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Lan Zhan had graduated two years before his boyfriends, and spent the first year recovering from spinal surgery, so it only made sense for him to spend the second year searching for a place to live while they sat exams and prepared to leave student accommodations. They would live with their siblings—as Lan Zhan had been doing—until they found a place of their own, but moving was a difficult process. Especially when disabled. Better to get it over with.
And better for Lan Zhan to do the work now. Searching was difficult, frustrating, and exhausting. If he never spoke to a realtor again, he’d die happy. He didn’t want to hear any more about “the market” or “the going rate” or “a prime location.” He didn’t want to wait outside in the rain for someone who had impressed upon him—as if he was a child—that it was imperative to come on time, even as they ran late themselves. He didn’t want to inquire about laundry and garbage and counter space. He never again wanted to see a realtor’s face fall upon seeing his cane and say, awkward and patronizing, “So there must have been some confusion: this is a top-floor unit with no elevator,” as if Lan Zhan was the source of the confusion and not the incorrect listing.
They never waited with him afterward, just turned and walked away. Lan Zhan didn’t want them to wait, not exactly, but he had grown used to social conventions, and knew that foregoing them was a sign of rudeness. So. That on top of everything else, simply because he was “unwilling to compromise” on floor levels and the presence of laundry. Unwilling—unable. He was well aware that no place was perfect, but didn’t he have a right to be comfortable in his own home?
Left alone once more, having dragged himself up and down a flight of stairs only to remind the realtor that he had specifically asked for no stairs, Lan Zhan had to decide whether he would call his brother for a ride or would take public transit. He never drove himself to these visits because of parking. It would be silly to drive, be unable to find a space, and have to walk the distance to the apartment anyway. His brother would never mind picking him up. But it felt like failure anyway.
It began to rain again.
He called a car, prepared to deal with his brother’s questions later when he saw the charge. But not now.
That he had met Wei Ying and Wen Ning again at university after losing touch so abruptly after school was almost a miracle. That they had so easily resumed their friendship was a gift of fate, and that it had soon turned to romance sometimes still did not feel real.
Lan Zhan had been raised not to fidget, and he resisted the urge for the first minutes of the ride, looking out the window and thinking of his boyfriends, who he would soon see, and not his utter failure of finding a place to live. But soon the discomfort of sitting in an unfamiliar seat turned to pain, as it always did, and Lan Zhan shifted his weight until he found a position that was easy on his back—again and again, because no position was truly painless, especially with the small jolts and shocks of a moving vehicle, especially when he was already exhausted, having once more foregone his cane in a foolish effort to pander to the realtor.
He had seen the apartment, though it had been on the second floor, and the laundry, though it was down a steep and twisting back staircase. None of them could consistently do that, not just Lan Zhan, but it felt personal nevertheless.
The realtor had said, “So what do you think?” and Lan Zhan had said, “I think we want something a little more accessible,” a diplomatic line he’d practiced with his brother, and the realtor had said, “So, a ramp?” and “Why? For convenience?” and did not respond when Lan Zhan said, “Disability,” more loudly and bluntly than he should have. Then, left in the rain, he’d called a car.
“You’re soaked,” Wei Ying said when he entered. He had bounded up from the other side of the room, taking Lan Zhan’s jacket and clicking his tongue over it as he hung it up.
“Mn.” The car had stopped in the right place, but he’d been slow getting out and slow walking to the door.
“Shower,” Wei Ying said, eyes flitting from Lan Zhan to the pile of papers at the table, where he’d been doing something that decidedly wasn’t studying. Then he said a host of things that Lan Zhan missed because he was toeing his shoes off, leaning on the wall, then leaning on Wei Ying when he took his elbow, allowing himself to be walked to the bathroom.
“You want company?” Wei Ying asked.
Lan Zhan thought, then shook his head. “Later?”
Later, when he didn’t feel raw and scraped out, when he was warm and sitting and preferably was being held by at least one boyfriend.
“I’ll put soup on.” Wei Ying smiled, squeezed his hand, and left, shutting the door behind him and turning the knob so it didn’t click. Still, as he undressed, Lan Zhan heard him muttering ingredients to himself, before the water took the rest of his sound away.
Vaguely, he felt guilty for taking Wei Ying away from exams, no matter that he’d been ignoring them already. Mostly he felt loved.
He felt demanding and unreasonable, too, for turning down so many apartments because they were down or up the stairs, because they lacked counter space or a large enough bathroom, because they did not have easy access to laundry. His brother had made clear that Lan Zhan would always have help with cooking and laundry, which he appreciated and never doubted. But what about when he wanted to grant the help? Or when he was alone? Or, simply, when he wanted the chance to be independent, even on his worse days? Or any number of things, which boiled down to whether he would feel comfortable in his own home.
He did not want to think that his second surgery, just over a year old, would go the way of his first, ultimately useless, and leave him needing another. Nothing was certain, but his recovery had been alright, if not magnificent. He was already up two spinal surgeries from the average person, and didn’t want to distance himself further, to be useless in the periods of decline and recovery once more. He didn’t want to think about it but he had to. His family had taken care of him before, and would likely help again, but—there was always a but, now, and it currently was that Lan Zhan did not want to get another surgery, did not want to think about further decline, did not want to live in a home that would make those possibilities even harder to deal with than they already would be. Not only for himself, for his boyfriends as well, but he was the one making these choices, the one rejecting places left and right because he couldn’t suck it up and deal with imperfection.
Lan Zhan kept thinking, already finished washing but simply warming under the spray, knowing that he was going in circles and giving in to distress, until he heard the door open and Wen Ning say, “The soup’s ready.”
Lan Zhan hummed, taking stock of himself and not yet ready to leave the water. “Ten more minutes?”
Wen Ning’s low hum came through, then Wen Ning himself, perching on the side of the tub and waiting until Lan Zhan welcomed him in, getting his shirt wet but not paying attention to it, steadying him out and helping him dry and kissing his temple.
He changed his own shirt first. He didn’t make a show of it as Wei Ying would have, but his movements were purposeful nonetheless, and Lan Zhan began to come back to himself as he watched.
He held Wen Ning’s arms for a bit, tattoos on display in the short-sleeved shirt, skin soft and warm everywhere except his fingers. Feeling more and more human, still fragile but present, Lan Zhan clipped his hair up to dry, Wen Ning holding his hips, and dressed in the clothes Wen Ning had brought, including one of his own dark shirts.
Lan Zhan smiled at him and swayed into his touch. He wanted to say something, maybe thank you or imagine Wei Ying’s face when he sees this outfit, but stayed silent as Wen Ning stayed by his side, bracing him upright just unintentionally enough for neither of them to comment, as they returned to the living room.
Wei Ying had already set out their soup, but he’d forgotten their spoons. Lan Zhan spotted it, and a glance to the side confirmed that Wen Ning had, too. Wen Ning handed him off to Wei Ying, went to get the spoons himself as Wei Ying helped him sit, and returned with extra napkins.
“It looks good,” Lan Zhan said instead of thank you, “it smells good.”
Wei Ying mimed a bow, picking up one of the bowls and putting it into Lan Zhan’s hands, sliding a pillow onto his lap without comment, fitting himself to his side as if he belonged there when Lan Zhan leaned back and put his legs up on the couch, doing it all so seamlessly Lan Zhan couldn’t comment. He could have done all those things himself, and would have foregone the pillow, though it supported his arms holding the soup, and meant he didn’t have to lift the bowl and spoon so high to his mouth.
“Come here,” Lan Zhan said, because thank you for thinking of me when I don’t think of myself didn’t cut it, and neither did I want to kiss you silly, you’re one of the best people in the world.
Wen Ning, handing him a spoon and getting comfortable against his other side, got the same gratitude, and bracketed like this Lan Zhan wondered what he had been feeling so awful about. Just for a moment. In the clear-headed interlude, he questioned the guilt that had crept over him, and the dark feeling in his chest telling him he was asking for too much, taking too much space, being too much, too—something. That there was a way he had to be, and he was not fulfilling the requirement.
Wei Ying jiggled his knee while they ate, propping his foot against the coffee table while Wen Ning, like Lan Zhan, tucked his feet onto the couch. There was a puzzle with flamingoes on it on the far end of the table, one Wei Ying had bought months ago. Wen Ning, who had sat most of his exams bar one, which wasn’t for another week, and who didn’t need to worry about it because he’d already been accepted to graduate school, never worked on puzzles alone, especially not ones with such small pieces.
It being started meant that studying was going even worse than Lan Zhan had thought. Whether it was insecurity, neurological difficulty, or executive dysfunction coming up against the knowledge that Wei Ying already had multiple freelance projects lined up, whether or not he received his degree, the result was the same: exams, at least for now, were ignored.
Lan Zhan was selfishly glad. A focused Wei Ying was a Wei Ying who did not shove his foot against Lan Zhan’s thigh to warm it, who did not tell him all about the history of pianos because someone in one of his classes had said something to kickstart a week of research, who did not tell him about the free lunch he’d gotten the other day, where he’d bitten so hard into a donut that he’d broken the plastic fork he’d speared it onto.
A focused Wei Ying was just as attentive, however, not to himself but to his loved ones, and there was distress in his fast speech and easy smiles. It didn’t take much for Lan Zhan, when he finished his soup and Wen Ning put the bowl and spoon on the table, to tug Wei Ying down sideways onto his lap, to rub between his shoulder blades while Wen Ning tugged at his hair, to feel his heart break in his chest when Wei Ying began to cry.
“Oh, Wei Ying,” said Wen Ning; he wasn’t a sympathetic crier but his hand was shaking in Wei Ying’s hair, and he began to cry, too, not quite a dam breaking but a small, unthreatening leak, and Lan Zhan leaned his head sideways onto Wen Ning’s shoulders and felt his own tears start.
It had been a difficult day. A difficult week, a difficult month, for all that it was a Monday, the first of May.
Wei Ying said, “I can’t make myself think,” meaning that he couldn’t study no matter how hard he tried, and Wen Ning said, “I have a headache,” which meant that he’d had a headache for over a week and could no longer feel the tips of his fingers, and Lan Zhan said, “I hate this city,” which meant that he’d been running around like a headless chicken trying to find an apartment, and was tired of being dismissed by himself and the people around him when he mentioned his needs.
“We could sit with you while you study,” Wen Ning said, and Lan Zhan said, “Flashcards; keep you on topic.”
“Noise-cancelling headphones,” Lan Zhan suggested, and “Call your sister,” and Wei Ying flapped a hand up to cradle Wen Ning’s face and said, “Let’s take more naps.”
“We’ll help search,” Wei Ying said, “you’ve been making good choices, you must be tired,” and Wen Ning said, “We’ll ask for help; our families know people; we’ll find something.”
Because the tears were more cathartic than anything else, and the hug warm, and what they all said was, at its core, “You don’t have to do it alone.”