Work Text:
Wen Ning's CV was three pages long and consisted mostly of volunteer hours, shadowing hours, front desk experience, and internships at the family clinic. There was a summer internship at a family friend's clinic, too. The CV didn't say he'd left it early because the heat and computer screens had gotten to him. The internship had been unpaid: he'd helped them as much as they'd helped him, giving free labor in exchange for experience and no questions asked about his legal, medical, and non-negotiable accommodations. Other places hadn't been so kind. "We don't think you're the best fit," "There's lots of competitive applicants this year"—the endless unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately...
But his CV looked good. He'd been working on it all morning, in between pastries and iced drinks. And now for his statement of interest. Wen Ning sighed and slumped a little bit. He was sitting at a small round table, watching other visitors to the cafe come and go. He didn't people-watch like Wei Ying did, but it was hard to miss the parade of high-schoolers talking about their summer programs, and hard to miss the law school students on lunch break, and hard to miss the couple that had just left to pick up their child from daycare. They were going to the beach—Wen Ning wasn't able to figure out which one—and were taking her out early.
Five hundred words to summarize himself and his future. Wen Ning would need more pastries for this. Maybe the seasonal fruit tart. Or a macaron. He could get five and have one every time he finished a hundred words.
He closed his laptop and went up to the counter. This cafe not only served good food, but had table service, which meant that Wen Ning never had to calculate whether he had the coordination to balance a drink or plate of something sweet on the way to his table, and never had to ask for help when he dropped everything because his brain and hands had decided to nope out in the middle of it.
He ordered and sat back down. There was the prompt. There was the personal statement outline and requirements his sister had sent him. There was nothing to it. Especially since he'd bought six macarons, to eat one right before he started.
Good posture meant he could stay typing for longer. He adjusted himself and got to work.
He only had an hour before his boyfriends were joining him, anyway. He didn't have to finish this today.
He wrote and ate, and decided that rewarding himself after every fifty words was the better option, and that the first draft had to be written, not to be good. When his laptop started dying, he plugged it it and kept going—but then he discovered that the dictionary website had word games, which still counted as mental exercise, so it wasn't a break so much as it was a temporary shift to other work. Wen Ning wasn't in a rush. This was okay.
Wen Ning was finishing up a crossword—so much easier with Wei Ying breathing over his shoulder, asking for clues and impatiently trying to pull words from a brain that didn't want to keep them, and doing much better than Wen Ning did even without brain damage—when he saw them.
The cafe had tall windows, and Wei Ying and Lan Zhan were also tall. They were at the opposite street corner, waiting to cross. Wei Ying was wearing a sunhat, a red ribbon artfully swaying off its side in the small breeze, and Lan Zhan was holding on to his elbow, balancing between him and his own cane.
They crossed slowly. Wen Ning was about to stand to open the cafe door—Lan Zhan was looking at it as they approached the same way he looked at the puzzles his brother gifted them—but a group was walking out and held it for them, so Wen Ning stayed in place and waved them over.
Wei Ying had made no move to take off his hat. That was the first sign, the only one Wen Ning needed, even before Lan Zhan, awkwardly but too quickly for Wen Ning to intervene, pulled out a chair, that it was Wei Ying who needed the extra support. Lan Zhan guided him down and took off the hat, then sat himself and pulled Wen Ning's water bottle in front of Wei Ying.
"Drink."
Behind his sunglasses, Wei Ying made a face.
"Only as much as you can, I'll get you a juice."
"I'll do it." Wen Ning slid out of his side of the booth—the corner booth, him on one edge of the cushioned bench and Lan Zhan on the other—and headed for the counter. He looked pointedly at Lan Zhan: Wei Ying might be the one turning into a puddle from five minutes in relative heat on the walk between the bus and the cafe, but he hadn't missed miss how stiffly Lan Zhan sat down. Why gamble with the future when Wen Ning was right there and eager to order them some sweets, too?
He asked for three mixed fruit juices, no ice, and a cheesecake and mousse to share.
By the time he got back to the table, Wei Ying was looking less like a spilled bowl of noodles and more like a slightly sweaty half-wilted peony coming back to life in air conditioning. Or something. The hat made him look more like a flower than he did now, and his face wasn't red anymore, so the comparison wasn't apt.
"Thank you," Lan Zhan said.
Wei Ying hummed agreement. Wen Ning patted the top of his head, and asked, "How are you feeling?"
They usually didn't ask that. There weren't too many ways to answer that when the baseline was already far lower than it should have been, but Wei Ying was looking better, so Wen Ning allowed himself this lapse.
Wei Ying allowed it, too. He slid the sunglasses off and made a face that indicated something along the lines of Better but I need to eat first. Wen Ning added that last bit: Wei Ying always needed to eat. Lan Zhan was in agreement, making room at the table for the desserts and pushing the juice into Wei Ying's hand when it was brought.
"What are you working on?" Wei Ying asked when the juice was gone and he looked another inch more functional. Life was so much better now that they knew how to deal with his heat intolerance.
"Apps," Wen Ning said. He couldn't keep his bitterness out of his voice.
"Oof."
"Yeah."
"What've you got?"
Wen Ning opened his laptop and turned it to face Wei Ying. He read, making faces here and there, squinting a bit from the screen.
"It's good!" He pushed it to Lan Zhan when it was done, and waited until Lan Zhan gave a hum of agreement. "Awful that you have to do it!"
Wen Ning nodded sadly. Grad school applications were the worst. Especially since his CV was so limited. And since so many programs wouldn't give him his accommodations.
"What's the problem?" Wei Ying asked. "Other than—" he waved a hand "—everything about it?"
"I don't have a lot of external experience. It's supposed to be important."
"You have done a lot at the clinic," Lan Zhan said.
"Yeah, but that's—it doesn't feel—" Wen Ning shrugged. "It feels different. I wish I had something else to fall back on. My top choice is my own program. So. You know."
"Fuck them," Wei Ying said, looking like he wanted to throw Wen Ning's laptop across the room. "So what if you're a nepo baby?"
Wen Ning laughed. Because that was the problem, clearly, that his family had helped him the only way they'd been able to, and that his top choice was a health program and university he knew he could manage because he'd already gotten one degree from them. Wei Ying's humor was a cool balm against his anxiety.
"You're clearly qualified," Lan Zhan, looking over it himself. "And many people apply for their own programs for grad school."
Lan Zhan, Wen Ning knew, had considered it. Had been planning on it, before graduation brought surgery with it, and hadn't spoken about further education after. He was apprenticing with a friend of his uncle's now, composing and doing some online stuff with scores and archived performances.
"Nepo baby," Wei Ying repeated.
Wen Ning kicked his foot.
Wei Ying kicked back. "Qualified nepo baby. So what if your CV's a bit shorter or you took more time to finish school or that hiring's bullshit? You know all the stuff, you have the grades, and you know the program's gonna give you what you need. They should be begging you to stay."
"They should," Lan Zhan agreed.
"You're more than qualified," Wei Ying said. "Like a koala—or not like a koala—Lan Zhan, what's that joke, the one—"
"Mm." Lan Zhan shook his head. "Not a koala." He looked at Wen Ning and asked, "Why aren't koalas considered bears?"
Wen Ning was sure the joke was from Lan Zhan's brother, who loved kitsch and books full of jokes and fun facts. That was how he was so good at socializing. Hack the system and all that.
With Wei Ying nodding and egging him on, Wen Ning asked, "Why?"
"Because they don't have the right koalaficiations."
"That's the one!" Wei Ying bounced once in his seat before he stopped himself and took a sip of his juice—Wen Ning's juice, technically, since he'd finished his own already. Good that he was regulating his body. Responsible. He put a hand on Wen Ning's, cold from the condensation on the glass. "You're not a koala."
"You can do it."
His smile was blinding.