Work Text:
- 1 -
“Shut UP! What is wrong with you?”
Wei Ying blinked, tears welling at the stinging grazes on his elbows where the older girl had shoved him down.
“No one’s ever going to adopt you if you keep talking like that. Always rabbiting on, it’s so annoying!”
“Maybe that’s why he’s here in the first place,” another of the orphanage’s older residents snickered. “Talked so much his mama and baba killed themselves just to get away from it.”
The tears fell in earnest now.
His memories of his parents were few and faded with time, but that couldn’t be right.
They had loved him.
They didn’t mean to leave him all alone.
…right?
- 2 -
“Why must you always rabbit on?”
Wei Ying kept his eyes focused on the floor at Madam Yu’s feet.
Cheek stinging from the reddened handprint that now stained it.
“You are such a pest with your incessant talking. Children should be seen and not heard, especially children like you. Am I understood?”
Wei Ying nodded, tongue aching where it was kept still between clenched teeth.
“Get out of my sight. I don’t want to hear another word from you for the rest of the day.”
- 3 -
“Oh a-Ying,” Jiang Yanli sighed, ladling fragrant soup into a bowl for him. “You know it antagonises her, why do you keep talking so much around her?”
Wei Ying shrugged, instantly regretting the move at the sharp stinging pain lancing down his back.
Jiang Cheng snorted inelegantly, “I reckon he wants to be punished. No other reason for him to just rabbit, rabbit, rabbit on like that when he knows what’s coming.”
Wei Ying stayed silent.
The shirt fabric chafing against the welts crisscrossing his back from Madam Yu’s belt was a poignant reminder to hold his tongue.
- 4 -
“He’s so hot, like, out of all the boys at this school, Wei Ying is definitely the hottest.”
Wei Ying froze at the sound of his name.
“I know, right? Like, his eyes are gorgeous, and his hair, it looks so soft, I just wanna play with it so much.”
Ducking his head a little, ponytail slipping over his shoulder, a small smile curved his lips.
“He could be such a heartbreaker.”
“But could you imagine actually dating him though?”
The smile froze and slipped.
“Oh my god, I wouldn’t even last the day.”
“He just rabbits on about the most stupid things all. the. time. Like, what is wrong with him?”
A quiet squeak sounded as he spun on his heel and walked silently in the opposite direction.
- 5 -
“Look I thought we could be good together, and I don’t mind having a chat or something.”
Wei Ying kept his eyes on the wine glass before him, twisting between his fidgeting fingers.
He knew how this went.
“But you just won’t. stop. talking.”
His nose tingled, but he swallowed down the urge to cry.
It always went like this.
“I can’t even, like, shut you up with my cock or something when you start rabbiting on, what with your whole stupid ‘waiting for the right moment’ rule.”
Was it so wrong to want something special?
To feel cared for?
“Good luck finding someone that can put up with all of that, cause it ain’t gunna be me.”
Of all the things he hated about being abandoned in a restaurant, Wei Ying was sure that the pitying stares and the whispers were the worst while he silently paid their bill, gathered his things, and left.
- +1 -
Wei Ying knew what he was doing.
But he couldn’t stop.
The words tripping over his tongue a never-ending stream of nonsense and inanity.
He needed to stop.
He couldn’t ruin this.
Why couldn’t he just stop?
“I’m sorry,” he finally blurts, biting his tongue to finally stop the torrent.
A slow, confused blink greets him. “Why are you apologising?”
“I know it’s annoying, no one likes it when I rabbit on. But I can’t help it, I just rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit…..”
A large warm palm rests over his hand, stopping the words in their tracks.
“Wei Ying.”
Nervous silver eyes flick up to catch on warm, soft gold.
“I like rabbits. Now, you were telling me about the various species of nudibranch?”
And Wei Ying?
Wei Ying talked.