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Ah-Yuan was so cute in his little white raincoat with the bunny ears and eyes on the hood, and his bunny themed wellie boots, Wen Ning just had to take a picture showing the little guy sitting across from him in the subway, happily eating finely sliced and salted radish from the bunny-themed lunchbox Wen Ning had brought along. Ah-Yuan liked to snack a little after all the excitement of daycare.
Raising Ah-Yuan was a distributed effort since the boy’s parents had died in a flash flood while on vacation two years ago: Wei Wuxian was the strict one, Granny was the warm one, Wen Qing was the sensible one in charge of any long-range decisions, Lan Wangji was the one who spoiled the little one, and Wen Ning was the nourishing one.
They all took turns to take him to daycare and fetch him again in the afternoon, and he had a bed both at Granny’s and at Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s. Wen Ning theoretically had his own tiny apartment, but had soon found that he hated living alone, so he rented it out to younger students and mostly lived at his sister’s place, or at Wei Wuxian’s, which could be a bit awkward, so he tried to limit it to the times when Ah-Yuan was there as well.
Awkward for Wen Ning, that was. He theoretically understood that allosexuals needed and wanted physical intimacy, but Wei Wuxian was shameless, and Lan Wangji went along with whatever he came up with because his social cues weren’t all that good, anyway. The only thing that reliably kept them in check was when the kid was there.
They all lived within the same three rundown blocks in the seedier area of the City anyway, between the old town and the back hills, so it wasn’t too hard to change locations when anything became too embarrassing. And the three or five times that Wen Ning had woken up to Wei Wuxian loudly yowling even through three closed doors, he’d just gone downstairs to the internet café, which was open 24/7, anyway.
“You really don’t have to live like a hobo,” Wei Wuxian had said the next morning one time, after he’d come down with an apologetic mug of hot chocolate (Wen Ning couldn’t have coffee or black tea as caffeine made him very, very wibbly). “You do realise we all have some money now, and part of it is yours really?”
“I don’t like living alone,” Wen Ning says. “It's boring without the people I love. But I don’t want to bother anybody all the time. You all have your lives. Jie-jie doesn’t want me underfoot all the time, either, I’m sure. She has a very busy practice.”
“We might get the guy in the apartment next to ours to move out,” Wei Wuxian mused. “He keeps leaving passive-aggressive post-its on our door. There was another one this morning.”
Wen Ning felt his ears get hot, and he sipped his hot chocolate to calm himself a little.
“If he’s got a problem, then I might have a problem, too,” he murmured.
“We can soundproof the wall in-between,” Wei Wuxian said, unmoved. “We have the money, really. Then you can live with us and still get away when you want to. Really, we like having you around 80 percent of the time. We never get sensible food if you’re not there -- I eat hot sauce ramen, and Lan Zhan eats raw vegetables, if left to our own devices.”
Wen Ning shrugged noncommittally. Really, it was too much of an effort, just for his own sake. Unhouse that poor man and then buy sound-proofing, put it on the wall, cover it with sheetrock and then paint it over, and pay rent every month, too.
Now, a few months later, as the heat had been driven out by the seasonal rainstorms, Wen Ning was considering that option as he was sending the picture of Ah-Yuan in the subway into the Signal group chat for all the tyke’s primary caregivers. “Chenqing’s List” it was called, because Chenqing, Wei Wuxian’s black ferret, was Ah-Yuan’s go-to fluff noodle. Whenever Ah-Yuan was at Wei Wuxian’s, Chenqing slept in the little boy’s bed. Wen Qing suspected that the creature gave him more emotional stability than any of the weird and busy grown-ups in his life.
Ah-Yuan was neatly eating his last slice of radish now, and then handed the lunch box back to Wen Ning. “Ouyang Zizhen did a thing today,” he started talking (why did Lan Wangji’s ‘No talk while eating’ stick after the first time even though most other rules were impossible to enforce?), and then he was off, babbling about his friends at the daycare with the typical lack of context. Wen Ning tried to listen, he really did, but the little boy usually lost him after a bit -- who had hit their head on the window but didn’t cry even a little bit, and who had put tomato sauce into the empty pot of finger paints, and who was going to bring their puppy to the daycare on Friday. Well, that would be Jin Ling, of course; he was the one with the puppy.
A-Yuan went to a posh daycare, the same that Wei Wuxian’s nephew and Lan Wangji’s nephew both went to; Wei Wuxian insisted they had the money, and early education was the most important bit anyway, and they all simply didn’t have the time and brainwidth to do it all by themselves. There were jobs and degrees and businesses and projects and neurodivergences to take into account, and the staff at the daycare had the necessary education to do nothing else all day.
“I can imagine that was very funny,” Wen Ning said, even though he didn’t quite understand what it had been, and Ah-Yuan giggled in response. The only one among them who would ask questions and listen very closely and actually understand Ah-Yuan’s stories was Lan Wangji; he had the necessary patience and focus for it.
“When will we get home?” Wen Ning asked, in order to distract Ah-Yuan, and indeed, he started listing all the stops until their own.
“... and then we take the bus so we don’t get wet,” he finished when a third person came to sit in their corner of four seats.
“You better take a cab this time,” the newcomer said.
“Yay!” A-Yuan said, who loved riding in cars and only rarely got to do it. They had the money for one, but finding parking space was such a hassle. Song Lan had a big old van they could borrow when they needed to move equipment; that was enough.
Wen Ning looked at the new guy, who felt vaguely familiar. The braids were probably pretty unique, but the face…
“You used to wear much more eyeliner,” Wen Ning said, “and much, much deeper rings around your eyes, too.”
It was the guy who had tried living secretly at their internet café in spring, the whistleblower from Five Lakes. When he’d gotten too smelly, Wei Wuxian had dragged him away to the doctor who was with the lawyer who worked with Ghost Valley, and that had started a lot of things happening, and in the end Wen Ning and Rong Xuan from Ghost Valley had hunted for an IMSI catcher all over Four Seasons Manor while Xuan-er’s dads were getting married.
They’d triangulated the thing and then climbed some pillars, rafters and beams, and found the nasty device before the rich people came. Wen Ning was the tallest, and Rong Xuan was nearly as tall, and both knew tech, so it made sense for them to work together, even though one was from Burial Mounds, and the other was the leader of Ghost Valley -- who usually would put up the IMSI catchers and suchlike at each other’ events. But for that wedding, even the rivalry between coders was off. Disabling the IMSI catcher of course meant that later in the evening, when Wei Wuxian started a quarrel with his brother-in-law because of his other brother-in-law, and Wen Ning ended up pinning the man’s rabid cousin to the ground with one hand while Meng Yao, the reason for the quarrel, stood by and was absolutely mortified, the pictures of the scuffle went up on Instagram and Facebook at once, and the resulting mess could get nice and big.
“One day,” Wei Wuxian had said, “I’ll manage to do something that gives Jin Guangshan a heart attack or an aneurysm, and then he’ll be dead and jie-jie’s stupid peacock husband gets all the money. Pity it didn’t work this time. The next time, just dump that revolting bastard into the koi pond.”
Now, in the subway, the newcomer (Xie Wang, right?) grinned at Wen Ning and happily chirped, “Yes, but I got a lot better, thanks to Ye-ye and Rong-ye helping, and the new boyfriend I have moved in with. No more skulking in basements with black walls!”
“Our walls are like that on purpose,” Wen Ning said, a little offended. It was interior design, not a random mess!
“Our walls are the best!” Ah-Yuan chimed in, loyal to the Burial Mounds, no matter what.
Xie Wang laughed.
“Of course they are. Here, I have a little gift for you lot so you don’t starve.”
He heaved up a big canvas tote bag with the logo of the City’s gay bookstore on it, and handed it to Wen Ning. “I never properly repaid you for your hospitality.”
Wen Ning looked inside. It was full of colourful ramen packages. The red ones looked nicely ominous, too.
“Erm, thank you, I’m sure,” he said, a bit perplexed. Putting it on his lap, he then added, “Oh, I see, thanks very much.”
“And here,” Xie Wang added, pulling a few crumpled bank notes from his jeans pockets, “is money for the cab. It’s not that I think you’re poor, it’s just that the whole thing should be on me. Here are some banana muffins I made for the little guy, too.”
He pulled a tupper box from his backpack, handed it to Ah-Yuan, and then stood. “The next stop is mine; I need to go get some paints.”
“Say hello to Xuan-er and his dads from me,” Wen Ning said, “that wedding was really something to remember.”
Xie Wang preened, threw the backpack over his shoulder, and turned to stand at the doors, which opened moments later; waving to Ah-Yuan one last time, he vanished into the crowd on the platform.
Ah-Yuan opened the tupper box and started eating a muffin, then remembered his manners and offered the box to Wen Ning, too.
The muffins tasted rather healthy.
Five stops later, tupper box stowed away, they got off the subway, up the escalator, and then out into the pouring rain; it was almost dark, and the neon lights from all the shops around glittered and shivered in the large puddles which kept growing. There were a few cabs, and the third did have a child seat and was willing to transport them for just about five minutes. “I have three of them at home, too,” the cab driver said as Wen Ning was strapping Ah-Yuan in, “and it’s a lot of work to get them dry again. Of course they enjoy this weather.”
Wen Ning laughed, but Ah-Yuan protested. “I like riding in cars more!”
Wen Ning got in beside him, keeping the tote back nice and dry between them. Ah-Yuan stared out of the window the entire time, oohing and awwing. It was mostly the same way they had so often gone by bus, but apparently, it was totally new and exciting from the lower vantage point of the cab. Usually, Wen Ning walked from the subway station, but Ah-Yuan both loved riding whatever transport there was to be had, and would stop whenever he saw something interesting, which was often.
Wen Ning texted Wei Wuxian while they rode the short way, and knew to go up into the apartment, not down into the internet café, when they arrived at their destination.
Ah-Yuan insisted on carrying the bag, so once they were inside the house and the little guy couldn’t dunk it into a puddle any more, Wen Ning let him have it.
“Xian-gege, Xian-gege, there was a man on the subway and Ning-gege knew him and he gave me banana muffins and Ning-gege a big bag full of noodle soup, it’s soooo heavy!” he shouted as he ran into the apartment to hand the bag to Wei Wuxian and pick up Chenqing, who had turned up as if out of nothing as he usually did, to happily curl around Ah-Yuan’s limbs for a bit while Lan Wangji divested him of his raincoat and wellies before the ferret chose a place to settle. It was difficult to peel a little boy out of a jacket when Chenqing had other ideas.
“Xie Wang; he wanted to show his gratitude,” Wen Ning said. “He happened on us terribly conveniently for it to be a coincidence, but he probably knows where Ah-Yuan’s daycare is.”
Wei Wuxian opened his laptop, which was snoozing at hand, and looked up a few things. “Zhao Xie is on the list of people authorised to fetch Lu Ta, Jing Beiyuan’s and Wu Xi’s kid, from the elementary school the daycare and the preschool belong to,” he then declared. That wasn’t common knowledge, of course, but Wei Wuxian liked to know about things and people. “So yes, he had a legitimate reason to know that. Also, of course, if I can do this, Rong Xuan can do it, too. No mysteries left.”
There was a cutting board and vegetables on the kitchen counter, so Wen Ning got rid of his own jacket, washed his hands, and started dinner. Meals had to be modular -- Lan Wangji was vegan, the others liked meat or fish, and Wei Wuxian needed everything a bit spicier than the rest, but Wen Ning was used to it, so he worked automatically while watching Wei Wuxian unceremoniously dump the ramen on the kitchen table, sit down, and start counting the fat wads of money which had been lurking underneath.
Lan Wangji, neat as always, got Ah-Yuan to help him put the noodles away: they might have been mere camouflage, but they were still food!
“Okay, I knew Xie Wang had quite the loot box stowed away in his backpack on the middle cistern,” Wei Wuxian stated. “I hear he bought a condo over in Changming towers, where Ghost Hand and his family live, without a mortgage or anything, cash out of hand, so to speak. But this is still generous. Lan Zhan, let’s go and buy that thing tomorrow we saw in that shop window, you know what I mean?”
Lan Wangji’s ears turned red, and he said nothing. So it was that kind of thing.
“If we use it for a few nights, the guy next door will probably paint his message on our door with blood, then we apologise and offer him money to move out, and then we can buy soundproofing and sheetrock. Large wads of bank notes are a bit awkward to re-digitise, but in moving and renting and building things, they’re still welcome. The Cao family gladly accepts cash, thank you very much.”
They were the landlords, an old clan who owned the entire block which they had reputedly murdered some other entire clan for in the late eighteenth century.
“You mean…?” Wen Ning says. “Seriously? You want me to live next door to you?”
“Of course,” Lan Wangji said. “We have said so very often. That apartment is large enough so Ah-Yuan can have his own room by himself in there when he is bigger.”
“My own room?” Ah-Yuan said, excited. “Can Chenqing come and live with us, too?”
Wei Wuxian pouted.
“You have Suibian, too, even though he’s just a cat, not a ferret,” Ah-Yuan argued.
“We can put a cat flap in the divider of our balconies,” Lan Wangji suggested. “Suibian and Chenqing can go and see you whenever they want. But right now, you’re not big enough to sleep in your own room all by yourself, without Wei Ying or me in earshot. We have time.”
Ramen put away, he picked up Bichen, his Flemish Giant rabbit, and sat at the kitchen table with her, contemplating the money.
“It is ethically dubious,” he mused, “but then, so are we. If we wanted to live perfectly ethically, we would both need to divest ourselves of everything, and pay a lot of money for anything. So, until the world becomes perfect, we will take it. Permanently welcome to the family, Wen Ning.”