Chapter Text
It’s a lovely night to be out on the town, Wei Wuxian thinks, though this is perhaps not the place he would have chosen for tonight, had it been up to him. The Good Luck Bar is as clumsily named as it is dingy, and the neon-lighted characters stretching over the smudged, dirty window flicker half-heartedly as he reaches for the handle of the door.
A riot of sound swells around him as the door swings open, swallowing him up in the cacophony of drunken revelry and too-loud music. It’s full to brimming with patrons, the dirty floor clutching at the soles of his shoes as he makes his way to the bar and the group of people standing there. He has to admit that in his more desperate days he might have made a place like this his regular watering hole—the promise of even mediocre alcohol better than no alcohol at all—and a welcome sight to someone like him. Jiang Cheng would’ve scoffed at it, though, and imagining Lan Wangji glowing like a beacon in his pristine clothing even under the flickering, dingy yellow lights almost makes Wei Wuxian laugh out loud.
It’s the right expression, if not the right sentiment, because the idiots at the bar see him and start cheering and laughing right along with him. He lets himself be swept up in the tide of revelers, ordering a bottle for himself and toasting his new companions, letting the heated flush of alcohol carry him away.
Or at least, that’s how he makes it seem. Very little of the liquor actually passes his lips, the sticky floor beneath his feet growing stickier with each clever tip of his glass.
The man to his left is Wen Chao, and Wei Wuxian recognizes him from the dossier Madam Yu had whacked him over the head with just a few days past. Beside him, and drinking far less, his gaze like a hawk as he watches the room, is Wen Zhuliu, the bodyguard appointed by the head of the Wen Clan. Most people would consider this dive a strange place for the son of one of China’s most notorious crime families to let loose, but A-jie’s intelligence never fails; this is Wen Chao’s favorite place, and he was going to be here tonight, looking for a good time and getting fucked up with his posse. It would also be the perfect place, Jiang Yanli had said, her voice sweet and innocent, for someone with the right temperament to get close enough to him to take him out.
Wen Zhuliu had watched Wei Wuxian closely at first, hovering at his shoulder with a hand on the Ruger at his belt. Wei Wuxian had swayed into his space, feigning drunkenness, and spilling his drink all down Zhuliu’s front as he’d leaned into his space to show him a juicy new erotic image he’d saved on his phone. Of course, Wen Chao had intercepted that one, and he’d been pressed up close to the greasy idiot ever since.
Waiting for an opening… biding his time.
It comes when Wen Zhuliu’s attention is drawn by one of the Wen posse who tries to pick a fight with the bartender. It only takes a split second, one moment of Zhuliu’s focus on someone other than Wen Chao and the stranger showing him pornography on the sticky screen of his phone, and Wei Wuxian is slipping a knife in between Wen Chao’s ribs, quiet and slick as anything. Blood washes hot down Wei Wuxian’s fingers, and Wen Chao is still gurgling his laugh when Wei Wuxian blurs past him to bury the knife, still wet with Wen Chao’s blood, in Wen Zhuliu’s chest.
The shouts start then, but he drops when another one of Wen Chao’s cronies levels a gun at his head, slicing the tendon at the back of his knees so he goes down like a stone before he can get a shot off. He takes out the legs of two more of them with a sweep of his own foot and the knife makes short work of the last of them. He’s out the door and into the night before the general drunken population of the bar has realized that more than a run of the mill bar fight has gone down, shoving bloodied hands into the pockets of his jacket as he makes his way casually down the street.
Wei Wuxian is a professional, the best contract killer hired by Jiang Industries, and he’s long gone by the time the sirens start, whistling his way to his car where he’d parked it several streets over, and letting himself inside with a sigh.
He moves to fit the key into the ignition and notices the smear of blood he’s left along the grey leather of his steering wheel. “Damn,” he curses, and fumbles for the glove box, extracting a crumpled pile of napkins he’d stuffed there after his last trip to a drive-through McDonalds. He scrubs at the steering wheel first, and then at his fingers, to only moderate success. Grumbling, he stuffs the bloodied napkins into a bag of other trash to be dealt with later, and jerks the steering wheel to turn roughly onto the street.
Twenty minutes later, he pulls his car into the space behind Lan Wangji’s where it sits at the curb outside their home, parked neatly and so perfectly parallel it looks as though the space was measured with a slide-rule. His own park job isn’t nearly so precise, but it’s not up onto the grass so he calls it good, locking the doors before skipping the walk and trekking across the grass to the front door. The house is dark—it’s past 9 pm which means Lan Wangji is in bed, and Wei Wuxian swears he’s not going to wake his roommate up this time, because contrary to popular belief, he’s not actually a monster, thank you very much.
His key in the lock seems to echo in the silence of the night and he winces as he tugs the door towards him to turn the key in the lock. It creaks as he pushes it open, and he tip toes into the entry, sucking in a sharp breath as he trips over a pair of boots he had meant to put away earlier.
A light flicks on and he stumbles to a stop halfway across the front hall, his eyes falling on the ominous figure of his roommate, perched on the end of the couch and glaring disapprovingly at him under the halo of warm light from the lamp. He’s dressed for bed in a t-shirt and pajama pants, an outfit that would look ridiculous on anyone else but which Lan Wangji makes look like high fashion.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, disapproval in his voice and in every line of his body. He’s frowning, his hands fists at his sides, his back perfectly straight and legs uncrossed as he stares daggers across the room. His posture is the very picture of rigidity. “You are very late.”
Wei Wuxian pastes a cheerful grin on his face, forcing his heart down from where it’s leapt up into his throat. “Lan Zhan! You didn’t have to wait up for me!” He fumbles for the cuff of his jacket, tugging it down over a hand he knows still has a smear of blood on it. Should’ve stopped to clean himself up better before coming in the house, he chides himself. Such a rookie mistake, the kind he shouldn’t be making after years in this line of work.
Lan Wangji’s sharp eyes drop, following the motion of Wei Wuxian’s hand as he tries to hide his fingers. “Wasn’t waiting.”
“Then what are you doing up? Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Wei Wuxian teases, flipping his hair over his shoulder to draw attention away from his sleeve, his bloodstained hands. Lan Wangji only glares, his eyes following Wei Wuxian as Wei Wuxian crosses the room, flinging himself onto the couch opposite Lan Wangji. The expression on his face is objectively kind of hot, not that Wei Wuxian notices, and he’s oddly touched that Lan Wangji had apparently waited up to make sure he got home alright. “Aww, Lan Zhan, were you were worried about me?”
“No,” Lan Wangji retorts, and pushes himself abruptly up from the couch. He’s all the way at his own bedroom door before he stops, turning to glare over his shoulder at Wei Wuxian. “Go to sleep,” he says. “You have work in the morning.”
Little does Lan Wangji know Wei Wuxian has just come from work, and not from a bender at a local dive, like he must suspect. Wei Wuxian stifles the dangerous, slightly delirious urge to laugh. Lan Wangji has no idea what he does, no idea he just spent the evening murdering bad men for good money.
“Okay, er-Gege,” he says, winking at Lan Wangji as he pries himself off the couch again and saunters past him into his own bedroom. He doesn’t let himself linger, shutting the door behind himself before flopping inelegantly into his unmade bed, his groan muffled into his own bicep.
He wishes he didn’t notice things like how beautiful Lan Wangji looks, even—maybe especially—dressed for bed, and that the thought of Lan Wangji waiting up to ensure he got home safe didn’t make him feel so warm inside. Even if Lan Wangji didn’t hate him—which he does—Wei Wuxian is sure that if Lan Wangji weren’t so polite and if the rent wasn’t so cheap or conveniently located near his workplace, Lan Wangji would have moved out ages ago.
After all, love is a luxury people like Wei Wuxian can’t have and probably don’t deserve, and he knows without a doubt that no matter what he feels about his roommate, Lan Wangji is far, far too good for him, and can never—will never—love him back.
*****
Lan Wangji rises without fail at 5 am every morning and has done so for all the years since they became roommates. As far as Wei Wuxian knows, he doesn't set an alarm either, so reliable is his internal clock, and by the time Wei Wuxian drags himself out of bed, Lan Wangji has usually already gone through his morning workout, showered, dressed, and eaten breakfast. When he had moved into the spare room in the house Wei Wuxian had been renting about three years back, he had attempted to sway Wei Wuxian to his inhuman and frankly ridiculous sleeping habits, but quickly gave up when he realized how fruitless his endeavor was.
Wei Wuxian does keep to some rough semblance of a schedule, however, if only to keep Yu Ziyuan from ending his life. So when he stumbles to the kitchen each morning, Lan Wangji is still there, impeccably dressed and groomed in a neat suit which looks far, far too good on him for Wei Wuxian's health so early in the morning.
This morning is no exception, and Wei Wuxian shuffles to the table and groans his protest of Lan Wangji's general everything before he lets his head thunk down on his own arms, stretched out across the kitchen table. He plans to lay here insensate for as long as possible, but Lan Wangji has other ideas, setting a bowl of congee and a cup of tea next to his outstretched arms.
"Eat," Lan Wangji commands, and Wei Wuxian has to blink blearily up at him.
"Hnn?" he manages, somewhere between a question and a grumbled protest.
Lan Wangji looks like he is trying very hard not to roll his eyes. "Eat," he says again, and reaches to balance a pair of chopsticks delicately across the rim of Wei Wuxian's bowl.
Wei Wuxian peers blearily inside, blinking at the contents. They're deliciously red, unlike Lan Wangji's own breakfast, which looks to be about as bland as he is. Wei Wuxian somehow manages to summon the strength to pick up the chopsticks and obediently begins shoveling the congee into his mouth.
His eyebrows shoot up as flavor bursts across his tongue. "Lan Zhan!" he exclaims, swallowing hastily and feeling significantly more awake. "This is so good!" He shovels more food into his mouth and groans appreciatively. “Thank you, Gege!"
When he looks up, Lan Wangji's ears look a little red. "Mm," he manages noncommittally, and Wei Wuxian grins as he continues to eat the delicious breakfast his roommate had prepared for him. Lan Wangji is so perfect as to be almost irritating, if not for the fact that Wei Wuxian is the one benefitting from such perfection, and now he's even making Wei Wuxian breakfast! This must be what swooning feels like. He’s not sure he likes it, but it’s definitely happening.
He watches as Lan Wangji pushes himself to his feet, gathering up his briefcase—his briefcase!—and making his way to the front door. Wei Wuxian knows, from the little he had been able to glean from the ever-reticent Wangji, that his work at Gusu Enterprises starts early, and he puts in long, long days. Wei Wuxian largely makes his own schedule, and the nature of his work often keeps him out late; they often don’t have much time to spend together during the days. Wei Wuxian pauses in his eating to call out to his roommate.
"Lan er-Gege!"
Lan Wangji pauses, his outstretched hand on the doorknob, looking over his shoulder at Wei Wuxian.
Wei Wuxian grins at him brightly, waving exuberantly. "Have a good day at work!"
Lan Wangji scoffs, but if Wei Wuxian is not mistaken, his expression looks a little warm. "Mm," he says. "You too, Wei Ying." And then he's gone, the door closing softly behind him as though it daren't make the kind of noise it usually does under anyone else’s hands.
Wei Wuxian listens to the soft fall of Lan Wangji's dress shoes on the pavement, the slam of his car door, and the hum as his car starts up and drives away from the curb, before he buries his face in his hands and screams.
*****
When he finally finishes his breakfast and bestirs himself to dress and head to work, it's nearly 11 am. He parks in the first empty stall he finds and squeezes into the elevator alongside a handful of other building employees just as the door slides shut behind him.
It's a long way up to the top of Yunmeng Tower by elevator, and Wei Wuxian uses the time to tug his clothes into a more respectable order, smoothing his wrinkled shirt and hurriedly tucking it into his pants. Outside, the clear glass showcases a brilliant blue sky, peeking through the thickets of buildings until the elevator crests them all, taking him to the top floor of the Tower, and opening onto Jiang Industries.
The office is already bustling and he greets a few of his co-workers with a smile and a wave as he makes his way through the maze of cubicles. He's sat at the same desk for the ten years he's been employed by his adoptive family, and it's acquired a cluttered, haphazard appearance that reflects its owner’s personality in a way that irritates Madam Yu as much as Wei Wuxian himself does. Across the aisle, Jiang Cheng is already flipping through a stack of files and typing away on his computer as Wei Wuxian sidles into the room. He cocks an unimpressed eyebrow at Wei Wuxian as he shuffles toward his desk, still wrapping an elastic around the long tail of his hair.
"A-Niang is going to kill you," Jiang Cheng says dispassionately. Wei Wuxian grunts, dumping his messenger bag on his cluttered desk and flopping inelegantly into his chair.
"Wei Wuxian!"
Right on cue, Madam Yu’s voice cracks through the room like a whip. Wei Wuxian winces, looking up to see the crowd of idling Jiang Industries employees scattering like leaves as Yu Ziyuan makes her way down the aisle.
“Told you,” Jiang Cheng hisses, and he sits up a little straighter as his mother makes her way over to them.
Her suit today is an elegant ruby as deep as blood, her pin-straight hair skimming the crisply tailored shoulders as she moves. Her shoes—five inch Louboutins with toes as pointed as Wei Wuxian’s best knife—sound against the floor in an ominous beat like the drum heralding the arrival of an executioner to the gallows.
It's as if she watches and waits for him to arrive just so she can rip Wei Wuxian a new one. If he weren't the best contractor they have on staff, and if not for her husband Jiang Fengmian's interference on his behalf, Wei Wuxian has no doubt he'd have been fired years ago, family connection be-damned. She probably has cameras installed at all the entrances just so she can keep track of all his misdemeanors.
"Madam Yu," he says, shooting upright from his chair. He might be terrified of the matriarch of Jiang Industries, might resent her obvious dislike of him, but he respects her and her ability to rip his face off should she so desire. There was a time that the Violet Spider was the most sought after contract killer in the industry, and there isn't a single person in the field who doesn't still speak of her with awe, Wei Wuxian included.
"You're late," she says, and the sweep of her eyes over his rumpled clothes is derisive. She tosses a file onto his desk where it lands amongst the discarded bodies of its companions. "You have an assignment."
He flips the folder open, scanning the front page of the dossier before he looks up to meet her sharp gaze. "This is…"
"I know," she says, and her tone brooks no argument. "But you'll do as you're told. Don't question your orders."
He nods, scanning the file. "Did A-jie collect this information?"
"Obviously not," Yu Ziyuan replies haughtily. "It would be better prepared if she did. But a contract is a contract and you will carry out your assignment."
"Yes Ma'am," he says succinctly, bowing his head and forcefully stifling the incredibly ill-advised urge to throw up a teasing salute. She scoffs as though she can read his mind and turns on her heel to leave.
Wei Wuxian is left standing, staring blankly at the space Yu Ziyuan had left, and he meets Jiang Cheng's gaze across the space between them as the door slams shut behind her. Jiang Cheng cocks a sardonic eyebrow. "Do you try to make her hate you?"
Wei Wuxian flaps a hand at his adoptive brother, flipping open the file in his hand. "You know she would hate me regardless." He thumbs through the papers, grimacing at the poor organization of the dossier. "Ugh. Why do we even take contracts Jie didn't line up for us? This is a mess."
Jiang Cheng glances to make sure Yu Ziyuan has truly left before he throws a balled up piece of paper at Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian nimbly dodges the piece of paper and sticks his tongue out at Jiang Cheng.
"Shut your mouth and do your job," Jiang Cheng grumbles, turning back to his computer.
"Jeez, you're about as fun as Lan Zhan these days."
Jiang Cheng snorts derisively. He doesn’t look up, his fingers hammering decisively at the keyboard beneath them. "Why do you always talk about him?"
Wei Wuxian sits up, glaring across the space at the side of Jiang Cheng’s face. "I don't always talk about him!"
"He's all you ever talk about. I feel like I know more about him than Jin Zixuan, and he and Jie are married."
"Whatever, Jiang Cheng. You're just jealous you don't have as good a roommate as me!" Or as beautiful, or as thoughtful, or one who makes him breakfast in the morning.
Wei Wuxian ignores Jiang Cheng’s answering retort and pushes himself to his feet. "Well, I'd love to stay and chat, A-Cheng, but I have things to do, people to kill." He flips the salute he'd spared Madam Yu in her son's direction. Jiang Cheng scowls, and Wei Wuxian runs to the door to dodge the hail of balled paper and office supplies Jiang Cheng sends flying in his direction.
*****
The target—one Xue Yang, purveyor of stolen weapons, murderer, and general miscreant—is due to meet his contacts in a warehouse that is so cliché a place for the exchange of stolen goods that Wei Wuxian has to laugh. It’s an easy matter to pick the lock and creep inside, tiptoeing silently through lines and lines of barrels and boxes. This is a situation that requires discretion, so his Glocks are tucked safely into their holsters underneath his jacket, their weight resting comfortingly against his sides. Instead, he has a knife strapped to his ankle and at the small of his back, and another against his forearm and ready to flip into his hand with a flick of the wrist.
He pads, catlike, through the shadows, flitting between pillars and barrels and boxes like a shadow himself. He follows the sound of voices, echoing through the corridors of the warehouse with the ease and bravado of those who think they can't be touched. Wei Wuxian smiles; little do they know.
Finally he sees them, a collection of eight men standing in a loose circle in the middle of two of the aisles, and picks out his target. Around him are the usual body guards, hulking and armed, but slow. They’re more physical obstacles than an actual challenge for someone like Wei Wuxian. The others appear to be the ones buying, and he settles in to wait for his opportunity. His task is simple: wait until they make the exchange and take out Xue Yang, making it look like the buyers were the perpetrators. He suspects there must be some ulterior motive for this hit—someone looking to turn Xue Yang’s people against the ones backing the buyers, but it’s not his place to wonder. His place is to do the job, make the hit, and not to ask questions.
It's cold and cramped in the space in which he wedges himself and the people below him talk far too much. Xue Yang himself has a permanent smirk on his face that makes Wei Wuxian want to punch it right off and he grows tired of his pompous rambling in the space of a few minutes. Rolling his eyes and sighing out his boredom, he lets his gaze wander as he waits, and it's because of that that he sees it—a flash of white, his eye drawn to the flicker of movement between the forest of boxes.
He sits up, flicking the first of his knives into his hand on reflex. His fingers curl around the hilt of it, knuckles going white. He hardly dares to breathe as he waits, staring across the empty space at the catwalk across from him. And there! There it is again, another flash, this time further down and closer to his target. Heart pounding in his throat, he realizes with a sinking dread—this whole op about to go absolutely sideways.
There's another player.
"Fuck," he curses, low and under his breath so that no one will hear, and slips from his hiding spot. He's not going to be outdone by some fucking imbecile amateurs. He's going to make this hit before whoever the fuck it is messes up the op.
He swings himself down from the catwalk, landing lightly behind a stack of boxes before he slips around the open area, stalking. He has a knife in each hand before he breaks into the cone of yellow light cast from the hanging lights on the ceiling and there are two dead bodyguards before they realize he's even there. He dodges the second one who raises his gun with a cry, taking him out with a shattered kneecap.
Xue Yang goes down with his slimy smirk still plastered across his face, and with a red smile slicing through his throat.
The man hits the ground hard before the buyers have even realized what has happened, their startled echoing through the stacks. They raise their own guns and Wei Wuxian has time to think shit with a casual dispassion before he's flinging the knives, taking out two of them one after the other. He's bracing himself to make a move on the next when there's a flash of white and suddenly, there's someone else in front of him.
Someone dressed in a slick suit and trim white shirt, who looks shockingly familiar.
Lan Wangji breaks the neck of the first of the remaining buyers with a swift twist and a sickening crack, and he lashes out with a sword of all things to cut the second clean in half. His eyes when he meets Wei Wuxian's for a split second are shocked and for a breath they just stand there, staring at each other across the carnage.
Then, heart hammering in his chest, Wei Wuxian moves.
His brain is screaming at him as he dodges behind a collection of barrels. "Fuck," he curses, his heart hammering. Lan Wangji is a contractor? How in the actual fuck? He scans hastily for an exit, just as he sees someone else join the scene, shouting to Lan Wangji.
The man beside Lan Wangji raises his weapon to aim at Wei Wuxian. It's a pathetic attempt and Wei Wuxian can already see how the shot will be wildly off-target. He feels the inadvisable urge to laugh at how poor the man’s aim is, how far it will be from actually hitting him—which is when he realizes he’s currently surrounded by barrels marked with the symbol warning for explosive materials.
He has a split second to look up, and sees the shocked, devastated expression on Lan Wangji's face, sees his mouth form the shape of Wei Wuxian's name, before the gun goes off. It's the most expression he's ever seen on Lan Wangji's face, and if Wei Wuxian didn't know better, he'd think he was afraid.
It's the last thing he sees before the world around him explodes.