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Wei Wuxian was never throwing a birthday party again.
He was so exhausted, he could fall asleep here and now in A-Yuan’s bed. A-Yuan, on the other hand, showed no signs of being ready to sleep anytime soon. His piping little voice was still laced with bright enthusiasm as he told Wei Wuxian all about the things that had happened at the party today. (As if Wei Wuxian hadn’t been there. As if Wei Wuxian hadn’t organized the whole thing.)
“I can’t wait for my next birthday!” A-Yuan declared. “When is it, Baba? Is it my birthday again next week?”
Wei Wuxian chuckled. “Sorry, buddy, but you have to wait a year for your next birthday.”
“A year? But, Baba, that’s more than two whole weeks!”
Well, he wasn’t wrong. “It’s a little more than that, bud,” Wei Wuxian said, smiling sympathetically.
A-Yuan stared up at him with wide, beseeching eyes and a tiny pout that was truly going to destroy Wei Wuxian one of these days. “How many?”
“Um, fifty…something?” He really should be able to remember basic facts like this. Lucky for him, his best friend and personal Google hadn’t gone home yet. “Lan Zhan!” he called. “How many weeks are there in a year?”
“Fifty-two,” Lan Zhan called back without hesitation. Because he always just knew all the facts that wouldn’t stick in Wei Wuxian’s head.
“That’s so many!” A-Yuan sighed, slumping back against his pillow in despair.
Wei Wuxian managed not to laugh at his son’s pain, but it was a close call. “I know, buddy. But can I tell you a secret?”
A-Yuan perked up slightly. “What?” he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“When you wake up tomorrow morning, you’ll be one day closer to your next birthday.”
A-Yuan’s eyes went huge. “Wow!”
“So what do you say we go to sleep, and that will make tomorrow get here faster.”
“Okay!” A-Yuan squeezed his eyes shut tight, a bright smile stretched across his face.
Wei Wuxian only made it to a silent count of three before A-Yuan peeked one eye open.
“It’s not tomorrow yet, buddy.”
“I know. But. Story first?”
Wei Wuxian was powerless to say no to that. In the end, it took not one, not two, but four stories for A-Yuan to wind down enough to fall asleep. Wei Wuxian almost drifted off a couple times during the last one. When he thought about what waited for him in the rest of the apartment, he gave some serious consideration to surrendering to the urge.
It had been his idea, he tried to remember, to invite over a dozen four-year-olds and feed them copious amounts of sugar. He had no one to blame but himself for all the cleanup he still had ahead of him. He didn’t have to handle all of it tonight, did he? The mess would be there tomorrow. Still, he should get started.
With great effort, he peeled himself off of A-Yuan’s bed and headed into the living room to find it—clean? He blinked once, twice. Looked around for any sign of the party that he was pretty sure hadn’t been an elaborate hallucination. The decorations were gone. The tables were cleared of cups and plates. All the toys were stowed away in A-Yuan’s trunk in the corner.
Lan Zhan had disappeared from the couch where Wei Wuxian had left him. And the sound of running water drifted in from the kitchen.
Wei Wuxian had been planning to put off entering the disaster zone of the kitchen for a little while longer. He didn’t want to think about all the half empty snack bowls and food trays, the pots and pans that had somehow all been used, the mountain of dirty dishes in the sink, the frankly filthy counters. He knew he had to tackle some of it before bed—he had to at least figure out which leftovers should be packed up and put in the fridge and what just needed to be tossed. But he had grand plans to “leave the dishes to soak” overnight—his favorite housekeeping loophole.
Bracing himself, he went into the kitchen, and his jaw dropped. It wasn’t clean, exactly, but it was well on its way. The leftovers were nowhere in sight. The island, formerly a sticky nightmare, had been wiped down. Lan Zhan was standing at the sink, already halfway through Dish Mountain.
“Oh my god, I love you.”
Lan Zhan went still, and Wei Wuxian’s stomach dropped. That…had not been how he was planning to confess his feelings. Actually, his plan on that front had always been “Do not ever confess your feelings, you raging dumpster fire of a human.” He wasn’t vain or stupid enough to think that anything good could ever come of it. He would only ruin one of the best things he had in his life. But then, what else was new? He ruined everything.
He wished he could suck the words back in. Wished they would just run down the drain with the dishwater. But maybe… Maybe this was fine. That was a thing people said to their friends, wasn’t it? Especially friends who helped clean up after a four-year-old’s birthday party. Totally normal! Wei Wuxian said it to plenty of his friends, and it was fine and not weird at all. He’d never said it to Lan Zhan before, but that was only because it meant something different when he thought about Lan Zhan.
He could still fix this. He could. He needed to. He just had to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth before the silence stretched long enough to snap.
He tried for a casual laugh. It came out sounding a little strangled, but he plowed forward like everything was normal. It’s only weird if you make it weird, right? “Seriously, Lan Zhan, you’re the best friend a single parent could ask for. I don’t know what I would do without you.” Which is why you cannot fuck this up, dumbass, he reminded himself.
Lan Zhan still hadn’t turned to look at him, but he was moving again, rinsing the plate in his hands. That was a good sign, right?
“You should just leave the rest of this for me,” Wei Wuxian said, forcing his feet to carry him over to the sink. He plucked the clean plate from Lan Zhan’s hands—careful not to make contact with him in the process, because Wei Wuxian definitely couldn’t handle that right now—and reached for a dish towel. “You’ve already done way more than I could have asked.”
“Wei Ying doesn’t have to ask,” Lan Zhan said, voice low. “Want to help.”
God. What was Wei Wuxian supposed to do with that? “You did, Lan Zhan. A lot. Thanks.”
“No need for thanks.”
Wei Wuxian expected Lan Zhan to step back from the sink and let him take over, but instead he just reached for the next dish and kept washing. Wei Wuxian felt weirdly helpless to stop it. He knew he should insist—Lan Zhan had been a guest at the party! He shouldn’t be saddled with so much cleanup. But all the words Wei Wuxian could have said felt jumbled up in his throat, and he couldn’t trust what would actually fall out if he opened his mouth to speak. So he silently dried the plate and silently put it away and silently accepted the next dish from Lan Zhan’s hands.
He should say something, he knew. The quiet was weird. He was making it weird. The thing was. It hurt a little bit, standing at the sink with Lan Zhan, drying dishes while he washed. He hadn’t anticipated how much he would like doing this stupid chore together. But he did. He liked it, and it hurt. It felt like something he knew he couldn’t have.
Lan Zhan was his best friend. He was perfect and beautiful and kind and so, so giving, and Wei Wuxian wanted to take everything he could get and more. But Lan Zhan was his best friend. He couldn’t keep grabbing up everything Lan Zhan had to offer. At best, he was taking advantage. At worst, he would chase Lan Zhan away.
What they had now, it was enough. It had to be enough. It was selfish to want more. It was pointless to fantasize about what this could have been if he were someone else, someone Lan Zhan wanted. It was nothing short of masochistic to let himself imagine a world where he and Lan Zhan were washing dishes together because they’d thrown this party together, because they were raising A-Yuan together, because they belonged to each other.
He needed to stop. He needed to stop because he was going to cry, and he was already doing a piss poor job of pretending that had been a normal, friendly I love you, and if Lan Zhan hadn’t figured it out immediately, surely he’d realize if Wei Wuxian started crying over the fucking dishes. And then he’d be horrified, probably. He’d be nice about it, of course, because Lan Zhan was so good. He’d be gentle with Wei Wuxian’s feelings when he shot him down. And then he’d probably start spending less time here. Maybe he’d think it would be easier for Wei Wuxian if he gave him some space. Or maybe he would need the space for himself. Maybe he would feel too awkward being around Wei Wuxian all the time, knowing how he was pining.
And Wei Wuxian couldn’t— He needed Lan Zhan to still be his best friend. He knew he could never have what he wanted, but he couldn’t bear to lose the rest of it.
He needed to get out of here before he ruined this.
“Um,” he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and kept his eyes intently focused on the cup he was drying. “I think this is good, Lan Zhan. I can handle the rest. You don’t have to— I mean. It’s past your bedtime, right?” He cracked a brittle smile and glanced over at Lan Zhan, but quickly looked away again. “You don’t have to hang around.”
He thought he heard Lan Zhan draw in a sharp breath, but when he chanced another quick glance, Lan Zhan looked perfectly normal. He was just rinsing the suds from his hands, his expression as blank and calm as boring household chores merited. Wei Wuxian passed him the dish towel, and of course after all his careful efforts the whole time they’d been passing dishes back and forth, he fucked it up now and let his fingers brush against Lan Zhan’s. It took everything he had not to flinch back in an extremely obvious and pathetic way. Unfortunately, in his effort not to flinch, he just…didn’t…move. And now he was standing there, hanging onto the dish towel Lan Zhan was meant to be using to dry off, his fingertips pressed to Lan Zhan’s, in an extremely obvious and pathetic way.
He dropped his right hand to his side and spun on his heel to put away the cup he was still clutching in his left.
What the fuck. Definitely made it weird.
If he took a little longer than was reasonable to find a spot in the cabinet for the cup, well, hopefully Lan Zhan just didn’t notice. Hopefully Lan Zhan could contract some kind of hyper-specific amnesia that blocked out all memory of everything that had happened since Wei Wuxian set foot in this kitchen.
When he collected himself enough to stop hiding in the cabinet, he turned to see Lan Zhan placing the folded dish towel on the counter. His face was still completely blank—and maybe that wasn’t “doing dull household chores” blank, after all; maybe it was “my best friend is making me uncomfortable” blank.
“Right! Well!” Wei Wuxian said cheerfully, trying to herd Lan Zhan to the door without actually touching him again. Lan Zhan, of course, took the hint and let himself be ushered out of the kitchen. “I guess I’ll see you, um, when I see you?” He couldn’t think of any upcoming plans to reference. They didn’t usually have plans, really. They just ended up hanging out together several times a week. God, what if this was the last time he saw Lan Zhan, because he had to be such a fucking weirdo about something so dumb?
Lan Zhan reached for his jacket, but paused before picking it up. Slowly, his hand dropped back to his side and he turned toward Wei Wuxian. “Wei Ying, I—” There was a tiny furrow between his brows, and he wouldn’t meet Wei Wuxian’s eyes, and Wei Wuxian was sure this was it. Lan Zhan was going to tell him that he was too much. That his feelings were too much, and if he couldn’t keep them to himself, maybe it was a bad idea to keep spending time together. But instead of any of that, what Lan Zhan said was “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
Wei Wuxian gaped at him. “Lan Zhan, what? You just cleaned my whole apartment!”
Lan Zhan nodded. “I overstepped. And I—” He frowned and shook his head.
Wei Wuxian opened and closed his mouth a few times. How was it possible that Lan Zhan thought he’d done something wrong here? Wei Wuxian couldn’t let that stand, couldn’t let Lan Zhan feel bad when Wei Wuxian was the one who had spewed his stupid feelings all over the place.
“I’m not upset. Promise.” It wasn’t even a lie, really. Upset definitely wasn’t the word for it. He was scraped raw, cracked open, emotionally wrung out over stupid domestic fantasies of washing dishes together for the rest of their lives. “I’m just tired. It’s been a day.” He forced a laugh that sounded almost normal. “Remind me never to gather that many four-year-olds in one place ever again.”
The pinched little frown didn’t fade from Lan Zhan’s face, though, so maybe Wei Wuxian wasn’t as convincing as he thought. He dropped his face into his hands and groaned.
“I have upset you,” Lan Zhan said.
Wei Wuxian ran his hands through his hair, frustration mounting. “No! Lan Zhan! How can you honestly think you did anything wrong? I’m the one who— God, what is wrong with me? Telling your best friend you love him is a completely normal thing. Why couldn’t I just be normal about it? Fuck.”
“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan’s voice was stretched thin, every line of his body gone rigid.
Why did Wei Wuxian have to keep digging this hole deeper?
“I’m sorry, Lan Zhan. I promise I don’t have to make this, like, a whole big thing. I mean, I know tonight wasn’t a great showing, but tonight was just a fluke! I’m usually way more normal than this, right?”
“Wei Ying. What are you saying?”
“I know I said what I said, but it doesn’t have to change anything, right? We can still be best friends. I mean, I’ve been in love with you this whole time, and I’ve never been weird about it before.”
Lan Zhan caught Wei Wuxian’s wrist in an iron grip. Wei Wuxian gasped and looked up into eyes that had gone wide.
“You what?” Lan Zhan asked.
Wei Wuxian swallowed hard. “I, um…won’t be weird about it?”
“Wei Ying. You love me?”
“Well.” He dropped his gaze back to where Lan Zhan was still clutching his wrist. “Yeah.”
“This whole time,” Lan Zhan said, and Wei Wuxian winced, because yeah, he really had just said that, hadn’t he?
He drew in a breath and forced himself to look up again, and— And Lan Zhan’s face had gone soft, his lips turning up at the corners just a little.
“Lan Zhan, are you smiling?” He didn’t look like someone who was about to walk away from his best friend forever. He looked… Wei Wuxian was afraid to think it.
Lan Zhan’s eyes fluttered closed as he leaned forward to press his forehead to Wei Wuxian’s. “Love Wei Ying,” he murmured.
“You—” Wei Wuxian breathed. There was a fluttering in his chest and he felt a little lightheaded, and was it possible that he was sick and this was all some sort of fever dream? But Lan Zhan felt very real and very solid, his grip on Wei Wuxian’s wrist grounding. And the way he’d looked at Wei Wuxian, that had been more beautiful than anything anyone could possibly dream up. “Wait, Lan Zhan, let me see your smile again! I wasn’t done looking!”
Wei Wuxian leaned back, lifted his free hand to Lan Zhan’s cheek so he could tilt his head up, and there it was again. That soft, luminous smile. Wei Wuxian had only seen Lan Zhan smile a handful of times before, and never like this.
Lan Zhan reached up to peel Wei Wuxian’s hand away from his cheek, and Wei Wuxian’s stomach dipped—a ping of alarm from the small part of him that still expected this to fall apart somehow—but Lan Zhan just turned his face to press a kiss to Wei Wuxian’s palm, and then held it to his cheek again.
A hot flush rushed into Wei Wuxian’s cheeks, and he would have covered his face if he could, but the last thing he wanted was to extract either of his hands from Lan Zhan’s hold. So instead he tipped forward and pressed his face into the crook of Lan Zhan’s neck.
“Lan Zhan, I love you so much,” he whispered into Lan Zhan’s skin.
Wei Wuxian felt a small tremor run through Lan Zhan, and then a cool rush of air on his right hand and left wrist as Lan Zhan released his hold on him. Wei Wuxian let out a small noise of disappointment and lifted his head to pout up at him. But then Lan Zhan took Wei Wuxian’s face in his hands, thumbs ghosting over his cheeks so gently, like Wei Wuxian was something precious and delicate. That moonlight smile was still on his face as he leaned in and brushed his lips against Wei Wuxian’s forehead, his cheeks, the tip of his nose, his lips.
Wei Wuxian sighed into the kiss, his fingers curling into the front of Lan Zhan’s shirt. All the worries that had tied his tongue into knots earlier, that had kept him silent about his feelings for all these years, seemed so silly now. Because if there was anything in this world that he could be certain of, it was Lan Zhan. He was so solid, so stable. Wei Wuxian felt safe in his hands.
They were both gasping for air by the time they broke apart, and Wei Wuxian let out a breathy laugh. “Lan Zhan! Why have we never done this before?”
“Did not know you wanted to.”
“Of course I wanted to! Who wouldn’t?”
Lan Zhan threaded his fingers through Wei Wuxian’s hair, and his eyes were soft, and Wei Wuxian could just melt into a puddle right here in the entryway. They stayed that way for a long time, just looking at each other. The warm, full silence was miles away from the uncomfortable quiet of the kitchen earlier.
Eventually Lan Zhan leaned down to kiss Wei Wuxian’s forehead again. “Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Tomorrow?” Wei Wuxian’s heart thudded in irrational alarm at the thought of having to go a dozen or more hours without seeing Lan Zhan. “Are you leaving?”
“It’s late. Wei Ying is tired,” Lan Zhan said. His voice was firm, but one corner of his mouth tugged up again ever so slightly, giving him away.
“Not so tired,” Wei Wuxian whined, tugging on one of Lan Zhan’s buttons. “If you leave now, I’ll just be wide awake and lonely. Lan Zhan doesn’t want his Wei Ying to be lonely, does he?” He bit his lip and looked up through his lashes into Lan Zhan’s darkening gaze.
“Mn,” Lan Zhan said. "Mine."
Wei Wuxian's stomach swooped, a pleasant shiver shooting down his spine. He slid his arms around Lan Zhan’s neck. “Stay?”
Before he could fully process the sensation of Lan Zhan’s hands—he had such big, warm hands!—firm on his waist, Wei Wuxian felt his feet leave the ground. He let out a soft yelp, which Lan Zhan quickly muffled with another kiss.
“You’ll wake A-Yuan,” Lan Zhan murmured against his lips.
Wei Wuxian chuckled. “Can’t have that.” He clung tighter to Lan Zhan’s shoulders and wrapped his legs around his waist, and as Lan Zhan carried him to his bedroom, he sent up a silent prayer to the birthday gods that after all the excitement of the party, A-Yuan had crashed hard enough to stay very soundly asleep tonight.
***
They finished washing the mountain of party dishes in the morning. This time Wei Wuxian chattered quietly the whole time they worked, and Lan Zhan occasionally hummed a wordless response, and whenever Wei Wuxian flicked water at him, Lan Zhan grabbed his hand and tugged him in for a kiss, and it was all perfect.
By the time A-Yuan tottered into the kitchen, his stuffed rabbit clutched in one arm, Wei Wuxian was seated at the island with a cup of coffee watching Lan Zhan mix pancake batter.
“Morning, buddy,” Wei Wuxian said, quickly setting down his coffee and holding out his hands to spot as A-Yuan clambered up onto the tall chair next to his.
“Hi, Baba. Hi, Rich-gege.” A-Yuan had no questions about what Lan Zhan was doing here so early in the morning, which was a relief.
“Good morning, A-Yuan,” Lan Zhan said. “Would you like pancakes?”
“I like pancakes!” A-Yuan declared. “Radish doesn’t like pancakes, but that’s okay, because I can eat hers for her.”
Wei Wuxian smiled. “I don’t know if you can eat your pancakes and Radish’s pancakes.”
“I can eat a lot of pancakes. I’m four.”
“Hm, that’s right, you are. And big kids have big appetites, is that it?”
“So big!” A-Yuan promptly launched into a list of all the things he could eat for breakfast without getting full—his pancakes and Radish’s pancakes and Baba’s pancakes and Rich-gege’s pancakes and a whole watermelon and ten chocolate bars and fifteen scoops of ice cream and… The list was still going when Lan Zhan set a plate of two pancakes down in front of him.
“One for you and one for Radish,” Lan Zhan said seriously.
A-Yuan cut off his list and chirped, “Thank you.” Because Wei Wuxian had the cutest son with the cutest manners.
Lan Zhan delivered Wei Wuxian’s plate next, and as he set it on the island, he slid one finger beneath Wei Wuxian’s chin to tilt his face up for a kiss. Wei Wuxian expected a chaste peck on the lips, but what he got instead was a lingering kiss that left him breathless.
“Lan Zhan!” he gasped. “In front of the baby?”
“Mn.” Lan Zhan had the gall to look a little smug about it.
A-Yuan, for his part, apparently hadn’t noticed their kissing at all. He was back to listing food items. He seemed to have forgotten that it had started as a list of things he could eat in a single meal, and now he was just rattling off his favorite foods. “And jelly beans and applesauce and Auntie A-Li’s soup and peas and not broccoli and waffles and pancakes! Baba, we should have pancakes at my next birthday party.”
“Sure, we can do that.”
“How many days?”
“Three hundred sixty-four,” Wei Wuxian said.
“Three hundred sixty-five,” Lan Zhan corrected, slipping into the chair on A-Yuan’s other side. “It’s a leap year.” Of course Lan Zhan remembered that.
“That’s a lot of days,” A-Yuan said.
It was a lot of days. Days full of cooking breakfast and washing dishes and being kissed breathless. Days full of Lan Zhan answering A-Yuan’s questions and listening to his rambling stories and serving him food for his stuffed rabbit. Days full of a love that Wei Wuxian had never expected to have. He was going to savor every single moment.