Chapter Text
On that fateful day, Wei Wuxian had been finishing his deliveries late into the evening. Thankfully, Wen Qing-jie wanted to babysit A-Yuan that day, so Wei Wuxian picked up extra work to make up for the last week, when he got sick out of nowhere.
The last delivery was in a wealthy neighbourhood for a senior citizen — he wasn’t that old, he just acted the part — that was a returning customer. Hands full of grocery bags filled to the brim with veggies, fruits and some vegetarian food, Wei Wuxian rang the bell with his elbow. Usually, the man would open immediately. Wei Wuxian could imagine him waiting on his little banquette near the entrance after getting a notification on the delivery app. This time, however, it took a couple of minutes before the man appeared and opened the door.
“Hello! Here is your order— Shit— sorry, what happened?”
His favourite senior citizen was absolutely drenched! Layers of clothes wet and water dripping from his hair and his goatee. The man looked like he took a swim and was too exhausted to be angry.
“Thank you,” he replied nonetheless, accepting the groceries. Then, he explained, “Kitchen pipe.”
“I am sorry,” Wei Wuxian said wholeheartedly. As someone who spent quite some time in a cheap apartment with faulty piping, wiring and everything, really, he got his fair share of sudden malfunctions. But since he had to deal with them often, he knew how to handle them. “Do you need help?”
“I wouldn’t want to burden you. I will just call the repairman in the morning,” he said tiredly, though he seemed to consider Wei Wuxian as his helping hand. “You probably have more important things to do.”
The man tipped generously, as always. Cash in hand, Wei Wuxian couldn’t help but to persist.
“Please, xiansheng, you must’ve turned the water off. What about cooking and taking a shower? At least let me take a look. You are my last delivery, I really am in no hurry.”
The man took a relieved breath, “Very well then.”
Wei Wuxian took his sneakers and jacket off, shoved the tip money into a pocket and followed the man to the kitchen. To call it a mess would be an understatement. The old man was lucky he had tiled floors in this room, otherwise his nice wooden floors would be ruined by now.
“I will bring the mop,” the man said resignedly and disappeared into, presumably, the bathroom — or did the rich people nowadays have a closet for mops?
Kitchen towels were thrown in heaps on the floor near the sink. Thanking the heavens that he didn't wear socks that day, Wei Wuxian stepped into a puddle to look into the cabinet. Luckily, it was the cold water pipe, and the pipe didn’t burst or break entirely. It seemed like a part of it simply came off. Must’ve been the bad installation — disaster waiting to happen.
Wei Wuxian squatted, picked up the loose part and installed it where it belonged. He had a wrench in his car and, when the man finally returned with two empty buckets and a mop, Wei Wuxian ran off to get his toolbox.
***
About twenty minutes later, Wei Wuxian was sitting in Lan Qiren’s — that was the man’s name — kitchen, now free of all the water and general mess, and drinking some very well-made and expensive tea. The last time he had tea like this was when he still lived with the Jiangs and had to attend social events together with Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli. The children didn’t like participating in these traditional tea ceremonies but had to participate and learnt all the rules under Madam Yu’s watchful eye. Back then, he didn’t really understand what was so nice about this tea. His go-to was one from sachets with so much sugar in it it barely mixed into the drink. Now he got all old and wise at a respectable age of twenty two and liked his huoshan huangya a lot.
Lan Qiren was lecturing him on tea history, when Wei Wuxian got a notification from his phone. It was Wen Qing, asking when and if he was coming home.
“Sh— I am sorry, Lan-xiansheng, I really gotta go now! My friend’s shift starts in an hour and I need to get back to my son,” Wei Wuxian was already at the entryway, stomping into his sneakers.
“You have a son?” Lan Qiren asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, A-Yuan is four,” Wei Wuxian smiled as he pulled on his jacket and grabbed the toolbox. “You have my phone number if the pipe breaks again. Don’t hesitate to call. If it’s more than I can fix, I will give you a good plumber’s contact.”
“Thank you,” Lan Qiren picked his wallet up from the banquette where it had been laying this whole time. He got a couple of large bills and gave it to Wei Wuxian, “Here.”
“Xiansheng! No! I volunteered to help, you don’t have to pay me.”
“Nonsense,” he pushed the cash into Wei Wuxian’s free hand. When Lan Qiren saw him trying to return the money, he said, with a squint, “Buy something nice for your son then.”
That was a dirty move! If it was just Wei Wuxian, he would never take the money, but he had a sweet radish of a boy back home who could always use a couple of new cute outfits or a surprise toy. And just having more money when you had a kid was always reasonable.
“Lan-xiansheng,” Wei Wuxian whined, “You are playing dirty!”
“Go, go,” Lan Qiren waved him off. “Don’t make your family wait.”
And so Wei Wuxian was off into the night. Lan Qiren closed the door and looked down at a phone number scribbled on a piece of paper. There was no name on it. With horror Lan Qiren realized how impolite he was never properly introducing himself or asking the young man his name. He must’ve seen one of the diplomas on the wall and learnt Lan Qiren’s name from them. Lan Qiren shook his head as he entered the number into his phone under the nickname of a “Helpful delivery man” and grimaced uncomfortably. He should ask his name the next time they meet.
***
The opportunity came rather soon, unfortunately. A week after the pipe incident Lan Qiren’s computer stopped turning on. Knowing from his acquaintances from the library how difficult it is to find a proper honest specialist, Lan Qiren had decided to call his helpful delivery man.
“Hello, it is Lan Qiren,” he said, finally saying his own name to the man.
“Lan-xiansheng! Oh no, did the pipe break again?”
“No, no. The pipe is good. First of all, I never asked your name, which was incredibly impolite of me. And I haven’t introduced myself either.”
“It’s fine, xiansheng, you were stressed. I am Wei Wuxian, you can call me Wei Ying if you want.”
“Nice to meet you, Wei Ying,” Lan Qiren was relieved. He could finally change the name in the phone book. “Secondly, I wanted to ask if you knew someone who knows their way around computers and could refer me to them. My computer isn’t turning on for some reason.”
“You are in big luck, Lan-xiansheng!” Wei Wuxian laughed on the phone, ”I am your guy yet again!”
He arrived the next day, another toolbox in hand. Lan Qiren led him into a big and nice office space and explained what the problem was. There wasn’t much information but Wei Wuxian had high hopes about this one. Maybe he won’t even have to go under the laptop’s hood to fix it.
He sat down in an ergonomic chair and pulled the laptop closer to himself. He checked if it was charging — which it was, according to the indicator — and tried turning it on. As Lan Qiren had already mentioned, it started booting up just fine but then turned off right after the welcome screen with a pin code. Wei Wuxian turned the laptop back on and navigated to the BIOS, safe-loaded it and seemed to have found the problem.
“Xiansheng, I think we will have to erase your laptop and reinstall the OS entirely,” Wei Wuxian reported to Lan Qiren sitting on a sofa behind him. He reminded Wei Wuxian of the patient waiting for the surgery to end. The mental image of him and Wen Qing operating on a laptop in full surgery getup made Wei Wuxian snicker. “Do you have important files here?”
“It’s new,” Lan Qiren answered, “And I had to go to the courses to learn how to use cloud space for work,” he grimaced. Must’ve been during the pandemic days. “Nothing important on it, no.”
“That makes things way easier!” Wei Wuxian took out a flash drive and plugged it in.
Turning the laptop back on with the installation drive, he began the Windows reinstallation. It was a lengthy process of which he informed Lan Qiren. The man left to make some tea and returned with some healthy snacks to go with it. Wei Wuxian joined Lan Qiren at the coffee table, sitting in the armchair to the man’s left. He had noticed Lan Qiren favoring this side when listening to him. Must be some hearing thing.
“Thank you for the snacks,” Wei Wuxian said after trying one of them. “I didn’t have time to have a proper breakfast today because of my son.”
“A-Yuan?”
“Yes! You remembered,” Wei Wuxian laughed. “He lost his favourite plushie and didn’t want to go to his popo without it.”
“This is rather familiar,” Lan Qiren stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You should take care of yourself however.”
“I am, trust me,” Wei Wuxian raised three fingers up. “I am eating way better than I did when I was younger. It was like half a meal and three energy drinks to go with it.”
“You would be setting a terrible example for your child,” Lan Qiren shook his head.
“I know, I know. But everything was different back then,” Wei Wuxian warmed his hands on the tea cup, looking down at the liquid gently swaying inside. Different wasn’t a good word to describe his past, but he wouldn’t go on about it with Lan Qiren, even if the man seemed nice and ready to chat.
Lan Qiren cleared his throat, “So, A-Yuan. You had him rather young. Wasn’t it hard for you and his mother?”
“Oh, there is no mother. I adopted him. It’s a long story,” Wei Wuxian said. “If anything, A-Yuan used to call me his mama.”
“I see. I have raised my nephews alone as well. They didn’t call me their parent, however,” was it a joke from Lan Qiren? Unbelievable!
“Nephews?”
“Yes, Xichen and Wangji,” Lan Qiren sighed. Whatever happened that left him to raise these two must’ve been a long story as well, “They are all grown up now. Around your age. Living alone and working hard.”
It was then when Wei Wuxian looked up and saw the laptop needing his input. He excused himself and went back to work.
“So, what was the issue?” Lan Qiren asked.
“Huh?”
“With the computer.”
“Ah! Well, you must’ve deleted something you shouldn’t have. Likely, the explorer. However, I don’t know how you managed to do that when the OS usually doesn’t let you.”
“I used a program. It is the one that deletes old work files for me. They are under a password and are hard to delete in bulk.”
This old man was shrewd!
“The people from work recommended it. Is it not good?”
“It’s good! You must’ve accidentally chosen the wrong file with everything else. Were you using a searcher?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that was probably the case then.”
What was left was logging into the account and letting the laptop finish setting up and checking if all the drivers were in place. Thankfully, Lan Qiren wasn’t one of the senior citizens that kept the password on the piece of paper or would tell it to just anyone. After the man logged in, with the laptop being new, it finished setting up fast. A couple of things…
“... and here you go!” Wei Wuxian proclaimed triumphantly. “I installed all the drivers and downloaded all the programmes you said you needed, including the unlocker one. Just be careful with it next time.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome! If you happen to delete something again, call me.”
“Wei Ying, I wanted to ask. I see you are a good and responsive person, but am I not burdening you?”
“No, I have an hour before my shift starts,” Wei Wuxian answered.
“Deliveries?”
“No, at the repair center,” they once again stood at Lan Qiren’s entryway. And once again the man was shoving money at him. ”Xiansheng, really…”
“Were you expecting me to let you work for free? I have researched how much it costs to repair the laptop at such a short notice. Here is it, and the tip. And for the pipe as well.”
“But you’ve already paid for the pipe!”
“I have done research,” Lan Qiren insisted. He was difficult to argue with!
“Fine, alright. But only because A-Yuan needs new books,” Wei Wuxian sighed and took the money, “Really, you didn’t have to. The problem wasn’t too serious anyway.”
“It wasn’t difficult for you, but it would’ve been for me, Wei Ying. Don’t tell me you go around helping everyone like this? I understand if they can’t pay, but if it isn’t the case… you should value your work more.”
Wei Wuxian sighed. He was, in fact, helping people selflessly. But why wouldn’t he? It wasn’t a big deal for him and wouldn’t take much time anyway. But maybe Lan Qiren was right. After all, he did have a child to take care of.
“Have a great day, xiansheng,” Wei Wuxian said finally and smiled. “I will be off.”
“You too, Wei Ying.”
***
What was happening was a little suspicious to Lan Wangji. At first, uncle’s “polite Wei Ying” seemed like a very helpful and responsive person who was just there to help with miscellaneous things. But just how much could this man do?
His story was also questionable. A young single parent with too many jobs to count and time to help Lan Qiren with various tasks? And his friends were his child’s relatives — including an aunt who worked as a paramedic and an uncle who was the ambulance driver? Why weren’t they taking care of their nephew?
It seemed like this Wei Ying was taking advantage of Lan Qiren, pretending not to want to take any payments but taking them regardless. Brother agreed that it was hard to believe, yet Lan Xichen had always been more trusting of people, that’s why he wasn’t so critical of Wei Ying’s character.
“Maybe he overexaggerates his story and skills. Maybe not even Wei Ying himself, but uncle does.” Lan Xichen said after another call from Lan Qiren who told the tale of Wei Ying fixing his fridge.
“He is treating him like family,” Lan Wangji said what they both were thinking.
“We should visit uncle more,” Lan Xichen lamented, “Also the child, A-Yuan, should be the reason why uncle is so enthusiastic.”
“If the child even exists.”
“Wangji, there are photos…”
“It doesn’t prove anything.”
It wasn’t like Lan Wangji was exceptionally distrusting. He wouldn’t turn away a person in need either, but there was a limit. However there seemingly wasn’t. Lan Wangji could imagine such a generous person existing. But if they had, weren’t they too good to be true? There must be something that Wei Ying was hiding.
“If you want, I can ask uncle to introduce us. Simply because they seem to be spending a lot of time together,” Lan Xichen offered.
Lan Wangji hummed his assent.
And in a week’s time it was two of his closest people singing praises to Wei Ying. Moreover, Lan Xichen had told Lan Wangji that the man was “very handsome” as well. Lan Wangji was at his limit. If brother was too naive to make judgement of Wei Ying, Lan Wangji would have to do it himself.