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“Whoa.”
Wei Ying is traveling alone, so there’s no one he knows around to hear his monosyllabic praise for the god who just walked into the restaurant, but the girl at the table next to him chokes on her drink when she follows his gaze so that’s got to count for something.
Listen - he might be kind of drunk on the cheap but surprisingly good liquor on offer at whatever this place with a bar is that he’s poured himself into, but just because he’s drunk doesn’t mean he’s blind. This guy is fucking gorgeous , and Wei Wuxian is gonna marry him . He can’t possibly know that such elegance, such beauty, such glory exists in the world without at least trying to claim it for himself. All his paintings, all his sculptures, all his attempts at portraiture have been nothing but sad imitations in comparison to this gleaming specimen of male perfection.
All of which he says to the god in question, who gives him just the teeniest tiniest hint of a smile in response. A smirk maybe? Definitely a smirk. That’s cool, Hot Guy can laugh at his expense if he wants to! Hot Guy could step on his face and Wei Ying would say thank you. The smirk takes on a deeper tilt and oh, he said that out loud too.
“You are drunk.”
“Holy shit your voice sounds like butter.”
Hot Guy blinks and then gets the cutest little furrow between his eyebrows like he’s trying to figure out how one’s voice could sound like a food product made of the fat solids extracted from milk.
“Thank you?” he eventually settles on, which makes Wei Ying positively beam.
“You’re welcome! Come sit with me?” Hot Guy looks over his shoulder and then around the restaurant, but he doesn’t seem to find whatever it is he’s looking for because he looks back down at Wei Ying and nods with a sort of gravitas that should be reserved for like. A fucking emperor. Wei Ying leads the man to his table which he promptly drapes himself half-over to continue watching his new friend like a hawk, a dopey smile on his lips the entire time Hot Guy plies him with fried food and a lot of glasses of water.
When Wei Ying is feeling mildly more sober he says perhaps the smartest thing he’s ever said in his life, which is: “Hey - d’you wanna marry me?”
Hot Guy chokes on his tea - because he ordered hot tea at an extravagantly themed, extremely upscale buffet in Vegas and they actually made it for him, because he’s a god and he can have whatever he wants forever - and gives him a wide-eyed look that very clearly states that he wasn’t planning on getting propositioned (literally) during a simple night out on the town.
“You are still drunk.”
“I’m sober enough to know that if you disappear on me I’ll just keep wandering around trying to find something that makes me feel like you do again, but I’ll never find it because I draw the line at stalking.”
Hot Guy’s lips twitch into the barest hint of a smile, like it’s happening against his will, which Wei Ying is more than willing to consider another victory.
“On what basis are you making this offer?”
“Hey, I’m a guy wandering around the States living out of his van and selling art wherever people will buy it so I can pay for my next tank of gas, you think I’m gonna use logic to decide where I go next? I’m only here because the schmucks that come here for their boring desk job conferences will blow their money on anything to say they had a good time in Vegas.”
“Is that so?” Hot Guy asks with just a little bit of frost around the edges of his voice. Wei Ying, master of having no self-preservation instinct, leans in closer with a smile.
“Yeah. You kinda look the type, anyway - the desk job type, not the easily-pandered-to schmuck type. C’mon, Vegas is the place to do wild things, isn’t it? Marry a random drifter, take me home, scandalize your family. You’ll never be bored again anyway, that’s for sure.”
And this, somehow, miraculously, incredibly - works ?!
Wei Ying wakes up the next morning fully aware of what he’s done and where he is, thank you very much, and he rolls over to find that yep, yeah, he’s got a husband. A really really pretty one who’s already watching him, eyes honey-gold in the morning sun streaming in through the gauze curtains on the window that do nothing to block much of anything at all.
“Ugh. You’re one of those put-together types who gets an east-facing room higher than 10 stories so you can wake up with the sun, aren’t you?” Wei Ying grumbles into his pillow. His husband ( husband ) - whose name he’d learnt at their wedding is actually ‘Lan Zhan’ and not ‘Hot Guy’, which seems tragic - raises an eyebrow at him with a bitchy little, “Mn.” that makes Wei Ying want to marry him all over again.
“Okay and you know that getting married in Vegas means we’re like. Actually married, right?” Wei Ying checks next, and receives another judgemental raised eyebrow ( really talented eyebrows on this guy, what a keeper). “Okay, okay! Just checking. Would hate to get myself a husband only to find out he’s actually not cool with it and wants to just ditch me after his wild trip to Vegas is over and done with.”
Lan Zhan seems to ponder this for a long moment, that little confused furrow between his brows again. Wei Ying reaches across the bed to poke his fingertip right in the center of it and smooth it away, which earns him a half-hearted glare and a twitch at the corner of Lan Zhan’s lips like he’s trying not to smile.
“I do not do wild things. Wei Ying’s arguments were sound.”
“Ah?!”
“Last night. Your reasons for marriage.”
Wei Ying laughs aloud at that, happy and delighted, and Lan Zhan pulls him in closer with an arm slung over his waist. He seems tentative about it, so Wei Ying does what he does best and just barrels straight through the potential awkwardness to instead bury his face in Lan Zhan’s chest and rub his cheek against his absurdly soft t-shirt.
“What? That you can shock your family and so you’ll never be bored?”
“Mn.”
“Interesting. I’m so smart, picking such an interesting husband! This will either be really fun for the rest of our lives or I’m going to wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, no in between.”
“I will not hurt Wei Ying.”
“Fun it is, then,” Wei Ying sighs, a little softer than normal in response to the fervor behind Lan Zhan’s promise that he won’t hurt him. He can’t know yet how much that means to Wei Ying, and how desperately he wants to believe that someone as serious and earnest as Lan Zhan actually must mean it when he says it. But hey, Lan Zhan might not do wild things but Wei Ying sure does - he might as well just go all in and see what happens.
“Hey. When you’re done with your boring work conference do you want to ride back to uh…wherever we’re going, in my van? I can’t really just leave it here, it’s like. Literally where I live.”
“Mn. I live in Seattle, I have a house in a good neighborhood in Ballard. Near the Sound, and close the arts district in Fremont. You will enjoy it - we can take turns driving home.”
Wei Ying goes warm all over at the word ‘home’ and finds he’s very glad he’s already hiding in Lan Zhan’s surprisingly sculpted and sturdy chest.
“ ‘Kay,” he mumbles. Lan Zhan kisses the top of his head, and that’s that. They’re married. He’s going to settle down. They drive up to Seattle at the end of the week and Wei Ying finds he’s not only gained a husband but a whole family - who have understandably mixed reactions to his presence.
First off, he’s apparently got a kid , which is great because little A-Yuan is fucking adorable and climbs him like a jungle gym the second Lan Zhan tells the boy Wei Ying is going to be living with them and helping Lan Zhan raise him. His new brother-in-law seems uhhh.. confused is probably the most delicate way to put it, but supportive nevertheless; welcoming enough, under the circumstances.
Then there’s Lan Zhan’s uncle, who turns a shade of purple Wei Ying is desperate to capture on film for proof that humans can turn that color, and suddenly he understands just exactly who it was Lan Zhan wanted to scandalize with his unannounced marriage to a homeless sculptor. He’s really only too happy to oblige and indulge his husband’s secret, deeply-hidden gremlin streak, and everyone’s just going to have to get used to it.
He’s staying put.