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There are few field trips at A-Ling's and A-Yuan's school which both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji attend. Parent-or-guardian chaperones wanted.
Jiang Cheng will not let work stand in the way of being an involved guardian—he does not want to think parent, because he not A-Ling's parent, but he's the only one left and it doesn't matter to others, not really—but he hates socializing with other parents-or-guardians almost as much as he hated work functions before he quit the company and moved to the aquarium. He hopes his parents would understand, for all that they were questionable parents-or-guardians themselves. He doubts it.
He takes this trip even though he took the last one, a trip to a farm that was not as awful as it could have been.
Lan Wangji took the kids to see bunnies at a smaller, accessible petting zoo when they were disappointed he couldn't come to the school trip. Jiang Cheng's preferences for animals lean towards the scaly and unloved—his brother used to tease him about that, A-Cheng, ChengCheng, that lizard looks just like you, he's glaring at me, ow, don't hit me!—and while both children enjoy visiting him at the aquarium, they are young and dumb and easily fall for the trap of the soft and fluffy.
They're still the smartest kids Jiang Cheng knows, but nobody's perfect.
They're at a natural history museum, children bouncing on their feet—"A-Ling, don't touch that!" he has to yell in every room, and even A-Yuan is taken in by a rock display, breathing on the glass until another student loudly says, "Ew," and Jiang Cheng gets his own stern look from the teacher when he glares at the brat.
"Take a picture, take a picture!" A-Ling nags every time they see a dinosaur, ferociously posing in front of it with a scowl and his hands curled into claws. By the herbivores, he makes a serious face and puffs out his cheeks, making such a show of standing up straight that he almost tips backwards.
A-Yuan tugs at his sleeve, widening his eyes, when there's a physics exhibit, looking so much like Jiang Cheng's brother, who barely got to raise the kid before we went and—he can't help the scowl and ruffles A-Yuan's hair instead as he follows. He pushes all the cars to demonstrate gravity and acceleration, and jumps on the pad as directed to show how vibration is recorded. He takes a video of A-Yuan doing the same, so focused on following the interactive exhibit directions that he sometimes misses the cue, but never gettings frustrated. He sends it to Lan Wangji.
He should be here, was supposed to be here—Jiang Cheng glares at the teacher's turned back, and directly at the museum director showing them around. It doesn't matter whether or not he likes Lan Wangji; the school and museum fucked up not telling them until this morning that the museum is not accessible and has never planned to be so.
(He doesn't like Lan Wangji, just for the record.)
(But that's all the more reason to make him deal with other parents-or-guardians, and to make him resist the urge to run over their toes with his big-ass electric wheelchair. It's heavy. Just ask how Jiang Cheng knows.)
Jiang Cheng kicks the side of the staircase on his behalf as they take it to get into yet another room. He doesn't blame the children he hears complaining about the stairs, either; they are no longer so little as to be unable to handle the trip, but it's been a long day, the field trip lasting longer than a regular school day and the sunset visible through the open windows of the museum's rooms. Excitement, stimulation, so much to pay attention to, and yet constant parents and teachers herding them and talking at them. Maybe he was more patient as a child than now, but Jiang Cheng cannot imagine being able to handle it.
(Maybe it's good that Lan Wangji couldn't go. He would have been a wreck in the noisy crowd, even though he would have focused on their children and not crashed until he got home. He would have been useless the rest of the night, which Jiang Cheng has no time for. So maybe the photos and videos are enough, and they can make their own time to visit another museum.)
A-Ling slips a hand in his. He's nearing the age, or so Jiang Cheng's heard from other parents-or-guardians, where he won't want to do it anymore. I can do it alone, and all that garbage. On his other side, A-Yuan does the same, and soon both children detach from him and run off to listen about the moon, the last exhibit before they are set to return. Jiang Cheng crosses his arms, widens his stance, and closes his eyes to ground himself as they stand. He breathes. It's a lot, he can't imagine how the other adults are holding up so well, but maybe they're hiding it just as he is. He shifts, pulls out his phone, and snaps a few more photos.
They could have come out better, Jiang Cheng so suddenly overwhelmed by it all, by A-Ling asking the teacher for yet another snack. The trip is winding down and the children are hungry, some of them yawning and leaning on their parents-or-guardians. A-Yuan has already made his way over, and unlike Lan Wangji, Jiang Cheng is not constantly in position to let children sit on him and conserve energy.
"You want to be picked up?" he asks.
A-Yuan shakes his head, but takes his hand with one of his, and rubs his eyes with the other.
"Tell me if that changes," Jiang Cheng says.
A-Ling, when he comes over holding some fruit gummies, has no such reservations, and makes faces at A-Yuan from his new perch in Jiang Cheng's arms on the way to the busses.
Jiang Cheng yawns as he puts A-Ling down and gets a poke to the cheek for his trouble. Undaunted, he pokes A-Ling in return.
A-Yuan's eyes light up in childish understanding that activities are afoot. Jiang Cheng shakes his head, gives his cheek a poke of his own, and lets A-Yuan poke him in return. And then they're off. Jiang Cheng gives them a look to behave on the ride back, but doesn't stop the poking game they've begun, and takes a few more pictures, one more video.
Then he yawns again. He takes his seat, because he left his car at the school, and closes his eyes. Maybe he can sneak a nap in before they arrive.
And then? Jiang Cheng fists his hands before he crosses his arms over his chest: his hands are shaking as he's crashing from the day's events, and he feels like he's going to throw up until the bus's rhythmic pounding and the children's yelling fade into the background. There's a parent conference tomorrow, but he won't be able to go. He was scheduled, but he can't, and he's suddenly so exhausted. Hopefully Lan Wangji took care of dinner.
He sends him a text as warning. Not about the food—that's his job to take care of, it's not on Jiang Cheng to remind him—but the conference. And Lan Wangji will go in his stead like Jiang Cheng went today; he will stay home like the beast he is, putting on a film for A-Ling and A-Yuan. He won't give them too much sugar—that's one of Lan Wangji's many vices—but they will stay up far too long, and Jiang Cheng will cook breakfast in the morning, leaving one portion bland for Lan Wangji, who will emerge from his bedroom in time to tell the children to wash their hands.
"Wanyin," he will before he begins eating. Many miles away, Lan Qiren's heart will skip a beat; all that effort put into making sure his children weren't raised in a barn, and here Lan Wangji will be, not looking at Jiang Cheng as he sits at his table and not thanking him as he eats his food.
Jiang Cheng will sit next to him at the square table. The children will run in and take their seats. Breakfast will be a talkative but not noisy affair. The kids will put their dishes in the sink and go off to play with a new construction set. A-Ling will run, A-Yuan will follow just as quickly while looking like he's never run indoors in his life.
Jiang Cheng will wash the dishes. Lan Wangji will do whatever he wants, which will mean that he cleans the table and sets out things for lunch in several hours.
After, Jiang Cheng will drive the kids to swimming.
After, Lan Wangji will pick them up.
After, they will have dinner again, Lan Wangji eating his portion while Jiang Cheng and the children eat actual food.
After, Lan Wangji will supervise bedtime while Jiang Cheng feeds his fish.
After, they won't say goodnight to each other but will meet the next morning in the hallway and Jiang Cheng will cede his first turn in the shower to Lan Wangji, even though they've each got their own, going instead to the kitchen to prepare food for the park.
After, the children will wake, chatter through another breakfast and take themselves to the car, and Lan Wangji will drive and Jiang Cheng will give directions, and the children will play as they set out food for a picnic, running up with worms and leaves and rocks in hand to get the appropriate appreciative responses, and by then Jiang Cheng will not be as tired as he is now.
A text comes through: Understood. I will go to the school tomorrow. Dinner is heating up.