in love. You'll give your entire self into it, pouring your weight on me and expecting, knowing, I will always catch you. You'll grab me all over, anywhere you can reach, and I will be unable to stop you - unwilling to stop you, when you back me into a wall and untangle my hair, my clothes, my life.

You'll tease me, because you always do. I'll love it, because I always do. When none of us can take it anymore, I'll take the lead for both of us and bring you to my bedroom.

I won't have a chance against you. I wouldn't want it, if I did.

-

I will count our firsts in my hands, and when I run out of hands, I'll write them down on the insides of my soul. The first time we hold hands. The first time we kiss. The first time we have sex.

I'll write down our first fight in my notebook, months after we start dating, and laugh at how stupid it was. I'll write down our first serious fight, right after you leave my house and bang the door behind you, with tears on my face. I will even write things that don't seem important, but that keep coming to my head as the pen crosses the paper and your name runs in my mind. The first time we laugh at the same joke. The first time I feel you looking at me when you think I won't notice. The first time your hand traces meaningless patterns on my naked chest. The first time we hug and I feel you inhale my scent, smiling against my shoulder.

The way our legs entangle on your bed after spending our first night together, seeming to mimic the way my life gets tied into a knot around yours.

You will never know this, Wei Ying, but that night I won't sleep. I’ll look at you the entire time, memorising every line of your skin, every curve of your body. You’ll smell like sweat, and like flowers, and I’ll wish I could bottle this moment in a flask, and remember it whenever I desire, like the opening of a long forgotten perfume. 

It's so easy to love you, Wei Ying.

So easy to forget everything that will happen, so easy to just pretend we have forever to ourselves.

-

I am weak, Wei Ying. I am not perfect. There will be moments when you’ll look at me, and I’ll second guess myself. The things I feel for you - have always felt, will always feel - crush me every second of every day. I long to tell you what will happen, to spill my secrets and share everything. But knowledge is a curse, and I would never put this misery upon you.

I’ll distance myself, try to forget everything, say that we shouldn't see each other again. Maybe if I do this now, I will hurt less, it's what I'll think. You'll yell at me, and I'll take it with my eyes closed, knowing full well that I deserve it, and more.

I'll walk out of the room, and you'll follow me. You'll say you love me for the first time with tears in your eyes.

It's too much. Too much, every time I remember. Too much, even when I know it's coming.

I'll come back to you fast, almost tripping, hugging you until you nearly break between my arms, and knowing I could never leave. I made the decision to stay a long time ago, and even though I may falter, there is a string in my heart that will draw me back towards you every time.

I’ll choose to stay, again and again. I’ll know, as I choose, that even though you’ll be happy, my staying begins an unstoppable string of Fate that ends in your misery, either way.

I’ll weigh the cost in my head every day for the rest of my life.

It will seem like I'm being selfless. It will seem like I'm sacrificing myself to make you happy, Wei Ying. But I'm not.

I’ll stay for myself.

I won't stay because it may save you. I won't stay because it makes the smile come back to your face and the tears dry in your eyes. Those are wonderful consequences, but consequences nonetheless.

I’ll stay because I want to be with you, for as long as I can. I’ll stay because you make me happier than I've ever thought it possible for someone to feel. I’ll stay because I do not want to live in a world without you, and this way, I'll never have to.

So I'll stare into your eyes, whisper that I love you on your lips, kiss my love onto your neck, bruise it with my fingers on your hips. I'll worship my love into your body, and feel the ways in which you'll move underneath me, over me, trying to convince myself that this is for the best, and believing it with my lovesick heart.

I'll do the selfish thing.

I'll stay.

-

You'll move into my house without any of us noticing it's happening. Slowly, you'll start to spend more and more time there, bringing your things, settling in.

I'll never ask. I won't have to.

One day, you'll wake up in my arms, and smile at me with groggy eyes, the brush of your hand over my chest.

"So, I live here now."

You'll say it as a fact, and I won't know whether you mean our house or my heart.

But I'll say yes, because it doesn't matter. You live in both. You own both.

-

Two years after we start dating, I’ll ask you to marry me.

We’ll be eating tacos on the street after a particularly bad movie, and you’ll be complaining loudly about all the things you would do differently if you were the director. The night will be clear and cold after a quick rain, glistening with the drops that haven’t dried yet.

You’ll say you could do it much better, make that movie into a masterpiece, and start outlining all the different ways the scenes could’ve played out. You’ll take a small notepad out of your pocket - the one you bring everywhere, in case you have a sudden inspiration - and you’ll write bullet points about the plot of the film you’re going to write.

The bullet points will turn into drawings, and the drawings will turn into me, half eaten taco in my hand, staring at you while you work.

You’ll show me the drawing smiling, eyebrows raised.

“What do you think?”

“Marry me.”

I won’t know what to expect as an answer. I don’t remember every single detail of your reactions, and sometimes I am too enthralled by you to dig into the deep corners of my mind to find a particular memory of our future together.

I won’t expect you to laugh, and so of course, that is exactly what you’ll do.

My heart will stop, not because I’m scared you’ll say no, but because that’s just how it reacts, to this day, every time your laughter is so bright it numbs my senses to everything else.

You’ll reach into your pocket and show me a box with two golden rings inside it.

“You ruined it,” you’ll say, picking one of the rings and placing it on my finger. “I was waiting for the perfect moment to ask.”

That's silly, I'll almost say.

Every moment with you is perfect.

-

I don’t know if what I’m doing is right. I’ll never know. Part of me thinks you’ll hate me once you find my notebooks, resent me for the rest of your life for not telling you. My hope that you’ll understand me hangs by a thread every time I have a doubt, every time my tongue almost slips and I get lost in the feeling of wanting to bare my entire soul to you.

I was the happiest man alive. I am, I will be, the happiest man alive. You made me like this, Wei Ying. Only you. Never diminish that by thinking that I haven’t weighed all the possibilities.

-

On the day it happens, six years after we meet, I’ll do everything I can to prevent it.

I’ll know that it won’t work. That won’t stop me.

I’ll start trying years before. I know where it happens, and so I’ll spend our entire lives trying to take you away from that place. I’ll receive calls asking you to do lectures near that spot, and I’ll pretend they never happened. I’ll convince you to take a job in another country and flee with you, trying to hide you away from the world, from nature, from the unbearable force that is Fate.

But Fate is patient, and Fate gets what it wants. It’s a wheel running down a never-ending mountain and it never stops turning, not for me. Not even for you.

So your sister gets pregnant, and you have to return to the place I spent years trying to move you away from.

We’ll have the biggest fight of our lives then, me yelling for you not to go, and you yelling that I’m being unreasonable, this is your sister, she had a baby, you have to be there.

It will end with us both in tears and clinging to each other’s clothes, thinking it’s all over, thinking I will never see you again, and that you can't, can’t, can’t go.

-

You’ll go.

And I’ll follow.

I’d follow you anywhere.

-

The baby is healthy, and beautiful. Your sister’s smile will convey everything she is too exhausted to say, and we’ll leave the hospital holding hands.

You won’t understand why I cry the whole way there.

You’ll stop in the middle of the street and ask me what’s wrong.

I will grab your hand, and we will run.

We’ll run until we can’t feel our legs anymore. You won’t ask me why, but you’ll follow my lead.

I’ll turn on streets neither of us have seen before, I’ll put us in a cab and tell the driver to drive anywhere, and then we’ll run some more.

When you’re exhausted, panting, unable to go further even one step, you’ll ask me what I’m doing.

I’ll tell you that I love you. That I loved you from the moment our hands touched, and it’s not an exaggeration or a gimmick, it’s the most pure truth to ever come out of my lips. I always knew you were the person who would make me happy, and I was so happy with you, my love.

I’ll kiss your hands, your face, your neck. My tears will stain your clothes and get confused with yours, as you ask me what’s wrong, what is it, what is it, Lan Zhan? and I can’t answer. If I answer, it may change what you do, and then I won’t know how to save you.

We will turn on a corner and I will scream.

Because I’ll know where we are.

You’ll turn to me, wide-eyed, and I’ll scream once again.

It’s a guttural sound, and you’ll hug me as tight as you always do, and I’ll hold you close as if there is nothing else keeping me in the world.

Because there isn’t.

I will know the place. I have always known that place. I see it in my nightmares, every single night. I am always running away from it, trying to stay on the other side of the world.

But Fate brings us here. And Fate is not cruel, or kind, but it is. It just is, Wei Ying, and there was nothing I could do. Fate plays a song and our bodies dance, and our legs skip, and our arms twirl.

It won’t be raining. It will shock me, because my nightmares have turned this scene into a downpour. It makes no sense to my brain, that the sky looks so beautiful even on a night like this.

I won’t be able to breathe. Gasping for air, I’ll clung to you in any way I can, and try to walk us somewhere else, anywhere else but here.

You’ll step away from me, because you’ll think I’m having a panic attack, and the solution is to give me space.

In the second it takes for me to notice what you’re doing, and reach out to you to keep you close…

You’ll trip.

Because you always trip.

Why, Wei Ying?

A trip from you started our story. A trip from you will end it. I’ll feel the urge to laugh at the irony, but it would be a crazy sounding laugh, one that comes from an already compromised mind.

You’ll step on the street and lose your balance.

This is the moment I have nightmares about.

My visions keep changing, all throughout my life. Every time I take a turn that I’m not supposed to, I see a new way in which we

still

end up

here.

We always end up here. And it only ends two ways.

So I’ll choose a way.

The truck will come turning the corner with no breaks, broken lights and a sleepy driver. I’ll hear it coming before you do, because I’ll be expecting it. And so I’ll shove you out of the way.

And I’ll try, Wei Ying, I swear to you I will try. But I’m not fast enough to get myself out of the way too.

-

Fate is ruthless, but it isn’t evil.

A life for a life.

And so you’ll live.

-

I will not.

-

And in the moment it takes Fate to adjust to the fact that I am the one dying tonight, and not you, as the tips of my fingers let yours go and you fall backwards, wide eyes staring at me in horror - I’ll see your future without me.

It’s beautiful, Wei Ying.

- 

You’ll be such an amazing uncle. The kind that is fun when he needs to be, and stern when the situation calls for it. The kind that pushes the swingset until Jin Ling is tired, and lets him fall asleep on your stomach when nowhere else will do. The kind that buys him snacks and tells him not to tell his mother about it. The kind that goes to hell and back to rescue him from any problem he gets into.

People will love you, although none will ever come close to the crushing fullness of what I feel. And how can they not love you, Wei Ying, when you’re the most enchanting man that ever lived? You’ll do amazing things, and save people’s lives with a smile.

But not my favorite smile. That one is reserved for me.

Your heart will mend. Not completely, but enough.

It’s alright. It’s what I want.

You’ll never forget - I wouldn’t expect you to -, but you’ll recover as much as you can.

You’ll be happy without me, eventually.

I could never be happy without you.

And this is why you’ll live. Not me, Wei Ying, it was never me. From the moment I found out, I knew what I would do for you.

And although I may second-guess myself and wonder if I made the best decisions possible, I’ll never regret saving you.

Not for a second, my love.

-

I am selfish.

I’m sorry.

I didn't want to live in a world without you, and so I’ll make you live in a world without me. 

But live, Wei Ying. Please.

Live.

-

As my hand touches yours and catches you when you trip, on our first day, I see everything.

I see our entire lives together.

I see you dying the same way, every time, unless I save you.

"Sorry," you open your first smile at me, and my hands tighten on yours. "I'm late."

"I know," I say, and your eyes open further.

I could run. I could pretend none of this ever happened, and never see you again. I don’t know you yet, and I don’t have to care about you.

If I leave right now, you will die on that night, hit by a truck, after you leave the hospital. I don’t have to die.

But if I stay… You may live.

"I spilled your coffee," I say, to make the silence less awkward.

I should run.

I’m going to run.

"And I, your tea. Call it even?"

Yes, I think, my self preservation instincts kicking in with desperation. Yes, we are even.

But that’s not what I say.

Because I’ve made my decision.

I can’t leave and never fall in love with you. Even as we speak our first words to each other, I already love you wholly.

"No," I say, a little too fast. You look hurt, and I explain myself. "I'll buy you another one."

You glance at your watch and sigh.

"What the hell,” you say, and I see you shrug for the millionth time. No, I see you shrug for the first time. “I'm already too late anyway.”

I take you to the coffeeshop, thinking your name over and over in my mind.

You are worth it, Wei Ying.

This is how we start.