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perhaps, and this was just jiang cheng’s take, but perhaps there was indeed a god. a very cunning, trickster god, that hated his guts.

he’d been in his new apartment for almost 2 weeks at that point, and while yes, he had expected some struggles into adapting to the new living facilities 一 and consequently new schedules and habits 一, things had gone so comically bad he was almost certain of an evil, divine intervention.

the building itself was fine. of course, it lacked most amenities he could find at home 一 my parents’ home , he reminded himself 一 but he liked to believe that the 4 years he spent living at his cousin’s bungalow in new york for university had turned him capable of surviving most adversities.

including probably the white spot on the bathroom floor which he was sure was some super std created after years of the most diversive sexual escapades the man had experienced. which, good for him, honestly. jiang cheng just truly didn’t want his sister to have to learn about his untimely demise due to being infected by some syphilis-gonorrhoea hybrid virus. 

no, the place was fine. the nice lady whom he shared the wall with was a blessing. the way the sun hit his room’s window in the morning was madenning, heating the place up like he was standing in a sauna, but he didn’t spend that much time still, so he just told himself to suck it up.

it was, however, due to his change in zip code that the other areas in his life started to go in disarray. 

jiang cheng didn’t move as much as he ran away. which was fine, he was a grown man, he payed for his own bills. jiang cheng also worked at his family’s company, which had never been a problem per say 一  except by the whole part that when your family owns a business, your family is a business, and there is a reason why experts say one shouldn’t mix personal life and work, and, hell, they were right.  

however he went from seeing his father in the office maybe around once, during briefings, to every other day. living at home he did see his father everyday, however living at home he wasn’t a walking disappointment to the jiang family name like he became after running away to live in a “hole in the wall junky’s den” (his aunt's words, not his). seeing that was the case he had to endure a 45 minutes speech every time he ran into his father in the coffee room, and had to stand his ground into not moving back home.

it could be a coincidence, jiang cheng certainly thought so the first and second time. however, after the 30th in a week and his jiejie’s reminder that jiang fengmian did not drink coffee, due to his ibs, he realised the trap he was set up in. 

you see, jiang cheng also didn’t drink coffee 一 it gives him headaches 一 but it just so happened that, mysteriously , every water fountain in his floor had disappeared, and the only one left was in the coffee break room where his father apparently stood guard at all times of day to catch his son in his most vulnerable time.

(jiang cheng had considered just bringing multiple water bottles to work but he reasoned with himself that it was better to be cornered by his father in a common area than at the loo. which the man, undoubtedly, would resort to.)

jiang cheng would be perplexed how someone can be so petty and run a company at the same time if he was still a child and believed that just because his father’s name was listed as the ceo he was actually the head of the company.

he rejoiced, not for the first time, that his mother disliked people enough to never come to the building and deal with workers, otherwise he could expect to walk in one day to see his office on fire and the only extinguisher in the building placed under his mother’s foot.

on top of insane family drama, jiang cheng also had to deal with his dog.

he pitied fairy 一 well, he pitied fairy more than usually , being a meter tall, 34kg siberian-malamute mix named fairy.

sometimes he regretted letting a 10 years old name his dog, but jiang cheng felt sorry for his nephew’s misfortune, not only being born into the jiang family but also having that illiterate small-penis-compensating absolute madman of a father. no wonder the kid was a thigh fist with hair at an abhorrently young age.

he had looked so happy seeing the pup that before jiang cheng could stop himself he had already left the question leave his mouth. 

jin ling did declare him his favourite uncle that day 一 which, considering the fact  that if you threw  a rock at any direction in hong kong you’d probably hit an uncle of his, was saying a lot 一, so jiang cheng thought it was worth it.

but that aside, fairy was a large dog that was now confined to a very small space. jiang cheng, feeling bad for him, tried to walk him multiple times a day if possible.

taking into account his horrible luck he should’ve know that an accident was bound to happen sooner or later. that afternoon fairy just simply took off running after a squirrel, ignoring jiang cheng’s shrieking orders at him to stop, and running over an elderly couple on his way. 

3 years of training and he just decided to go apeshit. 

jiang cheng sighed in despair as he pulled the beast back home, tired and ready to go to sleep and forget that day ever happened.

fairy, evidently, wasn’t done for the day as he decided to, very enthusiastically, befriend one of their neighbours 一 a very cute even if scared looking one, his mind provided glancing at the man trying to make himself one with the lift wall 一 jumping the man.

the way he was shrinking onto himself made jiang cheng believe he was probably afraid of being hurt, something he couldn’t blame anyone for, having chosen to raise a pony sized monstrosity of a pet.

jiang cheng pulled at his leash firmly and practically barked, “sit down and obey”.

which, being the somewhat reasonable good boy that he was, fairy did.

what neither of them expected, however, was seeing cute neighbour doubling over, and standing on his knees on the lift’s floor.

jiang cheng most certainly was having a stroke and imagining things, he decided while looking aghast at the man, noticing from his peripheral vision a very confused fairy glancing between the two.

“woof?” is the answer provided to whatever expression jiang cheng was showing in his face.

you need to lay down , his mind concluded just as the door to his floor opened. 

he pulled fairy outside with him with a struggle 一 the little bastard probably delighted in what he thought was a new friend 一, and didn’t look back.

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“what i’m saying,” nie mingjue drilled in, not noticing (or rather choosing to ignore) the fifth time jiang cheng sighed in despair. “is that you’re born from crazy, it’s not your fault for being the way you are.” and were it not for their 5 years of friendship, or the 30 cm of being the man held over him, jiang cheng would’ve picked a fight.

considering this, and mingjue’s gun collection, jiang cheng settled for throwing a ball around the confined space of his flat for fairy to catch.

“it’s always a pleasure to be able to count with your unshakable friendship.” and he couldn’t see, but he could feel the other man’s eye roll through the call.

“do you want me to list all the insanity you have committed in over 15 days or would you like to preserve your ever so frail self esteem?” 

“i fail to see how other people’s random actions are a reflection of my personality.”

mingjue snorted. loudly . “yes, i bet you got held at gunpoint by your 13 year old nephew and forced to move out, because he wanted a bigger bedroom.”

“i made a normal, adult, responsible decision and i’ve been mercilessly punished for it by the universe.”

“get off the cross you nailed yourself in, use the wood to build a bridge and get over it.” through the line jiang cheng could hear mingjue furiously typing in his computer and was momentarily glad the man had moved to taipei 一 even if it meant he lost his best workout partner. “you don’t see yanli complaining and her life is objectively harder.”

jiang cheng couldn’t help but agree with that.

while, like his friend so helpfully pointed out, they hadn’t had a choice in regards to their ancestry, it seemed to affect his poor jiejie to a point where the abnormalities of their lives felt to her like the standard. so she searched for it in every non-familiar aspects of her day.

jiang cheng had a weird dog that behaved like he knew something that his owner didn’t, yanli married a man that turned his own image into a golden dildo so he could literally be so full of himself, and together they created the most infuriating, self-absorbed, spoiled human being in the history of existence.

being a billionaire could pay for her therapy, but it would never make her life ok.

“maybe it’s your hair?” his friend provided over the phone.

“unprovoked?” 

“maybe your mother would love you if you cut it off.”

“my mother does-” memories flooded his head. he shook them away. “i’d be incredibly concerned about my personality if my mother loved me.”

“oh trust me, you should be concerned about it anyway.”

“you’re always a delight to talk to da-ge.”

“you could call your other friends, if you had any.” it was jiang cheng’s turn to roll his eyes.

“i have friends.”

“oh yeah?” suddenly the older’s voice picked up, getting visibly amused. “who?”

“well, lan xi-”

“xichen doesn’t count, he calls his rock collection his friends.” it was true. jiang cheng started just to be cut off again. “and yanli is blood, you can’t categorise her as a friend.” he scoffed.

“i wanna see you say that to her face.”

“wouldn’t work. she’s eye level with my belly button.” he digressed. “don’t change subjects.”

“well…” jiang cheng racked his mind over. he wasn’t the most friendly of people. he never saw a problem with it when the example of human interaction he had at home growing up was similar to the political relationship established between east and west germany during the cold war, with him and his jiejie acting as the berlin wall preventing possible crimes against humanity.

it was hard to maintain a friendship with someone when you lived your whole life listening to your mother talk about how other people are only as good as what they can give you.

in parallel to that, jiang cheng also had a lot of difficulties maintaining relationships due to residual trauma from his father “befriending” every nanny, secretary, cook, or any female identifying personnel that had ever worked for them.

“well, i made a friend this week.” he cringed, both at the lie and at how he sounded like a 5 years old that had just entered kindergarten.

“a real one?” once again jiang cheng could picture his friend’s face, as he probably raised an eyebrow and stared at the phone in disbelief. he hummed in agreement even through this telematic scrutiny. “where from?”

“he’s a neighbour.” a smile formed in his face, even though he bit down at his lip, remembering their earlier interaction. the man was funny, even if a bit weird. “he’s nice.” had looked nice enough, and acted with the right spice of stupidity that, despite jiang cheng’s better judgement, also instinctively called to him. maybe he and yanli were the fucked up ones in the end.

“yeah, i don’t trust that.” mingjue voice ringed through the room after a beat in silence.

“what? why?”

“you don’t do friends. and you certainly don’t do nice.”

“i’m friends with you .” jiang cheng accused.

“my point exactly.” one could say whatever they wanted about nie mingjue, except that he wasn’t self aware. “we met cause i set your brother-in-law’s car on fire after he threw garbage on the floor and refused to pick it up.”

“as it was your right.” the man somehow managed to spit out through cackling like a maniac remembering the incident 一 yanli’s forehead had crinkled badly as jin ling danced around the carbonated car like he was chanting some diabolic entity. jiang chang had stepped between a pissed off jin zixun and a nie mingjue that was shaking in anger. he knew his sister’s husband was too much of a coward to try and pick up a fight with anyone taller than his son, so he simply smirked in defiance and said i’m keeping him , pointing at the then officer mingjue.

“regardless. i don’t trust一”

“wait, sorry, da-ge.” the phone started vibrating signalling another call and jiang cheng picked it up. upon glancing at the screen he sighed. “wen ning is calling me.” that usually bred trouble.

“why don’t you call him your friend?” mingjue was clearing enjoying himself if the teasing tone was anything to go by.

“i know you think i have low self-esteem, but it's still there, i assure you.” it wasn’t specifically that jiang cheng wasn’t friendly towards the boy, but there was something inside him that screeched and died at the prospect of calling his mum’s assistant a friend. “i’ll call you later.” both of them bade goodbye quickly so jiang cheng could pick up the other’s call. “yes?”

“we have a problem.” as desperate wen ning’s tones goes, this was close to a watergate scandal on the scale. jiang cheng could feel a headache painting the inside of his lids.

“wanna hit the gym and talk about it there?” at least bench pressing 130kg jiang cheng would feel less inclined to throw himself out of the window, if the subject of their discussion was what it often was; his mother.

“i’ve been一 oh my god, i’m so sorry.” the boy apologised quickly as he almost face planted into someone’s chest. jiang cheng rolled his eyes while trying to remember why it was that somehow they bonded over gym when he didn’t trust wen ning to stand still without permanently injuring himself. “i’ve been trying to distract her, but the woman is resilient.” 

jiang cheng scoffed at that. “i’ve once seen my mother set all of my father’s clothes on fire because he refused to tell her the secret he was so obviously keeping from her.” his ponytail swinged as he curled the weight in his left arm. “it was a surprise birthday party.” 

“yes, she does not like to be kept in the dark.” wen ning looked around anxiously. “i’m afraid she might hire a p.i. to try and track you.”

“not like i work in our family’s company and she could just simply stop by and ask me herself.”

“perhaps you could just… go back home?” the man offered and flinched immediately and jiang cheng unceremoniously dropped the dumbbells on the floor.

“nope.” with an emphasised p.

“please, just consider it.” his eyes made it seem like he was pleading for his life. knowing his mother, jiang cheng thought he might actually be. “i mean, it’s not even like you’ve upgraded your living facilities.”

surely, the flat didn’t even minimally resemble the sheer 800 square meter monstrosity of a home the jiang state stood on, but he took offence to the comment nonetheless. “it’s a perfectly fine building, it is.” he grumbled directing himself to the leg press.

“it doesn’t even have parking spots.”

“it’s right by the tube and has loads of bus stops nearby, i don’t need to use a car.” it also lacked any member of his family in it, which was a joy in itself. “the people are nice.”

“well, it’s not like you have a really high bar to consider someone as a good person.” unfortunately for jiang cheng, that base-level statement seemed to be true. he gave wen ning a stinky eye all the same.

that’s when his mind reeled in on the encounter a couple of days back and he had to bit his mouth to stop the smile forming in it. 

as insane as it was 一 and jiang cheng was still having trouble identifying if that was a figment from his imagination, steaming from the very clear mental illness genes that ran through his blood 一 he couldn’t help but be captivated by the man in the lift. “hey, a-ning, do you like dogs?”

the man stopped the bottle he was on the process of raising to his mouth 一 for which reason jiang cheng wasn’t aware since the biggest exercise the man had done since they stepped foot inside the gym was the mental gymnastics he performed into trying to convince jiang cheng to return home 一 and furrowed his brow. “as a dish?”

“as a d一” jiang cheng suddenly felt tired right down to his bones. “as an animal!” it wasn’t exactly an yell, he minded the public space, but he went as close to it as he could.

“oh.” as his face went blank jiang cheng felt his blood boil some more. “i don’t have a strong opinion on it.” shocker , the long haired man’s mind provided.

“do you have strong opinions on anything?” came out mockingly. jiang cheng wasn’t expecting an answer, but then again, wen ning wasn’t a person that usually fit inside expectations.

“white rhinos.” 

“what?”

“do you know the difference between white rhinos and regular grey, or black rhinos?” suddenly there was a spark to his eyes that jiang cheng semdomly saw. 

“i don’t care?!” it was the first time jiang cheng felt like crying on the gym. he really needed to bring nie mingjue back in town so he could have an excuse to never go out with wen ning ever again. he settled for avoiding eye contact by focusing on the exercise at hand, and luckily enough that seemed to stop the other man from drilling in what was probably considered a polarising discourse into species extermination.

mingjue was right; he didn’t do normal people.

“why are you asking anyway?” wen ning inquired after a couple of minutes in silence.

“i’ve met someone,” bite off the smile, shake the head off of thoughts. focus . “a friendly neighbour.”

“spiderman?”

“i will lose my temper, i swear!” the hands holding the grips were shaking, and not by exhaustion. jiang cheng took a deep breath. “we met at the lift. fairy was acting up and…”

wen ning’s eyebrow raised, serving as a question mark. jiang cheng shrugged.

“i don’t know, maybe he really likes dogs.”

“he tried to pet fairy?”

“he barked.”

confusion clouded wen ning’s face.

“at fairy?”

“at me.”

“well, maybe he speaks dog.” came the man’s conclusion in a heartbeat. jiang cheng stopped the exercise and decided it was time to go home.

“forget it.”

“what else could it be?”

“well一” this time around he raised his voice too much, if the pointed looks he got from the people around them was anything to go by. “well,” a whisper-yell came as he got off the leg press. “maybe he just knew how to get a dog to behave, i mean, for a second there i was afraid fairy might bite him, but then he just stopped.”

“he didn’t bite him though, right?” wen ning passed the man his water bottle as jiang cheng shook his head in reply. “good, he might’ve gotten a disease.”

why were everyone trying to personally attack him that day was beyond him, but jiang cheng would be dead before he let anyone try and shit-talk fairy. “fairy is a healthy dog, he has gotten all his vaccines一”

“i know.” wen ning cut him off and then shrugged. “i was afraid fairy might’ve gotten a disease from him.” jiang cheng looked at him puzzled. “the man barked. i don’t think he’s healthy.” and somehow that managed to piss jiang cheng even more. but before he could start his spill about how wen ning wasn’t even there and couldn’t possibly judge someone he didn’t know, the man continued his rambling. “then again, he might’ve just sensed the dog genes in your blood.”

“he what my what ?” wen ning looked at him like he grew a second head. “i don’t have dog genes, what are you talking about?” 

“of course you have. it’s in your family.” he went on like it was the most natural conclusion one could come to. “i mean, have you ever been to your sister’s?” before he could control himself, jiang cheng had grabbed the man by his collar, inching his face to his, baring his teeth.

“my sister is not a dog.” every word came out enunciated slowly. wen ning didn’t seemed fazed however.

“no, not her.” he attempted (uselessly) to pry jiang cheng’s fingers away. “but i have seem your mother put a muzzle on jin ling.” jiang cheng dropped him unceremoniously. he just happened to remember that occasion very clearly as well. 

“he started biting people when he got angry a couple years back.” the man mumbled around his water bottle’s cap. hospice , his mind provided, you lived in a hospice . “forget i said anything. i don’t even know why i brought it up.”

“well,” wen ning grunted as he got up from the floor on his own, after jiang cheng pointedly ignored his raised hand asking for help. “why did you?”

well, because he seemed cute and the right dash of crazy that makes someone attractive to me apparently and i’m not good at approaching people , he thought. “i wanted to make friends.” came out instead. wen ning barked a laugh but suppressed it quickly, albeit with some difficulty if his facial expression and his shaking shoulders were something to go by. “what?”

“it’s just,” the other waved his hands around dismissively. “it’s just that you’re not the most friendly person in the world, a-cheng.” and suddenly, if jiang cheng just closed his eyes, he could picture wen qing in front of him, ripping him a new one with her condescending tone. a cold chill went through his spine.

“well,” jiang cheng began, defensively. “i might not be the most open, talkative person out there一”

“you walked out of the interstellar screening you went with lan-laoshi because,” the man wiggled his fingers to emphasise quotation marks, “it was making you feel emotions, like a thirteen years old.” and just like that jiang cheng felt the urge to yell, have you met my parents , but being raised by a high functioning sociopath and an absent womaniser of a father wasn’t an excuse to be emotionally constipated like he was seeing that a-li was, well, a-li.

“it was make pretend, it was stupid to feel anything over it.” was the retort he settled for instead.

“your greeting smile looks like a shark attack about to happen.” there was an occasion where one of jin ling’s friends peed his pants after greeting the man. jiang cheng simply flipped him off and stumped his way outside of the gym, ignoring wen ning’s calls.

“not friendly.” the door slammed behind him as he entered, making fairy raise his head from his bed in confusion. “he sounds like a peeled cucumber and his only friend is that pocket sized conor mcgregor of a sister and he has the audacity of talking about my friendship making skills?!” fairy tilted his head as jiang cheng’s voice got progressive louder and the vein in his forehead started to appear. “i mean,” he almost ripped his shirt off of his back as he made his way to the bathroom. “maybe he should concentrate on his one job of keeping my mother from commiting first degree murder, which,” he stopped to throw fairy one of the pets on top of the table so the dog would stop with the sudden howling. “which, by the way, is the only place his stunted emotional response of a self would be able to have a job, since she managed to send her last two assistants , actually functional human beings , into a mental institution under 6 months,” fairy got louder by the second as he went on. “what’s wrong boy?!” jiang cheng asked exasperated. “it’s not like you’ve never been on the rain befo一”

his mind screeched in place as he took in the fact that it was raining inside his apartment.

jiang cheng looked outside the living room window to confirm that it wasn’t raining outside, the way he remembered not even 5 minutes prior. he then noticing the fire alarm sounding off and looked up to see that the sprinklers were in action. “oh.” he dashed to the door, opening it in a hassle to almost run into the janitor.

“everyone, calm down, an accident triggered the sprinklers but there is no fire.” behind the constant chitter-chatter he could hear throughout the floor, there was a faint ‘ aaaaaaaah’ coming from somewhere above them.

“fairy, stay.” he ordered at the dog that was almost in the process of running him over to go into the hallway and make sense of the commotion. jiang cheng closed the door behind him and ignored the man trying to get people to return to their homes, as he took the door to the left, closest to the lift’s entrance, where the sound resonated louder from. he followed it upstairs as it was mixed with pleas of help, making him fasten his pace. 

surprisingly, however, upon reaching the 10th floor, it was bare of any human life, with the exception of someone running up the corridor, something smoking from where it was held in their hand. “what the fuck is happening here?” he walked further into the hallway as the person stopped their frantic attics.

as he approached them jiang cheng did a one over taking in the round, one-eyed character printed in the trouser’s bottom and a nonsensical checkered pattern in their shirt, both soaked through. what made him stop, however, was somewhat recognising the jaw length, light brunette hair, the same one that cute neighbour sported, alongside being able to make out the resemblance of what once might have been a frying pan, in the man’s hand.

“hey, are you ok?” worry suddenly washed over him, on top of his pre-existing panic mode. the man had seemed to go into shock, as he was so still, jiang cheng was almost sure he had stopped breathing. looking around he realised there was only a single door open in the whole floor. his logic mind started to piece things together, as his eyes traced back to the man who had then started to turn around. 

taking it like he would with a scared rescue, jiang cheng tried to be as still as he could and allow the man to make the first movement. “yeah, i’m… fine.” he managed to stutter out after a while.

when he finally faced the other, the cute neighbour looked positively frightened, his jaw a bit slack and his eyes incredibly wide, not being able to look jiang cheng in the face. 

“oh, i know you.” jiang cheng offered, like the liar he was, pretending he hadn’t recognised the man a while ago. “you’re elevator guy.” he offered the smile he usually reserved for his jiejie 一 because, fuck you, wen ning, he could be friendly and approachable when he wanted to 一, as the man finally looked at him in the eyes. “i don’t think we’ve introduced ourselves,” despite a couple of my acquaintances, and my dog, knowing you as barking neighbour , his mind provided with guilt, “my name is jiang cheng, i’m your neighbour from 906.” jiang cheng would offer his hand in greeting were the other not darting his eyes, again, looking anywhere but at him, like jiang cheng had offended him somehow.

but then suddenly, the man closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. when he opened them again, his eyes glinted with a resolve he had seen a couple of times in wen qing when she talked about her corpse dissection classes in uni 一 which frightened him a bit 一 and he smiled confidently which, cute .

his hand 一 the one not holding, as yet to be identified, kitchen appliance 一 was raised in the space between the two, and jiang cheng proceeded to mirror the motion when, “titties!”

jiang cheng had to fight off the reflex of crossing his arms over his chest as his eyes darted between the neighbour's face and what he could see from his shirtless torso. 

he opens his mouth, although he has no idea what to say, and looks back up in time to see the man turning around on his heels, dashing to the open door in the hallway, and slamming it behind himself with a wail resounding through the corridor.

yeah , he admitted to himself as he was still frozen in place minutes after the interaction happened, i do attract a certain type of weirdos .

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“why are fire extinguishers so expensive?” jiang cheng ponders out loud as he looked through amazon, after browsing uselessly through home security appliances in both taobao and jd’s websites.

it was probably common knowledge but jiang cheng still had some experiences that he missed on, due to his upbringing. he suddenly felt guilty about judging his mum the one time she went to visit him in the states.

(she had all but refused to even step foot at the neighbourhood he stayed at, and since his double major kept him busy they agreed to meet at a starbucks near campus. she met him outside with a condescending sigh after giving him an once over, but he tried not to take it to heart. they entered and jiang cheng greeted isabela, the barista taking orders, who had to see him multiple times a week as he stopped by for his peach oolong tea and a scone, foregoing introducing his mother to her, knowing the woman simply wouldn’t care to even look at her direction, and order his usual.

“mum?” he called to her as she was looking around with slight disgust, she turned her eyes back at him and raised an eyebrow, jiang cheng nodded to the barista, making her sigh and slowly take off her glasses as she inspected the menu with her mouth pulled in a scowl.

it was the first time she stepped into a starbucks.

the woman left out another sigh as she opened her clutch purse. “i’ll have a french roast, venti.” it wasn’t exactly that she enjoyed caffeine, but it pleased her to be able to do something that her husband couldn’t. 

she took out a couple of bills from her purse and placed them on the counter, before turning around and going towards the table. 

jiang cheng watched her go with a similar expression to the one the woman sported looking at her options. his eyes shot back at isabela as he heard the weird coughing sound she made to find her pale as a ghost, with her eyes 5 times their original size, looking at the counter.

there his mother had stacked six 100 dollar bills on top of each other. “jesus chirst.” he cried out, passing his hands through his face.)

he shook his head clean of the memory of his mother almost giving that poor girl a coronary and closed the amazon tabs altogether, deciding to focus on his work.

which lasted for about 5 seconds when the recognition program he ran bipped on the background.

he had coded in a security system to alert him when specific people entered the building with their company id card, so he was warned the second wen ning entered the parking lot.

‘ i know you’re here. come meet me at my office ’ he texted the man remembering the fact that they never finished their talk about his mother’s attempts of finding his new home address, and what that might mean for the apartament complex as a whole.

jiang cheng wouldn’t put it past her buying the whole thing and tearing it down just to force jiang cheng into moving back home.

part of him would like to see her try, knowing very well he could easily find some place else to go, while the other worried for the people that would be collateral damage to their stupid, petty, family drama.

it wouldn’t be fair to his neighbours to have their entire lives turned upside down due to a mad woman’s whims.

and just like that his mind turned back to the cute neighbour and their last interaction on the previous day.

jiang cheng had never been particularly self conscious about his appearances. his low self esteem derived entirely from his family-induced c-ptsd.

he didn’t much actually care about the way his body looked, it all being the result of his liking towards being active and doing sports 一 since it raised his otherwise mariana trench levels of low serotonin, seeing the one time the psychologist he was forced to see as a teenager mentioned to his parents the possibility of him taking meds, he was somehow accused the very next week of money laundering and had to flee the country with the clothes on his back and the entire ministry of economy on his arse 一, aesthetics wasn’t the first thing on his mind, however.

as it as, he wasn’t so dense to not realise that the body he currently sported 一 and had been sporting since he was 15 and his psychologist had to pull a gone girl, leaving him with anger management issues and hyperfixation in dodgeball 一 was very much inside what was considered the “goal”.

therefore, surely, cute neighbour’s comment must’ve been a positive affirmation, he deduced with a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. unless一

unless that wasn’t his type.

unless cute neighbour didn’t like guys that looked like they would stop you in the street to try and sell you into buying whey protein’s shakes.

or maybe cute neighbour was offended by his attire, or lack thereof.

his jiejie had gone through a church phase when she was in high school and was positively scandalised at anyone showing more skin than in a victorian era painting.

“do you like my boobs?” he was eating away at his nails, with a furrowed brow, when he heard the door to his office open.

“they are fine, but i like your sister’s better.” jiang cheng’s eyes shot up to see that the person who had entered the room was, in fact, not wen ning.

“mianmian?!”

“jiang cheng?!” the blonde exclaimed back, with a raised eyebrow and a smirk playing at her lips. “should i be concerned you’re asking about your body parts in the office? is this considered sexual harrassment?” she mused and jiang cheng rolled his eyes.

“what are you doing here?”

“discussing your six pack, apparently.” it appeared to amuse her to no end as jiang cheng got more and more angry by the second.

“i’m serious!” her hand waved around dismissively as she leaned into the threshold. 

“xiao-jiejie asked me to drop some lotus soup for you and jiang-laoban.” just then jiang cheng noticed the plastic bag with a container that she held on the hand that wasn’t on her waist. 

the man hummed. “i was waiting for a-ning.”

“and you were gonna ask that to wen ning?” the smile she held was tight in the way that meant she was thinking about how to break such news to yanli.

just then wen ning appeared besides her. “ask me what?”

“if you like his boobs.” mianmian motioned with her head towards jiang cheng.

“yes. a-cheng’s breasts are very plump.” jiang cheng never wanted to die more in his life as he covered his face with his hand, hearing mianmian boisterous laughter throughout his office. “but why?” the man questioned and it was surprising that jiang cheng managed to hear and the blonde girl doubled over, howling.

“nothing!” he yelled sinking back into his chair. “it’s just something someone said…” the man mumbled as an explanation. 

“oh, is this about bark guy?” a light bulb almost materialised itself atop of wen ning’s head. mianmian stopped gasping for air as she looked dubiously between the two man.

“bark guy?”

“jiang cheng’s neighbour barked at him.” this time around the girl had to physically hold herself to the wall as her entire body shook with laughter.

“he’s a new friend and一”

“jiang cheng一” mianmian gasped out as she tried to control her breathing. “i know you like dogs,” but she surely was having a hard time formulating sentences. “but it is quite sad to call them your friends, seeing you don’t have that many.”

“he’s a human.” jiang cheng yelled, somehow desperate to defend cute neighbour’s honour. 

“that barks ?” the blonde emphasised, as wen ning stood there with all the emotion of a peeled aubergine, glancing between the two.

“well fairy was acting up that day, god knows why, and he walked into the elevator and fairy started jumping up and down at him, and i honestly though he was gonna end up hurting the guy and i tried to get him to stop, but he was very uncooperative, and then the guy kneeled and barked at me to try and catch fairy’s attention, i reckon, maybe he just really likes dogs一” the man barreled out, almost losing mianmian when.

“he kneeled ?” both hers and wen ning’s voices yelled out at the same time. 

jiang cheng left out a deep sigh as wen ning tried to hold mianmian, as the blonde was slowly falling to the floor, her legs having completely given out on her.

“leave. immediately, both of you.” he considers for a long moment calling security, since neither actually worked at pier lotus, but his jiejie would be sad if he kicked out her assistant.

“but you asked me here.” wen ning pointed out, confused.

“leave!” and the mouse he threw at wen ning passed just close enough to his head for him to pull mianmian out of the office like she was a body he was trying to dispose of.

after a couple of moments the man reapered and jiang cheng considered throwing his keyboard at him, but wen ning simply pulled the door close and left.

jiang cheng left out a deep sight and let his head bang against the table.

a couple hours later his wechat biped with a message from wen ning.

‘ we still need to discuss your living arrangements matter .” it read.

it was going to be a long day, he concluded.

and when he found himself the next day, still texting back and forth, defending his choice with a strength that out of context would’ve seemed like he had decided to drop his entire life behind to move to norway to mary a cow and become a yodeler.

‘ she won’t stop until she finds you and then it will be a lot of headache for you to end up moving back in at the end .’ jiang cheng wasn’t gonna move back in, he knew that for certainty. 

he had just tasted freedom for the first time, he wasn’t going to give up, doesn’t matter the costs.

but he couldn’t deny this debacle was definitely taking its toll. he had taken fairy on a walk and barely managed to enjoy it at all trying to convince wen ning to buy him some more time until he could figure out how to get his mum off his track.

he stepped into the lift and pressed for the 9th floor automatically, his mind too focused on explaining to wen ning that the guest house of the estate still counted as living back at home. fairy, sensing his mood, sat quietly at his side.

before he could even realise the lift dinged at his floor and the doors opened. he then pocketesldp his phone.

he mumbled a goodbye cause he might be an antisocial troll, but he was an educated one 一 his many nannies had made sure of that 一, tugging at fairy’s leach for him to follow him along, looking at his side to see cute neighbour standing glued to the wall on the other side.

“goodbye, i love you!” he says smiling and waves a hand as jiang cheng steps out with fairy.

jiang cheng maintains eye contact as his eyebrows raise and the lift doors’ closes, managing to see only a glimpse of the man’s mouth opening before he is gone from view and a shriek can be heard from inside the closed container.

the ravenette stands outside, unmoving, for a few minutes, as he feel a bit of heat rushing to his face. “oh.” 

“are you alright, dear?” a voice sounds behind him and he whips himself around to see an elderly woman.

“oh, sorry, wang-ayi.” jiang cheng quickly stepped aside, pressing the button for the lift for his neighbour.

“it’s alright, dear.” she patted his arm lightly as she held a soft smile. “he’s quite cute isn’t he?!” jiang cheng’s eyes widened briefly before he broke out in laughter.

“yeah. yeah he is.” he agreed fondly. 

“you have a crush on barking boy?” nie mingjue roars in laughter from the other side of the line. jiang cheng oftentimes wondered why he maintained his friendship with the man.

“yeah? well you have a crush on xichen-ge and i’ve seen him apologise to a glass door he run into once.” and just like that the laughter stopped. 

“he’s slow, that’s all.” jiang cheng couldn’t help but appreciate the soft tone his da-ge utilised especially when defending lan xichen, or his stupid little brother and his antics 一 jiang cheng had given up into trying to be introudeced to the boy, with mingjue shuderring in fear everytime and saying that two singulaties should never meet.

“well, so is my neighbour.” he pointed out, choosing to not tease the man about their common friend further. jiang cheng kept reminding himself that nie mingjue had gun s (plural) at his disposal, and he knew for a fact he was a enthusiastic trigger-happy type of man, were the bruises he retained for months after the first and only time they went paintballing was anything to base his assumptions on. “and he has a name, i just don’t know what it is yet.”

“ok, so what’s the game plan?” 

“find out his name while trying to make sure that my mother won’t miley cyrus wrecking ball music video into my place.” he scratched fairy behind his ear making his leg twitch in excitement. he smiled at that. “are you sure you can’t help me一” 

“nope. your mother scares me.” was all he heard before the call got disconnected. 

“coward.” jiang cheng mumbled, before shoving his face into fairy’s belly.

as it was, it didn’t take long for him to complete at least half of his plans for the week. running into cute neighbour two days later as he went to take out his trash.

he had just disposed of 2 days worth of rubbish, having taken his sweet time separating the bags downstairs as he could have an excuse to be away from his phone, and was making his way back towards the elevator, when someone headbutts him in the stomach.

he would be winded if he hadn’t taken 2 years of taekwondo classes with mingjue in the past, which were actually just a legal excuse the man had found to commit battery without  having to deal with misdemeanor charges. 

jiang cheng had had his arse delivered to him so professionally so many times that short of being struck with a hammer he wouldn’t complain much about any physical pain anymore.

that, however, didn’t seem to be the case for the other person. “hey, you should look where you’re going!” jiang cheng looks down as the, now very-recognisable, brunette locks. cute neighbour is bent over, his hands fumbling around motioning at all the waste that is suddenly surrounding both of them. jiang cheng raises an eyebrow entirely too amused. “shit, now i need to clean this mess and一” he stops mid sentence as he looks up.

his facial expression changes about 50 times in the matter of 30 seconds. jiang cheng confirms his assumptions then; the man certainly didn’t feel any different about the other than jiang cheng did.

good.

“excuse me, but you were the one who came running in my direction not even looking up.” the tone he uses is the teasing one he used to pretend argue with his jiejie as to why he didn’t clean his room. he lets his eyes quickly roam cute neighbour’s figure, taking in yet another pair of pajamas. 

this one sports a blond girl with her hair in long pigtails, and a black cat. jiang cheng feels like he should recognise this character but he isn’t exactly pop culture savvy, to put it lightly.

he crosses his arms waiting for the other’s turn in this light banter they apparently have going on, but the man just looks up at him like he’s seeing a really tall giraffe for the first time. he must’ve tired his neck at some point as he shake his head and looks back down.

“oh my god.” he deadpans and drops on his hands and knees. jiang cheng is so startled he almost takes a step back, was he not afraid he would inadvertently step into the man’s hands as he runs them around, trying to pick out the assorted rubbish on the floor 一 and over jiang cheng’s shoes 一 and put them inside a… strip of plastic? jiang cheng isn’t exactly sure what the black contraption in the man’s hand is but taking context clues he would be bold enough to assume it once was a bin bag.

it is an useless attempt, but adorable, nonetheless. jiang cheng chuckles. “funny, this is the second time you get on your knees in front of me, and I still don’t know your name.” 

he knew he was teasing but he simply couldn’t help himself. that was his love language after all.

to his sister’s wedding he brought an actual peacock as the ring bearer to show his support. yanli wasn’t pleased even after he explained the lengths he had to go to convince lan xichen to train it to walk from point a to point b.

(“you had to say please?” the girl asked with as much anger as she could muster in her voice, which, granted, wasn’t much.

“well yes, and also had to say yes to sponsoring a panda in a zoo in taipei.”

“what?” his jiejie side tracked for a minute before shaking her head straight. “why did it have to be lan-er dage, anyway?”

“peacocks are very aggressive creatures.” the, then 15 years old jiang cheng had to try his hardest to control the laughter that wanted to bubble out of him. “it is very funny to see something try to actively hurt da-ge while he attempts to love his murderous intents away.”

yanli left out a tired sigh as she shook her head. jiang cheng knew it was partially to hide the smile creeping up on her face, but just like that her eyes snapped open wide. “what did you say?”

“that it tried to kill da-ge?!”

“that it is aggressive?!” they were looking like sounding boards at that point.

“well, yeah.” jiang cheng shrugged confused.

“didn’t you let jin ling go play with it?!”

“shit.” and just like that they both bolted for the door.)

“my name?” cute neighbour repeated in a strangled noise as he finally looked up at jiang cheng.

it was the first chance that he got to properly look at his face and jiang cheng must say he liked the man’s nose better, out of all his other, very pretty, features. 

the man looks back a him, mouth slightly ajar, and jiang cheng can’t control the corners of his mouth from pulling upwards as a bit of colour shows itself on the man’s cheeks.

“so,” he crouches down to be at eye level with him, “your name?” jiang cheng crosses his hands on his back to try and ignore the twitch in his hands to put a strand of the man’s hair that had fallen into his face behind his ear.

even more dashing this close , jiang cheng thought. unfair .

he seems to scan jiang cheng’s face, and for the first time maybe ever the ravenette feels conscious. as the silent seconds drag on he wonders if perhaps he shouldn’t have listened to his sister’s biped of a husband’s skin care tips.

“wei wuxian,” he says finally. “my name is wei wuxian.”

wei wuxian , the cute neighbour.

jiang cheng has to put all of his strength into not smiling like an imbecile, after finally, finally , putting a name to the face. 

hi, wei wuxian, can i call you a-xian? , is what he wants to say, but just like that his frantic movements that had otherwise stopped up until that point, resumed their ministries, ten times faster.

“i… uh,” wei wuxian 一 what a nice name , jiang cheng’s mind provides 一 completely foregoes the rest of the bin bag he had attempted to will back into usefulness and just cradles all the rubbish into his arms. “need to go!” he says and it feels like a goodbye and jiang cheng is suddenly entirely too sad that this weird encounter has come to an end.

and then, “trash!” the brunette greets as he dashes way.

jiang cheng is then entirely confused, and concerned that he might’ve read this situation entirely wrong.

he worried on his bottom lip until later that night if he had somehow offended wei wuxian.

“thanks for meeting me da-ge.” as jiang cheng poked around the bland salad that sat in the bowl in front of him, he couldn’t help but wonder how it was that the lan’s was a franchised restaurant and actually made profit under gusu lan inc.

he looked outside the window to the free space for the animal to run through and smiled as fairy played attack with some of the bunnies they had running around, and pretended that he wasn’t giving the poor creatures heart attacks as he lightly closed his teeth around their throats before releasing them so they could run around and he could chase them again.

besides the bunny therapy, he reckoned, their success must also surely be due to their, very smart if he would say so, use of wangji as a champion for the “lan’s vegan lifestyle” restaurant brand.

you could almost forget you were eating food that tastes like wet cardboard while looking at that man’s gorgeous face. 

almost , jiang cheng thought resentfully as he tried to hype himself up into actually putting that into his mouth.

“oh, it’s no problem at all a-cheng.” xicheng dismissed him as he poured them tea into the traditional cups they used. “but go on, you said you had a favour to ask.” 

“right!” jiang chang was grateful for the excuse to talk, so he wouldn’t have to put his tastebuds through the atrocity at hand. lan xichen brought his cup to his lips. “i need your help dealing with my mum.” and the lan xichen started choking on his tea. “shit.” he grabbed for the napkins and handed them to xichen.

jiang cheng felt bad, but as the week approached its end there was still half of his gameplan he had to get at least a headstart on.

“go on.” xichen’s voice came out hoarse after a couple of seconds, and the smile on his face was a bit forced.

“well, i was wondering if you wouldn’t be able to lease me a place.” relief was visible in xichen’s face.

“well, that'd be easy enough.” his smile was now more sincere as he nodded his head. “where were you thinking of moving to?”

“a floor below the one where i’m currently living at.” sometimes jiang cheng managed to convince himself that his life was somewhat normal. 

other times lan xichen looked at him like he had grown a second head and jiang cheng was certain that his life was part of a god’s abandoned game of sims.

he still smiled taking the win, before he felt his phone vibrate.

taking it out of his pocket he could see the wechat notification shining on its screen.

‘ something is wrong. ’ the message from wen ning read.

he explained his plan as quickly as he could to xichen and then took a cab back home to pick the poop collector and travel water container so he could go and meet wen ning at the pond on the park to discuss whatever problem was afoot, like spies did in the good old soviet union days.

he rolled his eyes just before the elevator dinged at his floor and opened its door to reveal one surprise looking wei wuxian

“hi.” jiang cheng mumbles out trying to contain a smile, not really sure yet if wei wuxian had been somehow offended in their last encounter days prior.

fairy stays on a tight leash besides him, to avoid any other barking incidents from happening. jiang cheng has lots on his mind as it is, but the idea of wei wuxian being mad at him was eating away at the man for days. 

so he decided to test the waters, “how are you doing?” he asks as nonchalantly as he could 一  which his sister would call an elephant dressed in a tutu and a green beret trying to hide behind a kart 一 and deflates a bit when the brunette startles a bit at the interaction.

“i’m fine.” his tone however is open and inviting, not clipped like jiang cheng would expect in case he was mad. jiang cheng grips fairy’s leash tighter as wei wuxian brushes a lock out of his face and behind his ear.

“no more running and picking up trash?” comes as a form of distraction to himself from how much he wanted to feel wei wuxian’s hair on his fingertips. it works well however, as the man starts gasping like a goldfish, making a laughter erupt out of jiang cheng’s chest.

“god, no!” he laughs along after a little bit, just as the lift reaches the ground level.

before he has time to feel sad that their interaction had, yet again, come to an end, fairy 一 as the dog he was 一 leaps forward to leave the confined space and out into the open.

jiang cheng tugs at his leash and, blessed by the gods, fairy this time actually remembers his training, not embarrassing him once again in front of the cute man. “good boy.” he can’t help the smirk in his face as wei wuxian slowly steps out of the lift.

“thank you, sir.” and then a whine.

jiang cheng barely has time to raise his eyes at wei wuxian and be confused about the interaction, and the man is already barrelling down the street, jumping over a little kid as if he was a barrier in track day in p.e.

fairy looks at him with a tilted head as jiang cheng laughs so hard he almost lets the lift’s door close them in again.

his good mood is gone almost immediately when he reaches the park.

“oh god, is this an intervention?” he looks behind wen ning and mianmian, expecting to see a row of chairs and jin ling sitting besides his weeping jiejie while holding a sign that says ‘jiujiu, we’re worried about you’. “what is she doing here?” jiang cheng approaches carefully as he nods to mianmian with his chin.

“always nice to see you as well, a-cheng.” the blonde rolls her eyes. jaing cheng is ready to clap back at her when his mind whirls on itself.

“you said there was a problem, is jiejie一”

“a-li is fine.” the girl assures him before he can spin out in theories. jiang cheng leaves out a relieved breath. 

“well, then?”

“there is something going on at the estate.” wen ning starts.

“we don’t know what, but the tension there is palpable.” mianmian actually seems worried. 

which is new.

scary.

“isn’t it always?” utilising sarcasm as a defense mechanism was almost second nature by now. “growing up we never had to used duvets, not even in winter. the temperature was always that of a boiling pot.” he chuckled but grew even more concerned as they looked at him with clipped expressions. “ok, cut it out, what the hell is一” 

and then all of their phones started pinging with messages, at the same time.

“going on…” the voice let him in barely a whisper as his brow furrowed further in worry. the three of them looked at their devices at the same time, and when he read the words, jiang chengs legs almost gave out.

“shit.” the sound came out of mianmian’s mouth as if she had been punched.

jiang cheng managed to avoid all the glasses thrown in his direction but barely.

“mother, please!” he shrieks out in yet another attempt.

as it was, he had lost in rock, paper, scissor to yanli, and wen ning was currently hiding behind the armchair, shaking like there was a tornado nearby.

“if he thinks he can have what’s mine, then he’s terribly wrong.” the woman roared as she broke yet another vase that was probably thousands of years old.

“father doesn’t want the divorce, you’re the one that filled for it.” being reasonable never worked with his mother, much like logic, science or facts.

she lived in her own reality where her word was law.

“i’ll just simply keep my half of the stuff and destroy his.” her tone changed from furious to happy in such speed that jiang cheng was having mental backlashes. “you’ll come home, won’t you, darling? hm?!” as she walked towards her son he backed into the wall like a caged animal. “so i won’t be alone through this?!” 

“mum, you need to explain this to me, i don’t understand一 nobody understands.” tiredness seeped into his bones, settling so deep he felt like he could sleep for the next 10 years. they had been doing this for 12 hours now, midnight was approaching and he didn’t seem close to understand what was that apparently broke the camel's back.

“but maybe i could take everything from him in court, don’t you think so, a-cheng?” the woman continued on her soliloquy as she took a knife 一 a knife?! 一 and headed towards the painting hanging next to the window.

“no! not the van gogh!” that seemed to spring wen ning into action as he threw himself across the room, shielding as best as he could the painting, apparently willing to trade his life for its safety. 

yu ziyuan sighe tiredly and pointed at the man, glancing over her shoulder at her son. “could you please remove it for me, dear, mum had a long day and is very tired.” 

“him, mum, he’s一” just then jiang cheng noticed the time on the clock, snapping back to reality. “shit. fairy.” he sprung forward, removing the knife from the woman’s hand and directing her towards the garage. “cars are very valuable to men, and break very easily.” he prompted.

ziyuan’s eyes glistened as she made her way downstairs.

“listen,” jiang cheng then ran to wen ning and pried the man off of the frame. “i gotta go一”

“what?!” the hold he held in jiang cheng’s arms were enough to bruise.

“fairy’s been alone for hours, i got to tend to him. i’ll leave her in your care.” and despite the death grip wen ning had on him, the ravenette manage to brush him off easily, as he ran towards the front door.

“jiang cheng!” wen ning shrieked in desperation.

“just make sure she doesn’t burn down the house.” was the response he yelled back.

as he dashed through the front door seconds later he could hear a loud, “how the hell am i supposed to do that?!”

almost breaking the door open, jiang cheng entered his flat sweating bullets and painting like he hadn’t in a while.

fairy was laying down on the couch, looking depressed out of his mind, not bothering even to wag his tail or raise his head at the sound of his owner coming back.

“hey, love.” jiang cheng dropped himself on the floor in front of the coach unceremoniously. he rested his head into the dog’s belly, petting him apologetically. 

it was already hard enough to take care of a large sized dog with a life as hectic as his, but now his parents had decided to go and make it even worse.

“i’m sorry.” it gutted jiang cheng to no end. 

he felt like he was breaking his promise to the hound, of keeping him safe and happy as long as jiang cheng was alive.

and he knew it would only get worse, unless this whole thing got resolved一

“oh, fuck.” that’s when he realised that, despite all of the promises he had made growing up, he would have to be the one to mend his parents marriage.

he left out a sigh before getting up and going around the house collecting various of fairy’s items. 

“c’mon buddy.” as the leash jiggled the dog sprung back to life, ready to go out.

“it’s three in the morning.”

“god, i hate you.” jiang cheng pushed his brother in law out of the way, as he made his way inside his sister’s house.

“what is that thing doing here?!” the gremlin asked, covering his nose, as if fairy was the one that mixed 5 perfumes in the morning to try and hide the stench of his rubbish personality.

“where’s jiejie?” he asked as he kneeled down and took the leash off of his pup.

“asleep. she barely just got home, it’s three in the morning, jiang cheng.”

“a-li!” he yelled.

“what the hell is wrong with you?” jin zixuan then shoved him on the shoulder. “you barge into my house with this… mutt,” he motions with disgust at fairy, as he sniffed his way around the new place. “in the middle of the night, to yell and wake up my wife, and you think you can talk back to me?!”

and then he was flying across the room as jiang cheng shoved him away.

“you know what?! i beat you to a pulp, i get 4 to 6 months in a low-security,” jiang cheng considered out loud. “i could use the break. square up motherfucker, let’s go.” his fists shook in anger at his side as zixuan looked at him with fear dancing in his eyes like moths to flame.

“a-cheng, what’s going on?” as luck often had towards the man, yanli came down the stairs, tying her nightgown around her.

“jiejie, we need to trade places, i gotta talk to dad.”

“oh no, no, no, no.” the woman shook her head furiously. “you lost in rock, paper, scissor, i keep dad, you keep mum.”

“yanli, this will end in international headlines if we don’t do something about it.” he held his sisters hands, pleadingly. “i’m certain that we should try and make sure that we aren’t on bbc next month trying to convince people that we really didn’t know that our mother had chopped up our father and fed him to public school children inside a baozi.” yanli eyes went glossy as she pictured the interview. “and to do that i need to know what dad did.”

yanli shook her head to get back on track. “he swears he hasn’t done anything this time.”

“he’s lying, of course he is lying.” jiang cheng laughed desperately. 

“and what makes you think he would lie to me but tell you the truth?!” she questioned freeing her hands from his and crossing her arms against her chest.

“because you’re a woman. father is physically incapable of telling the truth to a woman, i’m pretty sure he would go into cardiac arrest if he tried, but i can squeeze it out of him.” even if it has to be by force , his mind went on.

yanli’s foot tapped the floor at an inconstant rhythm.

“i need to keep fairy here for a few days and i need you to look after mum.” he continued without waiting for her response.

“can’t she be on her own?” yanli asked desperately.

“no, yanli,” flashbacks flooded his head. “she legally can’t be unsupervised.”

the girl left out a desperate sigh. “fine.” she shrugged. “i guess she’s less likely to kill me than poor a-ning.” jiang cheng nodded in agreement.

“so, where’s dad?”

“he’s at the winter cottage.”

“what?!” jiang cheng yelled, desperate. “he’s a sitting duck!”

“no, he’s not at the main house.” she explain. “at the cottage. up the hill, inside the forest.”

“oh, that’s smart.” their mother would much rather set the entire forest up on flames than go through tracking of any sorts. “it gives him enough time to run.” yanli nodded.

at jin zuxian’s scoff, both jiang siblings looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “what the hell is wrong with your family?”

“your brother married his half sister and your father has produced more sperm a day than a whale does in a year, shut the fuck up and leave.” jiang cheng smirked before getting his phone off his pocket and texting mingjue.

“a-cheng!” his jiejie chastised him as her husband was left gasping like a fish.

“the mutt doesn’t stay!” zixuan roared in fury after overcoming the shock of having most of his psychological issues dissected in under 10 seconds by his brother-in-law.

“jin ling,” the ravenette called out, still not taking his eyes away from his phone. “can you take care of fairy for me for a couple of days?”

a screeching noise was heard as the boy tumbled down the set of stairs, shaking in joy. he picked himself up once he reached ground level. “yes, jiujiu!”

“why are you wearing 2 pants?!” his father asked miserably and his mum just sighed in distress. 

“so it is more comfortable.” jin ling shrugged as he hug fairy, the pup happily kissing his face making the boy chuckle.

“where are your pyjama trousers?! by god!” and then both the boy and the dog were being dragged upstairs by a tired looking jin zixuan. 

jiang cheng briefly glanced at the staircase where the 3 had disappeared to and smirked. “who won the bet on who’s iq he would take after?”

“a-cheng…”

“let’s just hope his sexuality is the same as mine, otherwise the number of jins in this world is gonna grow exponentially once his balls drop.”

“jiang cheng!” yanli yelled aggrieved while crossing her arms in front of her chest, the rhythm of her foot tapping the floor increasing to the point she might just bent the marble tiles underneath.

“what?” jiang cheng stopped following the strings of cuss words mingjue was sending on his wechat, after asking the man for help, to look at his jiejie emotionlessly, “his grandfather impregnated mo xuanyu’s grandma.” it wasn’t a surprise the poor kid had been impatient for the past 4 years under suicide watch. “that man’s balls might contain the cure for infertility. his genes are more prominent in nowadays society than genghis khan.”

silence could be heard throughout the living room while jiang cheng caught his breath. he dared to glance at his jiejie and winced at the sombre expression she held on her face.

“are you done?” the woman said after sucking on her teeth.

if jiang cheng was less of an arse, he would’ve apologised. that, however, was not the case. “not really,” his shoulders shrugged dispassionately, “i have a whole routine written out that i’m gonna start performing at this comedy club near my place.”

“oh, that’s good a-cheng!” yanli rejoiced, a kind smile forming in her face as she placed her hand reassuringly onto her brother’s arm. “i always told you you needed to find something besides work and fairy一” upon seeing the look of pure disbelief in her younger sibling’s face her expression dropped. “you’re joking, aren’t you?”

“of course i am, jiejie.” he conceded, exhausted. “also, i have hobbies.”

“what? like working out while a-ning stands there as a voyeur?” jiang cheng’s biggest mistake was forgetting his sister was also a jiang, and thus could take laps around him at any time of the day.

he stuck his tongue out at her. “i’m taking the jeep.” the man informed as he quickly hug her goodbye and went towards the garage.

“text me when you get there, a-cheng.” her voice sounded behind him.

it was four hours later when he finally reached the house, way over the city limits.

jiang cheng eyed up the hill he would have to climb and let out a sigh, his head starting to flare up in pain thinking about facing his father.

so he sat in the car, in silence, for a few minutes, picturing being at home and leaving to take fairy on a run, running into wei wuxian and asking him for his number.

he wondered if the brunette’s family was marginally as insane as his.

if his blood would be considered a red flag.

if jiang cheng was so tainted he wouldn’t be able to have something normal with a decent person.

before he could be consumed in thoughts and depressed over a break up of a non-existent relationship due to his very complicated family matters, he left the car with the only bag he brought with himself. he pocketed the key after locking the car and started to walk up the elevation. 

“so to climb…” he muttered to himself.

the cottage wasn’t small by any conceivable means, but it definitely didn’t even get near the opulence of their winter abode. 

he hadn’t been there in years, systematically avoiding any semblance of family gathering, specially in a place as flammable as a forest.

jiang cheng unceremoniously dropped his bag on the couch and went towards the kitchen to grab himself a glass of water, glancing through the large windows all across the construction.

it was undeniably nice and beautiful.

and surprisingly quiet.

of the, very few, qualities his father possessed, being taciturn wasn’t one of them.

jiang fengmian was, if anything, a boisterous man. charming, when he wanted to.

he prefered to use anything as a sounding board, mostly people, just so he could better analyse the thoughts running through his head. it wasn’t uncommon to catch the man speaking out loud to himself in the house or over the company.

before jiang cheng had the chance of worrying about the stillness of the cottage, and the possibility of discovering a fresh, shallow grave in the grounds around it, he turned around on his heels, water cup still in his hands, to find himself facing down the barrel of a shotgun.

he raised his eyebrow.

“oh, hi, a-cheng.” his father greeted, lowering the weapon.

“chances are you’d shoot yourself in the foot before you managed to even graze her.” jiang cheng informed, his mouth hanging around the border of the cup.

“it helps with my nerves.” jiang cheng gulped the water to avoid voicing his inner feelings, knowing that accusing his father of drug abuse as a coping mechanism to his marriage would be uncalled for in the situation they faced.

“where’s the security system?” the man asked after finishing drinking. “i need to give us some semblance of safety during today’s episode of hurricane mum.”

at least for a couple of things his major in digital security and coding came on handy, seeing he wouldn’t be allowed to work with it at lotus pier inc., being decided, while still in his mother’s belly, to be the heir to the company and, therefore, expected to deal with the entirety of the economical side of their business.

it took a little while to make sure the system was routed on premises, with two encryption codes on top, after erasing all the footage from the past two days from the server’s database that was accessible in through all of their houses if need be, and when jiang cheng looked out of the window the sun was already setting down again. 

he left out a deep breath.

with his body sore all over he made his way to where his father sat in the living room reading a newspaper, seemingly unpreoccupied by his foreseeable demise. “we need to talk, but i literally haven’t slept in three days. so i will do that now and when i wake up you’re telling me the truth.” wasn’t exactly a proposition as much as it was an ultimatum, turning around and walking away, not giving his father the chance of arguing. 

despite how tired he was, jiang cheng managed to only get 5 hours of sleep. he grunted as he got up, going towards the master bedroom where his father was currently sleeping at.

“dad, wake up, we need to talk.” he called out from the threshold, but heard no response.

being the sensible person that he was, jiang cheng walked towards the bed, grabbed a pillow that was discarded by the floor, and pounded his father with it while yelling bloody murder. 

“by the love of god!” jiang fengmian got up startled, his hands trying to shield his face from the current attack. “jiang cheng, stop this madness at once!” he yelled, prompting his son to let go of the pillow with a grunt. the man then fumbled around for his phone on the bed, picking it up and letting his jaw drop. “it’s 2 in the morning!” he shriek.

jiang cheng just shrugged plopping down on the bed. “gotta be 2 in the afternoon somewhere in the americas.” he reasoned, running a tired hand over his face. “spill.”

“what?!”

“what you did this time, father.”

“i didn’t do anything, you have to believe me.” he sounded almost offended.

jiang cheng scoffed.

“no, i don’t. i’m not four anymore.”

“a-cheng, i’m being honest here, you gotta help me.” the greying man said resting a hand on jiang cheng’s shoulder. he looked at it with disdain but didn’t swat it away.

“have you considered suicide?” he offered instead.

“what?!”

“well, i mean,” he went on, ignoring the appalled look on his father’s face. “when mother finds you, and we know she will, she won’t be quick at all , so, since you insist that this is the literal hill where you shall die on, the least you can do is make sure that it is on your own terms.”

“maybe we should’ve taken you to the hospital after your mother dropped you on your head when you were a baby.” jiang fengmian wondered out loud after a second of looking at his child like he had horns coming out of his nose.

“she what ?”

“your mother is insane, why would you take her word over mine?” the older man deflected as he got up, tying his hair back into a ponytail.

“because the one thing she loves more than the amount of hatred she feels towards you is the damn company.” jiang cheng yelled, making his father stop halfway towards the door. “and we all know this family is just a collateral effect to the political marriage between the great yunmeng jiang and the meishan yu.” decades upon decades in the making.

money marries money.

power marries power.

fuck that , jiang cheng thought.

“so i don’t understand what in heaven’s name you must have done this time to make her believe it’s worth throwing generations of carefully crafted alliances into the trash一” and then it clicked. “oh my god.” he whispered, feeling dread running through his bones.

jiang fengmian slowly turned around, his eyes downcasted, his brow furrowed.

“dad… what have you done?”

“it’s not mine.” so jiang cheng got up and dashed to the door, his lungs burning, his vision blurred. he ran until his feet gave way, somewhere surrounded by acacias.

he got his phone out in shaking hands, trying to type something, anything to mingjue.

this was bad.

this was worse than bad.

he wondered if he should call yanli, but reasoned she must’ve been at the estate now, and if his mother, for once , was tight lipped about one of their father’s screw up, it wouldn’t do the girl good to wear a huge neon sign atop of her head, blinking the words i know .

‘ there’s a baby .’ he managed somehow to send to his da-ge, as he place his back against the bark of a tree and tried to control his breathing, doing his very best to ride this panic attack out.

the sun had been high in the sky when he entered the living room once again. jiang fengmian rose quickly from where he was sitting on the couch. “a-cheng一”

“who is she?” the ravenette walked straight up to the man, making him give a few steps back, bumping onto the couch and almost losing his balance.

“jiang cheng it isn’t mine一”

“i don’t care what you say, there’s a pregnant girl out there whose life is at risk.” jiang cheng yelled like he never had before.

“i’m trying to fix this!” his father yelled back, pushing him a bit away. “jiang cheng, after you were born i made sure that i could never sire an heir again,” the man confessed. “i know what it would mean, i’m not insane despite what everyone in this family thinks.”

jiang cheng rubbed his temples, trying to not let his father’s words get to him 一 something he was golden medalist at, by the tender age of 5 一, focusing instead on the matter at hand. “explain.” it wasn’t a request as much as an order.

“your mum was at her hair saloon once, the one she bought a couple of years back,” jiang cheng made a go on movement with his hands, trying to speed through this pain as much as possible. “we had some sudden liability taxes with one of the warehouses in japan, the process was speed through in the ministry of economics一”

“ father! ”

“your mum needed me to sign some documents, but she was getting her nails done, so she sent one of the new employees to bring it over to my office.”

“oh god.” jiang cheng spit out with disgust.

“we didn’t have time to do anything so we exchanged numbers and i told her i would call.”

“what a gentleman.” jiang cheng could puke.

“i took her out a couple of times to the golf club, but she just stopped picking up around 2 months ago.” enough time for a belly bump to show up, surely enough.

“mum found out.” the young man did the maths.

“she had to take leave apparently and, well, people that work at beauty parlours like to talk.” jiang fengmian had the absolute gull of rolling his eyes. “she used that friend of hers to get the security cameras from around the office and the club so一”

“she put two and two together.” jiang cheng took his vibrating phone out of his pocket.

‘ i got the men ready. do you have the name? ’ nie mingjue asked through wechat. jiang cheng didn’t know how exactly he had managed to get an extraction team from the hong kong police department ready in under 6 hours, but doubting a nie never did anyone any good.

“her name.” 

“it isn’t mine.” he said with a certainty that almost made jiang cheng believe him. but then again accidents happened.

“her name.”

“guangshan was there!” the older man yelled, making jiang cheng’s mind go on a halt.

he stayed silent, pondering things over.

“for how much of it?”

“i was in a meeting with him the time she went to drop the documents. he was there ever since.” jiang fengmian dropped on the couch, exhausted. “besides it is quite difficult to impregnate anyone after having a vasectomy for over 2 decades.”

“a vasectomy?” jiang cheng puzzled. that was a dirty laundry that had never been washed in public.

“your mother doesn’t know, and when i tried to tell her earlier this week i had a snake thrown at me.” jiang cheng let out a deep breath as he sunk into the closest armchair. he ran his fingers through his hair. maybe it is too long , he ponders.

“even if that is true,一”

“ it is! ”

“even if it is,” the younger emphasised, “mum is still going after her. she’s still in danger.” jiang fengmian looked at his son’s pleading eyes and let out a sigh, throwing his head back tiredly.

“ji xiuying.” he said, at last.

jiang cheng quickly replied to his friend.

‘ on it. ’ the reply came almost immediately, and then ‘ keep your mother occupied .’ shortly after.

“you stay here, i’ll go distract the beast.” jiang cheng called back at his shoulder as he ran towards the door, grabbing his bag where it was still laying on the couch.

“ it is strange that madam yu had two weeks and still didn’t manage to find her. ” wen ning said from the other side of the line as jiang cheng locked his flat’s door on his way out. he stopped at home on his way to the estate to take a quick shower and change his clothes 一 he definitely did not need his mother’s attention diverted into his appearance.

“i know.” he agreed, biting his lips walking the corridor towards the lift. “there’s something fishy here, but we can’t do shit until da-ge calls back.” the man left out another sigh, pulling the phone slightly from his face.

he felt like shit.

probably looked worse than what he thought.

“i’m on my way now, we’ll talk when i get there.” jiang cheng said pressing the lift’s button when reaching it.

“ok.” and then, “be quick.” in an almost whisper.

jiang cheng pocketed his phone feeling older than his years.

for the first time in a long time he felt like balling his eyes out.

he just wanted this to be over with, one way or another.

and then the lift’s door opened and there stood wei wuxian. like a beacon of light in the middle of a particularly bad storm.

jiang cheng just might cry.

he stepped inside quickly before the doors could close. and stood there in silence, wanting to talk but afraid he might dump all this baggage into an innocent by-passer in his life who definitely didn’t need to hear about all of this.

knowing that even glancing at wei wuxian would make his knees buckle and cause him to be the one to drop on his knees this time, he chose to stare straight ahead instead.

“n o dogs today to sniff around my shoes, huh?” the brunette offered in low tone, probably with a hopeful smile on his face. jiang cheng had to bite the inside of his cheek.

god , he missed fairy.

he forced a smile out anyway, because wei wuxian was cute and nice and didn’t deserve the worst version of jiang cheng 一 considering that he wasn’t proud even of his best version 一, and said “yeah… he’s not here anymore.”

years and years of training, for jin ling to probably have undone it all in under a week.

things were looking dark.

if he was lucky enough, at least, jin ling hadn’t taught the poor puppy to bite as一

his mind screeched as he felt something on his shoulder.

jiang cheng looked to his side to see wei wuxian looking directly at him, eyes filled with understanding and worry, a small, tight lipped, smile as he lightly pat where his hand rested.

as he felt his lip tremble, jiang cheng quickly bit it, to try and stop the watergates from flowing.

“i’m sorry.” the brunette said with such honesty it hurt. jiang cheng never wanted to hug someone so bad in his life. let his weight drop as wei wuxian held him there, like a tether to normalcy and kindness into the middle of the ocean of shit that was jiang cheng’s life. he wanted to take his hand and sail away into一 “t his is awful, I didn’t know dogs died so fast.”

pardonne moi?! jiang cheng blinked a couple of times, trying to process the words.

“t ry to remember how good it was when you had him by your side, you know?” wei wuxian barrelled on, “once I had a rabbit for a few months and then one day, it was gone.” what on earth was this beautiful idiot even going on about was beyond what jiang cheng’s few neurons left were capable of understanding. also , his mind offered, bunnies usually live up to be around a decade old , how come one day it was just suddenly dead?!   “but memories are forever, you should always remember this.” the man let goes of his shoulder with one last squeeze, and a reassuring smile on his face.

jiang cheng looked at him like he was wearing a tuba as a hat. “my dog isn’t dead,” he says slowly, as if explaining it to a young child. he then pinches the bridge of his nose trying to get his thoughts in order as he continues; “he’s just with my nephew for the next week or so because I have a lot on my plate right now,” and that was the understatement of the year. “i can’t take care of him as i should.” and it gutted him.

wei wuxian face reddens and drops at the same time, as he stares at his neighbour with wide eyes. “i thought 一” he stutters into a sentence, “ i was trying to be nice,” the man looks, and sounds, more desperate by the second, “i’m sorry i 一 ” the brunette looks like the one who’s about to cry then, so jiang cheng cuts him off with the first honest smile he had since this whole fiasco of a week started.

“i know.” he tried to be as reassuring as he could. “it was nice of you.” jiang cheng stood outside the lift, feeling marginally better than the time he left with fairy a couple of days back. he looked down, feeling suddenly conscious of the crazy way he must be looking. “thank you, wei wuxian.” honestly . jiang cheng then takes a deep breath, gathering up courage, “i know it might be random but i was wondering if 一” jiang cheng then takes a deep breath, trying to gather up courage, as he continues; "listen, i know this is gonna sound strange and all, but i was wondering ifㅡ" except when he glances back at his neighbour, the lift's door is closed and he has disappeared. "what…" jiang cheng ponders out loud looking around trying to find wei wuxian, but he seems to be gone.

he quickly shook his head and went to the jeep he had parked on the nearest block he could find. the man kept wei wuxian in the front of his mind as he drove towards the jiang estate as a way of distracting himself.

and if he almost rear ended an suv while remembering his neighbour’s cute smile that was between him and the very angry driver of such hypothetical car.

“sorry i’m late.” when getting home the ravenette didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it definitely wasn’t what was happening in front of his eyes. “why is wen qing here?” left his mouth in a whisper as he stood slightly behind his sister.

the oldest wen had a stethoscope pressed to madam yu’s heart while wen ning fanned her with a contraption made of peacock feathers. 

jiang cheng considered making a pun out of it, but yanli looked dishevelled enough that he was afraid the magical knife his mother had pulled out of thin air the last time he stood in this living room would magically appear in his jiejie’s hand, as she stabbed him.

“she had an episode .” was the explanation given between gritted teeth.

“right.” jiang cheng muttered, taking a step away from his sister.

“oh, a-cheng, you’re back!” and her tone was surprisingly… not entirely bitter. however, her facial expression was aghast as she did a once over on her son, then moving to do the same to her daughter. “you both look terrible.” the woman tisked, closing her eyes and letting her head fall back into the couch. jiang cheng was once again glad for his disposition to physical activities, as it undoubtedly helped with his reflexes, so he managed to grab yanli mid air as she leaped towards her mother, face contorted in fury.

it was, evidently, going to be another long day.

“you do look terrible.” jiang cheng heard from the kitchen door as he poured himself a cup of tea. the chill running down his spine was enough recognition as who the owner of the voice could be.

“thanks for helping out.” he handed wen qing the cup he had made for himself, and then turned back around to prepare a new one. “was she much trouble?”

the doctor shrugged. “it was fine.” she leaned her back into the counter beside the one jiang cheng was occupying with his kettle. “i’m more worried about you.”

“me?!” it wasn’t exactly like jiang cheng hadn’t seen better days, but having someone look between him and his mother, and diagnose him as the worst case was worrying beyond words.

“well,” and there was that condescending baseline tone that wen qing used towards everything that breathed. “we are all already aware of your declining mental health, but going against your mother can actually be ruled as suicide.” one of her shoulders was quickly raised and dropped while she took a sip of tea. “besides you look like you’re about to die of scurvy and you’re attracted to a fury so, maybe it would do you some good to… go away for a while.”

and jiang cheng could’ve sworn the implications of her “suggestions” were one of the scariest things he’d ever heard, but right at that moment his focus was on something else, as he tried to clarify; “attracted to what?”

“your neighbour that believes he’s a dog.” jiang cheng pinched the bridge of his nose.

“was that what wen ning told you?!”

“no, i’m just capable of understanding context and behavioural clues.” the girl shrugged.

“ok, first of all; he doesn’t believe he’s a dog一”

“got on his knees and barked.”

“ second of all ,” the ravenette raised his tone. “he’s not a fury… he’s just slow.”

“most people go decades without being aware of the kinks those who are closest to you have, and you’ve known this lad for how long? a month? less than that?!”

“why don’t you psychoanalyse my mother,” jiang cheng pointed with his whole arm towards the living room, “you know, your patient for the time being.”

wen qing shrugged. “ain’t much that can be done about hyper narcissism in high functioning psychopaths.” she smirked as she looked over to jiang cheng. “but i can get on your head so easily it could count as my specialty.”

“what are you doing there?” yanli was puzzled as she looked inside the fireplace to see her brother crouching in the dark.

“hiding from qing-daifu.”

“oh.” his jiejie exclaimed in understandment and sat at the opening, her body angled towards the corner where her didi was at.

they stayed in silence for a couple of minutes. tired and worn out.

“there’s this boy,” jiang cheng wasn’t certain why he was bringing that up, but it had left his mouth before he even realised his thought had gone that direction again. he suddenly felt that he really wanted to talk about him. “his name is wei wuxian, he’s my neighbour.” the ravenette opted to pick at his shoe instead of watching the way his jiejie would react. “he’s funny, and weird, and so, so , beautiful… and weird.”

yanli hummed, placing her hand atop of her didi’s in encouragement.

“and i think he likes me back?! which is so weird because i am as interesting as an old banana and i don’t know how to human very well一”

“a-cheng,” yanli cut him off, making the boy look at her. her expression left no room for discussion while still being soft. “you’re a great person. you’re kind and hardworking and nice, of course he would like you back.” 

jiang cheng was forever thankful that in this weird, dangerous life, with his inconsequential family, he still got to have yanli by his side.

he shook his head to disperse the tears that were forming in his eyes while squeezing her hand back.

“do you think something could happen to her?” his jiejie then blurted out of the blue after a couple of seconds in silence, her facial expression going back to worried.

“i don’t know much about mum’s reach,” dealing with the yungmen jiang part of his was already traumatising enough, jiang cheng wouldn’t come near meishan yu with a 20 metre wooden stick. neither him nor yanli had any contact whatsoever with his uncles and aunts from their mother’s side of the family, having only heard through the grapevine about their nan, but it was the sort of empire destruction tales that left children with nightmares for a lifetime. “it is possible, though.” jiang cheng shrugged, making yanli worry on her bottom lip.

“do you think mum would do it?” she thought out loud, not really questioning since she probably knew what her didi would say. “do you think they’d even have enough to convict her if there was anything left at all?” to that jiang cheng snorted.

“have you seen the way mum looks when she’s angry?! that’s a self report, right there.” yanli rolled her eyes and let go of her didi’s hand at that. clearly the emotional time was done and through for the foreseeable future. “her stance counts as evidence, a-li. it’s admissible in the court of law.” and just like that yanli was getting up, clearing the bottom part of her trouser 一 out of habit more than anything, since both siblings were aware of the fact that there were about 10 to 15 housekeepers at all times working on the state, making it easier to decipher the voynich manuscript than to find the smallest grain of dirt in any surface of the home. “hey一”

jiang cheng started, ready to take another jab at their mother’s violent tendencies, when he was cut short by his phone buzzing in his pocket.

‘ they’ve found her. ’ the text from nie mingjue read.

“shit.” jiang cheng’s eyes fumbled between his sister and the device in his hand.

“a-cheng!” yanli ran desperately after her brother as he beelined to the living room, where their mother was still giving her best attempt at acting out having human reaction to difficult situations. “tell me what’s going on!!” she pleaded.

“turn on the tv.” the ravenette pointed at wen ning as he entered the room, attracting the attention of the 3 current occupants. “channel 15.”

“a-cheng一”

“ now! ” he barked at the other, making wen ning fumble with the remote for a second before turning on the device. the 4 real people, and not live action enactments of a disney villain, stood with bated breaths as channel 15 was tuned in.

“一 and it is a very unexpected turn of events, everything considered, but jin guangshan has always been know, to be a surprising man! ” the screen was split between the news anchor and a picture of the old decrypt he had just mentioned, standing beside a young girl. on the bottom, besides the normal information, news channels usually displayed the tagline ‘ceo of golden carp inc. announces that he and new fiance are expecting, and will marry by the end of spring’.

a clip of the two was then showcased in what appeared to be a micro press conference at koi tower, where they announced the relationship publicly.

madam yu chuckled, bringing everyone’s otherwise horrified stares at the screen, to her. her eyes were narrowed and her mouth was tugging a bit at the sides. “cunning, clever girl.” as she pushed herself up, completely ignoring the role of poor, sick, abandoned woman she had been taken up until that point. “yanli, darling, tell your father to not forget to wash the car before he comes back home.” the woman took a deep breath. “a-cheng, make sure to send them a congratulatory gift to celebrate such joyful news.” madam yu waved a hand around as she made her way out of the living room.

the four remaining stood still in their places, seemingly afraid to breathe.

“it’s over?!” wen ning managed to get out in a choked breath after a couple of moments.

yanli started weeping while jiang cheng just dropped himself on the floor, his hands covering his face.

━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━

“i’m ok. truly.” jiang cheng lied like the liar that he was.

“your left eye has been twitching ever since we met.” lan xichen pointed out worryingly. 

“well, yeah, i mean, i left my dog a perfect gentlemen and my nephew, on the span of five days managed to turn him into a mammoth sized pinscher,” the younger scoffed gesturing wildly at the dog as he flipped bunnies in the air as if they were bowling pins. “anyone would be thrown off.”

xichen looked at him with furrowed brows and a frown. “it also may have to deal with the fact that in one week your parents almost got divorced, possibly causing an economical and political disaster in our country as it would definitely deeply affect around 20 of the biggest national companies, the possibility of your mother being thrown in jail for first degree murder of your father and his pregnant concubine, which would also imply that you’d have a new sibling thrown in the mix, only to find out in the end that your father’s girlfriend was actually impregnated by your sister’s husband’s father, giving your nephew a new uncle and a whole lot more of headache for everyone at lanling jin, inadvertedly affecting you through being a incredibly difficult situation for yanli to be in the middle of?”

jiang cheng blinked at his gege, and concluded, “he peed on my father’s car on the drive back home.” as he pointed a finger outside at the criminal in question.

lan xichen left out a deep sigh. his shoulders sagging.

“a-cheng一”

“remember that year i lived in cloud recess?” jiang cheng was barely 6 at the time, besides the terribly bland food and the million rules lan qiren had in place he couldn’t complain much. “do you remember that i never cried? not even once?” xichen nodded. it had been a tough year for the jiangs, his father under surveillance due to bribe allegations needed to escape to swiss while he cleared his name and, at the prospect of losing their empire, madam yu might or might not have caused 2 planes to crash, the death of a local gang’s leader and a minor scandal involving a minister from estate’s affair and a pig. 

due to the interpol investigation, cps got involved and decided that it was better for yanli and jiang cheng to not stay at home with his mum. yanli was already of age and living in england for uni, so it was agreed between the police and his mum that jiang cheng was to stay with the lans. “it’s because i loved it一 being away from home, i mean. not that… frozen monastery you lot call home.” it frustrated jiang cheng to no end that doesn’t matter how much he poked at his da-ge, the man never even flinched. “i don’t have much any memories of my father until i was 12 and deemed old enough to be groomed as an heir, and my mum…” there wasn’t much that needed to be said about yu ziyuan, so the ravenette just waved his hand in the air dismissively. “i learnt at a very young age that, besides my jiejie, i shouldn’t mind what that family does as long as it doesn’t affect me.”

“but it would have.” and that was the whole point lan xichen was trying to make. “if it wasn’t a mistake, if it wasn’t an accident一”

“ if . however, it wasn’t.” jiang cheng looked at the man sitting across from him pointedly, trying to pass confidence through his eyes. having lived the life he had 一 hell, that even lan xichen and lan wangji had 一, there was not much point to brood over past possibilities. 

what if his father didn’t resent his mother for their marriage and therefore was actually able to love his children?

what if his mother didn’t despise his father for all the backstabbing, cheating, undermining and lies, and therefore didn’t feel like scratching her face away every time she looked at jiang cheng and saw jiang fengmian?

what if his sister hadn’t been trapped into a loveless marriage to an arsehole she wasn’t even sure she would befriend in any other case by having ending up 一 very mysteriously so 一 getting pregnant barely weeks into their their relationship?

well, then jin ling wouldn’t be around.

some things just happened. we couldn’t control them. it wasn’t jiang cheng’s fault, it simply was how it was. he was only a person. a learning, growing person. 

he’d be fine.

lan xichen nodded still not entirely convinced by what his shidi was saying, but choosing not to press on it. jiang cheng was slippery, defensive and sarcastic, he wouldn’t be coerced into shit.

“anyway,” jiang cheng cleared his throat after a bit of silence. “i’m truly hoping you didn’t call me here strictly to do a wellbeing check.” one of his eyebrows raised as a smirk pulled on his lips.

“only partially.” lan xichen confessed, amused. “but it was in regard to the lease.” that picked up jiang cheng’s interest, making the boy sit up straighter. “i searched around, but the building isn’t under gusu or any of our subsidiaries, unfortunately.” and just like that jiang cheng deflated again. he seemed not to be getting any break recently, after the whole divorce fiasco. during the week after his return to his flat he barely got time to spend at home 一 having to put out the fires that had been caused due to their parents little feud 一, and therefore no wei wuxian. 

that is, except in the 2 odd times they accidently ran into each other. wei wuxian paid him absolutely no mind, however, acting as if the man wasn’t even there. jiang cheng was lucky to get a hello or a goodbye out of him on those occasions.

he worried, yet again, if he had offended the man somehow. 

maybe, most likely, during the whole my dog isn’t dead accident.

and now, to top it all of, his plan had gone down the drain, which was horrible seeing his mother was in the aftermath of a fight she didn’t win because it didn’t happen. the woman had all this resolve inside of her now, and nowhere to focus it on. 

the way jiang cheng saw it, there wouldn’t take long before people at the building started receiving eviction notices.

“i can track down the current head company owning the place and buy it from them一”

“absolutely not!” that wouldn’t be raising a red flag as much as it would be covering the entire thing in a red cloth. “she’ll see right through it.” jiang cheng bit his nails anxiously trying to think of a solution.

“mhn, then一” lan xichen hummed in thought, his arms crossed across his chest. “what if you got one of the tenants to subsidise their place out to a company?!”

“can they do that?” as good as he was with finances and computers, jiang cheng’s knowledge about real estate was undermining at best.

“well, it’s not illegal. it is thoroughly frowned upon seeing we are going off the assumption that they most likely wouldn’t make the deal with the actual owners of the building, but in such a way it gives whichever agency wants and can afford it to lease out the flat.” lan xichen explained.

“i imagine people don’t do it because it isn’t financially advantageous.” 

xichen nodded. “that raises the price by around 40 to 50% when considering how much it would be rather than just renting it through the actual owners.”

and most people couldn’t afford such a humongous raise in rent, even more in a lower class apartment building.

jiang cheng wasn’t most people, however, and was willing to pay whatever price he needed to in order to not move back into the jiang estate.

“can we go with that option, da-ge?”

“i’ll search around for profiles of people that would be willing to move out.” the man smiled kindly.

“thank you, da-ge.”

jiang cheng left the restaurant with his hopes a bit higher than by the beginning of the day.

his plan might actually just work.

he’d maybe even stop by a bakery and get himself a scone to celebrate it, was it not for fairy doing his very best to rip his arm out of its socket.

jiang cheng kept chastising jin ling in his head, and trying to figure out what could a 13 year old do in a week that would sent his pristine, very otherwise well behaved, son into a frenzy seen only in clubbers after taking a redbull, mdma and ecstasy cocktail.

as they finally approached their place jiang cheng left out a relieved sigh, feeling like if he had to try and control fairy for yet another block he’d just collapse and be dragged home, roman style.

fairy, acting like a bloody tennis ball in a serena williams match, could barely beeline his way to the lift. and just as faith would have, a second after, wei wuxian appeared in front of the lift.

jiang cheng tried to control the excitement bubbling in his stomach by focusing on taming his beast instead. “fairy, stop that.” it came out as a plea more than an order, by that point.

“uh, can i?” he looks up to see wei wuxian pointing inside.

“oh, sure!” jiang cheng’s smile was apologetic. embarrassed, with the whole thing. he tried at fairy’s collar once more, but seemingly to no avail. “i ’m sorry, since fairy came back from my nephew he’s been a rebellious child.” was the flimsy, but not dishonest, explanation he could come up with on the spot. it did drag out a laugh from wei wuxian, so jiang cheng thought it wasn’t so bad.

“it's ok, I can take the next elevator, don’t mind me.” and just like that jiang cheng had flashbacks to every time his mother chastised him for not being able to control the pup.

he raised an eyebrow in challenge. jiang cheng would not be defeated by a dog. “fairy, stop that immediately. sit down and obey.” and, thank the lord, this time the little bastard actually did as he was told. 

the ravenette couldn’t help his proud smile as wei wuxian stepped inside the lift. and then 一

nothing. 

both men (and the dog) rode the lift in complete silence, wei wuxian the furthest he could from jiang cheng. 

just talk to me , his mind pleads, as his free hand’s finger drum on his thigh. when the man laughed jiang cheng quickly dismissed his worries.

of the few things jiang cheng had learned about wei wuxian ever since their first meeting 一 and they were: he was kind, and liked to smile; wei wuxian wore baggy clothes and a very stylish messy hairdo; he probably was a bit afraid of fairy, which was understandable; his schedule was completely terrible; his nose was the cutest thing jiang cheng had ever seen; and a few others 一, he also knew that the boy was incredibly slow.

remembering their last一 scratch that, all of their encounters so far, wei wuxian had been a bit silly. he tried to overcompensate whenever he did something a bit strange, but his mouth clearly run faster than his mouth.

he was probably just embarrassed and afraid of embarrassing himself further.

the lift then stopped at the 9th floor, which was jiang cheng’s clue to leave. and wei wuxian still hadn’t dared to take his eyes off his phone.

jiang cheng stops fairy just outside the door, and bites his lips, turning around quickly before spouting “you’re lucky you’re cute.”

there is a bit of silence there were jiang cheng is petrified by the idea that he might’ve somehow read it all wrong and that maybe wei wuxian didn’t have the same feelings for him as he did.

“yeah,” it comes out of the others mouth though, “fairy is really cute.” and that confuses jiang cheng enough to look at the man into his eyes, a frown adorning his face.

“i’m not talking about him,” and jiang cheng’s smile is teasing as he sees the man holding the lift’s door open, and his cheeks tinting ever so lightly. “i’m talking about you.” the ravenette confesses, making the other’s mouth open ever so slightly.

jiang cheng waves his hand shortly as he bids goodbye and turns back on his heels, pulling fairy along.

and jiang cheng felt really proud of himself. 

for about 6 hours until mingjue called and, as mingjue did, destroyed all his hopes and dreams and set fire to jiang cheng’s self esteem, salting it in sequence so it could never grow.

“i’m pretty sure he could report you for public indecency and targeted harassment.” came the voice from the phone.

“it was a compliment!”

“so you just go around complimenting people that you don’t even know?”

“i do know wei wuxian!” jiang cheng suddenly felt like this was some sort of investigation.

“yeah. you know his name, his address, his working schedule, and even how often he takes out the trash.”

“you’re making it sound like i’m a stalker.”

“you’re making yourself look like one.” jiang cheng could hear the smirk in mingjue’s voice. “and now you’re also catcalling him, so一”

“why are you so horrible to me, da-ge?!” the ravenette left out frustrated at all the teasing.

“i’m simply trying to help.” a few seconds in silence and then, “also, taking the piss out of you is like a hobby to me.” jiang cheng threw his hands exasperatedly in the air as he groaned. “but seriously, stop daydreaming about it and get his damn number already, i can’t stand listening to you talk about him all day long anymore.”

jiang cheng hummed, “so you’d like us to go back to talking about xichen all day, then?” and the line was dead.

━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━

“no!” jiang cheng tried to slam his door shut, but fairy had already made contact with his new best friend and sprinted out of the door, straight into jin ling’s arms.

“we’re going on a well deserved vacation, after everything that happened.” steve buscemi’s uglier brother said with a smirk that jiang cheng had to control himself not to punch out of him 一 yanli had a one physical altercation a year rule and would be truly upset with her didi.

“do you want a cookie or did you came to brag?”

“we can’t take him with us.”

“that sounds like a you problem to me.”

“jiujiu, did fairy miss me a lot?!” jin ling cut in on them as he flinched his face away from where fairy was trying to lick it.

the jiujiu in question pinched the bridge of his nose, “i’m sure he must’ve.”

“we’ll be back by the end of the week.”

“i don’t care. your son is a horrible influence on mine.”

“you have a dog!” his current nemesis protested, exasperated.

“yes, who knows how to obey orders and doesn’t eat food off of the floor.”

to that zixuan rolled his eyes. “fine,” he sighed, “i’ll just take him to my father then.”

and in a quick motion jiang cheng pushed jin ling inside the flat while ushering fairy in with his foot. “goodbye then.” the ravenette then proceeded to slam the door. “alright, ground rules!” jiang cheng yelled catching the attention of his nephew and his pup 一 still entangled in each other. “no yelling, no running and no jumping inside of the house. you’ll go to school  and come straight back一”

“oh, yes.” the young man cut his jiujiu off and took his phone out of his pocket.

“what are you doing?!”

“texting my choufer your address so he knows where to pick me tomorrow.”

jiang cheng took  a deep breath. “ fine .”  he muttered to himself. “you will shower and eat when i tell you to, no complaints,” which was something jin ling was exceptional at. “and no walking around in your underwear. that’s weird!”

jin ling blinked up at him. “ok. can i go play with fairy now?” jiang cheng waved his hand dismissively in the air which prompted the duo to start some sort of tag game.  

“hey, go drop your bag in the room.” jiang cheng called over his shoulder, feeling a headache blooming. it was gonna be another long week.

it ended up not being as bad as jiang cheng thought it was gonna be. 

although raised by a psychotic egomaniac narcissist, he was still his jiejie’s kid, so there was some salvaging left to do.

jin ling was also a pitiful kid, despite it all. with his father’s inability to love anything besides his own reflection and his mum constantly travelling around the globe for business, he was extremely attention starved and overall a very lonely kid.

the fact that jiang cheng talked to him face to face and actually took time to do things with him made the boy’s eyes sparkle in a way that warmed his jiujiu’s heart. 

so that’s why, when friday rolled around, jiang cheng decided that they would go out for icecream.

“what took you so long?” the man asked the kid in the annoyingly bright yellow jumper 一 the one jiang cheng had to force him to wear, a shiver running down his spine at the thought of having to deal with his jiejie’s rage over handing jin ling back with a cold 一 as he locked the flat behind them.

the boy searched around a bit in the front pocket of his jumper with his hand and pulled out a gold spoon that was actually made of gold. “my ice cream spoon!”

“you’ve got an ice cream spoon 一” jiang cheng almost halted mid corridor but took a deep breath as they continued on. “you do know ice cream places have their own spoons, right?!” it wouldn’t be exactly surprising if jin ling had never been to one before. his personality made sure he didn’t have any friends that could invite him to hang out sometimes.

“yes, but they are disgusting.” jin ling shrugged, shoving his spoon back inside the pocket. “besides, they kill tortoises.”

jiang cheng pressed the lift button and took a deep breath, “it’s turtles. and no they don’t.”

“yes, they do! I saw it in a documentary.”

“straws. that’s what you’re thinking about. straws!” jiang cheng corrected him.

“what difference does it make?” his nephew mumbled under his breath, making jiang cheng chuckle.

he then looked in front of them, at the now open elevator, and “oh, it’s you! hello” he smiled at wei wuxian as they stepped inside and tried to pretend his heart wasn’t doing summer salts at the leather jacket and torn jeans the man was sporting 一 very different from his usual attire of oversized shirts and track trousers or ludacris pyjamas with various characters printed on them.

“hey!” he greets back. “are you partying tonight?” wei wuxian smiles and it makes jiang cheng wishes jin ling wasn’t with him so he could just get his number without worrying about the gossip little shit that is his nephew to run around telling the whole family about jiujiu’s man in the lift .

instead jiang cheng just scoffs and crosses his arms. “i’m babysitting tonight.” he motions with his head looking at the little bastard.

“i’m not a baby!” jin ling complains immediately in the same tone he has used since he learned to talk at 9 months old.

jiang cheng can see wei wuxian trying not to laugh as the man’s bottom lip trembles and he looks over at jin ling, “don’t worry about it, babies are cute, people like to take care of them.” he teases as well before glancing at jiang cheng and giving him a wink.

a smirk forms himself in his face as the banter goes on. “jiujiu doesn’t need to take care of me, I’m old enough to look after myself!” he scoffs while crossing his arms and staring up at wei wuxian with the same intensity he does with his babysitters right before they quit.

jiang cheng smiles at that but it tugs at his heart a bit knowing that jin ling is mostly telling the truth. regardless of having everything money can buy, jin ling is mostly on his own, and he’s done surprisingly well considering the genes on him would probably make for a serial killer under less ideal conditions.

he slings his arm around his nephew’s shoulder as the lift door opens. jiang chang waves back at wei wuxian as they make their way outside.

they had barely reached the corner when jin ling halts. “wait!” he says fumbling around his pocket.

“what?” 

“my spoon,” he huffs, “i think i dropped it.” he looks back and then takes off in a jog. “I’ll be right back jiujiu!” as he goes back towards the lift and jiang cheng probably should follow but he decides that no kidnaper would take jin ling. money would not be worth the years of therapy they’d have to go through after dealing with him.

jiang cheng rocks back and forward in his heels and it takes a minute but jin ling finally comes back with his eyebrows pinched together. “didn’t find it?”

“no, i did!” the boy says as he keeps walking, seemingly in thought. jiang cheng is confused but knows better than to prompt jin ling into talking, so he just let’s it go and follows the boy.

“happy?” jin ling asks with a grunt as he sits back down in front of his ice cream bowl.

“you’re the one,” jiang cheng starts saying through a mouthful of his own ice cream but stops, swallowing it first before continuing. “you’re the one that called the plastic spoons disgusting and you wanted to eat with a spoon that fell on the street floor without washing it first?” tweens. jiang cheng only hoped he wasn’t this much of a nightmare back in the day.

they resume eating in comfortable silence for a while before jin ling blurts out, “is the man from the lift a sugar baby?”

and just like that jin ling is sporting jiang cheng’s ice cream all over his face and jumper, as the man chokes on it, flying out of his mouth. “what?!” he manages, somehow, to cough it out, as he grabs a napkin and dabs 一 basically punches 一 jin ling in the face.

“i, ow 一” the kid stops his jiujiu’s frantic hands and swats them away. he grabs his own napkin and proceeds to try and clean himself with disgust written on his face. “when i went back to get my spoon i saw him talking to a very old man, like grandpa’s age, and he asked him out on a date.”

jiang cheng gasps at his nephew for a couple of seconds as he tries to process the information. “but why are you asking if he’s a sugar baby?! how do you even know what that means?!”

jin ling’s look at his jiujiu is deadpanned. “i do have access to the internet, you know?!” his tone is sarcastic. “and that’s what a sugar baby is,” he shrugs one of his shoulders nonchalantly. “young, attractive people who go out with an older person so they can get some money out of it.” and then he mutters. “judging by where he lives i’m assuming he could really use it.” 

jiang cheng immediately takes his phone out of his pocket, dials a number and holds it to his ear.

jin ling raises an eyebrow in curiosity. “who are you calling?”

“your mum. i’m gonna tell her to put an age restriction and parent control app on all your devices.”

“jiujiu!” jin ling screams in protest as he launches himself across the table trying to get the phone out of jiang cheng’s hand.

━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━

jin ling is gone on saturday afternoon, therefore jiang cheng sleeps his way to sunday.

he woke up a bit later than he’d usually prefer, but still decided to take the time to go out with fairy, who had been co-opted by jiang cheng’s nephew the whole week, barely batting an eye at his owner.

they go to the park nearby the building and jiang cheng enjoys the area to take the leash off of fairy and play catch. 

it ends up with his holding his knees while painting and fairy running laps around him. i need to focus more on cardio at the gym , he reckons while regaining his breath.

they stay around a bit longer, but when jiang cheng stomach starts to rumble he realises that he hadn’t had breakfast, and lunch time had gone and passed, so he ties the leash back into fairy’s colar and they start making their way home.

jiang cheng, going off on pure muscle memory, gets lost in thought over what to cook 一 whether he has energy to prepare an actual meal or if he should just go for the leftovers of the roasted duck he and jin ling had on friday when his knees hit something and he almost falls forward, planting his face on the floor.

the man somehow manages to regain his footing and realises that the thing he bumped into was fairy, as the dog abruptly stopped. “what’s wrong?!” jiang cheng asks and follows the pup’s eyes to the outside area of a restaurant across the street.

there wei wuxian sat across from an older man, smiling fondly at something the man was showing him on his phone.

jiang chang frowned, remembering for the first time jin ling’s words when they were having ice cream  一 jiang cheng had been more worried about jin ling knowing what a sugar baby was than focusing on the rest of the sentence, drilling in the boy trying to better understand what else he knew that he definitely, definitely , shouldn’t.

he opened wechat and sent his nephew a text, asking if he remembered the guy in the lift.

‘ yeah. ’ came the reply almost instantly.

‘when did they agree to meet up? ’ jiang cheng glanced nervously between the 2 men on the table and his phone as the 3 dots that meant jin ling was writing kept appearing and disappearing.

‘ today. why? ’ jiang cheng pulled his face into a scowl and pocketed his phone.

when he looked back to the restaurant the two weren’t there anymore.

jiang cheng chewed on his lip before pulling fairy along.

the pain on his chest was jealousy, he knew. 

but not of the man 一 well, not exactly. jiang cheng just saw the smile in wei wuxian’s face and the fondness in his eyes and it tugged at his heart.

he wanted to be the one causing wei wuxian to smile, somehow.

or the one he was looking so fondly of. the one he had asked out for lunch.

he knew it wasn’t what jin ling had implied.

he met enough of his father’s mistress 一 unwillingly so 一 to know how that type of relationship looked like.

it just hurt him a bit that after months he still hadn’t moved an inch forward since he first met the man.

jiang cheng was pulled back from his thoughts, as fairy started jumping around trying to eat a butterfly.

“what are you doing?” he chuckled, starting to play a bit again with the pup. “ok, ok, daddy is hungry. let’s go!” jiang cheng starts running and pulls fairy’s leash along over the few metres left to the lift.

━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━

“you’ve caught me in a bad time.” jiang cheng grumbled, balancing the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he fishing putting on his pants.

“yes, the one you’re in since you were born.” his da-ge’s response came with the most matter-of-factly voice the man had in him. jiang cheng rolled his eyes. “why, are you trying to track down the grandpa that is dating your man? do you want help?” there was a thrill to the way the last question came out that sent a chill down jiang cheng’s spine. for some reason it suddenly reminded him the primal tone his father’s friends had everytime they discussed hunting for sport.

“no. i am going on a date with your man.” it probably wasn’t the smartest of decisions, mocking mingjue with his… thing, towards lan xichen but out of all adjectives one would use to describe jiang cheng, smart probably wouldn’t cut it.

“you lot meeting about your money laundering scheme?”

“not every shady contract about real state is money laundering.” jiang cheng knew at least 4 better ways to cash in unexplainable income by the time he was 10. he might or might not have been the one that gave the original pitch for the pay for protection scheme the bullies had in place in the one time he was allowed to attend a normal non-home schooling institution. the way that snowballed into a political fight when the renowned parents of the middle schoolers heard word of was, as jiang cheng insisted to this day, not something he had the foresight of predicting and being removed from social interaction with peers his age probably stunted his emotional development. at least that was his jiejie says when their parents complain to her about jiang cheng’s emotional constipation. “but yeah, we’re meeting in 20.”

“can you make it to the lan’s in time? do the city even have direct transportation from the outskirts of nowhere where you bloody live there?”

“no, actually.” jiang cheng usually hailed a cab, hating the idea of having to ask for a car from lotus pier and not entirely too bothered about buying one with the whole nowhere-to-park thing. “but we’re actually meeting in a restaurant nearby.”

“afraid your mum might’ve bugged the restaurant? she didn’t. i keep tabs on her purchases.”

“... ok. why?”

“precaution.” nie mingjue stayed friends with jiang cheng because of a couple of reasons, despite both being horrible at friendship. those being: he hated the man’s brother-in-law as much as he did and thought that if they worked together they could make jin zixuan’s life more miserable than it usually was, he pitied jiang cheng, he himself didn’t have that many friends, and having a direct connection to meishan yu could prove helpful. although they were currently abiding to the law the tales from that family were generational and still stroke fear to all the non corrupt individuals inside the police. “thought you’d like a heads-up if she ever came to the possession of large scale weaponry or industrial level bleach.” not that anyone could prevent that but a couple of days of head-start and jiang cheng could get a new name and passport and go live the rest of his days in a remote paradise. 

“no. i mean,” he pat fairy’s head as he made his way to the door. “if that happens yes, it would be nice of you to let us know. but i can’t go to the lan’s anymore.”

“you’ve been banned ?? from the lan’s?” the older sounded incredulous in the other side of the line. “oh that’s a new low, even from you.”

“not- not banned.” he jammed the button on the elevator in annoyance. “lan wangji’s bunny have ptsd.”

“no, they don’t.” nie mingjue deadpanned.

“da-ge, i understand your lack of familiarity with animals that small but yes, they do.” mingjue only went to the first the lan’s while still in construction, having never eaten in the place. the only contact he must have had with bunnies is as food, as far as jiang cheng is concerned.

“i’ll pretend that’s real. how come?”

“well… fairy has gotten… creative, in the way he’s played with them.” jiang cheng still doesn’t trust his eyes or his memory but he could’ve sworn the last time he was leaving the lan’s fairy had at least a dozen bunnies lined up one on top of the other while he smashed through them like a live, furry, jenga tower. “they are not reproducing anymore and when they see me or fairy they roll over and play dead for hours.” it was traumatising to jiang cheng himself.

“how come even non-human creatures around you are off their right minds?”

“you’re around me.”

“and i monitor your mother for fun.”

“anyway, we’re going to a place with actual food.”

“can his stomach even handle that?”

“we shall see. anyway, i promise not to kill your beloved.” jiang cheng stepped onto the street signalling for a cab before disconnecting the call in lieu of listening to his da-ge attempt to commit murder through the phone.

as it was, lan xichen did not, in fact, handle normal human food. they had ordered gong bao ji ding and upon tasting a single peanut laner-ge had gone green in the face and was nursing his cup of water ever since.

“we can order some rice soup, ge.” jiang cheng insisted for the nth time still worried about the prospect of having lan qiren call him to ask for explanations on how the heir to the gusu empire had been hospitalised because of spice.

“do not worry. i’m fine.” the man lied. “i called you to congratulate you, as a matter of fact.” lan xichen turned to his suitcase sitting on the chair to his right.

“ok…” jiang cheng wasn’t congratulated. ever. not by his allegedly non-existent friends and certainly not by his family. not even by yanli. it just wasn’t a thing they did, celebrate one another, to the point he wasn’t sure he himself knew how to do it. he shifted uncomfortably in his seat while racking his mind trying to think of something that would warrant such sentiment, but came up empty.

“you are the new tenant of the only unit under gusu lan inc. to have ever existed.” the older one placed a couple of signed forms and documents on the table.

“ oh .” jiang cheng was relieved with the prospect of not having to deal with a compliment as he pulled the papers close to inspect them. “7th floor.” he hummed.

“i know you wanted to move one floor, but the only option was on the 10th and,” jiang cheng’s head snapped up at that, but he quickly regained his composure, cleaning his throat. “since you wanted to go down the seventh seemed like a good choice.”

“no, yeah.” he tried to contain the emotions in his voice. because right now he didn’t particularly like to think about the 10th floor or its inhabitants and the disappointment of things that could’ve been but weren’t. it had been almost a week since he saw wei wuxian and it was on his most-likely date with the methuselah from their building. moving to the same floor as him would only grow his expectations even more, which would undoubtedly hurt when they crumble. “this is perfect. thanks da-ge.”

“the couple there is moving out in the next couple of weeks and i’ll need a few days to paint it over for you from the dreadful colouring in it.” in lan’s words: any colour that wasn’t white or real pale baby blue. “you should be living in it in three weeks at the latest. i also took the liberty of handling your current contract with the owner.”

“oh, and what was decided?” jiang cheng had rented it for the year. had it not been up to lan xichen’s kindness he would just pay the fee for breaking the contract and move.

“thought your mother might be suspicious of me taking over the lease even though with gusu owning one of the units she wouldn’t be able to buy the complex, but just to be safe i am giving it to mingjue for the time being.”

jiang cheng coughed around his drink. “what?”

“well, yes. i thought since now he too is used to live outside of home, whenever he comes to visit he can stay there, it seems to be very convenient!”

“and did you tell him that?”

“oh no, it’s a surprise!” lan xichen smiled around the border of his cup of water, in a way that could almost be considered sly. 

jiang cheng’s hand twitched to text the man i know something you don’t but mingjue wasn’t above kgb, torturing it out of him. much like lady yu, mingjue did not like surprises. besides, he wanted to see the look on the man’s face when one lan xichen came up to him and told him that i got us an apartment . “that’s fantastic, da-ge! i’ll make sure he comes as soon as possible so you can tell him the news.”

his spirits were reasonably higher than they were that afternoon as he returned to his soon-to-be old apartment with a good prospect, for once. 

it wouldn’t last long.

“good evening, darling.”

“oh, wang-ayi!” he greeted his neighbour with a smile.

“you seem better than lately.”

jiang cheng chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. “yeah, i had a bit of a rough one lately, ma’am, but things are starting to look up for me.” for once , his mind provided.

“oh, that’s lovely dear. well, i am also having a good time.”

“oh! that’s great.”

“yes, it seems like i was quicker than you when it come to xiao a-xian.” jiang cheng wondered if the older lady could hear the tire scratching from the way his mind halted at her words, or his dumbfounded was the reason that prompted her to say, “just yesterday that young man asked me out on a date. what a good way to make an old lady feel special!”

jiang cheng, frozen in place, could do nothing but let out a quick chuckle as the woman made her way inside her apartment.

did wei wuxian really have a thing for older people?

━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━

“maybe wei wuxian really does have a thing for old people.” mianmian pondered while sipping her tea.

“why are you here?” jiang cheng asked, very unamused, looking at her interrupting the probably very important job he was supposed to do.

“no, he also asked out these 2 kids from the apartment, and the janitor, whose also around their age.” wen ning gave his input, sipping on his very own cup of tea.

“your job,” jiang cheng pointed to the man, “as of lately has been officially changed to making my life a living hell, why is she here?”

“oh god, he’s not into little kids is he?”

“no!” jiang cheng exclaimed, very offended.

“no, it was more of a babysitting kind of thing, according to the tales.”

“what tales? i’m the only person you’re getting info on him from.” jiang cheng was, as usually, very exasperated. 

“so, he’s going around on dates with anyone in the building with a pulse and capable of consent but you?” mianmian directed her focus back on jiang cheng. “he barks, and he won’t ask you out. have you maybe thought about doing an introspection into what’s wrong with you?”

“can we please let that bark thing die once and for all? and what are you doing here ?” jiang cheng didn’t like yelling 一 well, he didn’t like that he yelled, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

“a-li jiejie asked me to look into your non-existent love life.”

“she didn’t say that part, did she?”

“no, she’s a kind woman who likes to lie to herself regarding her didi’s relationship capabilities so she won’t be depressed. i added that with my god given poetic freedom.”

“first of all, i’ve dated people before一”

“name one that wasn’t because you were forced into, for your parents' business deal, or the  boy that burned all your clothes when you were living in the states.” wen ning butted in.

“ second of all ,” jiang cheng continued, ignoring the man. the car burning incident was due to a psychotic break the boy he was seeing at the time had due to the boyfriend he had, which jiang cheng did not know of, and had nothing to do directly with jiang cheng himself, thank you very much. “i would rather stay single forever than marry an uncanny valley elon musk designed robot for the rest of my life.” divorce wasn’t exactly an option in his life. he knew of his mum’s side of the family practice of ending relationships through arson. he didn’t want that.

“well, don’t i have good news for you, then.” mianmian said with her mouth around the border of her teacup.

“maybe you could get him to go out with you for dinner and convince him you’re a good catch.”

“yes!” mianmian agreed with wen ning clicking her teacup into jiang cheng’s work table. “just pretend you’re everything you’re not and he should like you. i mean, you're a handsome man, all that’s rotten in you is on the inside!” jiang cheng passed a tired hand on his face knowing this was as good of a compliment he would ever receive from her.

“i appreciate the dating tips, i really do, mr. wouldn’t be able to make a single conversation to save my life with someone i’m not forced to work with or my sister, and mrs. i live vicariously through my boss’ relationship because the only person who has ever agreed to go out with me filed a restraining order that very week, but i have really important business to get back to.” 

“yeah? like what?!” mianmian asked in a genuine curious tone.

“leave!” jiang cheng snapped, getting up abruptly while slamming his hands on the table, making wen ning flip out of his chair and make it to the door. mianmian just levelled his glare.

“i know we have our differences, but i am with a-li jiejie on this one, a-cheng. i really hope this works out.” jiang cheng furrowed his brow. that sounded like almost an earnest wish for his happiness. “i mean, can you just imagine breaking the news to your mum? the son she paid so well to be raised by other people dating a guy ?” her eyes unfocused as she imagined the scene while she sighed. “after she kills you, and him , a-li will be the only heir and she will ascend to the yunmeng jiang throne.” mianmian was out of the door before the rest of her tea, which jiang cheng threw in her direction, made contact with the chair she had previously been sitting on.

“what’s wrong with jiang yanli inheriting lotus pier?” lan xichen asked, confused.

“she doesn't want it. her passion is for her humanitarian work, and what we do at lotus pier is anything but humanitarian.” jiang cheng shrivelled just thinking about the knowledge he one day would have to be privy to, once he stepped into the ceo role.

“wow. it does have a heart.” mingjue mocked pushing the pint he just brought back towards the youngest of the tree. 

jiang cheng had used taint to bring nie mingjue back into hong kong, and used the man’s own tricks against him. after a very cryptic lan xichen told me a secret and two days of no contact, all jiang cheng needed to do was leave his gps on and lo and behold, nie mingjue was barging into the bar they are currently sitting on, sporting almost comic level sized brass knucks only to be welcomed by a very cheerful “ you made it! ”, from lan xichen. 

he had also timed the exact moment mingjue da–ge would take his first sip to direct the conversation towards lan xichen’s big surprise to him. although the mouthful of beer and spit that came flying towards his face was bad, jiang cheng had been mentally preparing himself for a while for the way nie mingjue would most likely get him back for this little stunt he pulled.

“yeah, yeah.” he waved his hand around dismissively. jiang cheng didn’t know exactly how the conversation went towards wei wuxian but, much like his thoughts, they all did lately.

“maybe he’s shy.” lan xichen tried being supportive.

“he asked out a 12 and a 15 years old.”

“oh god, is he in一”

“he’s not into kids.” jiang cheng let his head drop on the table. the weather was too cold and he wasn’t nearly drunk enough to having the reprise of this conversation for the 4th time. he took one kid to morning screening of five nights at freddy and chaperoned the other on a skate-rink date. “i am more concerned he is into my neighbour than whatnot.” wei wuxian had been going a lot to have tea and biscuits with wang-ayi. the fact that jiang cheng seemed to miss him every single time that happened just made him all the more mad. 

nie mingjue hummed in thought, “i feel like i’ve heard something like this before…”

“yes, i know, i’m sorry, i haven’t really been able to shut up about it.” to anyone willing, or not, to listen to him.

“why don’t you ask him out?” lan xichen once more trying to be helpful, unlike everyone else in his life.

“i mean,” jiang cheng shrugged. “not that i would exactly know what to say when he’s been going around asking everyone out but me. maybe he just really doesn’t want to go out with me.” he took an angry sip of his pint. “maybe i’m the creep who managed to fall in love with him with no much more information that his name.”

“that’s probably it.” nie mingjue agreed, matter-of-factly, promptly receiving an elbow to the ribs by lan xichen while jiang cheng let his head hit the table in a painful thud.

“i一” jiang cheng grunted like he was giving birth. “apologised!” he yelled while finishing the last rep of the last set on the leg press.

“oh it’s cute, you think i won’t drag this out for months because of one apology.” mingjue seemed actually entertained. 

“i’ve been,” jiang cheng should get off the machine, but he wasn’t entirely sure he could walk anymore. if his legs didn’t give out on him the second he stepped out, then certainly his collapsing lungs would get him down. “been apologising. since yesterday.” it didn’t stop nie mingjue from dragging him into a torture session of exercising this morning. jiang cheng could count his losses that at least he didn’t take him to a ring for a sparring session. his mood must be very down if it warded off even nie mingjue’s need for gratuitous violence and honest punch throwing amongst friends (lan xichen not included).

“and you will continue to do so.” mingjue smile pulled at his face in a weird manner. had he not had his beard jiang cheng thinks the way his face contorted would be nightmare inducing.  “you should stop complaining though. this is me being a good friend.”

jiang cheng levelled a look at him as he bobbled, on wobbly legs towards the closest bench to do his last exercise. “oh, my saviour.” he mocked the older man. 

“we’ve been here for three whole hours and you have yet to mention you-know-who.”

“he’s not beetlejuice, you can say his name!”

“so you will mop around more? no, thank you, i can’t barely stand you as it is.” the man rolled his eyes as he threw a 40kg dumbbell at jiang cheng who was able to catch it before he needed a rhinoplasty.

“what am i supposed to do with this?” jiang cheng heaved as he placed the thing in his lap, thinking that it was slightly heavier than jin ling and immediately making a mental note to search how much a 11 years old should weigh, before nie mingjue tried to kill him with yet another flying dumbbell.

“dumbbell chest press.”

“at 80?”

“you can bench press 130.”

“yes! bench press!” jiang cheng groaned as he placed the second one on the ground, he didn’t think he needed to explain to mingjue, of all people, the difference between those two exercises. “i’m starting to think it would be better to just go to the krav maga gym and let you beat the crap out of me.” he could swear that he wouldn’t feel as sore as he most likely will tomorrow.

“no can’t do. i can’t go there anymore.” the older said nonchalantly as he picked up two 80kg dumbbell to do some curls.

“why?” jiang cheng flinched as the man started doing his reps as if they didn’t weigh more than he did.

“restraining order.”

“on a gym? on a gym ?!” jiang cheng was appalled as mingjue just continued to do his set.

despite how hot he felt after nie mingjue’s first round of payback, even after the quick shower he had in the gym, jiang cheng still wore his jumper just as a precaution. he really didn’t feel like catching a cold at the moment. 

mingjue was nice enough, if that word can even legally be applied to the man, to give him a ride back to his place.

although the trip was impromptu he would stay for a week so they made plans to meet the day after the next to unwind. 

(which in nie mingjue and jiang cheng language meant throwing themselves from high places in bungee jump and hoping that they would become statistics)

jiang cheng asked why not on the very next day, mingjue talked high and mighty about him but he wasn’t any better in the friends department and everyone at his old station had a knee jerk reaction of peeing in fear every time they saw him. mingjue simply grumbled something about huaisang, new meds and a baseball bat, reminding him yet again that, like yunmeng jiang, qinghe nie clan will also never walk on the path of the light of the lord.

jiang cheng just wanted to take a longer shower, get in his bed and forget his life had ever existed when he stepped inside the lift to face a beautiful as ever, albeit constipated-looking wei wuxian. “hello.” he greets the man nonetheless despite being immediately reminded how he will rather have tea and biscuits with their senior neighbour than have a proper conversation with him.

yet, jiang cheng cannot stop his heart from beating faster, in anticipation, in hope. it’s ridiculous, is what it is. having crushes like he is a child and doesn’t know any better, and yet he cannot help but hope, despite the way his mind keeps telling him not to. even when wei wuxian didn’t even bother to greet him back.

and while, yes, it is not wei wuxian’s responsibility for the scenarios that jiang cheng created in his very own head, he can’t say that it wasn’t mutual. at least for a second there, right?!  it was driving jiang cheng insane because, while he knew he wasn’t the best at reading social cues and facial expressions and body language (both his parents being the emotional equivalent of a brick wall for the times they weren’t trying to tear each other down), he could’ve sworn, with all he had that wei wuxian had felt something too.

jiang cheng realises he’s staring once they are already passing the 3rd floor and wei wuxian’s facial expression is growing increasingly more deformed.

mianmian’s question what is wrong with you keeps replaying in his head as he tries to mentalise a situation into existence but to no avail. sooner than he knew the lift reaches his floor all while wei wuxian looks like he wants to say something, whether to start a conversation or tell him to fuck off jiang cheng supposes he wil never know, as he makes his way out of the confined space with a sigh.

mingjue must’ve been right. wei wuxian must’ve found him weird or something, and he should let this go. it will only lead to heartbreak and hurt and the poor guy wouldn’t survive his family, except 一

except he is, somehow, the only real thing jiang cheng has ever know. he’s a real person who seems quirky and odd and amazing and weird and funny and is so fucking beautiful jiang cheng’s historical low sex drive has made an appearance for the first time in forever.

so jiang cheng turns around, worrying on his bottom lip and praying to the lord that this isn’t their last moment, because he is about to ruin it all but he needs to know “should i be worried?” he scratches the back of his neck. a nervous tick as of lately, averting wei wuxian’s eyes as realisation sets in of what he’s doing and how this, much like everything else in his life, will end up in ball of flames.

“worried about what?” wei wuxian sounds confused because of course he does, it’s not his fault he captivated jiang cheng as one would do a stray after petting it a couple of times in the street only to have it follow you all the way home.

the blood is creeping up jiang cheng’s neck and he is so embarrassed because this is so pedestrian. his whole life and one of the few things his mother taught him was that people like them, they never beg, they never ask, they take what’s their.

but that is the thing. the whole problem: wei wuxian wasn’t his. he wasn’t an object, he wasn’t even a part of his world. he was a beautiful far away distant galaxy that jiang cheng knew better than to bring his black hole of an existence near and destroy everything in his path. everything that was good and beautiful in him. but he is his parents son, and he can’t help the thrum in his blood to take. to keep. 

“should i be worried that you’re going around asking everyone out for dinner but me?” i am a good catch. don’t ask my friends or family, but i am pretty sure i have the most fanclubs out of any legacy on weibo and at least 3 dramas where the main character is inspired in me , is what his mind is yelling but he doesn’t say out loud.

wei wuxian, in lieu of replying, lets out this strangled noise, looking positively in pain while his eyes dart around everywhere but towards jiang cheng. 

and he doesn’t respond. which breaks jiang cheng’s heart.

he never wanted for much in his life, not really much wanting his life, but he guessed, at some point during the last 3 months, that it would be fine, better even, if he could walk it with wei wuxian.

not that it mattered now. the man in front of him looked absolutely embarrassed as he probably thought of some way to gently let jiang cheng down, being saved by the lift doors’ closing, saving them both from more embarrassment.

jiang cheng took a deep, shaky breath and made his way back to his apartment, thinking, for the first time in his life, that his mum was right. love wasn’t good for a single thing.

(jiang cheng would like to let it be clear that he did not cry in the shower following what he name his lift confrontation episode, because one time, a couple of years back, when he had a very short psychotic episode and almost dyed his hair purple fairy let it be very clear that he was not an emotional support animal, all but basically roundkicking jiang cheng in the face as he leaped for a hug in a crazed stance. he would not like to discover what having normal human emotions for the first time around his dog would result in.)

━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━

“just move to one of gusu’s building.” lan xichen’s voice sounded somewhat far away.

“he won’t, he’s a masochist.” came nie mingjue’s reply right after. jiang cheng regretted, as he passed one of the boxes in his room to one of the movers yanli had sent to help, not wearing headphones and opting for putting the call on speaker.

in his defence, jiang cheng did not 一 in his innocence or stupidity, still up for debate 一, imagine what the call was going to be about, or that it even would be, evidently, an intervention group cal. he should’ve known better since it had been a week and the only topic of discussion he ever seemed to be thrown in was how he was turned out by a man that barks and standards that, as diverse as they are, do not include jiang cheng.

“i am not a masochist.” he hissed on the phone as he all but somersaulted between boxes to continue putting things away. wen qing had offered to help packing but jiang cheng knew the price she would ask for her time would be nothing short of signing away the rights to his organs.

“you lived with your mum way up after your 18th birthday.” mingjue countered.

“yes and i moved.”

“before marriage or become the ceo, knowing she would hunt you for sport.”

“that’s not why i did it!”

“a-cheng is right, he did it in hopes that absence makes the heart grow fonder, forgetting that madam yu is not, at the moment, in possession of a heart.” wen ning, who jiang cheng didn’t even know was on the call, unhelpfully pointed out.

“at the moment?!” and “in possession?!” sounded out at the same time.

“that is not what this is about ok. it’s about my mental health.”

“practising necromancy now, are we?!” heavens knew why mianmian was also on the call. “bloody thing’s already dead. bury it.”

jiang cheng thanked god that he would never again have to face any of the movers ever again after today.

“besides, is it so hard to believe that wei wuxian or no wei wuxian i actually like living here?” a cacophony of yeses and one and no wei wuxian it is resounded from the phone making jiang cheng sigh.  “alright, thanks you lot. i’m gonna assume since we’re doing this through the phone none of you are gonna come and either help or forcibly remove me from the premises, right? so i will go back to packing my books.”

“oh that’s what we’re calling them now, jiejie?” as jin ling’s voice made his way out of his phone, jiang cheng wanted to smash the damned thing in the nearest wall, but opting for just unceremoniously disconnecting the call. he had already packed most of what he kept with himself 一 mostly dostoyevsky, tolstoy and the classics of russian literature, as well as a few obscure brazilian novelists 一, and not at the library at the state, had already been packed. it just so happened that his marvel collection (the one he read, not the original ones, obviously) were still somewhat scattered in the box. 

still, they were comic books , and he would not take shit from an 11 year old.

if he actually put any thought to it, he probably should move out. he had a plan to frame wen ning for something petty stupid that would send his mother spiralling like changing the type of grain she likes for her bread, so she would focus on making his life a living hell instead. or just getting engaged to lan wangji and moving into one of gusu’s high end skyscrapers so she would stop bothering him altogether. 

(lan wangji didn’t necessary dislike jiang cheng, and jiang cheng mostly didn’t remember the existence of the other, but if lan xichen asked he would probably accept it. even more so considering he would get out of those ridiculous most eligible bachelors list and putting a barrier between himself and all the crazy power-hungry mammas that would force lan qiren’s into throwing his nephew out to the wolves.

if lan xichen wasn’t the current leader of the company he probably would also be required to go through such torture. as it was he was trying to set his own trap to force mingjue into going out with him instead.

jiang cheng had thought of suggesting jealousy as an attraction technique, but that was probably reserved for people without severe mental issues and access to heavy weaponry and police force at their back and call.

jiang cheng chuckled to himself understanding a bit why his so-called love life seemed so amusing to others. it was actually quite fun. his only experience thus far had been the criminal his sister was married off to and his parents’ car crash of a relationship so he didn’t really understand the appeal. 

he felt lucky that, even if failed, he had had a good one as wei wuxian.

and then he turns around to see said man standing in the doorway painting. jiang cheng jumped in surprise cursing that the illness in his blood has finally caught up to him.

“uh… hi.” evidently not hallucination wei wuxian greets him. “what is going on?”

affirming to himself that, for some reason the man is actually at his already-former residence, it takes a second for jiang cheng to get it out that, “i’m moving out.”

“oh.” and perhaps that traitorous part of jiang cheng’s brain is acting out again but he could swear it is sadness painted on wei wuxian’s beautiful, beautiful face. “are you really moving out right now?” and jiang cheng, even with the pain, can’t help but smile fondly as he quickly glances through the room full of boxes. he was always a bit slow .

“ yeah, i am.” 

and as he turns around to close the box with the west coast avengers’ 2018 saga on top, wei wuxian blurts out “you can’t leave right now!” in a desperate tone that makes jiang cheng feel like someone is physically squeezing his heart. “i’ve been making a fool of myself for months trying to finally get a chance to behave like a normal being, trying to feel confident enough to say how beautiful you’re. you can’t leave before i finally do it!”

and, oh .

jiang cheng would pinch himself if that wasn’t a very pathetic thing to do, and before he has a chance to reply, wei wuxian barrels on, “god i was so afraid of your dog the first time i met you, but you looked so hot that i couldn’t ask you to wait for another elevator to ride because i really wanted to spend time with you.” the laughter in his tone has an edge of desperation and the confession of being afraid of fairy but powering through it makes jiang cheng both guilty and amused. “i’m terrified of dogs, but i know you love them so i couldn’t say anything and, to be honest, you do look adorable playing with fairy.”

and yeah, that’s a man after his own heart right there. jiang cheng blushes fiercely with what is probably the nicest thing someone (that actually knows him and not the parasocial relationships people have with him on internet forums) has ever said to him. however, it proves impossible to get wei wuxian to stop now that he has started it, and calling out his name does nothing to stop the soliloquy he had going on. “every time i saw you with your arms out i couldn’t even think, too afraid of speaking because you look like a god,” and wei wuxian covers his face as if he is the one that has the right to be embarrassed right now. “you’re so hot and you don’t even notice! my confidence is ruined because i can’t flirt with you without turning into a mess, and I’ve always flirted with anyone!” 

and yeah, jiang cheng bear witness to that as he went out with everyone in their near vicinity in the past month. 

“you’re cute and hot at the same time, it makes my head dizzy and I get speechless because you confuse me.” wei wuxian confesses and for a second jiang cheng is afraid that they are making a spectacle of themselves, not because he’s embarrassed of the moving crew, or of the young girl at the apartment to his right that might or might not be trying to listen to the commotion, but because this is for jiang cheng and jiang cheng only. this is his moment, his person. “i know it’s probably ridiculous because we don’t know each other very well, but i think i’m in love with you? also i really hate dogs 一 ”

“wei wuxian 一” he tries again because, really, they need to take this elsewhere before he yells every one of the poor innocent movers out and ends up with no one but his stubbornness to help him with the furnitures, but,

“.... but you look so cute with them! Also the first time I saw you with your nephew it made my heart warm, you looked soft so I’m pretty sure you’ll be a great father in the future一”

“wei wux一”

“so please please please if you could give me your phone or something, I don’t want to lose another chance and 一”

“wei wuxian!!!” jiang cheng yells bloody murder to get to stop. breath. only to receive a just as exasperated what in return. he proceeds to take a deep breath, trying to calm his frantic heart and stop the flow of blood that probably has his face tomate red by now, and clears his throat before, “i’m really thankful for all of… this,” he gestures wildly with his hands “but i don’t think this is the right time to do that.” he wants to be romantic, and do a grand gesture, and a lot of things he didn’t knew he wanted or had the right to want until hearing from the man he’s in love with that he loves him back.

well. 

that he loves him. wei wuxian hasn’t exactly given jiang cheng the opportunity to confess as of the moment.

“oh… right, i’m sorry.” the man says deflated, looking like a kicked puppy with his head down, before turning around to face the door.

jiang cheng doesn’t find the bite within him to pull the man’s leg like he would’ve if it was one of his da-ge or that horrible pompous talking bird his sister keeps at her house, so he doesn’t. “besides, i’m only moving two floors down. so grab a few boxes and help me, the sooner i'm done, the sooner we can discuss what to have for dinner tonight.” he instructs, wanting to take the man out of his misery. 

wei wuxian wips around so fast jiang cheng is afraid he might have whiplash, and he swears the man tumbles for a bit before firming down on the floor. “so… you’re not going away?”

“nope.” the answer stretches the pull at the corner of wei wuxian’s mouth. “i will still live in this building for a very long time.” he foregoes dumping the politics or implications of his statement on the other for now.

“does that mean i didn't need to confess everything i confessed in the last few minutes like a fool?” wei wuxian pouts and jiang cheng can’t help but sport a smile of his own.

“yep, but i’m glad you did.” he takes the opportunity to approach wei wuxian, taking in the somewhat tiredness of the bags under his eyes and his dishevelled hair, but finding it all the more endearing. “also, i think being a fool is part of who you’re, but it’s kind of endearing.” he says because he can. they can.

jiang chang feels tingles down to the tips of his fingers as a smile forms in wei wuxian’s face. he winks at him and moves to the living room because he is now more eager than ever to get done with the move. “if you don’t help me, i don’t think we can have that dinner date tonight!” he calls out and in less than a heartbeat wei wuxian appears on the door carrying a box.

jiang cheng is happy.

━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━

there are a plethora of things jiang cheng has to protect wei wuxian from: his mum, his family, the tabloids, nie mingjue.

all of those, he realises with an impeding sense of doom, are bound to happen sooner or later, with various degrees of disaster imbued to them.

however the most pressing one, in their very first days, has been fairy.

getting the little beast to behave around so not to horribly tick wei wuxian’s cynophobia has been a challenge. so he’s doing his best to avoid their encounters, choosing to walk fairy out whenever he knows wei wuxian won’t be around, and letting jin ling stay with him progressively more.

(jiang cheng swore to his jiejie that he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, seeing how much his nephew loved fairy, but, in reality, he was training fairy to piss on jin zixuan’s bed, the one he thankfully , did not share with a-li)

so when he runs into wei wuxian in the elevator he is fairy free. 

“are you free tonight, neighbour?” jiang cheng asks as he holds his hands, looking at the beautiful man he has on his side. 

one day. 

one day jiang cheng would have to show him all the ugly.

confess all his sins. show himself bare and hope that wei wuxian still takes him.

love him even if he doesn’t.

jiang cheng knows it’s all too much. he’s too much.

but for now he let’s himself have this.

for now wei wuxian is still looking at him and meaning it. “for you i’m always free,” he winks which bubbles a laugh right out of jiang cheng’s chest. “but  everything comes with a price, so…”

“where is the man that got down on his knees when i was talking to my dog?” jiang cheng teases, with a flick on the other’s forehead. ‘the one who listened when i said sit down and obey.” he had forbidden his friends of talking about it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.

wei wuxian flushed bright red, but held jiang cheng’s eyes as he inches closer to whisper through a smirk “you can alway find new ways to make me obey, sweetie.” and yeah, jiang cheng recently found confidence held a candle to the natural prowess of one wei wuxian, so it was fair that it was only his turn to blush as he glared warningly at his boyfriend and tries to stutter a reply.

wei wuxian, the smart, good man that he is, holds jiang cheng’s head between his palms and kiss him instead. 

and yeah, jiang cheng thinks he’s never getting tired of this.

they, unfortunately, break apart after a couple of seconds as they reach the 10th floor. “let’s go, handsome!” the demon in front of jiang cheng prompts with a smirk as he sways his way out, probably dislocating his hip bone in the process.

unlike shakira, wei wuxian’s hips, most like the rest of his body, do lie and trick and deceive, as he carelessly trips over his own feet and almost plants his face in the floor in spectacular fashion, were it not for jiang cheng quickly grabbing him by the waist. 

holding him and pulling him unto himself, jiang cheng is more worried than anything. “are you alright?” wei wuxian looks, for a lack of better word, stupid, with his mouth hanging open.

“oh no, jiang cheng…”

“what? what are you feeling?” jiang cheng’s heart picks up it’s pace while he’s debating whether he can still hold wei wuxian with one hand and use the other to call wen qing. “is your vision ok? is your 一”

“jiang cheng…” wei wuxian grabs onto jiang cheng’s leather jacket, pulling them closer, as he says “look… i think i’ve fallen for you.” cackling maniacally as jiang cheng groans and debates letting the man fall on his butt.

wei wuxian is nothing he has ever encountered before.

jiang cheng loves him like he never did anything before.