Chapter Text
Lan Wangji’s junior year at CRHS was going to be great. It was going to be the best year of his life so far.
This year was great because this year, for the first time, he had a boyfriend.
It was an unusual pairing, to say the least. Lan Wangji, the straight A student and class president, was dating Wei Wuxian. Yes, that Wei Wuxian. The kid who mouthed off in class and threw paper balls at the history teacher’s head (who unfortunately just happened to be Lan Wangji’s uncle) and got sent to the principal’s office at least once a week.
It was safe to say that Lan Wangji’s family was not as thrilled about the situation as Lan Wangji was.
They had not really given him a chance, though. Lan Wangji knew what Wei Wuxian looked like from the outside, but if they just took a chance to really get to know him, they would see that Wei Wuxian was good.
Sure, Wei Wuxian really needed to learn to behave in uncle Qiren’s class. He was not helping the situation. But Lan Wangji knew things about Wei Wuxian that other people didn’t, because Wei Wuxian never let them see.
For example, Wei Wuxian hid behind this facade of not caring about school, but Lan Wangji knew that Wei Wuxian was actually really smart. He did every single reading and assignment, he just never bothered to turn them in.
How did Lan Wangji come to find this out?
Well because before they started dating, Lan Wangji had been assigned to be Wei Wuxian’s tutor. Wei Wuxian had been at risk of failing his sophomore year and had been sent to after school tutoring. That’s how the two of them had met, officially. Prior to that, Lan Wangji had only known Wei Wuxian as the infuriating classmate who liked to break rules and pick on Lan Wangji from across the hallway.
Then, he became stuck tutoring him.
Lan Wangji had been so frustrated at first at Wei Wuxian’s complete unwillingness to take it seriously. Angry that he had to be assigned to Wei Wuxian in the first place, instead of a student that actually wanted his help. Still, Lan Wangji tried hard to get him to focus on the assignments. Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian just made a joke out of it.
The first tutoring session, Lan Wangji asked Wei Wuxian to complete a worksheet and they would go over it when he was done. Wei Wuxian appeared to be diligently focused on it for nearly an hour, which seemed like too long for a single worksheet. So Lan Wangji went to see if he needed help just to find out that this entire time, Wei Wuxian had just been drawing a picture of Lan Wangji instead.
The second tutoring session, Lan Wangji actually used his own free time that morning to make Wei Wuxian a study guide for his upcoming math test. When he presented it to him, Wei Wuxian simply turned it into a paper airplane and threw it straight at Lan Wangji’s forehead. Then he started asking Lan Wangji a ton of personal and inappropriate questions that Lan Wangji refused to answer and teasing Lan Wangji for always being so boring and such a teacher's pet. He even went so far as to call Lan Wangji “Lan Zhan" just to get under his skin. He knew his family was way too traditional in still using courtesy names, but he was raised that way, and he found it improper for Wei Wuxian to refer to him by his given name.
So yes, their relationship had definitely started off on the wrong foot. Lan Wangji could not stand Wei Wuxian at first.
However, for some reason, even though he never took it seriously and could have just skipped it like he often skipped everything else, Wei Wuxian kept showing up to their tutoring sessions.
It was the fifth tutoring session when Lan Wangji finally started to soften towards Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian had nagged and harassed Lan Wangji to do the tutoring session at his house instead of in "the stuffy library" as he referred to it. He had even promised Lan Wangji that he would actually do the assignment if Lan Wangji agreed.
That’s how they ended up sitting on the floor of Wei Wuxian’s bedroom, in his very fancy house. At the time, Lan Wangji had thought it made sense, that Wei Wuxian came from money, given his behavior. He regrets that judgment now that he knows the reality.
Wei Wuxian had not kept his promise that afternoon at all, but instead had pulled out a bottle of liquor and tried to convince Lan Wangji to drink with him. Lan Wangji had never drank alcohol before, but he had been so frustrated with Wei Wuxian that he had foolishly told him that he would take a drink if Wei Wuxian could correctly answer all of his questions about the poetry assignment he was supposed to be analyzing.
It was a mistake to make that bet. He had only said it because he never thought Wei Wuxian would be able to do it.
Imagine his surprise when Wei Wuxian smirked and immediately began to dramatically perform the entire poem. Apparently Wei Wuxian had an affinity for poetry, because he seemed to know it by heart.
Lan Wangji had to drink his words that day. So he reluctantly accepted one small shot from Wei Wuxian. It burned his mouth and throat and he coughed and choked on the sensation of it, which Wei Wuxian seemed to find hilariously entertaining.
Then, Wei Wuxian’s parents came home, and that’s when Lan Wangji got a glimpse into the other side of this mysterious boy who constantly made a fool of himself and was failing all of his classes even though it turned out he was secretly very smart.
Wei Wuxian’s parents came home and Wei Wuxian suddenly turned stiff. Told Lan Wangji it was time for him to go and seemed very eager to get him out of the house. He wasn’t fast enough though. Not fast enough to stop Lan Wangji from hearing the yelling and screaming that erupted downstairs only a few minutes later, though. Wei Wuxian’s mom was clearly very upset about something. From Wei Wuxian’s demeanor, Lan Wangji could tell this was a regular occurrence. Though, he seemed mortified that Lan Wangji was witnessing it.
So Lan Wangji, admittedly slightly drunk, took action. He grabbed Wei Wuxian by the arm and pulled him to the window. They climbed out onto the roof and then jumped down to the yard and went for a walk to a local park. Wei Wuxian laughed at their escape. Then they sat, and they talked.
That day was the day Lan Wangji learned that Wei Wuxian was adopted by the Jiang family. Lan Wangji knew of the Jiang family, of course. There were a few wealthy traditional Chinese families in the area, similar to his own, and the Jiangs were one of them. Though, they were at least a little bit less formal and traditional than the Lan family was. Lan Wangji had not been aware that Wei Wuxian had been adopted by them, though.
Wei Wuxian shared that his parents had died when he was young and he had been a foster kid for a while before Jiang Fengmian, a family friend of his mother's, found out about him and adopted him. Then he shared that his adoptive mom, Madam Yu, was not very nice to him. He told Lan Wangji that she did not treat him like a part of the family and seemed to resent having adopted him at all. Seemed to blame every family problem on him.
Lan Wangji, still slightly drunk, shared that he had lost his parents too, and that he lived with his older brother and his strict uncle Qiren.
That day was the day they became friends, and Lan Wangji started to realize that the class clown version of Wei Wuxian was just a facade. That Wei Wuxian had so much more depth to him than that.
Lan Wangji knew at that point that Wei Wuxian didn’t actually need tutoring. But he continued to schedule their regular tutoring sessions anyway. Continued to pretend for as long as Wei Wuxian was willing, because he was now fascinated by Wei Wuxian and happy to have a friend.
Eventually, they stopped the premise of tutoring altogether and just started hanging out. A lot.
The more time they spent together, the more Lan Wangji learned about Wei Wuxian. It turned out that very little of what he did was as random as it seemed. He always had reasons for the bad things he did, even if other people didn’t realize them. At least, usually. Lan Wangji still could not figure out the throwing paper balls at Uncle thing.
But for example, there was the time Wei Wuxian got suspended for a week for sabotaging their classmate Wen Chao's science project so that it exploded all over him in the middle of his class presentation. The teachers had all been baffled as to why he would find it funny to do something like that. When asked why he did it, Wei Wuxian deflected the question. But Lan Wangji had been watching Wei Wuxian earlier that day as Wei Wuxian had seen Wen Chao bullying a small freshman boy. Wei Wuxian didn’t even know the freshman, but he had gotten himself suspended (and Lan Wangji now secretly knew this also meant severe punishment at home) just to get revenge for him.
These were the things that intrigued Lan Wangji about Wei Wuxian.
For being such a "bad kid" according to everyone else, Wei Wuxian never really seemed to do anything all that bad. Sure, he didn't follow the rules, but he wasn't really hurting anyone either. Even the prank against Wen Chao had been pretty mild, all things considered. And probably justified considering how much of a bully Wen Chao was.
Wei Wuxian continued to tease Lan Wangji constantly, but Lan Wangji came to realize that Wei Wuxian was not being a bully himself. This was apparently how Wei Wuxian interacted with people he approved of. Lan Wangji saw him do the same thing to his friends. Wei Wuxian was constantly making fun of his best friend Nie Huaisang and always bickering with his friend Wen Qing. The latter always gave it back just as viciously. He didn’t do it as much with Wen Qing’s brother Wen Ning. Instead, the whole crew seemed very protective over him. With his older sister, Jiang Yanli, Wei Wuxian’s teasing took on a more childish tone. But the worst was his adoptive brother Jiang Wanyin. It took Lan Wangji a while to realize that the two of them did not actually hate each other as much as they seemed to. They just communicated that way.
Still, the fact that Wei Wuxian went so out of his way to tease Lan Wangji apparently meant that Wei Wuxian had accepted him into part of his circle. That had been a surprising realization to Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji had never really had friends before. Sure, most people seemed to like and respect Lan Wangji well enough. He was class president after all. But there was a difference between respecting someone and wanting to be their friend.
Wei Wuxian had wanted to be his friend.
Lan Wangji was not sure why. They were very different people. Complete opposites really. Yet Wei Wuxian gave Lan Wangji a lot of attention and spent a lot of energy trying to get attention back from Lan Wangji. He thought Lan Wangji was funny, which nobody had ever thought that before. He even trusted Lan Wangji with some very personal facts about his life. As they spent more and more time together, he actually opened up to Lan Wangji a lot. He seemed to really trust Lan Wangji. Maybe even more than his other friends. It made Lan Wangji feel special to know that he got to see this other deeper side of Wei Wuxian.
Then, over the summer, Lan Wangji had done something absurd and entirely uncharacteristic of his normal careful, quiet self. He had, in a moment of insanity, suddenly accidentally kissed Wei Wuxian.
Even as it happened, Lan Wangji had thought Wei Wuxian would be disgusted. He had not told anyone that he was attracted to boys and he definitely didn’t think Wei Wuxian liked boys, since Wei Wuxian was always talking about all the girls he found attractive and flirting with them in the hallways. But instead, Wei Wuxian had kissed him back.
That’s how they ended up dating. Now, junior year had started, and Lan Wangji had a boyfriend. It was going to be the best year ever.