Work Text:
Lan Wangji is a good—in fact, impeccable—student.
During the weekdays at school, he has no trouble concentrating on teachers’ long lectures. He has never been late on an assignment. Although he despises group projects, he suffers through them just fine.
It is much more difficult for him on Sundays, when Mandarin school convenes, and students from outside the district storm the building.
And by students—Lan Wangji means something in particular. Student.
Wei Wuxian, a rambunctious senior from Yunmeng High.
Wei Wuxian, who doesn’t seem to take any of the lessons seriously.
There have been many enraging moments for Lan Wangji, but perhaps the one that stands out the most was in the fall.
Breaktime had just begun. In the tenth and final year of Mandarin school, most of the students had long formed cliques.
Wei Wuxian, probably a jock at Yunmeng High, sat on top of the desk with his legs spread apart, laughing loudly with his friends, Nie Huaisang and the quieter Wen Ning.
They were coming up with some puns.
Nie Huaisang was especially good with the puns, having spoken more Chinese with his family over the years.
Lan Wangji was watching his friend Mianmian draw a flower.
Breaktime ended and the rest of class began to shuffle back to their seats.
And then he felt a shadow fall over him. He looked up, and Wei Wuxian’s large eyes stared at him. “Lan Zhan! Do you want to hear a joke?”
“Not particularly,” he sniffed.
“C’mon, listen! I worked hard on this one.”
“Wo bang ni. Get it? Bang?”
I help you?
With horror, Lan Wangji’s eyes widened. “Wei Ying—”
The teacher, Zhang Laoshi, clapped her hands at the front.
Wei Wuxian erupted into ruckus laughter, holding his stomach and nearly falling over the desk.
Ears burning, Lan Wangji turned back to his textbook. Zhang Laoshi asked everyone to start reading this chapter, again about Dawei and his friendship with Kaiwen. They were discussing politics and the role of a leader.
“Do you think Dawei /bangs/ Kaiwen?”
Lan Wangji’s eyes shifted over to the naughty group of students.
Wei Wuxian giggled quietly and then shook his head. “I doubt they have a friendship beyond these conversations in the textbook. They seem boring, especially Kaiwen!”
Dawei and Kaiwen were mainstays of the Mandarin curriculum, having been main characters of the textbook series since the beginning. Kaiwen was a foreign exchange student and friendly kid, Dawei a diligent and serious one. The textbook conversations revolved around their friendship and their philosophies on life. Occasionally their friends XiaoLi and MingMing would be featured, but it was mostly the two male characters at the center.
Dawei bang Kaiwen?
This was hardly a romantic text. Lan Wangji huffed. This is a /textbook/! Why were Wei Wuxian and his friends constantly making things dirty?
Now, with spring blooming, Lan Wangji can’t wait to graduate from Mandarin school and be done with this crowd. This is just a chapter of his life, he tells himself. When he goes to college, he’ll be surrounded by more serious, nice folk.
During break on this particular day, he decides to take a walk, textbook in hand, before their quiz. Pacing helps him clear his mind, especially since Wei Wuxian has been especially noisy today, singing to himself, his small ponytail bouncing happily.
Lan Wangji shakes his head.
He returns to running the phrases through his mind that they’ll be quizzed on today, when he hears, like an arrow cutting through a calm spring day—
“Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan!”
Lan Wangji keeps walking.
But the sound persists. “Lan Zhan!!”
He hears footsteps jogging up to him, so he halts.
Wei Wuxian sidles up to him, breathing hard. “You walk fast, Lan Zhan!”
I'm gay, Lan Wangji thinks by way of explanation, but simply waits for Wei Wuxian to continue talking.
“I wanted to apologize.”
Lan Wangji blinks. “For what?”
“I feel like…” Wei Wuxian shuffles his feet. “I feel like you don’t like me?”
This doesn’t translate as an apology to Lan Wangji.
“I feel like I must’ve offended you, so I’m sorry for whatever I said.” Wei Wuxian jogs up to Lan Wangji again, whose steps have quickened. “Was it the sex joke? Is it because you’re uncomfortable with sex? Don’t take it to heart, Lan Zhan, I let my mouth run—”
At this point, Lan Wangji has gotten into the elevator. He wants to go downstairs, pace around the garden in solitude, but Wei Wuxian follows him.
He takes a deep, meditative breath.
“Just tell me what it was, Lan Zhan, and I’ll stop doing it—”
“Wei Ying!” Lan Wangji says, having had quite enough.
But the two are jolted by the elevator slamming to a halt mid-descent. They find themselves in pitch blackness.
“Wei Ying?”
Lan Wangji feels around in the darkness, and touches something smooth. Wei Wuxian’s hand. “Lan Zhan.”
The lights flicker back on, and Lan Wangji realizes their fingers are laced together. He releases his hold on Wei Wuxian, sniffs, and watches as the elevator doors open. “Come, we might be late for the quiz at this point.”
“I’m sure there’s—” time, Wei Wuxian is about to say, but his mouth hangs open as they walk out into a field of flowers.
Shouldn’t the elevator have opened to the first floor of a dreary school building?
But the two young men are now fully outdoors, not in the city of Gusu, but in an unfamiliar place.
Not too unfamiliar though. The field is bedazzled by purple and yellow flowers.
Where has Lan Wangji seen this before?
He glances down to the book in his left hand. A shiver runs down his spine.
“We’re in…”
“We’re in the textbook!” Wei Wuxian exclaims.
Lan Wangji wants to quip, I didn’t know you paid enough attention to the book to know where we are. But he refrains.
They glance behind them, and the elevator has disappeared!
“Wei Ying…”
“Stay close, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, beckoning him. “We might find our way back if we go forward.”
The two spend what seems like the whole afternoon wandering around the field, until they come across a little cottage.
“I wish the textbook came with a map!” Wei Wuxian says, sighing.
Lan Wangji opens up his textbook, and flips through the pages. No map, but there’s a library, a cafe, and houses.
They come upon a small brick home.
“I think we should consult Dawei and Kaiwen. They may know something,” Lan Wangji says.
“That’s a great idea, Lan Zhan! We can at least get some food. I’m getting hungry.”
Lan Wangji knocks on the door after giving Wei Wuxian a reassuring look.
A man, in his 50s, opens it and looks at them.
Lan Wangji is about to ask Is Dawei home? when the man says, “Dawei! You’re back home early!”
Dawei?
In Mandarin, the man says, “Come, son, jinlai, eat dinner. I’m going to run errands but you and Kaiwen should eat.” Dawei’s--Lan Wangji’s??--dad ushers them inside, points at the food on the table, and leaves as he puts his coat on.
Lan Wangji stands in the middle of the room, perplexed.
“Did he mean me, Lan Zhan? Me? Kaiwen?” Wei Wuxian says, tapping his cheek.
“I think so.”
“Did we…?”
“Transmigrate into the textbook?” Lan Wangji gulps. “It seems so.”
Wei Wuxian’s stomach emits the loudest growl.
“Eat,” Lan Wangji says.
“Can we eat....fictional food?” Wei Wuxian sits down in spite of himself. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Following suit, Lan Wangji picks up the chopsticks. They eat quietly. The food tastes normal: baicai, niurou, mifan. Simple but delicious.
Lan Wangji is thankful that the logic of this world allows him to eat still. That his body is still intact. He looks to Wei Wuxian, who bears no resemblance, physically, to the Kaiwen in the text, who is drawn with blond hair and large, cartoonish eyes.
Wei Wuxian has large eyes indeed, but raven black hair in a small ponytail, and very full lips.
Lan Wangji shakes his head. He shuffles to the last chapter of the textbook. “Maybe if we re-enact this last chapter, we will be transported back.”
“Okay,” Wei Wuxian replies, mouth full of food. He chews, swallows, and leans over to read the textbook between them.
It’s a dialogue about chunjie, something pretty typical in a Mandarin textbook. Kaiwen talks about his home country and his customs there, and Dawei responds in kind about his culture.
As Lan Wangji reads the last sentence, he closes his eyes, ready to be taken back, ready to graduate from Mandarin school and live a peaceful life.
Instead, he’s met with a sound: Wei Wuxian going, “huh.”
He opens his eyes. Wei Wuxian is still there, chopsticks to his mouth, in Dawei’s house.
“Maybe we have to read the whole book,” Lan Wangji says.
Wei Wuxian whines. “Lan Zhan, that would be the most boring kind of magic spell!”
“It might be the most logical.”
More whining. “Do we HAVE to? Can’t we explore more?”
“This world is pretty empty. The textbook is not big on worldbuilding, so there are few characters and few buildings. I doubt there are answers here. They must be plot-driven.”
Sighing, Wei Wuxian admits, “That makes sense. The textbook is very Dawei and Kaiwen centric.”
So they spend the rest of the evening reading the passages out loud to each other.
As they read, Lan Wangji notices that Wei Wuxian--isn’t goofing off as he expected him to. In fact, his bright eyes, which are usually so big and full of energy, have a gleam of auburn in them in the sunlight coming in through the window, and his animated brows are furrowed in concentration.
Wei Wuxian is taking this quite seriously, thinking hard about the language, getting all the tones right, at times even exaggerating them like a voice actor in a drama series.
Lan Wangji feels a small door in his heart open.
At one point, in the middle of chapter seven, Wei Wuxian shifts in his chair and his knee brushes against Lan Wangji’s leg under the table.
The latter’s breath hitches.
“Are you okay, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian pauses to ask.
“Mn,” he says, but his ears are burning, all his focus now on the point on his leg that Wei Wuxian touched.
The chapters aren’t long, but they are dense, and eventually, they get to the end of it.
Lan Wangji’s heart is racing. Will some portal appear for them to return to their world?
He’s not even thinking about the test anymore. He’s thinking about going home to his brother and uncle. He’s thinking about how much time must have passed there--were they at dinner now, worried about him?
Wei Wuxian’s hand on the table inches towards Lan Wangji’s as they near the last sentence.
Lan Wangji’s turn as Dawei comes, and he reads the last line out loud, heartbeat in his ear, drowning out his voice.
Wei Wuxian’s hand finds his, and his fingers--which are sweaty--clasp around Lan Wangji’s.
He’s nervous too, Lan Wangji thinks.
They get to the end, close their eyes, squeezing hands.
Lan Wangji feels his pulse in his hands, melding with Wei Wuxian’s.
They hear a door open, and whip around.
It’s Dawei’s--Lan Wangji’s??--father, back with groceries.
“Ah, you’re still here!” the friendly father figure says, with a smile, placing his bags down.
Lan Wangji quickly hides the textbook under his arm.
“We’re just finishing up,” Wei Wuxian says.
“You two should get ready for bed. It’s late out,” the father says.
Indeed, as they look out the window, dusk is falling. How many hours have passed?
The two classmates walk up the stairs, uncertain where Dawei’s bedroom might be. Kaiwen is a foreign exchange student staying over with Dawei’s family for the year.
The textbook didn’t show where they slept--when Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian pass by a blue-and-gray room, which matches the illustrations of Dawei’s, they stop.
They look.
There’s only one bed.
“I’ll sleep on the floor, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, plopping on the rug.
“No,” Lan Wangji says, “you can sleep on the bed. I’m going to be up a little longer figuring this out.”
“We can figure it out together,” Wei Wuxian says. “I’m not too tired.”
“Okay,” Lan Wangji replies, closing the door shut behind him and sitting on the floor against the bed as well. “Let’s both figure this out.”
“We’ve obviously traveled into the textbook,” Wei Wuxian muses out loud, stroking his small ponytail. “But not materially, because...you have that textbook right there.”
Lan Wangji lays the book out on his lap. “Mn. Perhaps we are unconscious in the other world and...hallucinating?”
Wei Wuxian chuckles, tapping his cheek. “You think? Or maybe the elevator was a portal?”
Lan Wangji shrugs. “It is possible.”
“What would the book want us to do? Do we need to re-enact all of the chapters?”
Flipping through the pages of the textbook, Lan Wangji lets out a small sigh. “We have already done that. There must be something else, extratextual, that the book wants us to do.”
Wei Wuxian nods, then yawns.
“Why don’t you sleep?” Lan Wangji says, gesturing towards the bed.
Wei Wuxian gets up, takes off his socks, and climbs onto the inside of the bed, near the wall. There is ample room for Lan Wangji beside him.
Lan Wangji, tired, his defenses coming down a little, sits next to him.
“I’m not sleeping, just going to close my eyes,” Wei Wuxian assures him. “We can keep brainstorming.”
“Mn.” Lan Wangji looks around shyly, trying not to peer at his--friend? But the moonlight shines through the window now and hits Wei Wuxian’s cheekbones at just the right angle. His lips are full, slightly parted. Lan Wangji clears his throat to clear his mind. “How come you don’t take school seriously? You are very good at Mandarin.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyelashes flutter, but his eyes remain closed. “I do take it seriously! I just learn through play.”
That makes sense. Lan Wangji frowns. “I’m sorry I judged you.”
His eyes open this time. He smiles. “It’s okay, Lan Zhan! I’ve always thought of you as my friend! Fun to tease! And I’m sure there’s a reason why you take studying so seriously.”
He purses his lips. “I don’t want to disappoint my uncle and brother. They work so hard and I feel so distant from the language and culture sometimes, being younger.”
“We all do our best. You seem fluent to me!”
Lan Wangji smiles in spite of himself. His heart beats loudly in his ear again. “Thank you.”
All of a sudden, a shimmering door appears before the two of them, on the wall opposite--Wei Wuxian jolts up and stares--Lan Wangji blinks---and then it’s gone.
A pause. “What just happened?”
“I--don’t know,” Lan Wangji says. “Something we did must’ve worked.”
“We need to keep doing that.” Wei Wuxian turns towards him, sitting on the edge of the bed as well. “What if it’s not linguistic? Dawei and Kaiwen, their goal is to get better at Mandarin, and we’ve gotten good at it. But maybe it’s--more than that. Maybe it’s their friendship.”
Ba-bump. “You think...because you called me your friend…?”
“We had a moment of emotional connection, vulnerability,” Wei Wuxian says. “But it happened naturally.”
Lan Wangji is out at his regular school. He has known his whole life he is gay. He reads BL novels in his spare time. And he has long suspected that Dawei and Kaiwen were meant to be romantically attached.
Would that be absurd?
“What are you thinking, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian asks, inching closer, his knee tapping Lan Wangji’s.
Ba-bump.
“Wei Ying. Remember--that joke you made in class?”
“About me banging you?”
Lan Wangji feels like he’s in a cold shower. “No. When you said that Dawei...and Kaiwen…”
“Oh!” Lan Wangji can see gears turning in Wei Wuxian’s eyes. “You think they like each other?”
“What if the book...what if…?”
“But I didn’t open up to you because of the book, or because I’m Kaiwen here,” Wei Wuxian says.
“Then...maybe the book is about…”
He turns towards the backcover.
Kaiwen and Dawei follow their wildest dreams and learn about their culture, becoming close friends despite differences!
“Following your dreams?” Wei Wuxian asks. His knee touches Lan Wangji’s again, and the door--a blur, but there--reappears.
The two turn towards the door, then both stare at their touching knees.
“What if we…?” Lan Wangji asks.
“Kissed?” Wei Wuxian asks back.
Lan Wangji stares at him for an immeasurable amount of time. “Is that what you want?”
Wei Wuxian looks at Lan Wangji. “I’ve never kissed before.”
Lan Wangji swallows. “Me neither.”
“And it seems like the portal wants us to.”
Lan Wangji shakes his head. “Forget about the portal. Is it what you want?”
Wei Wuxian nods, and then appraises Lan Wangji. “This would be a first kiss, Lan Zhan. You have to promise you’ll be gentle with me.“Is that what you want?”
Lan Wangji’s ears burn. He thinks of the disobedient student before him, his laughter, his annoying behaviors.
And he thinks of his own reactions to Wei Wuxian. The intense frustration has always been--a kind of desire, a warmth.
They’re stuck in this world. Why not be truthful?
“Mn. But not if that offends you.”
“It doesn’t offend. It flatters,” Wei Wuxian reassures him.
Lan Wangji nods and watches as Wei Wuxian turns to face him, closes his eyes.
Wei Wuxian has beautiful cheekbones, and a delicate jawline that points to his full lips. His eyelashes are long and curled, almost touching those cheekbones--impossibly, against all odds.
He hears his heart beat.
He likes this boy in front of him. He wants to feel his lips against his own. Hear his voice tease. Hear that laughter.
Lan Wangji inches closer to him, cups his chin delicately, and brings his lips to Wei Wuxian’s.
The kiss begins tenderly, simply lush lips against lush lips, and then Lan Wangji begins to move, and he hears Wei Wuxian inhale, feels Wei Wuxian’s mouth open a bit. His tongue meets Wei Wuxian’s halfway, and soon they are making out, tongues rolling together. He hears Wei Wuxian gasp against him, feels it inside of him.
He leans forward, pins Wei Wuxian to the bed, feels Wei Wuxian’s hands through his hair.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian gasps, “Lan Zhan.”
“Mm?” Lan Wangji says, desperately kissing Wei Wuxian’s neck.
“This is,” Wei Wuxian lets out a chuckle, “so good. I like you so much. I want to tease you and date you and kiss you--”
Lan WAngji’s mouth finds Wei Wuxian’s again, shuts him up, and the two are lost to the sensations, their bodies pressed together.
They hear a ding!
And they look up.
They are on the elevator floor, the doors opening, and a scandalized Zhang Laoshi looking down at them.
“Is this where you two have been?” she says.
Lan Wangji raises himself off of Wei Wuxian, who is still catching his breath.
The two stand up and apologize.
She raises her brow at them. “You two can do this later after the exam. Come.”
Already walking away, she beckons them forward.
Lan Wangji straightens his clothes, and then looks at Wei Wuxian, who whispers, “Lan Zhan….can we?”
“What?”
“Can we continue later?”
Lan Wangji’s heart swells. “Mn.”
Wei Wuxian walks now with a bounce in his step. “Good. Because I liked that….” He glances at the textbook in Lan Wangji’s arms. “You think that was all real? You think the textbook wanted Dawei and Kaiwen to get together?”
Lan Wangji isn’t sure. “I think...it was more about us.”
“Our will? Hehe, are you saying you wanted that?”
“Are you saying you didn’t?” Lan Wangji challenges, looking at Wei Wuxian with stony eyes.
Wei Wuxian kisses Lan Wangji’s cheek. “I did.”
As they near the classroom, Wei Wuxian leans in to tease Lan Wangji one last time, “Guess I did bang you after all.”
“No,” Lan Wangji says, turning to Wei Wuxian with equal vim. “You don’t know the meaning of that yet, Wei Ying. I will bang you.”
And for once, he sees Wei Wuxian speechless.
Lan Wangji takes his exam with a small smirk on his face, extremely proud of himself.
Beautiful art by Em.