Chapter Text
Perhaps, the first sign should have been the messages from his brother.
Lan Zhan is no stranger to waking up to numerous messages awaiting his reply. He retires early, and he is well aware that most people continue functioning far longer into the night, especially in their profession. More often than not, he wakes to messages and notifications for changes in schedule that have collected over night when his phone had been on Do Not Disturb. That had, in fact, been the reason he has developed a habit of spending an hour every morning dedicated solely to answering his accumulated messages.
What is uncommon, however, is a message from his brother. Lan Huan does not have a habit of sending text messages, at least not to Lan Zhan. He prefers to call, and since he knows the hours Lan Zhan keeps, he makes sure that any information that needs to be delivered to Lan Zhan is done so directly while he is awake. For Lan Huan to leave any messages at all is odd. That his message is so cryptic is even more so.
Lan Zhan opens the message immediately. It’s just two lines long.
YilingWen announced their line up. You should see this.
It’s followed by a link to an Instagram post. Lan Zhan clicks on it, and waits for the post to load. His phone is only linked to a private account, one he had insisted he did not need— he had never seen the appeal of posting on any form of social media and was only forced to maintain an official account that his PR manager controls completely and posts carefully curated neutral content after every race on— but his brother had insisted on, so that he could “keep tabs on what was happening around him”. It contains a singular post— a captionless photo of a sunset— made when he first created his account, a handful of saved posts, and nothing else. He follows one equally inactive account. He has been made aware that this is behaviour that could be constituted as 'lurking', but he has not been blocked yet, so he seems to have gone under the radar.
The post is slow to load, probably as an effect of the poor Wi-Fi connection at the hotel Lan Zhan is currently staying in. All he can see is two blurred silhouettes and the colour of the race suits. It’s been a while since he’s seen red on the grid. Where QishanWen’s colours had been an eye-catching bright red and white with the sun emblem front and center, when they rebranded into YilingWen, they had replaced their colours with a more muted burgundy shade. A mountain had been incorporated into the emblem as well, making it appear like a rising sun— or a setting sun as their detractors loudly proclaimed on social media. He’d seen flashes of both the colour and the emblem before, as YilingWen had started campaigning for their comeback, but he had not paid it much attention, choosing to focus on racing alone.
QishanWen had been rotten on the inside from the day Lan Zhan had joined the grid. Everyone had known it, even if no one had been able to say anything about it. Between the rumours of their owner Wen Rouhan money laundering, the blatant nepotism that had gotten his son Wen Chao a seat, the accusations that his other son and Team Principal Wen Xu was purposefully fostering a dog-eat-dog culture that caused mechanics and second drivers alike to leave within months of joining, most people preferred to simply stay away from the dumpster fire of a team. When the whole QishanWen scandal had broken, the only thing that had truly surprised most people was that the Wen family had faced any consequences at all.
In the three years since, QishanWen had undergone its rebranding as YilingWen, power shifting from Wen Rouhan and his sons to a minor branch of his family that had remained untouched by scandal. It had been difficult for them to recruit, from what Lan Zhan had heard, seeing as no one really wanted to touch such a scandal-ridden team with a ten foot pole, but they had managed to scrape together a team somehow. It had taken them a whole extra year, however, apart from the two year race ban the team had received. The last Lan Zhan had heard, they were struggling to find drivers willing to join them. It would have been career suicide for any established driver, meaning that they would have to go hunting within their own Driver Academy, and it had been a well accepted fact that they would firmly take their place as a backmarker team with two rookies at the helm. All things considered, it’s very odd that Lan Huan would expect Lan Zhan to care about their line up.
When the post finally loads, Lan Zhan first sees the figure on the left. It’s a rookie as expected, with a sweet smile and what looks like kind eyes, though he is certain to have some fire if he had survived the famously brutal and cutthroat Wen Driver Academy. Vaguely, he remembers seeing the kid before, though he isn’t sure where and when. He will have time to find out, he supposes, as he shifts his focus to the figure on the right, and—
For a moment, everything around him stops.
Lan Zhan would recognize that face anywhere. Of course he would. Four years is nothing— four lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to make him forget that face. All he can do is stare, suddenly thankful that he is seeing this news in the privacy of his own hotel room and not in public with every camera trained on him to try and catch the expression on his face when he recognizes the returnee— his famed eternal rival, his greatest competitor, the one person in the world whose name has forever been and forever will be intertwined with his.
Images flash in his mind’s eye of those same bright grey eyes, sparkling with good humor, a bright smile that felt warmer in person than a photo could ever capture, a warm presence that was always, always there, just in his periphery, in his mirrors, the gleam of a deep purple car as they took turns flying past each other at each turn until one crossed the finish line first, the way it felt to look up on the podium instead of always down, that strange mixture of feelings that he couldn’t quite put a name to and tried so hard to convince himself was just competitiveness, just envy, just the irritation of having yet another win snatched away from him, the feel of a waist under his hands and the body pressed against his when they squeezed onto a single step for podium photographs, the voice that was equally cheerful in victory and defeat, the easy compliments— you nearly had me in Turn 1, that was a well-executed overtake, it’s so much more fun racing you than anyone else—
Lan Zhan cannot breathe. He forces himself to inhale. To exhale. His lips shudder as he does.
“Wei Ying,” he murmurs to himself, his thumb tracing the shape of the face so beautiful, so beloved to him, on the screen. “Oh, Wei Ying.”
The thing is, when he first started out, no one had warned Lan Zhan that winning could be a lonely thing.
Victory is always accompanied by cheers and yells, by the pride brimming over in his uncle’s eyes and his brother beaming wide enough to split his face in two. Victory is always accompanied by joy in the hearts of the fans and his team alike, all the people cheering him on, believing in him, trusting him to do it right. Victory is always accompanied by the mingling smell of sweat and champagne that he wonders if he will ever get used to— he hasn’t in the past seven years.
But the top step is isolating, especially when you have the reputation that Lan Zhan has developed. He has outperformed or outlasted all his peers and those who came before him, and remains unopposed by what should be the bright new future of the sport— none of them have close to touching him yet, on track or off. He is too precise, too skilled on track that everyone else only has a sliver of a chance to beat him on his worst days. Off track, his peers find him cold and distant, too intimidating to approach.
Lan Zhan is a generational talent.
For the past four years, Lan Zhan has been bright, shining, untouchable— and alone.
Perhaps he would not feel it so much if he had never known anything different. But he has, and now it feels like there is a hole that can never be filled by anything else. Only one person has ever challenged him, had neither been intimidated by him nor resented his abilities. Only one person had ever been his equal, had beaten him, even. Only one person had been worthy enough to do so.
It has been four years since Wei Ying's departure— so abrupt after, by all accounts, his most successful season yet had earned him a well-deserved championship— had been announced. That day, it had felt to Lan Zhan that his world had stopped turning.
Finally, finally, he is back again, and Lan Zhan feels like the world has started turning again.