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They have tickets to go to the aquarium, and Lan Wangji is still in his room. The children are ready, old enough to dress themselves with no tears and only one inside-out sweatshirt, playing with a Lego set they’ve been collectively struggling with for two weeks. There are no tears or arguments yet, but there will be if Lan Wangji doesn’t move his ass, and the they can kiss the quiet evening goodbye. A-Ling and A-Yuan are good kids, but they’re still kids, and Jiang Cheng for one is excited to see Lan Wangji’s prissy face get splashed by a fish at one of the petting tanks.
The tickets are untimed and free because of Jiang Cheng’s job at a partner aquarium. But it’s the principle of the thing. Lan Wangji is so late the kids had time to cycle through the dinos, planets, or planes t-shirt dilemma four times.
“Stop if you get frustrated,” Jiang Cheng says, standing and leaving the kids to their own devices.
He enters Lan Wangji’s room without knocking, revenge for Lan Wangji doing the same to him three weeks ago. It’s the little things that bring joy. But instead of indignation he’s met with silence, an empty room, and an open bathroom door.
“I’m coming in,” Jiang Cheng says. He’s not a complete monster. Then, in case Lan Wangji wants to get annoyed by it: “Door was open.”
Lan Wangji does not look annoyed. He looks at Jiang Cheng through the mirror, angry and frustrated and—
He’s gotten dressed, but his hair is half-brushed, down around his shoulders, and his shirt is wrinkled as if he’s struggled into it.
Life insurance settlements can’t buy happiness, but they can buy a nice accessible house with en-suite bathrooms for each of them, and a separate one for the kids. Like Jiang Cheng’s, Lan Wangji’s bathroom boasts a luxurious tub and extensive mirror with a large counter, which he normally takes full advantage of, vain and fancy as he is.
His hairbrush is on the ground. Lan Wangji is silent.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t say anything—it would be wrong, somehow. He kneels, picks up the brush, drops it into Lan Wangji’s hand. Waits.
Lan Wangji lifts it, begins brushing—his hand doesn’t seem to follow, and the brush falls—again, into the same place Jiang Cheng lifted it from. How long has he been trying to do this? Lan Wangji is many things but he is always punctual and always pretty—
Jiang Cheng kneels, picks up the brush, hands it over again.
Still looking at Lan Wangji through the mirror. Still silent. What a sick, awkward, stupid dance.
Lan Wangji is punctual, vain, and above all stubborn, forcing Jiang Cheng twice more through the charade until his knees protest and the hairbrush, clattering a fourth time, stays put. Waiting.
“Idiot,” Jiang Cheng says.
Lan Wangji doesn’t respond. Stubborn. Asshole. Proud through it all, for no reason other than misguided self-preservation. Well. It takes one to know one. Jiang Cheng can work with that.
He picks up the hairbrush, glaring all the while, holding Lan Wangji’s expectant gaze through the mirror.
“You’ll just drop it again.”
Lan Wangji looks away, down to the side, clenches his left hand, then relaxes it and uses it to draw his right arm near and massage it, just below his shoulder. As if Jiang Cheng won’t notice. Jiang Cheng was there when that arm was torn apart, along with Lan Wangji’s back. It doesn’t usually bother him like this. It bled heavily—Lan Wangji wore white even then—Jiang Cheng’s sister died in his arms and his brother in Lan Wangji’s—carnage, fear, fire everywhere—A-Ling and A-Yuan hearing of their parents, never truly knowing them.
Jiang Cheng walked away from the car wreck. Lan Wangji didn’t. Jiang Cheng didn’t either, not really, in no way other than physically.
“I’ll do it,” he says.
Lan Wangji didn’t come to the funerals and has been by Jiang Cheng’s side every moment since.
Not going to the aquarium is out of the question. They can always go to the one Jiang Cheng works at—“It’s the same as coming home,” A-Ling said once, splashing around, endearing himself to everyone around as long as he was rested and well-fed, until the tantrums came, and Jiang Cheng thought of his sister, who never saw him work with fish, only dream of it, still tied to their parents’ expectations and desires. Just as Jiang Cheng’s sister will never know this joy, A-Ling will never know this sorrow.
The kids are excited to go somewhere new, though. Jiang Cheng can’t carry them both when they get tired. Whatever his arm is doing, Lan Wangji can still go, can hold them in his lap. He would have backed out otherwise. His pride always falls before the children’s happiness and comfort. And Jiang Cheng needs to see Lan Wangji get splashed by a fish. It’s possible—the space is fully accessible. He checked twice.
“You didn’t even have fish pets growing up, did you?” he says needlessly as he takes a section of hair and begins brushing. A provocation. Lan Wangji, as angry as he is about it, is fiercely protective of his strict, sheltered youth.
Lan Wangji grew up without pets. Jiang Cheng’s brother learned that fact and told it to him, wide-eyed and offended on his behalf. Pets were a sore spot between them ever since Jiang Cheng gave up his puppies for his brother, deadly afraid of dogs, even small ones. They were allowed to feed Zidian, his mother’s ill-tempered eel, if they behaved. Jiang Cheng’s brother never behaved.
Lan Wangji was a teacher’s pet growing up in a family of teacher’s pets, so he never suffered the indignity of collective punishment. Only once. When they all got drunk at summer camp, Lan Wangji in the wrong place at the wrong time, not even truly guilty, yet beaten with the rest of them for delinquency all the same. Stupid, suffering with them, and for what?
Jiang Cheng’s mother did not like his brother because he was not her son. The jury was still out on Jiang Cheng himself. The few times he fed Zidian as a child, he was alone, his brother somewhere else—at school, at work, with Lan Wangji.
Zidian’s tank is now in the bunnies’ room. Another benefit of the house, of the insurance. His mother’s terrifying electric eel, sharing a room with rabbits. She’s mellowed. Jiang Cheng, in his line of work, knows not to anthropomorphize animals. He can’t, working with the sea’s least-loved creatures, ugly, unsociable ones people gawk at with disgust even as they respect the “DO NOT KNOCK ON THE GLASS” and “NO LOUD NOISES” signs. Still, Zidian’s nicer now. More welcoming.
The rabbits are good, too, even if Lan Wangji raised them. Ostensibly the children did. Jiang Cheng lies to himself about many things, but in this he is honest. Few things bring joy to Lan Wangji. Or to him. Rabbits? So let there be rabbits.
Besides, Lan Wangji raised the kids, too, and they’re good kids. The best.
“Come on,” he says when Lan Wangji doesn’t move after he's finished two sections of hair. “Budge up.”
Lan Wangji glares at him. Good. An angry Wangji he can deal with. Jiang Cheng makes his most expectant face. He pulls some stray hairs from the brush, clumps them up, throws them in the lidless trashcan.
Lan Wangji swallows, shifts his shoulders, braces his hands on the wheelchair's armrests, so careful with his right arm, so clearly moving it along for stability rather than true aid. Can he even shift his weight using just his left arm? Jiang Cheng wants to offer help. Doesn’t. feels like a swine, but Lan Wangji wouldn’t let him anyway.
It takes Lan Wangji three times to push himself forward enough that Jiang Cheng can access the back of his head, three tense, painful minutes when he pretends not to hurt, not to struggle. He slumps left when he settles, breathing heavily, looking at Jiang Cheng through the mirror as if daring him to say something.
Jiang Cheng brushes. The brush moves smoothly, catching where the sectioning is off. He moves on, little by little, all the way around. Lan Wangji’s hair is heavy and down to his waist, impractically long with the wheelchair’s high back and the nerve damage in his arm that rears its head often enough for Jiang Cheng to know how to do his hair but not often enough for the kids to catch on. When they do his hair, sometimes, one braid each, hanging over Lan Wangji’s shoulders like he’s about to pick flowers in a meadow, A-Yuan’s braid so much neater than A-Ling’s, and neither child realizes Lan Wangji truly needs help and isn't just humoring them.
Lan Wangji didn’t let them at first. “It’s not their job to help me,” he said when Jiang Cheng asked while the kids pouted at his refusal. “I won’t have them responsible for me.”
“Idiot,” Jiang Cheng said. He braided his sister’s hair. So did his brother. Their mother didn’t let them, and they wanted to so badly.
Lan Wangji has beautiful hair. Jiang Cheng will never say it out loud again. He said so then, said that Lan Wangji wasn’t a burden, that neither of them was, that the children will not grow up as they did, too soon and too harshly, will never feel the gnawing pain telling them they’re asking for too much or taking up too much room.
He puts the brush aside and braids Lan Wangji’s hair, adding all the pretty pins he pretends not to notice, ties it off with a bow and looks away as Lan Wangji heaves himself back into place, inch by inch. Looks away, grabbing the brush again, picking hair from it, clumping it up, throwing it away.
Lan Wangji’s hand is shaking when he puts it back on the wheelchair controls, but the chair itself moves steadily when he commands it.
“We’re coming!” Jiang Cheng shouts, leaving the bathroom first.
By the time they come out, the kids have put away the Lego set, as unfinished as when they started. Jiang Cheng ruffles their hair and pushes them to the door for shoes. They’re good kids. They did good.