Work Text:
Jiang Wanyin stares at the lines of code running across his laptop, wondering how exactly he went from being bored out of his mind in virtual prep school to jailbreaking a cyborg in Wei Wuxian’s shady garage in just a few weeks.
~
The hyper-realistic clock on the far wall ticks steadily by, matching the monotonous drone of his teacher. Jiang Wanyin taps against the side of his desk idly as the old man goes on about the same subject he’s been talking about for the last twenty minutes. Jiang Wanyin glances at the notes on his desk before swiping sideways, which reveals the homework tab that he had already completed earlier when the teacher had spent ages answering a student.
For the thousandth time, he curses the force field around the virtual school that automatically locks their communication rooms during class time, so the students cannot send or receive messages unless there is a case of emergency. That it is a Friday only makes the final class of the day seem longer than usual. All Jiang Wanyin wants is to go to the Arcade in the SCAPE to assert dominance over the leaderboards once again.
Finally, mercifully, the bell rings, cutting off whatever the teacher had been about to say. Immediately, the students’ avatars begin flickering, either logging off from the server altogether, or changing skins now that they aren’t required to maintain their actual appearance.
A hard nudge at his ribs makes Jiang Wanyin take off his VR goggles with a scowl as he meets the grinning face of Wei Wuxian, his childhood best friend.
“Are we hitting the Arcade, or what?” he says, the challenge clear in his teasing tone.
“Best two out of three, and then I’m hitting the ranked queues,” Jiang Wanyin tells him. “I’m not quitting until I get to grandmasters today.”
The two of them race to Jiang Wanyin’s basement, where there is a whole room dedicated to equipment for the SCAPE, the largest virtual reality server in the world. With practiced ease, the two of them put on their haptic suits and rig themselves securely to the omnidirectional treadmills. Then, Jiang Wanyin puts his goggles back on.
He spawns right outside the Arcade, a large building glowing with piercing neon lights, where all the available games on the SCAPE can be accessed. Ahead of him, Wei Wuxian is already walking into the building, his username flipping to Yi1ingLa0zu as he steps across the threshold.
Jiang Wanyin hurries to catch up, and a pleasant ping! tells him that his username has flipped to his gamer tag, S4NDU_SS, as well.
The two of them weave between the maze of booths that advertised all sorts of flashy games, some of them going as far as to generating pop-up windows right in front of their faces, all of which Jiang Wanyin swipe away with annoyance. They find the booth labelled Immortal Battleground relatively quickly, tucked away in the corner despite its popularity.
Immortal Battleground is a multiplayer fighter game with a variety of maps, some of which have teams of up to five people fighting against other teams to secure objectives, while others are free-for-alls in arena-style battles. Jiang Wanyin, however, prefers the duel mode, because he believes it to be the best showcase of mechanical skill. Since it is all in virtual reality, physical capability is really the only way to be good at the game; there is only so far that good equipment can get a bad player.
A digital counter hangs next to the doorway of the booth, showcasing the number of people currently playing the game. Underneath is the leaderboard for ranked games, and Jiang Wanyin quickly flips through them until he lands on the Duel page.
China | rank 59 | S4NDU_SS | 2297 MMR
Nine ranks until he breaks into grandmasters. Jiang Wanyin cracks his knuckles and steps into the booth, his vision fading to black as he waits to spawn into Immortal Battleground servers.
~
Jiang Wanyin glances between the screen of his laptop and Lan Xichen’s apprehensive face.
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he repeats for what seems like the millionth time. “I know it took a lot of trust for you to agree in the first place.”
He wants to make it clear to the cyborg that the choice is up to him, but with the way that cables are connecting Lan Xichen’s brain to the laptop, his statement no doubt seems dubious at best.
Lan Xichen lets out a trembling laugh, shaking his head gently so as to not disturb the wires. “It’s alright, I trust you. It’s just…it’s hard to ignore it when everything I’ve ever been taught is telling me that this is wrong. And I don’t want to get you guys in trouble.”
Jiang Wanyin frowns. “This is wrong, training a human being like a highly intelligent animal is fucked up.”
“If we’re ready, I’m going to turn on interference,” Wei Wuxian tells them, before Lan Xichen can reply. He tosses a small device from hand to hand, which will cut off their access to the Web and prevent anyone from hacking into their devices once it’s activated, as well as distort any tracker signals.
Jiang Wanyin nods. “Let’s start.”
~
Jiang Wanyin lies on his back, panting, as his health bar is reduced to zero and he is sent into the post-match lobby.
After his warm-up rounds with Wei Wuxian, he had gone into the games in high spirits, the familiar weight of his favoured sword Sandu in his hand. The matches hadn’t been easy by any means—not when he’s competing against some of the best players in the region—but once he’s in the zone, he is extremely hard to beat.
The thing is, most players, no matter how good they are, fundamentally treat the matches as what they are: a video game. They tend to rely on their expensive armour and weapons to win fights, which means their actual duelling skills are average at best. Between heavy, clumsy blows of brute force, Jiang Wanyin can easily find the weaknesses in his enemies, wearing down their armour and healthy that way. Maybe he is cheating a little, since he had briefly taken up fencing in middle school, but still, skills are skills.
As a result, it hadn’t taken long until Jiang Wanyin won enough points to rise through the ranks, and he is now sitting at a comfortable 43, with an undefeated 16-0 streak.
That is, until he had been matched up with ZeWuJun.
Jiang Wanyin would be certain that the user is a smurf account if video games in the SCAPE allowed more than one account per user. Still, he had been playing Immortal Battleground for the past two years, always at a high rank, so he knew most of the other high-ranked players by heart. And ZeWuJun is definitely new.
Maybe it had been a fluke, he had thought to himself. Jiang Wanyin had slammed the replay button as soon as the match ended, so he wouldn’t have to face the other player, who was no doubt smug at their victory.
But then fate had thought it would be amusing to match them against each other again, and oh, it had most definitely not been a fluke.
ZeWuJun fights like a dancer, spinning gracefully through the air with such control over his body so that Jiang Wanyin is unable to get close enough to even land a hit. Their blades clash harshly against one another, sometimes sparking with blue and purple light whenever their special abilities come off cooldown. ZeWuJun had caught him off guard the first time, but now, Jiang Wanyin is able to avoid a few hits as he learns the other player’s attack pattern. Still, he only manages to hold out for a few minutes longer this time before ZeWuJun lands a strike through his avatar, and he falls to the ground once more.
His vision goes dark for a moment before he finds himself back in the post-match lobby, but the fight had been so intense that he didn’t want to join the queue again right away. He had assumed the other player would keep playing, but when he looks up, he finds ZeWuJun approaching, unexpectedly.
Just like him, ZeWuJun’s in-game avatar is covered in armour from head to toe, except his are purple where the other player’s are white and blue. Sitting up, Jiang Wanyin sets his jaw and braces himself for the gloating that would be sure to follow.
Instead, ZeWuJun extends a hand out at him.
“Good game,” they say, their voice low and pleasant.
Jiang Wanyin accepts the hand begrudgingly, brushing off non-existent dust as he gets to his feet. “Good game,” he grumbles.
He thinks that will be the end of it, so he pulls up the game’s menu, but ZeWuJun doesn’t move.
“You’re really good, I’ve never played against someone who fought like that. Do you mind if we make a custom game?” ZeWuJun asks.
Jiang Wanyin checks his rank briefly before he shrugs. He probably won’t be able to climb higher today, and ZeWuJun seems to be a genuinely nice person, someone hard to come by in the gaming community.
“Sure,” he accepts.
He makes the custom match, half-expecting ZeWuJun to brag about his skills the moment they spawn into the map, but the other player subverts his expectations once again. They spend the next hour discussing strategies and trading blows, which confirms Jiang Wanyin’s suspicions: ZeWuJun has definitely learned sword-fighting formally before.
Which begs the question, who the hell still taught their kids sword-fighting in 2058?!
Jiang Wanyin learns the answer after several weeks of talking, when he asks to finally meet with the mysterious ZeWuJun whose real name he still doesn’t know.
The two of them had kept in contact after their first meeting, chatting occasionally when they both happened to be online at the same time. Jiang Wanyin doesn’t consider himself over-reliant on technology, even as a hacker, but he had found himself glued to his laptop more and more often.
Eventually, after a custom match, Jiang Wanyin had created a private chat room for the two of them, and asked if they could meet up.
“It’s just, ah, we’ve known each other for a while now, and I still don’t know what you actually look or sound like,” he explains, strangely flustered.
Under his helmet, ZeWuJun smiles awkwardly. “I’m afraid that would be quite difficult, Sandu.”
Jiang Wanyin tilts his head, curious. Of all the responses he had anticipated, whether they be rejections or acceptances, this had not been one of them. “Why? Are you far from the capital? Your region is set to China, right?”
“The location is not the issue. It’s, ah…” the usually well-spoken ZeWuJun trails off, piquing Jiang Wanyin’s curiosity further.
“Is it because you’re actually super ugly? I don’t care about that, you know,” Jiang Wanyin says, leaning forward subconsciously.
ZeWuJun looks up and meets his eyes with a startled laugh, before finally relenting. “Alright, alright. Are you free this Saturday?”
Jiang Wanyin nods eagerly. “Definitely. You know that cafe downtown…ah, here, I’ll send the address to you.”
A small ping! from ZeWuJun’s side indicates that the other player had received his message. Their avatar freezes for a moment as they presumably respond to someone in real life, before they flicker back. ZeWuJun looks up apologetically. “I must go. See you Saturday.”
“See you Saturday,” Jiang Wanyin echoes, smiling at the empty air long after the other player had logged out of the SCAPE.
~
In retrospect, Jiang Wanyin thinks he should have asked ZeWuJun for some way to identify them when they meet up, but when he arrives at the cafe, he finds that he had worried for nothing.
The quaint coffee shop is surprisingly empty for a weekend, though it still means that only a few tables are open. Most of the customers are wearing vibrant, flashy clothing, though their glow will not show until after dark. As a result, Jiang Wanyin’s eyes are immediately drawn to the young man sitting by the far windows, wearing light blue and white, staring out at the streets pensively.
Following his gut feeling, Jiang Wanyin walks towards the table.
“ZeWuJun?” he asks tentatively.
At his voice, the young man turns to look at him. Up close, his brown eyes are like molten amber under the sunlight, flecks of gold swirling in his irises. “Sandu Shengshou?” the man guesses back.
Jiang Wanyin grins, taking a seat. “Ah, my name is Jiang Wanyin.” He offers an open hand. “Nice to meet you.”
ZeWuJun seems taken aback by his actions for a moment, before he regains his composure and shakes his hand. “Lan Xichen, nice to meet you.”
Jiang Wanyin’s eyes widen as he withdraws his hand and shifts on his seat. “You’re a Lan?!”
Immediately, his cheeks flush at his outburst, and he berates himself internally at the stupid exclamation. Even if the way Lan Xichen dressed hadn’t been obvious enough, the clues from their time in the SCAPE should have been plenty for him to figure out the other player’s identity. The polite demeanor, the perfect sword forms, the impeccable postures…only a traditionalist, aristocratic family like the Lans could produce such a person.
After he gets over his initial shock, however, Jiang Wanyin studies Lan Xichen more closely. Now that he is sitting down, the change in angles makes him realize that the other man’s eyes are not brown after all, but rather actually amber, almost golden.
“You’re a cyborg?” he can’t help but ask curiously.
Lan Xichen’s smile becomes more restrained. “Yes. All direct Lan descendants are turned into cyborgs when they become two years old.”
Jiang Wanyin frowns.
Cyborgs are humans with mechanical parts, either in their brains or in the rest of their bodies, allowing them to achieve heights unattainable by regular humans. They tended to be faster, stronger, or smarter, depending on the modification, but as the technology is relatively new, few people are able to afford the actual surgery.
But while many covet their superhuman abilities, Jiang Wanyin knows that having part of the brain be merged with a computer allows for external tampering and, in many cases, becomes an extreme form of discipline. Such is the case with Lan cyborgs.
Lan Xichen must misunderstand his grimace, for his smile dims further. “That is why I had been hesitant in agreeing to meet up. If it makes you uncomfortable…” He stands, making to leave.
Jiang Wanyin waves his hands hurriedly, gesturing at Lan Xichen to sit back down. “No, no! It doesn’t bother me at all. Well, okay, it does, but not for that reason.”
“Then why?” Lan Xichen prompts, when Jiang Wanyin trails off in thought.
“I don’t like the way you can be controlled by your family elders,” he finally admits, giving up on tact. He had never been good with words, that’s more Wei Wuxian’s area of expertise. “Jiangs value freedom, you know. It doesn’t sit right with me that all your actions can be monitored.”
Lan Xichen shrugs. “It isn’t so bad. I assure you that the implants are only to our benefits,” he says carefully, though the flicker in his eyes betray his true thoughts.
Jiang Wanyin bites his lips, before gesturing to his ear and mouthing, are you being listened to?
Lan Xichen hesitates, and then gives the slightest of nods.
Grabbing a napkin from the side, Jiang Wanyin fumbles out a pen from his pocket before scribbling furiously. He then pushes the impromptu note across the table.
I’m a hacker, I can disable the parental controls in your program, if you want.
Lan Xichen’s eyes trail over the napkin several times before he reaches for the pen and flips it over.
I cannot possibly ask that of you. It would be far too dangerous.
Jiang Wanyin shakes his head. I know how to protect yourself. The choice is yours.
Lan Xichen stares at the message for a while, deep in thought. He is silent for so long that Jiang Wanyin is tempted to reassure him and drop the subject, but then Lan Xichen looks up and gives him a resolute nod.
~
Jiang Wanyin taps his laptop unconsciously as lines of text run across the screen. After an hour, he has finally found the program which controlled the cyborg, buried deep under layers of storage memory, and he has begun the process of painstakingly uninstalling the program without affecting other parts of Lan Xichen’s software.
For his part, Lan Xichen is sitting in his chair calmly, which is quite a feat for someone with wires sticking out of his head.
On the side, Wei Wuxian spins around in his chair idly, twirling a pen between his fingers. “Staring at the screen won’t make it go any faster, you know.”
Jiang Wanyin scowls, but he is so distracted by his laptop that he doesn’t throw the nearest object at his friend. “Only you could treat something like this lightly.”
Wei Wuxian shrugs like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “We’ve done plenty of illegal things, don’t act like this is new. Lighten up.”
“Oh yeah? What do you propose we do, then?” Jiang Wanyin shoots back.
“Hmm…” Wei Wuxian looks around the room, before his eyes fall on Lan Xichen. “Well, let’s get to know each other! Xichen-ge, you don’t know this, but Jiang Wanyin here has been keeping you all to himself, so even though I’m helping to jailbreak you right now, I don’t actually know that much about you.”
“Since when did he become your ge?” Jiang Wanyin squawks, and it’s enough to make him tear his gaze away from the screen at last. This time, he does throw the small plastic pipe on the table, and Wei Wuxian cackles in delight as he dodges away.
“I do not mind,” Lan Xichen says from the side, still keeping his head perfectly motionless. “You may do so as well, if you wish.”
At Jiang Wanyin’s speechlessness, Wei Wuxian laughs harder, nearly doubling over in his seat. “See? He lets me.” He turns his attention back to Lan Xichen. “Say, Xichen-ge, do you have any siblings close to your age? It would be such a shame for all these good genes to go to only you.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Jiang Wanyin warns.
Lan Xichen smiles quizzically at the random question, but he answers nonetheless. “I have a brother a few years younger than I am. His name is Lan Wangji.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes light up. “Oooo, is he cute? Do you have a picture?”
Jiang Wanyin reaches over to smack him. “Can you stop for one second!” he growls between clenched teeth.
Wei Wuxian dances away, laughing again. “What? Xichen-ge is hot. Don’t worry,” he adds, before either of them can react. “I know he’s yours. That’s why I asked.”
“Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Wanyin hisses, before looking at Lan Xichen in mortification.
Thankfully, Lan Xichen only pulls out his phone, and his tone is pleasant if slightly confused when he speaks. “I do not understand what you mean when you say I ‘belong’ to Jiang Wanyin.”
Still, he taps at the screen a few times, and then a hologram projects upward, showing a young man who is almost identical to Lan Xichen save for his golden eyes and serious expression. Jiang Wanyin can’t imagine Lan Xichen, who is always smiling, drawing his features so severely.
Wei Wuxian whistles lowly. “Is everyone in your family this attractive?”
Lan Xichen withdraws his phone, putting it back into his pocket. “You are quite handsome yourself, Wei Wuxian,” he returns humbly.
“Don’t encourage him,” Jiang Wanyin mutters from the side, a bit too bitterly.
“You are handsome as well, Wanyin.”
Jiang Wanyin’s face instantly flushes with heat, but his laptop beeps suddenly, announcing the end of the program and saving him from further embarrassment. His fingers fly over the keys quickly in order to disconnect his device from Lan Xichen, before he closes his laptop and looks at the cyborg in question.
Lan Xichen has a blank look on his face, likely going through some sort of system reboot as he becomes used to the lack of the controlling program. Jiang Wanyin carefully removes the wires from his head and closes the ports, and then he waits.
After a few moments, Lan Xichen blinks rapidly, before his eyes focus on Jiang Wanyin. The unexpected eye contact makes Jiang Wanyin notice their proximity, so he steps back quickly. But the tips of Lan Xichen’s ears begin turning red, and then he’s doubling over.
Jiang Wanyin rushes forward to catch Lan Xichen by his shoulders, peering in his face in alarm. Lan Xichen’s breaths are coming in short bursts, and his pupils are dilated as he gazes upon Jiang Wanyin’s face. It takes him a moment to collect himself as he leans back against the chair, taking deep breaths.
“Are you alright?” Jiang Wanyin asks tentatively, studying his face for any discomfort. Wei Wuxian hovers nearby, ready to act if anything has gone awry.
Lan Xichen nods, but his voice still holds a slight tremble when he answers. “Yes, I just did an internal scan. It appears that the program has been truly removed.”
Jiang Wanyin exhales in relief, running a hand through his hair. He hadn’t noticed how tense he had been throughout the whole ordeal until it was over. “Good, good. If there’s any issues, please let me know.”
Lan Xichen nods again, more stable this time. “I’m quite alright. Thank you both, truly, for freeing me.”
Wei Wuxian grins, at ease again now that he realizes there’s nothing to be worried about. “No problem! That’s what we do!”
Jiang Wanyin rolls his eyes and elbows Wei Wuxian in the ribs, earning him an offended yelp, but he’s smiling too. Lan Xichen looks up at them again, biting his lips as if he is hesitant to speak.
“Something wrong?” Wei Wuxian asks.
“I am physically well, it’s just that, earlier…when I first looked at Wanyin, there was a sudden increase of adrenaline in my system, causing both my heart rate and my breathing to speed up. I’m not sure if that is a side-effect of uninstalling the program, or it has another cause altogether.” Lan Xichen’s tone is adorable in his confusion, almost like a lost puppy, as he describes his conditions in such a technical way.
Jiang Wanyin’s face heats up at the implications as he tries to come up with an appropriate response, but Wei Wuxian has never bothered to spare him.
“Someone’s in love~” he sing-songs, earning him an even harder smack.
“Wei Wuxian, will you shut up!” One of these days, Jiang Wanyin is going to die from high blood pressure.
Lan Xichen’s eyes follow this exchange with an expression that is still innocently confused. “In…love…?” he repeats in a murmur, holding a hand to his heart. The gesture is done in such cautious wonder that Jiang Wanyin’s own heart melts a little more.
To cope, he swats Wei Wuxian again for good measure. “Stop spewing nonsense. Since when are you an expert on love?”
“I don’t have to fall in love to know what it feels like,” Wei Wuxian retorts, sticking out his tongue childishly. “Just looking at your face after you got offline from talking to ‘ZeWuJun’ is enough to—ow!”
Jiang Wanyin all but shoves Wei Wuxian out, heedless of the protest that it is his garage in the first place.
When he turns back around, Lan Xichen is laughing softly, his eyes crinkling into adorable half-moons. Still smiling, he rises from the chair and walks forward to take both of Jiang Wanyin’s hands in his.
“Perhaps you should not be so harsh with your friend,” Lan Xichen says, staring at him with earnest amber eyes, “I believe that I am in love with you.”
And at that moment, Jiang Wanyin isn’t sure which of them is the cyborg, because he’s certain his brain short-circuits.