Chapter Text
“You think I don’t dance?”
Wei Wuxian nearly chokes on his drink. “To this? Please, tell me, Lan Zhan, tell me: who would assume you do?”
It’s not a jab worth responding to, especially since the three fingers of gin is partly to blame for it, to say nothing of it being 3:00am and—
“Luckily,” Wei Wuxian leans in dangerously, each glazed eye reflecting a half dozen electric lights, “you have me!” He grins a feral grin, hops off the railing, and downs the remainder of his glass. He makes a show of closing his eyes and laying his free hand solemnly over his chest: “I’m both extremely knowledgeable and extremely skilled in these things.”
This can’t be good.
Lan Wangji is about to protest, but Wei Wuxian is off and rummaging behind the bandstand before he can get a word out. There’s a muffled thud, something indistinguishable rolls haphazardly out and under the piano, and Wei Wuxian emerges seconds later clutching a smallish suitcase in one hand and a single record in the other.
Oh, no. There is chaos coming. Dominoes are about to fall, and not the good kind that line up tidy—the kind that clatter about and make a mess. Say goodnight and bow out quietly, Lan Wangji thinks. But there’s something in Wei Wuxian’s face as he deposits his payload on one of the tables across the dancefloor that makes him pause. There’s energy swelling in him, and he seems desperate to catch it before it can float away. It’s burning out through his fingers as he opens the suitcase to reveal a portable gramophone, as he gently slides the record out of its sleeve, as he seats it on the turntable and turns the hand crank a good two dozen times. There’s a moment when he pauses, as if second guessing—and Lan Wangji can see those fingers trembling—before he recovers and plunges ahead, lifting the tone arm.
He looks genuinely happy. That’s what it is. The sardonic cant of his head is nowhere to be found; the lopsided smile of the man Lan Wangji has spent the last three months working with has been replaced with the unspoiled grin of the boy he knew twelve years before, beaming in the burnished sunset light of the last lantern festival before the Great War.
And that’s simply too much, especially at 3:00am.
Escape is the best course of action. They can continue their discussion tomorrow when Wei Wuxian is sober and... slightly more professional.
Lan Wangji is up and grabbing his coat and hat from where he’d tossed them as music crackles into life. It drifts, thin and watery, across the wide and empty dance floor, a pale, quivering thread imitating the deep, swooping rhythm of the exact same music that was playing live no more than two hours before. Yet it brings things altogether unbidden to his mind: the rush of pure adrenaline that saturated him the moment he walked through the door and saw the face of the man that was meant to be his contact—the man he’d been warned about in no uncertain terms, the man believed to be responsible for all manner of crimes—and knew instantly and without doubt that despite the gaunt cheeks and old scars and pale lips and darkened eyes, he was the boy he had been told had died somewhere far off in the mud and muck a decade past.
He crushes his hat in the rush to put it on his head.
He’s halfway to the door and trying to put his coat on when that same man is running towards him, the beginnings of a flush blooming across his cheeks. “Lan Zhan!? Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan? Where’re you going?”
“Go upstairs and go to bed. We’ll talk more about this tomorrow when you’re sober.”
“Nothing’s worth talking about sober—take that off!”
“Goodnight, Wei Ying.”
“Lan Zhan!” He grabs the hat right off his head. Despite the growing signs of inebriation, he’s still agile enough to keep it out of Lan Wangji’s reach. Dangling the hat like bait, he starts backing towards the center of the dancefloor.
Lan Wangji does not follow.
This development seems to disappoint him. “Lan Zhan, how are you going to get Mianmian to open up if you’re not willing to dance with her?”
“That’s not part of my job description.”
“...Dancing?”
“Se...” he tries again. “Seduction. There are protocols—”
“Oh, come on! Forget what she knows about Jin Guangshan. She’s asked you twice!”
Lan Wangji is stone. He is stone, and the hand he reaches towards Wei Wuxian is stone. “Give me my hat.”
Wei Wuxian smirks that satin smirk and plops it on his own head. “No.”
There will be sirens. There will be klaxons. There will be paperwork in triplicate. “It is three in the morning.”
Wei Wuxian’s slow steps melt into a backwards sashay. “What’re you going to do? Arrest me? Is there a curfew I don’t know about? Wait! Is that your department, too? They really expect you to do everything, don’t they!? And I hear they pay you so poorly; not that anyone would know that from looking at you.” He flashes another, showier smile. “So, what is under your jurisdiction then? Whose vices might invoke your long arm?” He giggles for a moment then starts counting it out on his fingers, “Bootleggers, we know. Drunkards as well, surely. Curfew Breakers? Troublemakers? Non-conformists? and... wait...”
Lan Wangji takes a calming breath and closes his eyes. He is stone. “You’re drunk.”
“No, I’m just forgetting something…. Smoke-eaters?!” He pulls his own silver cigarette case out of his pants pocket by way of illustration. “Lan Zhan, you already know I’m guilty of every vice under your jurisdiction and then quite a few I imagine you would frown upon. If a little foxtrot at three in the morning really is a vice, well then grant me just one more—just this one more, Lan Zhan—and after that you can take me in, hmm?” He holds his wrists together out in front of himself and actually has the audacity to pout.
Wei Wuxian has come to rest in the middle of the dancefloor, the stolen hat still askew on his head, but Lan Wangji does not answer him, so he drops his arms, sighs, and seems to consider things for a moment. At last he plants himself squarely and clasps his hands behind his back, taking on a serious and didactic air, head held high. “Lan Zhan. Lan Wangji. Do you know what I read not more than three weeks ago?”
Lan Wangji shakes his head.
“It was an astronomy paper, written by an astronomer working up at the Mount Wilson observatory.” That energy is still burning hot and his hands clearly need to work; he unclasps them and opens his cigarette case. “Did you know that there are whole other galaxies outside our Milky Way, so far away the distances are just unimaginable, and we can see them from here? Right here!? Just north of Pasadena you can look at other galaxies, all full of stars.” He takes out a cigarette and returns the case to his pocket where he retrieves a small lighter. “‘More things in heaven and earth,’ eh? Or at least in heaven. Not so sure about earth anymore.” He lights his cigarette and then takes a long drag. Lan Wangji can see the mechanism slowing, the concrete concepts abstracting, their edges blurring, and Wei Wuxian struggling to pull them back into focus as the buzz kicks in. Lan Wangji starts to protest again and Wei Wuxian holds up a hand to stop him. “No, now just bear with me for a minute. Do you follow astronomy?”
Lan Wangji does not, and rocks his head back and forth exactly once to say so.
“Hm. Well, the thing is, we now know that these other galaxies are hurtling away from us at incredible speeds, and the farther away they are, the faster they’re hurtling! Now, there’s a lot of math in there, and I won’t bore you with that. Who wants that at three in the morning, right?” He takes another long drag on his cigarette, likely for the dramatic pause as much as anything. “But it’s not that these galaxies are moving, but that—and this is the important part—the space between them is growing!” It’s clear by the expression on his face that he finds this deliciously absurd. “Isn’t that outrageous? Have you ever heard anything like that?”
Lan Wangji has not.
“Well one day, you see, these galaxies are going to be moving away from us so quickly that even light from them won’t be able to reach us any longer. They’ll just—poof!—be gone.” He punctuates the sound with a snap of his fingers. “Completely and forever out of our sight and reach. And that holds true for everything! Absolutely everything not gravitationally locked to something else will end absolutely unreachable, solitary and untouched by anything else.” He stands quiet for a minute, a slender exclamation point. “So, Lan Zhan, doesn’t all that fatalism put things into perspective? Even a bit? If that’s how things are going to end, wouldn’t it be worth the risk or of one dance? If nothing else, it would make m... it would make Mianmian very happy; I know it would.”
For reasons Lan Wangji doesn’t fully understand, his mother’s voice bubbles up from the silent past, clear and musical.
“Don’t be frightened. It won’t hurt you.”
In his memory her ruqun is blue like the heavens. The silk clouds woven across the collar glitter in the sunlight and the rabbit is soft and white in her hand. He realizes, looking back, that he hadn’t recognized yet what the sadness behind her eyes was for.
In his memory it is spring and the magnolia tree is in bloom, powdered magenta against the sky. From the direction of Du Pon Gai, where it cuts a line through tangrenjie, he can hear the whir of an engine, but within the walls of their courtyard this other world persists, slow and steady.
“You’re so gentle, Zhanzhan. Don’t worry.” In his memory she takes his hand in hers and lays it on the rabbit’s back. “You won’t hurt it either.”
He strokes the fur, amazed at how soft it is. “Uncle won’t let you keep it,” he warns.
“No. Let’s enjoy it while we have it, then, hm?”
Things can be taken away so quickly. A surge of adrenaline soaked fear brings him back to the present, where Wei Wuxian looks at him with an intensity that passes almost into pleading.
“Humor me?” Wei Wuxian, hand outstretched, smiles thinly. “Please?”
Lan Wangji does not believe in hypnotism; he was a child when he mastered compulsion; but something makes him take that first step towards the whirlpool at the center of the dancefloor, where the finish has been mostly worn off with use, tracing the paths of thousands of courtships. Wei Wuxian watches with widening eyes, slowly blossoming into a smile as rare and delicate as the vulnerable unfolding of a magnolia flower, pure and achingly ephemeral. That smile is as close as anything has ever come to what he would describe as irresistible, and that is not a concept that has troubled Lan Wangji for a very long time.
It’s as if a latch is released. Wei Wuxian springs into motion, taking Lan Wangji’s coat and retiring it with the hat to the table next to the gramophone. He resets the needle—the song having ended minutes before—and bounds back as if flying. He’s quiet for a second as if suddenly unsure how to begin, then takes up a position a surprisingly respectable distance away, almost shyly; Lan Wangji might almost believe he was not expecting to have to come through on his offer.
“Really, this one is easy because it’s all a foxtrot,” he says. “Now, I’ll be you. We’ll start with just the basic steps.” He orders his hands in space, cradling an imaginary partner... presumably Mianmian. His posture is unexpectedly formal, considering; his back is strong and his head proud. Whether that’s in imitation of or mockery of himself Lan Wangji doesn’t know.
“The steps are really simple, you’re really just striding, see? Just flowing across the floor.” He speaks the rhythm as he walks it—slow, slow, quick, quick; slow, slow, quick, quick. “But you can embellish it all you like. Lan Zhan, do you know Rudolph Valentino? The movie star? Would you believe he was here once? Not long before he died. In fact—“
The words fade into a cheerful background hum as the dynamic grace of Wei Wuxian’s movements command all Lan Wangji’s attention: for such simple steps Wei Wuxian can’t seem to help but fill them with his own sense of character. This is not a man who is a professional dancer. His steps are not that precise, his form occasionally goes a touch sloppy before he reigns it back in (the slow and relentless assault of the gin is partly to blame, Lan Wangji is sure), and every few steps he can see the slight favoring of the left leg. But… it’s 3:00am... and he’s beautiful when he moves.
As Wei Wuxian spins about in angular figures, cresting on the “quick, quick,” something catches Lan Wangji’s attention out of the corner of his eye. It’s Wei Wuxian. And another Wei Wuxian. And another—winking in and out of existence in the many mirrors that line the opposing walls. One Wei Wuxian becomes three, becomes five, becomes seven, and each duplicates recessively backwards into a green-tinted nowhere.
As if sinking into fetid water. His skin prickles for a moment, just barely, and he wonders if he should take it as a warning. He has come to know of many Wei Wuxians now: the brilliant boy and the charming man, but also the callous man and once even the cruel one. And of course, the ruthless criminal he was warned about. He wonders if he really knows which one this is, but also... if it would make any difference. Wei Wuxian is a comet that’s come flying in for the second time, disrupting once more the careful gravity of everything in his life, and he has spent the last three months suppressing the overwhelming urge to reach out and catch him.
Collision at such speeds is dangerous, of course, but….
What would be the harm in only a daydream? A daydream about a couple of lonely satellites finding each other and dancing in each other’s orbits? Hidden by the dim light, shrouded in the haze of a decade of cigarette smoke left suspended in the air, protected by the secret agreement made by everyone who walked through that door that in this space the rules of the world did not apply… could his uncle’s eyes and their ossifying crows feet find him here?
“Now you try.”
Wei Wuxian has retreated to the gramophone to restart the music. When he returns he positions himself halfway to the proper form for the following partner, stopping just short of touch. Which is very out of character.
“Come on, come on. We’ll start slow. I’ll be Mianmian. Left foot first.” He looks down at their feet as if waiting for Lan Wangji to make a move. He’s swaying slightly and doesn’t seem to realize it; flush has spread from his cheeks to his nose, but the music is rolling past them now, and he looks so expectant.
So happy. So carefree.
And that’s simply too much.
So Wangji connects, his right hand firmly but respectfully below Wuxian’s shoulder blade, his left gently cupping the fingers of Wuxian’s right, in one fluid motion guiding him backwards along the floor as decades old muscle memory takes over.
Wei Wuxian lights up with surprise, and it’s honest surprise, Lan Wangji is pretty sure. “Wha...?”
“I had to learn when I was young; social engagements demanded it. You’re the one who assumed.”
Wei Wuxian laughs as if he’s delighted by an unexpected joke. They flow through several bars of basic steps, a promenade, a couple of underarm turns. “Lan Zhan, you’re really good. Really, Lan Zhan but….” Wei Wuxian trails off but shows no signs of disengaging; instead his focus seems to have turned inwards.
They take several turns around the floor, and the passage of movement-to-movement is smooth like sleight-of-hand. There’s no collision, no sudden and violent tumbling out of orbit, and even if being this close is secretly thrilling, the scripted framework balances it with calm and familiarity.
The past decade of Lan Wangji’s life has been a continuous pattern. In the foreground: routine, an unfolding caseload, paper and ink and weak yellow lamplight. Investigate. Determine. Judge. Resolve. Slow, slow, quick, quick. But in the background: the ghost passage of memory and desire. It had been visible only out of the corner of his eye or audible only as a soft tapping, a tangle of thoughts that would drift uncomfortably close in the dark reminding him he should have made himself clear when he had the chance because now Wei Ying was dead.
Except suddenly he wasn’t. Suddenly he wasn’t! And the tapping had become a hammering that beat in time with Lan Wangji’s increasingly harried heart.
“Ooooh,” Wei Wuxian laughs suddenly and playfully slaps at his shoulder, “You don’t know what to say to her, do you?” The gin is starting to win and Wei Wuxian is drooping towards him now. “Alright. Practice on me.”
Practice on him? What could he possibly say? He thought he had said everything a long time ago.
“You have to say something, you know. Let me tell you something: she likes you. I happen to know that direct from her, but she won’t put up with your silent treatment like I will. I like it,” again he smiles, “if you’re silent it gives me more room to talk.”
Lan Wangji has no intention of following through on any of this, of course. He has nothing against Luo Qingyang, who, unlike most of her extended family, has always seemed kind and noble and uncompromising, even if he is, most assuredly, not “interested” in her. But the thought of disappointing Wei Wuxian now is too much to bear. “Then... what would you say?” he asks, as Lan Wangji leads him through another turn.
Wei Wuxian practically snorts. “Oh, I don’t know, don’t ask me, please.”
“...Why?”
Wei Wuxian suddenly tilts his head against Lan Wangji’s shoulder. Muffled against his suit jacket Lan Wangji can just make out the words as Wei Wuxian starts to giggle, “I’m too drunk. How would I know how to speak to a lady when I’m like this?”
He makes no sign that he intends to move. In fact he melts closer, bringing with him the juniper scent of gin and something else, a familiar sweet fragrance Lan Wangji can’t yet place. He’s quickly becoming more acutely aware of the silken softness of Wei Wuxian’s shirt, the way the lavender cambric with the tiny carmine pinstripe catches the light across the bridge of his shoulder, how it flows down the plane of his shoulder blade. As their frames gradually contract, Lan Wangji’s right hand shifts unconsciously downwards, collapsing the folds of cotton one by one as his fingertips trace a slow line down Wei Wuxian’s spine, savoring the little undulations below the skin, vertebrae like a path of stones breaking through a shallow river, until they come to rest against the hollow of his back.
There the smooth fabric is marred by a single ridge of stitches patching a tear. It stands out loudly in the field of his senses, incongruous. He runs his finger up and down it slowly and replays in his mind all the details that haven’t made sense since he first set foot in this place: Wei Wuxian’s shirt is torn and mended, his pants are a couple years out of style, the apartment upstairs is small and poorly furnished. He’s seen the books. With as much money as Wei Wuxian is making he could have at the least a new suit made each season and as many new shirts as he wanted. What was he hiding? And what made this man out of the boy he knew?
Wei Wuxian turns his head just enough for his breath to register on Lan Wangji’s neck “Just... what’s the first thing that comes to mind?” His voice is drowsy and slack and silken.
But the things that come to mind are a litany of questions he should not, cannot ask, but which keep surging behind his teeth, primed to erupt: Wei Ying, do you really not know me? Why did you leave when you did? What happened to you? How did you get here? Did you really not know back then? Did you really not understand? How can you—you—be the kind of person they say you are?
“You know... this isn’t making me very confident.” Wei Wuxian’s smile is audible. “Does your mouth cease to function at night?”
“No, I prefer the night,” Lan Wangji says, entirely without thinking, and realizes that it’s both true and not something that he’s ever said to anyone before.
“Really? I don’t. Too still.” He chuckles deep in his chest, and a whisper of breath tickles Lan Wangji’s jugular. “And here I am every night into the wee hours. Really, I prefer the day.”
“Mm. We don’t often get what we prefer.”
Wei Wuxian is quiet for quite a long time after that.
The music is rounding towards the last few notes. When the song is over Lan Wangji will stop, he thinks, say goodnight, see Wei Wuxian up the steps to the apartment so he doesn’t fall, like he’s done a half dozen times already when he was surely too inebriated to remember. He’s decided. He has indulged this as long as he should. But then he turns his head just a few degrees, planning to ask Wei Wuxian if he is able to walk without assistance, and suddenly that encroaching fragrance springs to the foreground. It’s perfume: dark, sweet, and heavy, like ripe peaches at the peak of summer. It invades Wangji’s senses, and he realizes he’s smelled it before.
———
Lan Zhan had been searching the streets for three hours, an unlit lantern dangling from the stick in his hand. He’d bypassed two dozen stalls, most more than once, as their owners—those whose names he knew and those he didn't—tried and failed to garner his attention and his cash with food and drink and gifts painted with snakes to commemorate the new year, none of which held any interest for him. One was selling brightly-tinted tangyuan in sweet syrup and another a miniature forest of pastel fairy floss, but the colors were dull and unappealing. The knot in his stomach had kept him from eating much at all for the last two days.
Music converged from three different directions, a mixture of the old and the new, and sometimes the melodies complemented each other, but most often they did not. Up and down the street lanterns were being lit and hung, staining walls and faces with red light. It was sunset, and the air was becoming chill.
He was starting to consider going back to the Jiang residence and asking after Wei Ying again, more forcefully this time, when two children ran past, escaping the glittering explosion of a firecracker they set off in the middle of the street. He turned his gaze to follow them, watched them laughing—envied them laughing—as they ran down a quiet and darkening alleyway past a man with a long pole hanging a newly lit lantern on a wire stretched over the thoroughfare. As it rose its soft red-orange glow Illuminated the figure of Wei Ying.
The world stopped for a moment. Suddenly, there was no festival, there was no music, there were no vendors, no crackling firecrackers. There was only a dim pool of light with Wei Ying in it.
He was sitting on top of a tall wall that enclosed a rare, small yard, letting one leg dangle carelessly and swinging it in rhythm, staring eastward toward the bay as he took a drink from the jug in his hand.
Lan Zhan tried to force himself forward, to do what he came here to do and say what he came here to say, consequences be damned. On the third try he succeeded, crossing into that solitary pool of lantern light which may have been the only real place on Earth.
“Wei Ying?” he called.
Wei Ying looked down. An expression Lan Zhan couldn’t quite place passed quickly across his face then disappeared. Uncharacteristically, he nodded in acknowledgement but didn't say anything.
“I was looking for you,” Lan Zhan said.
It took Wei Ying a moment to respond, and the hesitation made a part of Lan Zhan’s insides tense. “Are you coming up here or should I come down there?” he finally asked.
Lan Zhan held up his left hand by way of illustration, displaying the simple but beautifully made red paper lantern with two silver butterflies painted on the side: he was not in a position to climb walls.
Wei Ying nodded, swung his leg over, and hopped down. He managed, rather impressively, to avoid spilling whatever was left in his jug, and seeing this he took a triumphant drink.
“I was looking for you.” Lan Zhan said again, hoping maybe that that alone conveyed everything he meant.
Wei Ying seemed to consider this for a moment. “Not that I’m not flattered… but why’re you looking for me?”
There was something distant in his voice, the kind of thing Lan Zhan had never heard from him before in the conversations they’d shared, the ones that Lan Zhan had replayed far more times than he could count, so that he knew the many varieties of Wei Ying’s pitch and rhythm. Lan Zhan glanced around them: they seemed to be safely nestled in a quiet pocket away from the turbulence. He lifted up the lantern again. From the bottom hung a slip of paper with several lines of writing on it. It took him a moment to form the words: “I was hoping you could help me.”
“Riddles? You’re the one with the fancy education. Why would you need my help?”
“You shouldn’t disparage your intelligence. I don’t know anyone as clever as you.”
Wei Ying was already turning the lantern around, twisting it on its wire and admiring its craftsmanship. “Where’d you get this? I didn’t see anyone selling any this nice.”
“...I made it.”
Wei Ying smiled at him instantly and that alone made the work worth it. “Really? It’s so good! I didn’t know you could do this. You should light it!” He reached into his pocket and began to dig, as if searching for matches.
“Wei Ying… I’d like to solve the riddle first.”
At that Wei Ying shrugged, taking no note of the pauses in Lan Zhan’s speech, “If you insist.” He went to take another drink but stopped, looked at Lan Zhan with some embarrassment, and then held out the jug to him. “You should join me, Lan Zhan. It’s the last bottle. Come on! It’s barely even alcohol.”
The quivering in his abdomen was what finally drove him to accept the offer. He took the jug and brought it to his nose. The deeply sweet, fruity scent of osmanthus wine rose to meet him, and when he tilted it just right he could make out the faded yellow petals at the bottom of the jug drifting across the amber surface like tiny boats.
Satisfied, Wei Ying turned his attention to the slip of paper.
Lan Zhan quickly downed the jug’s contents.
“Long for a riddle isn’t it? Wait, did your brother write this for you?” Wei Ying asked as his eyes roamed across the characters. “You two are the only people I know with perfect handwriting.
Lan Zhan watched, trying to ground himself by concentrating on the sweet-soft warmth in his mouth and throat. Wei Ying was uncharacteristically quiet as he worked. He would read the riddle, look at the lantern, and then back at the riddle; his lips at first working silently and then pressing very tightly together. Once for the briefest moment his eyes even flickered upwards, catching Lan Zhan’s own, and then darted back. Lan Zhan thought he could have stayed that way forever, Wei Ying like a butterfly that had at last landed on a choice bloom, no longer fluttering about but beautifully displayed in its languid contemplation of a particularly fine nectar. But of course that contemplation ended, as it had to, when Wei Ying took a long breath and looked up, letting the slip of paper fall out of his grasp.
The next 15 seconds were the longest in Lan Zhan’s life.
Wei Ying’s face could chart an entire language's worth of expressions in just a moment, and its variety has been the singular source of color in Lan Zhan’s world for some time. During those 15 seconds Lan Zhan witnessed a private performance of what might be the sum total of human emotion dancing across Wei Ying’s face, moods fleeting and uncatchable. It was breathtaking, but it quickly settled into what Lan Zhan was sure was fondness as Wei Ying reached out tenderly, his thumb making contact with the skin of Lan Zhan’s lips at the corner of his mouth, wiping away a stray osmanthus petal. Then two things happened: Wei Ying smiled—a wide, brilliant, effervescent smile—and the last of the day’s sunlight broke down the alley, crystallizing that smile in amber, and with it the sudden daydream of a whole potential life, vibrant and bright, spreading out before them. But then...
Wei Ying laughed apologetically and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know. Like I said, I’m not so good at these things. You’ll have to ask someone else.”
The golden moment ended, the sunlight faded, and the floor dropped out of Lan Zhan’s stomach.
Wei Ying went quiet again for a moment then seemed to gather himself and turned serious. “I’m glad you found me, though. I didn’t know if I’d get to say goodbye.”
Goodbye? A single, wholly insufficient, stuttering question is all Lan Zhan could form: “Where are you going?”
“Oh, anywhere and everywhere!” Wei Ying puffed himself up. “This place is so small—way too small for me. There’s a whole world out there. I have big plans for my life. How can a few square miles contain me?”
He smiled again, or tried to smile, though it didn't come out quite right, it was lopsided and tense and his eyes flickered up and down the street.
“Anyway, long goodbyes just make things harder, don’t you think?” Wei Ying looked him right in the eyes. “Lan Wangji… find a good girl, have a brood of kids, huh? Don’t keep that pretty face all for yourself.”
With that and a wave, Wei Ying turned and walked away. He never once looked back as he strolled down the sidewalk, away from the festivities and into the dark. Three blocks away he turned the corner and disappeared from view and from Lan Zhan’s life.
Lan Zhan had no memory of it, but that night his brother told him, concern etched on his face, that he must have stood there for an hour, unmoving, staring down the street with the lantern hanging at his side. Lan Huan had heard from someone–who had heard from someone else–that it was only when someone touched Lan Zhan’s shoulder gently and asked if he needed help, breaking him from his daze, that Lan Zhan had turned around and walked silently home without even bothering to answer.
The next morning Lan Zhan walked to the Jiang house, but when the door opened it was Jiang Cheng with an even darker scowl than usual. He told Lan Zhan that Wei Ying had left, would not be coming back, and to not ask after him again. No further information was given before Jiang Cheng shut the door in his face, but in the time it was open, Lan Zhan heard what sounded like a woman crying.
Lan Zhan spent the next two years in those 15 amber-tinted seconds, the happiest he had ever known, analyzing his perfect recall of every expression that passed Wei Ying’s face, but finding no discernible solutions to what exactly had transpired. Had Wei Ying really not understood what he was trying to say? Had he understood but felt he could not overtly reject him? Had he understood but was so repulsed at the idea that he chose to not even acknowledge it? Or was there something else? Something Lan Zhan hadn't seen? And why had Wei Ying left so suddenly?
Lan Zhan spent those two years looking for information on where Wei Ying might have gone–without success. That uncertainty was almost as hard as the rejection. Both the Jiang children seemed to avoid him and from the other families most likely to deal in rumor plenty was said, but little was trustworthy. Only the Jins seemed suspiciously quiet, but if they knew anything, they were keeping it to themselves.
Then one fall morning…
It was the day after parades had filled Market street to celebrate the end of the Great War when his brother found him at work in his study and said there was something he needed to hear from him before he heard it from anyone else: Jin Zixuan was going to pay his respects to Jiang Yanli and her family because they had just received word that Wei Ying was dead.
There was very little color in the world after that.
———
The music had stopped some time ago, and their steps have contracted to fit within a tight patch of dance floor. Against all hope and Lan Wangji’s better judgment, Wei Ying is a warm, living presence against him, breathing so softly, like an endangered creature at last safely at rest. The tactile exposure to so much vitality and vulnerability soothes and terrifies in equal measure; eyes closed, Lan Wangji wraps his arms fully around his dance partner in some fuzzy entanglement of protectiveness and careless desire.
Wei Wuxian tucks his head further into Lan Wangji’s shoulder: having fully succumbed to the effects of the alcohol, Wangji is surely the only thing keeping him upright. “Lan Zhan,” he whispers from where he’s submerged, and the edges of the syllables nibble at Wangji’s skin. “Lan Wangji... Agent Lan,” he titters that last one and presses his lips close to Lan Wangji’s ear. “Let me tell you the truth.”
Lan Wangji stops and opens his eyes. A quiver of excitement and dread runs through him.
“The truth is you don’t need to say anything. Just let your pretty face do the work.” A desperate edge cuts through the sweetness of Wei Wuxian’s voice. “She’s... a very modern woman. She’ll know what she wants… maybe she’ll just say....” He tilts his head back and looks Lan Wangji in the eye. His lips are pink with drunken blush now, no longer pale and deathly, and his curling smile seems to keep shifting, slipping quickly past any attempt at definition. With those lips just the barest second away from Wangji’s own, he whispers through shuddering breath, “Kiss me.”
The universe extends into forever with wonders and possibilities unimaginable.
It is trillions upon trillions of miles to the closest star.
But here in the dark and empty dancehall of an LA speakeasy, the longest distance in the world…
May be that last
shallow
span
of fractious breath.
All it takes is a last leap.
Just the pull of a trigger, Lan Wangji thinks.
What’s an inch compared to a decade?
What’s an inch compared to the space between stars?
What’s propriety when the world has showered mercy on you, and given you the chance to try again?
It’s nothing. It’s nothing, he thinks.
But just as he feels himself closing that last distance, Wei Ying mutters a single sentence.
“I know the answer, Lan Zhan.”
Lan Wangji’s spine goes cold.
A thousand assumptions reorient themselves, and the man in his arms becomes instantly alien, the smell of osmanthus becomes a rush of cloying sweetness.
Lan Wangji doesn’t know if he’s holding the boy he knew, or the dangerous man he was warned about.
So he lets go.
Wei Wuxian slides to the floor in front of him, landing in a lanky jumble, and for a second he looks at him with surprise.
And then he laughs.
He laughs.
As if the whole thing were hysterical.
To his absolute horror Lan Wangji does not know if it’s genuine mirth or cruelty, cannot tell if that sound is directed at him or at Wei Wuxian himself. He stands there staring down at him. Why would he pretend for so long only to tell him now all he ever wanted to hear? The boy he was holding was so close, so temptingly close, and the man on the floor in front of him is a million miles away.
Wei Wuxian stops laughing and stares up at him in drunken confusion, a pitiful, drooping sight.
Was I a joke to you then? Lan Wangji thinks. Am I joke to you now? I meant every word. Have you ever meant anything you’ve said?
But as always Lan Wangji holds his tongue.
Silently, he goes to collect his coat and hat and then stops in front of Wei Wuxian one last time. He hates himself for it, but it is all he can do to fight the urge to help him up. “Go to bed,” he says. “Goodnight… Wei Wuxian.”
He leaves all seven of him disappearing in the silver-green glass. He doesn’t say he’ll be back, but he knows by now he will be.
———
The senses come back one-by-one.
Wei Wuxian wakes with what feels like the weight of an upright piano on his head. He doesn’t know how much is from the hangover and how much is from the crying.
Opening his eyes is more painful than he anticipates. Afternoon light is filtering rudely through the curtain and onto the sofa back, overlaying an interference pattern on faded paisley. His mouth tastes absolutely foul, and his automatic response to this, for whatever reason, is to wiggle his toes, as if to shake off the sensation, and that’s how he realizes he never took his shoes off. His left arm is twisted under and behind him, nearly numb from the hours of his unmoving stupor, the awareness of which begins the inexorable recall of the finer details of the cause of said stupor. There’s a lot he doesn’t remember, but the hurt on Lan Zhan’s face as he told him goodnight was horribly, uncharacteristically clear. Awakening is, as he feared, nothing but compounding confrontations with a string of unpleasant conditions.
Still, beneath and behind it all there is something else his half-unconscious mind instinctually latches onto and derives comfort from, the sound of something soothing and pleasant: the soft bubbling of water.
“I’m making you some tea.”
He looks over his shoulder to see Mianmian sitting in the little armchair, her attention on the magazine open in her lap, the 3 p.m. light illuminating the soft waves of her precisely permed hair. Behind her the kettle is on and his old gaiwan and matching cup—the one with the lotuses and the chip out of the rim—is sitting at the ready.
He’s still bleary-eyed as he starts to sit up, and he must look at least a little confused as he notices the blanket draped over him.
“It was Qing-jie. She thought you might be cold so—“
“You look terrible.” Wen Qing sweeps out of the second bedroom like a heavy wind, carrying the scent of strong coffee with her, and disappears into the little bathroom where he can hear her rummaging around. As loud as her voice seems, she might as well have dropped a boulder on him.
Mianmian looks at him apologetically and sets her magazine aside. As she places it on the side table, it bumps against her bottle of osmanthus perfume, and he’s pretty sure she notices. He can tell she wants to say something.
Of course she does. Maybe if he looks away she won’t ask, but when he glances down all he sees is a nearly empty bottle of gin and an overturned tumbler tucked against the sofa leg, which, he suspects, half-answers her question anyway. Still, he can’t help but delay the inevitable. “I thought you weren’t coming back for the rest of the week?”
“Qing-jie needed some things. When we got here the door wasn’t even locked.” She makes a point to catch eye contact before continuing. “We were worried.”
“I don’t need anyone’s worry.” That was harsher than he intended, but it doesn’t seem to phase Mianmian, who leans forward and puts a hand lightly on his knee.
“No luck?”
He snickers at that. Oh well. “What do you think?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Maybe if—”
“—Look, I appreciate your help, but you shouldn’t ask him any more, alright? It’s not safe for him. It was a mistake. I made a terrible mistake. The most recent in a really very exceptionally long series of terrible mistakes.” He leans his head back in hopes the change in angle might relieve some pressure. “I think he maybe hates me anyway. I wouldn’t blame him.”
He can hear Wen Qing snort a room away. “His safety? What about our safety? Does this mean you’re done making a fool out of yourself?
“I’ll make a fool out of myself if I want to! I’m 31 years old; I’m an old, grizzled man and it’s my dignity to dispose of.”
“Will you risk our safety if you want to?” Wen Qing emerges with her cheeks nearly as red as the sun pattern on her qipao. “If so, maybe we should find somewhere else to live. This isn’t a game. You—”
He lays back down and rolls over and doesn’t hear the end of the sentence. Behind him the kettle whistles.
The clink of china is followed by the round and brilliant trickle of water, the subtle aroma of brewing tea, and soft footsteps. He can hear Mianmian setting things on the side table and can smell the vegetal scent rising as she sits down behind him on the edge of the sofa. Her voice is low.
“Yanli would love to see you. Please, tell her what’s going on. Jin Ling will be eight years old in a few months. Eight years old! He’d love to have another uncle in his life. You know how Jiang Cheng can be with him.” He does not respond so she lays a hand on his shoulder. “Wuxian?”
“You know your family is dangerous.” He turns back to look at her so as to make his point. “You know I’m dangerous.”
“I’m ready.” Wen Qing steps out into the common room, an old rumpled and oddly-bulging carpet-bag in one hand. “A-Ning is waiting.”
Mianmian clearly wants to say more but instead stands up and retrieves her bag, gloves, and hat.
There’s something bittersweet in the look Wen Qing gives him.
“Be careful,” he tells her. “Don’t let anyone follow you.”
“I’m not worried about us; we’ll be fine. But please... please! Wei Wuxian, take care of yourself? We need you, none of this works without you, and you’re...”
He does manage to look ever so slightly contrite, he thinks. He certainly feels more than ever so slightly contrite.
“Do you have everything you need until we get back?” Mianmian asks. “Remember, Wen Ning won’t be here to run errands for you.”
“I can take care of myself. Cross my heart.”
She returns him a sad smile, then both of them disappear out the door. The latch clicks softly into place and footsteps retreat down the stairwell, but as they leave he can hear Mianmian’s fading voice: “Why are you so hard on him? How would you feel if it was us?”
Her words dissolve into nothing and Wei Wuxian is left alone with his tea and his thoughts. He does not drink. Instead he lays back down, wraps his arms around himself, and imagines it’s his sister.
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