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Wei Ying has bad days.
He has very bad, no good, horribly bad days.
Lan Zhan learned the triggers and signs for bad days after he rushed Wei Ying to the ER. Lan Huan had to be called because he wouldn’t let go of the biohazard of a jacket he wrapped Wei Ying in waiting for the paramedics.
For the first two semesters after that Nie Huaisang makes sure to ‘drop by’ Wei Ying's dorm on Lan Zhan’s lab nights so Wei Ying isn’t left alone. Wen Qing and Wen Ning take him to dinner on Thursdays when Lan Zhan has dinner with his uncle. Mianmian has a spare key. He hates it. He's thankful for it.
A semester of them having similar enough schedules was enough for Lan Zhan to think the worst of the bad days were behind them, so when Lan Zhan was asked to go to a conference with his internship for a week, he thought things would be fine.
Lan Zhan hated the frantic tone of Wen Qing’s voice at 2am on the third day. His brother meets him at the airport. Wei Ying had a bad day.
“Wei Ying.” Lan Zhan is standing in their kitchen, now that they’ve found an apartment off campus for their last year. Two bedrooms, but Wei Ying sleeps on the couch because it's closer to Lan Zhan's room. There’s a four hour gap between Wei Ying’s first class and Lan Zhan’s morning shift ending. He’s come home to Wei Ying huddled in a ball on the couch after only four hours - the sign of a bad day. He doesn't know what to do. He hides the books he’s borrowed from the campus library to try and help Wei Ying through the bad days.
They cannot afford therapy. Wei Ying refuses any more pills after Yu Ziyuan. They have done yoga - Lan Zhan cannot bend like that, meditation - Wei Ying fell asleep, hiking - tick removal has slightly traumatized Lan Zhan, and a thousand more activities that don’t work.
Today, the kitchen is filled with a smoky haze and clearly burnt sugar is coating three of the four pots they own.
“Lan Zhan! Look! Tanghulu!” He appears from around the corner with two of the saddest looking strawberries coated in the thinnest, cloudest sheen of sugar.
“Did you make tanghulu?”
“Well, you like tanghulu, so, yes, yes I did. Or, I tried to. I ruined our pots, Lan Zhan!” he beams.
Lan Zhan called out of work, a double shift, money they needed, because it took two viewings of bad day movies to pull Wei Ying out of a bad day the night before. They end up spending the day falling down a hole of vegan dessert videos on youtube, and by the end of Lan Zhan’s finals the next day he’s got a cake to try. It’s got the texture of sand, but it’s delicious. The next day, the texture is better, but it’s so bitter Lan Zhan can barely choke down a second bite. Wei Ying has to pry the fork out of his hand before he tries a third.
The next time it’s perfect.
It was their first date.
They move into an apartment that has a bigger kitchen, Wei Ying no longer sleeps on the couch. He still has bad days. Lan Zhan stands up to his uncle about his boyfriend. He shuts the door in Jiang Cheng’s face as he swears obscenities up and down the hall. They adopt two rabbits and a beta fish. They join, and leave, a hobby orchestra. Wei Ying is expressly forbidden from the Lan Family private museum.
“You like my sweets.” Wei Ying sing-songed as they snuggled on the couch, a tray of matcha fudge cooling in the kitchen amongst a newly ruined plastic bowl.
The local thrift store is run by grannies who Wei Ying charms into letting him take the kitchen donations they couldn't sell. Wei Ying burns and melts them all, but he does bring back the successful treats.
“It's quiet in my head when I make things for you, er-gege.” He traces Lan Zhan’s hands resting over his knees. There’s a deep breath. “Who else would make you banana nice cream if I wasn't here, hmm?"
Wei Ying has bad days.
He knows he has bad days. He keeps a list of desserts he wants to make when he feels them coming.
One page is special. It's marked 'Not for a bad day.'. It’s a crinkled sheet of notebook paper shoved into the back, the corners bent and soft. There’s at least four different colored inks on it. He bribes Wen Qing to take him to a class at the community center instead of dinner one night, a class the two get kicked out. It’s one of his favorite memories. It was not a bad day.
Wei Ying does not have a bad day when he starts it. His sister has been instructed all she can do is help keep the pans alive. Wei Ying does not have a bad day when Nie Huaisang crashes into the apartment from the window bringing covert supplies. Wei Ying feels the bad day trying to take him as his chocolate seizes up until a firm voice reminds him why he’s doing this,
Wei Ying does not have a bad day he feeds the first bite of the four tier wedding cake he baked for his husband on their wedding day. In their vows, Lan Zhan promised to be there for all of his bad days.
A-Yuan has bad days.
A-Yuan doesn’t tell his new baba or his new a-die about his bad days. He doesn’t want them to send him away. He hides his tears. He tries not to make noise.
But his baba is smart.
He doesn’t go to preschool on bad days. His baba doesn’t go to work on bad days. They sit in the kitchen, crushing oreos in plastic bags with their feet.
“Little Radish,” baba says. “We’ll make your a-die mudpie pudding today. And then we’ll watch movies and read books and color, and maybe, maybe visit your aunties at the store because I think we broke the rolling pin.” Baba laughs before picking him up. “I know what it feels like to have a bad day. Making treats for a-die is like medicine that makes the bad days get better. And I bet he’ll stay home with us tomorrow.”
Lan Zhan does not go to work the next day.
They take a picture of the three of them laying in the grass at the park together, eating leftover mudpie pudding.
They start a binder - A-Yuan and Baba’s Bad Day Cures.
The first recipe is for tanghulu.