Archive of Our Own ^beta

The road is mostly empty, which is expected of a town this size. Wei Ying tries to relax his fingers on the steering wheel, but his knuckles have gone numb and uncooperative. Jiang Cheng swats at his ribs to knock some sense into him and purposefully misses the ball A-Yuan aims at Wei Ying’s head. The ball bounces off the headrest, this time, and rolls under the car seat.

“Think you can throw that harder for me?” Jiang Cheng croaks, reaching for the chewed up glob. He is even less cooperative than Wei Ying’s knuckles. “Throw it as hard as you can.”

“Catch!” A-Yuan shrieks and launches Tislit’s toy right into Wei Ying’s right temple, and it hurts. Little imp.

Jiang Cheng high-fives him. “Good boy, it’s working.”

“Yeah,” Wei Ying says absently. He waves at the elderly woman who’d flashed him to go forward. “If you want to make me stupid.”

“Can’t do what’s already done,” Jiang Cheng says in his I-am-clutching-my-nephew’s-toes voice, which is exactly what he is doing. Wei Ying looks at A-Yuan in the rearview mirror, how he is flopping his foot onto Jiang Cheng’s palm. He is laughing. Jiang Cheng isn’t.

“Can we get Tislit a bone?” A-Yuan pipes up, patting the crate.

“She’s not a dog, silly,” Jiang Cheng says. “We can get her a fish.”

A-Yuan huffs and sighs with what sounds like his whole body. “Stinky.”

“Like your feet?”

“Not stinkyyy,” A-Yuan whines, because he hates this joke and always buys it. Blood or not, he is Jiang Cheng’s nephew in that sense.

Wei Ying exhales in funny little puffs that usually make A-Yuan smack his cheeks to elicit the horrible sound. The thought helps his eyes sting less.

He parks in front of the front door of their building and turns the engine off.

They are home.

Wei Ying turns in his seat and reaches out to tickle A-Yuan’s foot. A-Yuan doesn’t giggle, just pulls the foot under himself and smiles. His brave, wonderful boy.

“Ready, bun?”

A-Yuan slaps his knees and declares, “Yeah!”

Wei Ying grants Jiang Cheng the honour of carrying his nephew and Tislit upstairs while Wei Ying wrestles half of their remaining luggage into the elevator and then out of it. Jiang Cheng is waiting by the door and arguing with A-Yuan about the cat toys and whether Tislit would eat a turtle, but they are waiting for Wei Ying despite Jiang Cheng having the key and being pressed for time.

Tislit being the first one to enter the flat is a pure technicality because Wei Ying has been here three times already, and so had the moving company people, the delivery people, and the cleaners. But the formality is nice. A-Yuan coaxes Tislit out of the crate and she darts into the flat with no preamble.

“Welcome home?” Wei Ying smiles, more genuine than he’d hoped for. A lot of the furniture is their old, well-loved pieces, and if they are not a perfect fit in this place, it’s okay.

A-Yuan gives him an excited wheeze and runs after Tislit, stopping only after Wei Ying barks about the shoes in the house.

Jiang Cheng is quiet, which is both good and excruciating. He helps A-Yuan unpack the last bits and does some finishing touches like putting up the star and animal decals on the walls and the ceiling, deals with the food delivery and the last boxes of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere. Wei Ying pops out to get lunch for no longer than ten minutes and finds them curled up on the sofa, napping. A-Yuan is star-shaped on Jiang Cheng’s chest, and Jiang Cheng is as calm as he gets on Wei Ying’s sofa. 

“Call me anytime,” Jiang Cheng says, crouching in front of A-Yuan. In Wei Ying’s phone, he’s called ‘Yuanyuan’s favourite shushu’. Wei Ying had argued that Jiang Cheng is his only shushu, and Jiang Cheng had countered, “Exactly, and I’ll always be his favourite.”

A-Yuan peppers Jiang Cheng’s face with kisses and nods about a hundred times. Wei Ying slouches against the doorframe and pinches the inside of his elbow until it goes from stinging to numb.

“Can I call you anytime, di?”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t look at him. “No.”

“You wound me, A-Cheng.”

“The least I can do for you.”

Wei Ying cackles, only a little hurt. He pats Jiang Cheng on the back and orders A-Yuan to drag Tislit for a goodbye kiss, too. When the little one scurries away, Wei Ying doesn’t fight the urge to plaster himself all over Jiang Cheng’s back and squeeze him until Jiang Cheng curses and throws him off just as hard.

“We’ll come often,” Wei Ying promises. “And you can come whenever you like.”

“It’s not like I don’t have a life back home,” Jiang Cheng says, cuddling the cat. “Or that you care.”

“Jiang Cheng.”

“A-Yuan, come here, hug me again and as tight as you can.”

Dinner takes more time than usual because the layout of the kitchen is unfamiliar and Wei Ying keeps reaching for the wrong cabinet. The people who helped them unpack were brilliant, but their logic is not in line with Wei Ying’s.

A-Yuan is happy with his room and with how much bigger the flat is, that he can see the tops of the trees from the windows and that Tislit now fits on every windowsill. Wei Ying lets him wash the vegetables and add the spices to the pan, and together they stir it until A-Yuan gets bored and asks for a cartoon. No tears so far.

“You can come into my bed anytime, little one.”

A-Yuan’s nose gets hidden by the duvet when he nods solemnly. Wei Ying strokes his forehead and between his tiny brows. “You can come into mine too.”

“Deal,” Wei Ying smiles. They have done three stories and had a call from Yanli-jie to wish them goodnight in their new place. “Have you thought about what you want to do tomorrow?”

A-Yuan’s yawn is pleasantly huge. “Play with Tislit.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. Anything else?”

“Ice cream,” A-Yuan decides. Wei Ying could watch him blink and do nothing else his whole life.

“Eat or make?”

“Make.”

Wei Ying kisses his little nose and gets up off the floor. “I choose the flavours.”

“Nooo,” A-Yuan drawls, kicking his legs tiredly. “I do!”

“So you choose the activity and the flavours? Anything left for your dada, little one?” Wei Ying flicks the nightlight on and looks out of the nursery’s window. The street lamp that used to beam right into A-Yuan’s room is gone. Now there are only spring-bare trees and a wide bridge illuminated by passing cars in the distance. In summer, they will look like fireflies moving through the branches.

“I wanna see,” A-Yuan says, climbing out of bed and shuffling through the room with his arms already up. Wei Ying sweeps him up and presses him close a little too quickly to hide how hard his heart is thudding.

“Like the view?”

“Yuh.”

“Me too, bunbun.”

A-Yuan drops his head onto Wei Ying’s shoulder and sighs, furnace-warm hands clenching and unclenching. “Not scary.”

“Not scary,” Wei Ying echoes. He briefly considers bringing A-Yuan to his bed for Wei Ying’s own sake but swats this thought away just as quickly. If his son can be brave and spend the first night in their new flat on his own, Wei Ying can too. “So what am I going to do with the ice cream?”

A-Yuan plants a drowsy kiss on the shoulder. “Eat.”

Wei Ying rocks him until the number of cars gets fewer and A-Yuan is well into his undoubtedly very exciting dream. Tislit trots up to check on them and sniffs at the bed, then curls up at A-Yuan’s feet and covers her face with her tail. Wei Ying kisses her goodnight too and gets a paw blessing all over his face.

In the spare room, there are boxes heaped high with miscellaneous things: clothes and shoes, books, the rest of the bedding and random pantry foods, some of the kitchenware that wasn’t in the urgent list of unpacking, the empty bed frame, no mattress, stuff Wei Ying doesn’t know where to put yet, so he probably should get rid of it, and his computer. A-Yuan’s room, the kitchen and the living room were top priority, obviously, and Jiang Cheng came primarily to help out with those. He did.

Wei Ying leaves the computer for now and retrieves a set of bedsheets and his toiletries, spending a good while looking for a towel, because of course he finds it in the box that has toys written on it.

The phone lights up with a message from Jiang Cheng saying that he’s home and that it’s raining there. Wei Ying sends him a dancing emoji and shoves the phone under the pillow.

The ceiling in his own room is boring, pasty white and he doesn’t like it, but there was no time to look for someone to deal with that because the moving had started pretty much immediately after he said yes to the new town. The master bedroom really is a master bedroom now, and he has far too much space for everything he owns. It’s nice. The carpet is soft and will not scratch A-Yuan’s elbows and knees when he plays here, but Tislit may be fussy about it. Wei Ying will buy a new carpet if she doesn’t like this one.

The phone buzzes under the pillow because it’s uncharged and not because it’s Jiang Cheng saying a condescending night , which is fair. Wei Ying doesn’t expect him to be nice about the whole thing of moving away from family, from every corner that knows Wei Ying’s misplaced hopes and A-Yuan’s lost socks.

Wei Ying curls up on his side and tucks a little pillow between his knees for added comfort. His bed is as creaky as always, as is his new windowsill when the heavy droplets start rolling off of it. He knows it’s not the same clouds that are blanketing his not-anymore home right now.

/

A-Yuan gets grumpy and fussy on Monday, their last day before Wei Ying goes to work and A-Yuan to the kindergarten, so Wei Ying takes him out to a playground. It’s not as lush as they’re used to, but A-Yuan quickly gets entertained by the empty slide and lets Wei Ying drink his extremely well-brewed coffee while responding to work emails that have never shied away from his vacations, even as tiny as this one. He is down to fifty when A-Yuan becomes eerily quiet and Wei Ying looks up from the phone to find him staring at the shiny metal of the slide.

“What’s wrong?”

A-Yuan turns his head, and Wei Ying almost spills his gorgeous, already cold coffee all over himself as he rushes to cup A-Yuan’s face.

“Not my slide,” A-Yuan whispers, and bursts into tears.

Wei Ying hauls him into his arms and shushes him with kisses, but A-Yuan cries harder when Wei Ying tells him they will find another playground or they can go to soft play instead. It’s a miracle their town has one, and even though it’s a half an hour drive from here, Wei Ying is willing to try.

A-Yuan isn’t. He clutches Wei Ying’s coat in his tiny fists and hiccups that he wants to go home. Home home, Wei Ying hears, where his slide is longer and has rubber padding at the bottom of it instead of dirty sand. Where his old playground is and where he scratches his hands on the thick rope he likes to climb and then descends on it like a fireman. There’s no such rope here, and Wei Ying thinks if he nails one to the beam at home, it won’t help the matter.

A-Yuan tucks his face under Wei Ying’s chin and sobs until his wails turn breathy and familiarly cranky. Wei Ying has walked far enough from the playground and his own throat is no longer tight with helplessness. He’d anticipated this and expected everything to be a trigger – the flat, the playgrounds and parks, the kindergarten they are yet to go to. Yes, A-Yuan wakes up and climbs into Wei Ying’s same old bed every morning like he always does, but he bumped his head the other day because he forgot about the wall on the way to the master bedroom – there was no weird designer wall to run into back home. A-Yuan could sneak into Wei Ying’s bed in total darkness and never trip on anything, even on Wei Ying’s stuff.

“Hey, hey,” Wei Ying tries, jostling him, “wanna go get groceries? You can pick everything you want, and we can get that dinosaur-like broccoli.”

“Ro-romanesco,” A-Yuan snivels, the brightest child to ever walk their Earth. Wei Ying kisses the top of his head for that. When A-Yuan becomes a renowned scientist, Wei Ying will tell everyone he’d started with petting spiders and memorising each and every fruit and vegetable they could get their hands on just to be able to ask Wei Ying to draw it for him. “And raisins? And I can choose the puff-puff?”

“As many as you want, bun.”

“Okay,” A-Yuan capitulates, and finally releases Wei Ying’s coat. Wei Ying kisses his fingertips and blows warm air on them. 

It’s too late for a trip to the market, so Wei Ying plays it safe and ducks into a massive supermarket, which are universal thanks to the universal marketing techniques. A-Yuan shakes his head at the kid-sized shopping trolley with a groggy no and refuses to be carried on the hip or on the shoulders, or sit in the big trolley. Wei Ying slips the hat off of A-Yuan’s head and doesn’t argue.

“How am I going to carry everything then, mm?”

“I carry,” A-Yuan declares, pinching his thumb and forefinger like a crab. Wei Ying flings a little basket onto his elbow to A-Yuan’s grouchy dismay.

They walk down the aisles and barely meet people. Those who they do meet smile at A-Yuan reading the produce tags and asking Wei Ying if they need five detergents – the puff-puffs – and Wei Ying just nods. So what if they won’t need another kitchen table cleaning product for another year? Wei Ying tends to spill things and A-Yuan likes to draw directly on the table. When Wei Ying puts the detergents in the basket, A-Yuan pointedly looks away.

A-Yuan chooses yoghurt pods for himself and Wei Ying, knowing full well he will eat both his and dada’s, picks up two garlic heads and carries them himself, brandishing them in Wei Ying’s face. Wei Ying realises his mistake when he skims over the shelves and sees no dinosaur-like broccoli, not even a price tag for it. Almost at the same time, A-Yuan makes a bereft sound and looks up at him, eyes critically shiny in a matter of seconds.

"Gone?"

Wei Ying flashes him an overconfident smile and tries to track any staff member to ask about the damn vegetable. He should've promised A-Yuan chocolate milk or sour candy instead, or better yet, not have promised anything to begin with.

Shouldn't have promised anything when they are like that – A-Yuan, who has complained only once about the move and hasn't mentioned an owl plushie that was lost in the moving process, and Wei Ying, who is dreading a days-long tantrum that involves everything – the plushie, the countertop that's too high for him to reach even on his little stool, the fact that A-Yuan will never see his favourite teacher again, or his friends that he used to go to the pond and feed the ducks together. They had discussed it so many times and A-Yuan had nodded to the explanations every time, but Wei Ying knows there will inevitably be something that is going to trigger a torrent of tears, screaming and kicking, and eventual pleas to come back. The playground was just the beginning.

"I think we need to look for it more carefully, don't you think?" Wei Ying says, and leans closer to the shelf to inspect the contents. There is still nothing that would indicate the supermarket even caters it. Wei Ying eyes the regular broccoli and frantically wonders if it could do the trick just this once, or they will go through a variety of shops and supermarkets before A-Yuan snaps and throws a valid fit. "Okay, little one, if it's – I think we need to ask – "

A-Yuan bawls. 

He drops the garlic, screaming into Wei Ying's chest, and goes into the high-pitched distressed sobbing that makes Wei Ying weak in the knees no matter how many times he has heard it and managed to deal with it. The sound of it vibrates through his jaw and threatens a dull, simmering headache right at the back of his head.

The filled basket thumps against the floor and Wei Ying is distractedly but thoroughly grateful for having nothing glass-packaged in it. He darts a glance around to see if A-Yuan's hat has accidentally slipped out of his pocket when A-Yuan inhales too much at another bout of wailing and starts coughing from it.

Wei Ying shushes him and rubs his back in rapid motions as a girl from the staff kneels to pick up the dropped garlic and shakes her head sympathetically. Wei Ying mouths so sorry and, frightfully hopeful, romanesco at her, but she shakes her head again, guilty, which – yeah. Splendid decision-making.

"Do you like cactus stickers?"

Wei Ying turns to the sound and spots a man just shy of at arm's length from them, peering at A-Yuan. If it wasn't for their current situation, Wei Ying would probably choke on his tongue from the sight of him, but now he only manages a crusty, "What?"

The man doesn't spare a glance at Wei Ying because he is, bizarrely, watching A-Yuan and waiting for his reaction. Wei Ying bites back a bristling comment – this is so not the place and time for well-meaning strangers. Wei Ying all but shoulders him out of the way to pick up the basket.

"Little one," the man says, zeroing in on A-Yuan's fist curled in Wei Ying's scarf, "do you like cactus stickers?"

Wei Ying covers A-Yuan’s hand with his palm. "I'm very sorry, but we need to go. Thanks."

The man is completely unperturbed by his gesture and raises his hand for – Wei Ying doesn’t know, but it’s moving in A-Yuan’s direction; he catches the wrist and wrenches it away, because what the hell.

“If you would excuse us. Thank you .”

A-Yuan unpeels himself from Wei Ying's chest and mumbles blearily, "Sticker?"

Wei Ying, at this point, would like to go home, too.

"Hey, bean," he calls, wiping the snot from A-Yuan's face with his palm. A-Yuan is red in the face, but he tries his very best to blink away the tears as he repeats, "Stickers?"

"Yes, little one, sticker," the man says placidly and reaches into his pocket, retrieving – stickers. Wei Ying stares dumbly at the tiny things on the translucent plastic and opens his mouth for a no thank you , but the man says, "Do you prefer pink, red, purple, or white flowers on them?"

A-Yuan doesn't stop crying, exactly, but he turns awkwardly in Wei Ying's arms and bores into the offered distraction, hiccups jolting him a little each time. The man nudges the sheet closer to him and points at one cactus with red flowers. 

"This one is called "prickly pear," or "Opuntia." It also produces fruit that you can eat. Would you like this one, or this? It's a Blue Barrel Cactus."

A-Yuan straight up gasps at the round thing with a yellow flower on it and reaches out to touch the sticker. Wei Ying tightens his arms around him, reflexive, and exhales slowly through the nose.

"This one," the man says, tracing the tip of the finger over a star-shaped cactus, "is called Blue Columnar cactus. I have several of these at work, and some of them are taller than you and blue. Like your hat."

Wei Ying ducks his head and sees the tip of the hat peeking out of his coat pocket.

A-Yuan makes a sound of awe and scratches the blue sticker. "Can I have it?"

"Of course," the man says, unpeeling a long cactus off the sheet. Wei Ying snatches brief glances of him and notices how the sheet is missing some pieces already. "Where do you want it? On the back of your hand or on your coat?"

"Hmmmm," A-Yuan says, shoving a thumb into his mouth. He finally looks at Wei Ying, expectant and suddenly shy. He blinks twice every time he hiccups.

"Knee," Wei Ying decides for him, earning a nod from the man and an excited kick from A-Yuan. Now that everything has suddenly calmed down, he realises how aggressive his behaviour was, that he grabbed the man not even knowing what he was going to do. “Thank you. I hope it’s not – sorry, we didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to grab you. Thank you.”

"It is no trouble," the man says, holding A-Yuan's foot steadily as he gently rubs the sticker into the fabric on the knee like a bandage over a scratch. Wei Ying's heart does its little, obvious thing. "I am used to this."

"Uh huh," Wei Ying offers. It makes sense. "How many kids do you have?"

"Fifteen."

Wei Ying squeaks but the man merely hums approvingly at the job done and takes A-Yuan's hand. Wei Ying will not – cannot – begrudge him that.

"I am a kindergarten teacher."

Oh. Of course.

"Oh," Wei Ying huffs out a laugh that carries all the marshy tension out of his chest. "Yeah, that's powerful. A-Yuan's about to join his new group, aren't you, monkey?"

A-Yuan is too engrossed by the blue cactus on his knee, which he scratches and pulls at and then pats back into place. Wei Ying kisses his temple and wipes his face clean once again.

"Sorry for grabbing you," Wei Ying says, nodding at the wrist. "If I hurt you or – anything."

"No," the man says, and Wei Ying is only a little jealous of how he is looking at A-Yuan and A-Yuan alone, that soft gaze of abysmal devotion to kids that teachers and doctors have. "What you are looking for can be found in a shop two blocks away, near the butcher's shop. It's behind the supermarket. You won't miss it."

Wei Ying smothers the urge to tackle the man into a hug of gratitude.

"You are my guardian angel," Wei Ying gasps, and squeezes the man's other wrist, because – Wei Ying would honestly hug him. "Thank you, thank you so much."

The man looks at Wei Ying's hand on his wrist and trails his gaze up Wei Ying's arm and up to his eyes, slow, but not hostile or disgusted. Wei Ying feels blessed and burnt.

"You are welcome. A-Yuan, be good."

"Yes," A-Yuan says. Wei Ying pokes his ribs. "Thank you, gege."

"You are welcome," the man repeats, and nods a goodbye. Wei Ying gnaws on his lip until A-Yuan headbutts him into the jaw and demands pumpkin soup.

/

"Three, two, one, go!"

A-Yuan sticks his tongue out as he presses the button on the new coffee machine. It rumbles extremely promisingly. Wei Ying bounces him on the hip and they both watch the coffee trickle thickly into the cup. 

"Mmmm," A-Yuan inhales and nods approvingly. "Smells good."

"So good," Wei Ying says, "even better when you press the button."

"I press it evvvery day," A-Yuan notices, tapping Wei Ying's cheek pointedly. "It doesn't smell good every day."

"Yes it does," Wei Ying protests, catching the finger between his lips, and A-Yuan squeaks. "You, though! Who was fussy about the bath yesterday, mm? Who was throwing soapy bubbles at me until I was drenched and smelled like cotton candy?"

"Meee!" A-Yuan throws his arms in the air, immensely proud. "Me, me, I made dada a soap beard!"

Wei Ying rawrs at him like the pirate A-Yuan wanted to make of him last night, and flips A-Yuan head down, shaking him until he stops wiggling like a grass snake and goes breathless. A-Yuan’s trilling laugh muffles the coffee machine, and Wei Ying feels solid. He can do this.

"Ready?"

"Yep."

"Got everything you need?"

A-Yuan flashes him an annoyed look. "Of course."

Wei Ying smacks a wet kiss onto his forehead and A-Yuan wipes it away with a dada, ew. “Let’s go.”

The kindergarten building is much smaller than their first one, but the fence around it is so cute Wei Ying that can’t help but coo at the colourful foxes, deer, clouds, flowers and stuff, it’s so sweet. A-Yuan sucks on his thumb as Wei Ying unbuckles him, then throws A-Yuan’s backpack onto one shoulder and takes A-Yuan’s hand as they enter. Wei Ying nods at the other parents who eye him curiously, but all of them smile back.

“Hello, A-Yuan,” the administrator chirps. Being a newcomer at such a small place has its perks. “Hello, A-Yuan’s dad. Your teachers will be here in a minute.”

Wei Ying flashes her a smile and thanks profusely; skates his eyes over the hall and can’t find a single thing that distresses him. The kids are all loud and don’t pay them any attention, the parents are sleepy as they make the kids change their shoes and shrug their outerwear off. A-Yuan is looking around with mild interest, content to cling to Wei Ying’s ring finger for now. Wei Ying’s fingers brush over his wrist.

“You can ask your teachers to call me anytime, remember?”

“Mm.”

“And I will come to pick you up.”

“Uh huh.”

Wei Ying knows the names of their teachers – Lan Zhan and Xu Wenling – and is going to receive a weekly report of A-Yuan’s activities, trips, meal plans, and any special occasion events. A-Yuan knows they are going to the Natural History Museum in a few weeks, and it got him restless and unable to fall asleep until Wei Ying drew a Yingshanosaurus. The spikes had been the best part of it.

When A-Yuan’s teachers come to collect the kids, Wei Ying feels his face do an astronomically dumb grin. The man recognises them and arches one very lovely eyebrow indeed.

Wei Ying cackles. “Kindergarten teacher, you say?”

With a shrill yell, A-Yuan launches himself at the man who picks him up and nods at the babbly greeting A-Yuan forces onto him, so giddy Wei Ying has to scrub a hand over his face to calm down. Xu Wenling exchanges glances with the administrator, who can’t decide who to look at.

“Lan Zhan,” the man says to Wei Ying. He holds A-Yuan like Wei Ying does – easy, infallible.

“Wei Ying,” Wei Ying says. He should probably unpeel A-Yuan from Lan Zhan’s chest. “Fancy seeing you in your habitat.”

/

Xiao Xingchen is as great in person as he was via phone calls and emails, and that right degree of touchy Wei Ying appreciates in people and especially colleagues. He shakes Wei Ying’s hand and pats his shoulder when Wei Ying whistles at the warehouse progress data Xiao Xingchen provided almost as soon as Wei Ying had walked through the door. The tour around the place is short and profound, and Wei Ying gets awed smiles from most of the staff, bonding with drivers pretty much immediately, which is a bonus. His new office looks lovely, and although it’s smaller than his previous one, Wei Ying would call it comfortably snug. Xiao Xingchen assures him that he can write on the walls and claw through them if it helps him somehow.

“How are you settling in?”

“First day in the new kindergarten.”

Xiao Xingchen’s smile is extremely sympathetic. “Tell me if you need a day off or you need to work from home. If you need to bring your little one to work, we’ll keep him busy. When A-Qing stays here during school breaks, everyone leaves early because they work faster with her valuable contribution.”

“A-Qing?” Wei Ying frowns. “CFO? She comes to check on you guys?”

“My daughter,” Xiao Xingchen grins. “She’s seven and she doesn’t like it when I work overtime.”

“Looking forward to her input, then,” Wei Ying cracks up. “So, who’s responsible for the negotiations with inbound freight vendors again?”

Wei Ying knows the loose ends and the holes of every department by lunchtime and is arguing about the costs for a large chunk of their raw materials delivery when Xiao Xingchen pokes his head through the door and shoots Wei Ying a thumbs up. Wei Ying shoots one back and settles deeper into his chair, scribbling a hundredth note into his planner.

A-Yuan has drawn a pineapple on the page that Wei Ying has allocated for the problematic shipping company dealing with the lumber vendor. Wei Ying writes notes around the doodle and contemplates telling Xiao Xingchen that they will need to ship the goods themselves until Wei Ying sources another company for them. No calls from the kindergarten so far.

A-Yuan’s shyness had evaporated the second he saw Lan Zhan, which is entirely understandable, but Wei Ying is still bewildered by the fact that A-Yuan even remembers him, given the state he’d been in when they met. The sticker Lan Zhan had given him is now on the frame of A-Yuan’s bed, and it freaks Wei Ying out every time he goes into the room because it looks like a giant bug. A-Yuan cherishes it like he cherishes everything he can call his own.

While the other teacher, Xu Wenling, was talking and introducing herself and Lan Zhan and greeting A-Yuan, Wei Ying had nothing to do but to stare at Lan Zhan and not worry about his son, and he did both. Lan Zhan wasn’t smiling, had a green hair tie wrapped multiple times around his little finger and another child clinging to his leg besides A-Yuan, and all the while Lan Zhan was welcoming his kids as they skipped by, chirping good morning to him and Xu-laoshi. But Wei Ying saw how much more partial they were to him as they reached to touch him when they brushed by, how they looked at A-Yuan, too. Curious and jealous . Wei Ying would have never believed a kindergarten teacher could look so stern and be so beloved.

Wei Ying knows that if something went wrong, he would have already been notified if A-Yuan couldn’t stop crying or wasn’t eating or sleeping. But even the most arduous tasks he is assigned get pushed to the automatic level of managing as he chews on the tip of the pen and considers calling the kindergarten himself. It would be fine, too, if he did. He could just call and make sure everything is alright and A-Yuan is not in silent distress either. But Wei Ying trusts him and trusts the teachers. Knows that A-Yuan will call for him if it gets too much too fast if he needs to hide. Wei Ying puts his phone face-down and switches to checking the drivers’ ELDs.

The kitchenette is bustling when Wei Ying jogs out of his office to get some hot water and immediately gets interrogated by the horde of customer service people, and his break stretches until someone chokes on their coffee when Wei Ying excuses himself and says he needs to check if his son has screamed the roof of the kindergarten off while they were chatting. Lovely folk, Wei Ying decides, and ducks back into his office.

He gets a green light for leaving the office ten minutes earlier today to battle the worst of the traffic and parks in front of the kindergarten early enough there’s still parking space available. The paved path is slippery from the sleet, town-grey, opaque.

The administrator grins at him and shows him two energetic thumbs up, mouthing all good . He half bows to her, thankful for the reassurance, and settles on the little bench alongside other parents, leaking puddles on the floor.

A-Yuan runs out of the depth of the kindergarten brandishing a sheet of paper with something long and blue on it, and starts when he notices Wei Ying. For one ruthless moment, Wei Ying’s heart shrinks to the size of dried apricot and he expects a yell, a dam decimated, but then A-Yuan’s face lights up, he shrieks, “Dada!” and launches himself into Wei Ying’s arms.

Wei Ying exhales a crackled laugh into the top of his head and presses A-Yuan flush to himself, his little lighthouse. A-Yuan bounces on the balls of his feet as Wei Ying peppers his face with kisses.

“Dada, dada, look, I drew the blue cactus that’s on my sticker, it’s so big, dada, you’re crumpling my drawing!”

“Sorry, little one,” Wei Ying says, not letting go, “I’m just really happy to see you. I missed you so much today.”

A-Yuan giggles, delighted. “Missed you! Look at my cactus?”

The cactus looks like an anthill. Wei Ying smooths out the wrinkles he has caused, some of them still too wet because of the felt pen and on the verge of tearing, and hums. “Is it the one Lan-laoshi said he has at work?”

“Yeah!”

“Is it bigger than you?”

“Yeah,” A-Yuan says, far less enthusiastic. “Its needles are so long! But I was careful, and Lan-laoshi said I’m a good boy, and I’m not scared of them!”

“My good boy,” Wei Ying agrees, and chomps on A-Yuan’s blushy cheek lightly. “Where are your teachers?”

“Uh,” A-Yuan mumbles, wiping his cheek, “Um, there!”

Lan Zhan and Xu Wenling are ushering the rest of the kids from the group into the hall. It gets crowded in seconds, and loud in a way that makes every parent on earth feel like it’s their kid’s birthday and they haven’t even gotten to the cake yet, but everyone is already tired.

Wei Ying gets up and takes A-Yuan’s hand.

Xu Wenling tells him that A-Yuan slept well and made lots of friends in the group, while Lan Zhan silently sticks out his index finger and lets A-Yuan tug on it just as silently. Wei Ying listens to Xu Wenling as best as he can, nodding at the day’s events and how A-Yuan helped some kids with their spring blossom cards and said that his dada draws the best blossom, and now Wei Ying is somehow responsible for everyone complaining about the lack of proper shares of pink pencils. Lan Zhan is having a whole wordless conversation with A-Yuan in the meantime, and Wei Ying is not part of it .

“Thank you, Xu-laoshi,” Wei Ying half-bows to her, “I hope it’s not too much trouble. You can definitely draw a blue blossom and say that it’s hydrangea.”

“Correct,” Lan Zhan says. It’s so unexpected Wei Ying cracks up at that, chuffed. “A-Yuan, I need to talk to other parents. We will see you tomorrow.”

“Bye,” A-Yuan deflates immediately, letting go of Lan Zhan’s finger and looking up at Wei Ying with big eyes. “Home?”

Wei Ying’s heart flutters hopefully at the word. “Yes, bun. Say goodbye to Xu-laoshi and Lan-laoshi.”

He nods goodbye to both Lan Zhan and Xu Wenling together with A-Yuan before crouching to change A-Yuan into his winter boots. A-Yuan reaches out and cards his hand through Wei Ying’s hair.

“How’s work?”

“My boss said you can come to the office and draw on the walls.”

“Good boss,” A-Yuan says, zipping his coat. “Can we have cake for dinner?”

Wei Ying flicks his nose. “Fish cake.”

A-Yuan admits defeat, but bargains for a chocolate bar the entire way home.

/

They slot into the same-new routine with no effort thanks to Wei Ying’s merciless workload and A-Yuan’s obsession with Lan Zhan. Wei Ying is stuffing A-Yuan’s backpack with snacks on Sunday evening when A-Yuan pokes his head into the space between Wei Ying’s arm and ribs.

“Can I have chocolate?”

Wei Ying plucks someone else’s hair clip from the front pocket and shows it to him. A-Yuan, bent like that, shrugs as best as he can. “Now?”

“No, for Lan-laoshi.”

“You like him so much?” Wei Ying headlocks him.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. But you have to share with Xu-laoshi too.”

“’kay,” A-Yuan croaks, worming his way further into Wei Ying’s lap, and Wei Ying knows A-Yuan’s already forgotten what he had been told in favour of pulling on dada’s leg hair.

The next evening, while Wei Ying is doing a quick check of his email, A-Yuan opens his palm in front of his face, almost knocking Wei Ying’s glasses off. Wei Ying catches his wrist and narrowly avoids eye trauma.

"What's this?"

"Chocolate," A-Yuan beams.

"I see that."

"It's from Lan-laoshi," A-Yuan explains smugly. Wei Ying bites the temple tips of his glasses to keep it cool and not laugh. "He said he liked my chocolates very much and he wanted to share with us."

"Aw, he's cute," Wei Ying croons, curling A-Yuan's fingers around the sweets. "Say thank you to him from me next time, okay?"

A-Yuan frowns. “You don’t want chocolate from Lan-laoshi?”

“I’m giving you my share for being a good boy.”

“Dada,” A-Yuan says sternly, “Lan-laoshi said with us .”

Wei Ying sets the laptop on the sofa and pulls A-Yuan into his lap with a resigned sigh. “You think he will get upset if I don’t eat his chocolate?”

“Yes,” A-Yuan says, approving Wei Ying’s train of thought and pointing at the squares. “Eat.”

“And what if I don’t?”

Wei Ying can practically see the gears turning in A-Yuan’s head as he comes up with a worthy punishment. “Then I will tell him that you’re not a good boy.”

“Ah, I’m defeated,” Wei Ying admits. “If Lan-laoshi finds out about that, I’m doomed.”

“Exactly,” A-Yuan says. “So, these are with strawberries and these are with orange.”

The chocolates are really good. Even though Wei Ying is not a big fan of sweets, these are clearly expensive and probably hand-made. He smooths out the foil, but there is no information on it, just colour coordination – yellow for orange, pink for strawberry, hazelnut green, blue for plain milk chocolate. Lan Zhan must have shared the whole box with the kids.

The good boy thing is affecting A-Yuan more than ever, especially since the day his group went to the paleontological museum and Lan Zhan lifted every kid to have a closer look at the dinosaurs’ bones. He called A-Yuan a very good boy because A-Yuan managed to identify three different species on his own, so now there is no praise higher than Lan-laoshi’s. Wei Ying is kind of concerned, but not really. If A-Yuan wants a teacher for an idol, Wei Ying gives his blessing.

Treason happens the next morning.

“We ate the chocolates,” A-Yuan hops in front of Lan Zhan. “Dada said you are cute.”

Wei Ying lets out a sound of a fire engine rushing to the scene. “I did not!”

“Did he,” Lan Zhan says, taking A-Yuan’s hand and leading him away. “Tell me what else he said. Which one did you like the most?”

“Laoshi, come on!” Wei Ying whines. It’s too embarrassing even for him. But Lan Zhan doesn’t turn around and neither does A-Yuan. “Lan Zhan! Hey!”

/

"Do you have a babysitter?"

Wei Ying lifts his head from the arduous email he's been writing to the consignee about the customs clearance agreements currently being viciously violated by said consignee. Wei Ying has put his phone on silent because even vibrations are setting his teeth on edge today.

"What?"

Xiao Xingchen, bless his director's ergonomic chair, is beaming. "Do you have a babysitter, Ying-di? It's Friday, I thought you'd like to celebrate a whole of two weeks spent in our curated hell."

"Not at all curated," Wei Ying says, blithe, honestly unrepentant. But only some of that is Xiao Xingchen's fault. "I don't ah. I need to pick up the little one. A short day means a short day for everyone, kindergartens included."

"I know," Xiao Xingchen says, because he does. But unlike Wei Ying, he has a husband to pick up their daughter from school, and, judging by his offer, a babysitter to look after her when Xiao Xingchen gets picked up by his husband to chill at a bar or two after the workweek. Wei Ying is not jealous, but he would really like to have a drink. One day. "I can ask around if anyone's available and qualified for the task in the future."

"Thank you, Chen-ge," Wei Ying says.

Despite Xiao Xingchen's generous offer, Wei Ying knows that if he did get a hold of someone willing to stay with A-Yuan, he would call for them only in the direst circumstances. Jiang Cheng used to be their ever-ready-instantly-not-busy babysitter, not even jie, although she always does her best to spend as much time with all of them as she can. But being a brilliant mathematician has its price and it means she is home very little. No thanks to her fiancé she absolutely loves but lives in another city, which she also loves. Wei Ying knows she thinks of moving there for good after her scholarship programme has finished.

Wei Ying is terrified of leaving A-Yuan with someone A-Yuan doesn’t know. Wei Ying cannot remember his parents’ voices, but when the month of nightmares inevitably begins, he dreams of his mother whispering Be good, Yingying, stay with Li-jiejie for the evening, will you? before she and baba left for work that day. After almost thirty years, Wei Ying doesn’t know if he wants to forget that line or be grateful that he has this twisted piece of memory still intact, because there is very little of what he remembers about his parents in the first place.

Wei Ying looks at his watch. He has an hour to settle the issue of customs clearance and then head out to pick up A-Yuan. And then he can treat himself and A-Yuan to a takeout. Or better yet, have dinner somewhere else. But takeout means they can snuggle up in Wei Ying's bed together with Tislit and watch a documentary about volcanoes and then sleep with crumbs under their ribs. Awesome.

A-Yuan waves madly at everyone when they leave the kindergarten, most of all Lan Zhan, who waves back – of course – and looks at Wei Ying for so long Wei Ying suppresses an urge to ask A-Yuan if there’s ink on his face or something. There’s also a funny kid who whispers some extremely important naptime story conclusions into A-Yuan's ear even as Wei Ying is dressing A-Yuan for the outside and the boy's mother is trying to wrestle him into his coat.

"I know he's the one who stole the honey cakes," the boy – A-Yi – is saying with such a huffy look on his face Wei Ying has to look down to distract himself with his own shoelaces. "And – and that Zhong-ayi will blame their maid and not her son for that."

A-Yuan sighs like he has resigned himself to the obvious end of the story. "I know."

"But it's not fa- ow, mama, my chin," A-Yi hisses, but doesn't cry as his chin is suffering the zipper. "It's not fair."

"Heng-ge will save everyone," A-Yuan says.

"How do you know?"

A-Yuan takes Wei Ying's hand. "Because he promised.”

Wei Ying's eyebrows climb his forehead as he swings their hands. "Care to share what you two are talking about?"

"No," A-Yuan says, looking up at him. Wei Ying always forgets how quickly he grows and makes opinions. "I'm hungry."

"Me too, bean. Do you want to eat out or a takeaway?"

"Takeaway," A-Yuan says. His hand is still small enough to fit around Wei Ying's single finger. "And a volcano film."

Tislit is being blissfully petted to death as Wei Ying arranges the pillows and napkins and containers on the bed. He pinches A-Yuan's toe under the duvet, and A-Yuan tucks it under himself like a snail hides its eye when poked, and just as quickly.

"Can we go to the sea?" A-Yuan asks abruptly.

Wei Ying makes a separate nest for Tislit at his side, then pries her out of A-Yuan's arms and shushes her with a foul-smelling fish stick. "Tomorrow?"

"Mm."

"If it's not windy, okay?"

"If it's windy, you can hold me," A-Yuan suggests. Wei Ying tackles him into the pillows very carefully so as not to spill their extremely indulgent dinner, hellishly red for him and peacefully pink for A-Yuan.

A-Yuan licks his fingers clean and steals sweet and sour crayfish from Wei Ying's carton box. Wei Ying doesn't regret not bar-hopping with his very cool boss and his perhaps cool husband and several of their colleagues for the barest of moments.

A notification from the parents chat pops up way past midnight, when A-Yuan has already been fast asleep for hours and Wei Ying is coaxing Jiang Yanli into sending her a care package.

Gao Jie: [link attached] xu wenling posted a photo of her kissing her husband. I am filing a complaint to the kindergarten administration for her being indecent on the internet. Again.

Zhu Delan: ?

Gao Jie: didn’t you see what I just said? how is this proper?

Zhu Delan: it's her own page you stalking freak. she can post whatevs

Gao Jie: she's a teacher, and shut the fuck up. I wasn't talking to you.

Dai Xiulan: You reported her for a photo of her in a public swimming pool.

Gao Jie: yeah you remember her swimming costume? her whole stomach was uncovered????????????

Dai Xiulan: wonder if you're brain is uncovered so that now you're hitting it on everything and keep talking shit about our best teacher

Gao Jie: you're brain

Gao Jie: I'm reporting you for being too stupid to chat with anyone, let alone raise three children

Wei Ying mushes his face into the crook of his elbow. The parent group chats don't change throughout the world, it seems. Why did he think that one in a smaller town would be different and more civilised than the one in a big city?

Jiejie writes that she doesn't need a care package but she would like three hundred photos of A-Yuan in his new room, in their new kitchen, in front of the kindergarten, when he is napping, when Tislit is napping with him, when Tislit is napping, and so forth, and please, A-Ying, let me help find the babysitter for you. Wei Ying sends her a couple of photos from the first day where A-Yuan is asleep at the dinner table while Wei Ying is cooking, arms folded under his chin and his features finally relaxed after a long day of new acquaintances. His cheek is squished and his lips are bow-like. Little cherub.

Because Wei Ying can never shut up, he tells her about Lan Zhan, too. Jiang Yanli calls immediately.

"A-Ying," she says, exasperated. She is on the treadmill and she is heaving, but not because she is on her tenth kilometre.

"I know," Wei Ying says. The bullshit in the group chat is still erupting, judging by how fast the notifications are dropping. "A-jie, my luck."

"Is he pretty?"

"A-jie."

"He is."

Wei Ying throws his back and hits the headrest of the sofa. He can allow himself this much, at least. "Very. Jie, you have a fiancé."

"Your luck," jiejie says. Wei Ying hears her slow down and then hop off the treadmill. "The little one is in love with him."

Wei Ying knows she is only teasing him, maybe both him and A-Yuan, and tiptoeing around the topic of relationships would make everything worse anyway. But Wei Ying would really like not to think of Lan Zhan as anything besides their teacher, how he makes A-Yuan happy and at ease and how it lifts five humongous boulders off Wei Ying's chest every morning he has to drop A-Yuan off.

"We will go to the sea tomorrow if it's not windy," Wei Ying says to end the topic. "I will send you photos of us."

"A-Ying."

"Mm?"

"I love you. My brave little one."

Wei Ying groans to tone down the fluffiness. "I'm a whole head taller than you."

"That doesn't mean I can't bench press you," Jiang Yanli says. Wei Ying loves her so much. "I will come as soon as I can."

"Love you," Wei Ying says, small. "We miss you."

The wounded sound jie cleaves through Wei Ying's entire body.

"No, jie, I don't – you're going to become the first president of the world and represent us at the alien negotiations," Wei Ying prattles. "We're fine, I promise you. Xiao Xingchen allows me so much and I can work from home if I really need to. Yuan-er is pressing all the buttons in the flat and bullied me into drawing him a sprouted potato at breakfast, and when I asked why sprouted, he said that no one draws sprouted potatoes and they feel left out. God, he bullied his whole group into drawing cherry blossom in blue. Jie. Jieee."

The elevator pings. Jiang Yanli asks someone which floor they need and presses the buttons, Wei Ying hears, but she says nothing until she’s in her hotel room. She has a transatlantic flight in three hours and she hasn’t spoken to Jiang Cheng yet.

“If Lan Zhan – ”

“No,” Wei Ying interrupts her, terrified and too loud. “No Lan Zhan. A-jie, I’ve seen him, what, fifty times and his sole focus has been my one and only son, as it should be. You are making it weird.”

“If Lan Zhan,” Jiang Yanli presses again, which makes Wei Ying curl into a ball like a pincushion, “if – if you allow him. If you allow anyone near you. I would like to talk to them.”

Wei Ying laughs into his sofa. This is entirely ridiculous and unnecessary, like her shovel talk could become padding in case Wei Ying slips himself. A shovel talk for a kindergarten teacher. As if there isn’t enough cruelty in the world.

“If,” Wei Ying says, safely muffled, “he falls in love with me, which he won’t, thank underworld, you will be the first one to know.”

“I know.”

Wei Ying hides his annoying blush deeper into the messed up sofa spring. “Have a safe flight. Tell A-Cheng he still has food in the freezer.”

“Love you,” Jiang Yanli says, which always answers all of Wei Ying’s sentences and needs.

The group chat has over a hundred unread messages when Wei Ying checks on it. He flicks through it against his better judgement, scrolling through the petty squabbles of the parents who have nothing better to do on a Friday evening than to talk trash about each other and their teachers. When Wei Ying gets to a message about Lan Zhan being called an arrogant tight-ass, he can feel his blood start to boil.

Wei Ying: i know i’m a new member here, but could you please shut the fuck up and stop shitting on our teachers ♥ go rub one out if you’re so desperate to release all that tension mwah

The comments from the three morons who’ve been pouring their rotten thoughts into the chat are so long and quick Wei Ying is honestly impressed. He leaves the chat with a light heart. Funny how those parents will have nothing to say if Wei Ying confronts them directly.

In his bed, A-Yuan is drooling enthusiastically into the pillow. The older he gets, the larger sprawl there is to attend to when he sleeps with Wei Ying.

Wei Ying kisses his cheek and loose fist and curls around A-Yuan, protective, harboured.

/

He wakes up to little frustrated huffs and immediately gets a faceful of cat fur. He swats Tislit's tail away and pats the bed space to his right, palm landing squarely on A-Yuan's knee.

"Time?"

"I ate," A-Yuan says, huffing again. His knee jerks as he loses another level of massacring the fruit on Wei Ying's phone.

Wei Ying doesn't open his eyes. A-Yuan wins and loses as many times as he can bear and then tucks himself back into Wei Ying's side. Wei Ying gathers him closer and hides both of them under the duvet, away from the sunlight.

Wei Ying strokes A-Yuan from the back of his head to his bum. "How did you sleep?"

"Good," A-Yuan yawns into Wei Ying's armpit. "You were talking in your sleep."

"And you were snoring when I came to bed."

A-Yuan wriggles in protest under Wei Ying's hand. "It was Tislit."

"Was it," Wei Ying tickles his neck, then starts to randomly jab A-Yuan all over. A-Yuan kicks his legs and tries to push himself away, but Wei Ying flings himself over him and A-Yuan laughs into Wei Ying's throat, high-pitched and defeated.

Wei Ying showers and shaves unhurriedly, considering their weekend plans. The forecast sounds – looks, too – promising: no rain and no strong wind, but it's still a little chilly. The humidity is the same here as in their hometown, but here it's crispy-salty because of the sea, and in summer A-Yuan's hair will be all bouncy, unmanageable curls. Wei Ying's, too, just a little.

A-Yuan is watching TV when Wei Ying steps out of the shower, but it's more for the background noise as he sits frog-like on the floor and studies the map of the universe made for kids.

"Saturday thoughts?" Wei Ying asks, nudging him with his foot.

"Why is our sun yellow?"                                

"I don't know," Wei Ying says. "Do you?"

"No. Can you find out why?"

Wei Ying pinches his toes for running around without socks or slippers. "Only after you clean the litter box."

"I cleaned it last time!" A-Yuan grumbles. "It's your turn!"

"It's your turn!" Wei Ying copies him. A-Yuan shoots him such an angry look that Wei Ying makes a scared face and runs out of the living room, crying for help. A-Yuan scrambles off the floor to chase him, screaming that he's going to get dada and if he does, dada will clean the litter box the whole of next week. Wei Ying runs faster.

When A-Yuan becomes sufficiently breathy and more annoyed than playful, Wei Ying very carefully trips on nothing and shouts as if wounded. A-Yuan throws himself on top of him and declares his victory – that A-Yuan is faster than dada. Wei Ying suffers a quick assault on his runner’s past, carries A-Yuan into the kitchen to make breakfast and, more importantly, coffee.

"Sea!" A-Yuan shouts as the strip of blue becomes visible. "Dada, look, the sea!"

Wei Ying sticks his chin out. "Can you see the port?"

A-Yuan reaches as far from the car seat as he can, planting his hands on the window. "Yeah! It's where the ships are?"

"Yep," Wei Ying says. "And the container cranes. It's where part of dada's work happens."

"Can I see?" A-Yuan gasps, clapping his pudgy hands. "Please please please? I won't run! Promise!"

"Some other time," Wei Ying says. A-Yuan makes a pitiful sound. "It's a very big place full of huge loading machines and containers and screaming people. When you are older, we will go there."

That seems to appease A-Yuan, but only so much. "I'm not scared of screaming people."

Of course he's not, he's Jiang Cheng's nephew.

"It's a different kind of screaming," Wei Ying says. The traffic is getting denser and slower as they are approaching the beach. "Not the one little kids are supposed to hear." Like Jiang Cheng’s.

"I'm not little!"

"You are very little," Wei Ying disagrees. "I can fit you in my pocket."

"I'm a big boy!" A-Yuan grumbles.

"I can fit a big boy in my pocket," Wei Ying says, flapping his elbows for greater effect, "and feed him seeds like a little baby bird. Worms, too, if he's good."

"Dada, you said no eating worms," A-Yuan says, deadly serious. Wei Ying smothers a laugh. "And you can't fit Lan-laoshi in your pocket."

"Why him?"

"He's a big boy. A very big boy."

"He is," Wei Ying acquiesces. "But why him and not your shushu? He's my little brother."

"Shushu doesn't like hiding."

Wei Ying's stomach swoops awfully. "He doesn't, does he."

"We never play hide and seek," A-Yuan continues, "even at home."

"But you play a lot of other games. He is so fast you can never catch him when you play tag."

"No," A-Yuan sighs, patting the window. "Can we talk to shushu?"

"Of course, bean."

The parking lot is a lot emptier than Wei Ying anticipated, and A-Yuan all but jumps at him out of his car seat.

"No running," Wei Ying instructs, adjusting his hat. "The beach is all stones and you can hurt yourself. Some people leave and break things here. We don't want an owie from a broken glass bottle, right?"

A-Yuan nods solemnly, scratching his forehead under the hat. "No owie. Can I touch the sea?"

"Yes. But it's cold," Wei Ying says, tucking a blanket and a thermos into the crook of his elbow. "Like water from the fridge. You have to be quick."

A-Yuan uh-huhs at him, considering sticking his hand into something he knows but cannot really fathom because of the size of the sea.

Wei Ying barely watches his own step as he follows A-Yuan's reaction to the water getting bigger and bigger, no longer a thin strip of blue but a dark, rippling, boundless force. A-Yuan knows water, he is used to the lakes and ponds, snake-like rivers that make him squeal with happiness, but now he clutches Wei Ying's fingers and goes completely silent until a seagull screeches near them. A-Yuan trips on a stone and cheeps anxiously under his breath but doesn't stop even when Wei Ying does. Wei Ying squeezes his hand, a question, and A-Yuan shakes his head. Wei Ying ducks down to kiss the top of his head.

A-Yuan stops where the seaweed-slick stones begin, far enough from the sandy shore he can hear the mellow tug and pull of the waves but can't really see it. Wei Ying sweeps him into his arms and walks closer to the water.

It’s no longer frozen, and clear in a way only cold water can be. Wei Ying’s heart rate picks up softly, with each breath drawn, with each second A-Yuan quietly takes the sea in and falls in love with it, perched on Wei Ying’s hip.

"Big," A-Yuan says eventually, contemplative.

"Very big," Wei Ying agrees. "Scary?"

"A little," A-Yuan allows, then points at the stones. "Why are they green?"

"It's seaweed. Not scary, just yucky if you touch them. Slimy. You can touch them if you want."

A-Yuan shakes his head sharply. “Can I touch the sea?”

Wei Ying’s boots sink heavily into the sand as he hunkers down and A-Yuan reaches out to pat the water. He wriggles his fingers and draws his hand back only once, after the first touch, when the temperature shocks him and makes him gasp. A-Yuan looks at Wei Ying, gauging the extent of the permission.

“Go on,” Wei Ying smiles.

A-Yuan sticks his tongue out with effort, trying to grab water and then just being content to have it caressing his fingers. He pokes the bubbles in the froth for a while, until Wei Ying commands that they need to warm up a bit.

“Do you like the smell?” Wei Ying asks, spreading the blanket. The edges of A-Yuan’s sleeve have been sufficiently soaked and Wei Ying’s boots are somewhat damp on the inside. Wei Ying will keep finding sand in his car for the rest of his life, he thinks contentedly.

A-Yuan hums nonsensically, putting the rocks on the corners of the blanket.

A-Yuan nestles himself into Wei Ying's lap and sniffs at his hand, and then scrunches up his nose because it smells like wet wool. Wei Ying rocks them back and forth a little, lulled by the hissing waves and the minute shift of A-Yuan in his arms as he looks around and drinks everything in, the sounds that rivers he remembers don't make and the smell that settles deep into your marrow and makes you always crave it. A-Yuan plays with Wei Ying's fingers and giggles every time the wind sprays them with saltwater. He likes the sea. He is Wei Ying's son.

Wei Ying holds the cup as A-Yuan sips the tea and aahs indulgently after every mouthful. Wei Ying rests his chin on the top of his head and thinks about a summer day here, loud and viscous, ice creams devoured in dangerous amounts and noses burnt. He has been teaching A-Yuan how to swim since A-Yuan's belly button healed, and the seabed is no less interesting than a riverbed. It will be good.

He dials Jiang Cheng and gives A-Yuan the phone. Because he’s been doing it for several years now, Jiang Cheng has stopped barking What is it? as soon as he picks up and switched to a mild Yes? because he’d scared A-Yuan once and didn’t know how to apologise for that. A-Yuan holds the phone and instantly perks up at Jiang Cheng’s voice.

“Tell him I love him,” Wei Ying says when A-Yuan is done telling Jiang Cheng about the clay elephant he made in the kindergarten two days ago.

“Dada says he loves you,” A-Yuan says dutifully into the phone. Then, “Shushu says he wants to hear the sea.”

“Don’t drop the phone,” Wei Ying says, hauling A-Yuan to his feet. “Jiang Cheng, we have a spare room, you know that.”

A-Yuan runs to the sea and sticks his hand out, and Wei Ying finishes the tea. Each of them hopes to be heard.

/

Lan Zhan’s gaze lingers on Wei Ying every time he drops A-Yuan off or picks him up, and it would feel nice and could spark the heat low in Wei Ying’s belly if Wei Ying didn’t know better. Everybody, not just Lan Zhan, knows that Wei Ying is a single father, and those lingering looks are always anything but want-driven. It's most often pity, occasional curiosity, and always judgement. A-Yuan gets judged for Wei Ying being a single father, too, is always checked more carefully and tended to with more attention than a kid from a family where a parent is an abuser of an alcoholic, or a child nursed by a single mother. A scratch on A-Yuan’s arm once caused a full-on interrogation from a teacher in their first kindergarten. Wei Ying didn’t tell her he had gone through three sets of foster parents and A-Yuan is looked after better than Wei Ying has ever been. The scratch was from A-Yuan climbing a pear tree while Wei Ying was loudly cheering for him.

Wei Ying was criminally self-conscious of such looks and questions which had started as soon as A-Yuan was taken home. Every worried look from a nurse, every visit to a doctor, every institution that needed Wei Ying's personal data that listed A-Yuan as his infant, then toddler son, and no mother in sight – Wei Ying has always tried to prove, foolishly, that he is enough. That A-Yuan, bottle-fed and raised by three siblings in turns, is a happy little boy who laughs more often than cries. That his shushu sings better than his guma, definitely better than his mother, always worse than Wei Ying. And it was enough.

A-Yuan's clothes, rumpled and stained to death with watercolours and tomato juice, were scrutinised by their neighbours despite A-Yuan's hiccupping laughter when Wei Ying was blowing raspberries into his tummy. When A-Yuan, not even one year old, had flu and was crying non-stop, or was too tired and thin from the fever to cry, Wei Ying was kneeling by his cot and praying like any parent of a sick child.

The looks from the kindergarten teachers, who know A-Yuan is raised by a single father, and parents of the kids in A-Yuan's group, who know about it because A-Yuan is honest when he plays mothers and daughters with other kids and only needs a father when he plays, are always the same.

Wei Ying knows better. He smiles at Lan Zhan and leans down to hug his son.

/

The weather turns from the sweet-smelling, clement spring to summer seemingly overnight. Wei Ying gets a whiff of it the evening prior, airing A-Yuan’s bedroom before bedtime, and feels unspeakably grateful to his past self for remembering to buy A-Yuan new sandals. A-Yuan wakes him up in the middle of the night and complains that he can’t sleep because he is too hot under his blanket, so the morning is not fun.

With summer taking over and scorching the life out of the greenery and everyone’s electricity bills, the Northern Sea Route tentatively begins its limited operation and demands more of Wei Ying’s attention than anything else. It may already be sweltering where they are and where they load the vessels, as they had scheduled months ago, but the north does what it wants. There are a couple of days leading up to the Dragon Boat Festival during which Wei Ying can feel himself getting new grey hairs, and on one of those days, he is late to pick A-Yuan up because he physically cannot leave the office on time.

He calls the kindergarten and is told that A-Yuan will stay with the security guard on duty. A-Yuan knows not to panic about it, because it has happened multiple times already. Besides, should anything unusual happen, A-Yuan knows all of his adults’ phone numbers, knows where Wei Ying works and their home address.

Wei Ying parks at the gate and darts into a convenience store on the other side of the road. If dealing with government and especially educational institutions has taught him anything, it’s that a little gratitude and politeness go a really long way. In A-Yuan’s first kindergarten and nursery, Wei Ying had been perfectly calm about working overtime, because he would bring sweets to his teachers and security guards and actually remembered their names, and it would pay off. Since it’s hot today, he buys three different ice creams.

Wei Ying expects to find A-Yuan at the playground, but he’s not there.

Inside, the security guard looks him up and down. “A-Yuan’s father?”

Wei Ying nods, smiling, and holds out all three ice creams for him to choose from. “Is he in the bathroom?”

The man’s eyes widen, stern expression promptly turning amiable. No one’s immune to ice cream. “Thank you,” the man says, and takes the vanilla popsicle. “He is with Lan-xiansheng in the classroom.”

“Lan-laoshi stayed with him?” Wei Ying says obtusely.

The guy smiles. “He stays until the last child is picked up, even if they are not from his group.”

“Oh,” Wei Ying squeezes out. This is impossibly kind and also sad that Lan Zhan doesn’t need to rush somewhere after work. People who stay late are usually either workaholics or have no one to return to. Which one is Lan Zhan? Is a kindergarten teacher workaholic even a thing? “Do you know what room they are in?”

“Should be the last room on the second floor, the playroom.”

“Thank you,” Wei Ying says, and pads deeper into the kindergarten.

Places like kindergartens and school compounds, when they are empty, are creepy. There are kids’ drawings and posters everywhere, decorations that have oily handprints on them, the doors are ajar for the janitors, and the silence is prickling, unsettling, because it’s usually the opposite. Wei Ying climbs the stairs that are too narrow for his feet and strains his ear to hear anything, but it’s quiet. If Wei Ying didn’t know Lan Zhan better – through A-Yuan’s tales, no less – he would think that Lan Zhan gave him his phone to keep A-Yuan busy, but they’re probably drawing or reading something quietly. Wei Ying doesn’t need to look for the room A-Yuan and Lan Zhan are in because it’s the only door on the floor that is swung open.

On the carpet, his footsteps are mute, so no one hears him approach. Wei Ying pokes his head into the playroom, where, yep, Lan Zhan is sitting crossed-legged on the floor, a thick book in his hands, and A-Yuan is slumped against him, reading as well.

Wei Ying knocks, and both of them lift their heads simultaneously like meerkats. It’s adorable.

“Sorry I’m so late, oof,” Wei Ying croaks from the impact of A-Yuan cannonballing into him. “But I brought ice cream, though it’s already a bit melted. I didn’t know which one to get, so I got black sesame and mango. The security guy took the vanilla one.”

Lan Zhan casts a glance at the popsicles. It’s dinnertime; all of them are hungry because of Wei Ying. “You didn’t have to.”

“Neither did you,” Wei Ying retorts, brandishing the sweets.  “Laoshi, quick, it’s dripping. Which one do you want?”

Lan Zhan flicks A-Yuan’s earlobe, his own a blasting red. “Which one do you want?”

“Mango. Dada, and you?”

“I had one with my lunch,” Wei Ying lies. Lan Zhan sees right through it, damn his teacher’s experience, and backs away, but Wei Ying grabs his hand and closes it around the stick. “Laoshi, please? And I will drive you home.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan admonishes. The poor ice cream sweats onto his fist. “No.”

“I insist,” Wei Ying says. “Please. Think of it as a payment for the future, because it might happen again. And I was told that Lan-laoshi is the guardian angel of this establishment. And! I have air-conditioning in the car.”

A-Yuan looks between them, entertained, clearly very tired. Lan Zhan must tired too, because he lets out a tiny sigh and follows them out.

In the car, Wei Ying wipes every part of A-Yuan that came in contact with the mango juice and gives him the phone. In the front seat, Lan Zhan is shyly finishing his grey lump of ice cream. Wei Ying gives him a wet wipe, too.

“A lot of work?” A-Yuan pipes up as Wei Ying buckles him in.

“Nasty work,” Wei Ying nods, and kisses his forehead. “Missed you so so so much today.”

“Mmmmm.”

The evening unspools, softening the heat and making the reflections in the windows apricot-coloured. The turn signal clicks while they wait for the green light, the GPS informs him that they have about three minutes left. Wei Ying wants to bully Lan Zhan just a little, while A-Yuan is distracted, because Lan Zhan’s hands are primly folded in his lap and he hasn’t even asked about music. Wei Ying does not look at his bare forearms.

“Laoshi, can I ask you a very personal question?” he says, letting the silence stretch as he passes crossroad, then turns to smile at Lan Zhan. “Which zongzi do you prefer?”

“Are you going to bring me them if I tell you?”

“Do you want me to?” Lan Zhan actually glares at him. It’s unexpected and cute and exactly what he aimed for, but Wei Ying definitely needs to tone down – whatever it is that’s spilling out of his mouth. “No, I’m just asking. I like everything and bun likes the salted egg in his.”

“I prefer mine with mushrooms.”

“Never knew anyone to make such a splendid choice.”

Lan Zhan lives not far from the kindergarten. It’s a pain to park near his building, but it’s undoubtedly worth it. Wei Ying aiyo’s at him because Lan Zhan attempts to take the ice cream wrapper with him, and Lan Zhan quickly pockets it. Wei Ying wants to gently bully him so much it’s ridiculous.

Lan Zhan climbs out of the car with a stifled, “Thank you.” He taps A-Yuan’s window goodbye, and although A-Yuan is too far away to squish his face into it, he tries his best.

“Can you honk goodbye, please?” A-Yuan asks.

Wei Ying honks twice, watching Lan Zhan in the side mirror. Lan Zhan turns at the sound and obediently waves goodbye once more. Best boy.

/

There must be a scientific explanation for the fact that chewed up pencils hold better and longer in the ceiling panel than the fresh ones. Maybe it has to do with the grip that the teeth indentations provide, or Wei Ying just throws them up better somehow. Either way, it works wonders for him. The last one he launched didn’t even dangle.

Xiao Xingchen knocks on the doorframe and immediately cracks up. “You want to believe?”

“I would like to, yes,” Wei Ying admits sourly. “But my job dictates otherwise.”

“Your job dictates that you have an hour-long lunch break, but I haven’t seen you out of your office all day,” Xiao Xingchen notes, leaning against the desk. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Wei Ying says honestly. Nothing out of the ordinary that would drain him more than usual. It just so happened that his boss saw him in the middle of moping about how We Ying hasn’t talked to anyone who isn’t family or a colleague for a long time.

A few years back, Wei Ying had half of the city hanging out with him and crashing at his place for the weekend. Most of them understandably severed ties with him when A-Yuan was born and Wei Ying had no time to shower, let alone send memes in the group chat. That, combined with the fact that A-Yuan’s mother left, created a weird sort of tension, where some of their friends who stayed became pitiful and some outright hostile, and Wei Ying had the patience for none of that. By the time A-Yuan turned three and Wei Ying had changed several jobs to keep them afloat, there was nobody left. Moving town was excruciating only because Jiang Cheng was still there, but otherwise, Wei Ying felt like he could breathe.

“You need to blow off steam,” Xiao Xingchen decides.

If Wei Ying were younger and single – not the way he is single right now – he would have diverted the conversation into a highly inappropriate and satisfactory route. He might’ve even hit on Xiao Xingchen, because the guy is unbelievably good and hot and funny, but here they are, staring at the mutilated ceiling in Wei Ying’s office, with two kids that have to be entertained during the forthcoming rainy weekend, and a shit ton of work on a Friday.

Wei Ying sighs. “You’re just like my sister, which, believe me, is the highest compliment, but also. I’m fine.”

Xiao Xingchen mn’s at the back of his throat and tilts his head to see what’s going on on the computer screen. “Poland?”

“The manufacturer made a mistake in the customs declaration and in the certificate.”

“And that’s not for you to fix, is it?”

“No, but I – ” Wei Ying begins, baulking at Xiao Xingchen’s sceptic brow. “Yeah. You’re right. You have suggestions?”

“I do, actually. Have you ever attempted boxing?” Wei Ying shakes his head. “My husband owns a club. You should try it, it’s very physically taxing. Bring the little one, too. And after that, we’re going to have a Korean barbecue at our house.”

Wei Ying stares at him, feeling the blush creep up his face. He knows that Xiao Xingchen means well, and he is genuinely kind to his coworkers, but this is too much. This is an imposition of the worst kind because it feels like pity. “Xingchen-ge. Laoban, you don’t have to.”

“Don’t have to what, befriend you?”  Xiao Xingchen peels himself off the desk and pats the arm of Wei Ying’s chair. “Side dishes are on you. I’ll send you the address.”

Wei Ying laughs anxiously. Did Xiao Xingchen plan this or did he look at Wei Ying’s face and decided that he needed to be rescued? Can Wei Ying say no to this, even though he would really like to go and hang out with him? Should he say no?

“Wait,” Wei Ying says. “Do you have a dog?”

A-Yuan is also moody. He asks to be carried to the car instead of hopping on the way to it and nuzzles his face into Wei Ying’s neck, his hands squished between them. He is not distressed or upset, nothing hurts, he doesn’t have a fever, no one picked a fight with him in the group, he says. Wei Ying is not sure if melancholy can strike at the tender age of four and a half, but if it can, cuddles and chocolate are definitely the way to ease out of it.

Wei Ying climbs into the backseat and A-Yuan curls into him even more, truly a bean in lap. Wei Ying rearranges him so that his legs don’t fall asleep and his head is at the ultimate level for the kisses, and strokes his back slowly.

He tells A-Yuan about his workday, as he often does, even if A-Yuan understands very little about it. He knows what Wei Ying does at length, and Wei Ying had shown him the countries and cities they work with, but it sparked no interest. A-Yuan is not a fan of trucks or any kind of transport toys, but he does love dinosaurs and space. And his dada.

“We need to go to the grocery store because tomorrow we’re going to a boxing club to spar with my boss, and then we’ll go to his house to eat,” Wei Ying says into A-Yuan’s loose curls. He needs a haircut. “What do you want for dinner?”

A-Yuan squirms to tilt his face up at him. “Are you going to punch him?”

“No, but I can’t say the same for him.”

“I’ll protect you,” A-Yuan grumbles, and coils back into the snail shape.

Wei Ying tries to tickle his sides, but A-Yuan makes sounds of discontent and bites his arm. No playing today, then. “I know, bunny,” Wei Ying placates. “I know you will.”

The rain starts just after dinner, bringing typhoon wind and incessant lightning. A-Yuan is not scared of such weather, but Tislit is, and she claws her way up Wei Ying’s t-shirt to hide under his chin. Wei Ying unearths A-Yuan’s sling that he can’t bear parting with and puts her in it. She falls asleep, her content snoring louder than the roars of thunder.

/

“Song Lan,” Xiao Xingchen’s husband says right off the bat. Wei Ying is not intimidated by his firm handshake, but he’s also not not intimidated. Impressed, at the very least. Then Song Lan crouches and introduces himself to A-Yuan just as seriously. A-Yuan shakes his hand, face into Wei Ying’s thigh. “I gather you’ve never done this before.”

Song Lan doesn’t look like a boxing club owner Wei Ying imagined him to be – bulkily built and grinning. In reality, he is taller than Xiao Xingchen or Wei Ying, slim, grim, and looks like he can kill a man with a single slap. Wei Ying is a big fan.

 “Unfortunately,” Wei Ying smiles. “But I was promised a thorough kicking around.”

“No kicking around,” Song Lan says, frowning. “Punching.”

Xiao Xingchen hastily takes him by the wrist and kisses him on the cheek. “I’ll take him, don’t worry. Go talk with Jue-ge about tomorrow and be ready in two hours or so.”

Song Lan makes a funny brow twitch and kisses Xiao Xingchen squarely on the mouth, no messing around. A-Yuan tugs on Wei Ying’s fingers, uncomfortable. Wei Ying is uncomfortable. “Two hours. The kiddo’s done her reading.”

“Well done,” Xiao Xingchen grins. “Off you go. Send A-Qing over here, will you?”

Wei Ying looks around. The gym is fancy. It’s black and orange, two rings, one smaller and one that takes a quarter of the whole space, a separate corner for workouts with a bunch of equipment, and rows of different punching bags. It’s quite busy despite the weather, but maybe exactly because of it. The gym doesn’t look like a place one should bring their kids to, but Wei Ying trusts Xiao Xingchen’s judgement. If anything, A-Yuan can charm everyone in here and punch a bag a couple times.

“His sense of humour is very peculiar,” Xiao Xingchen explains. “It’s – not there. I’ve tried.”

Wei Ying waves a hand. “I’ve had worse. I offend people more often than I make them laugh, so he was valid.”

The office door slams open and a skinny girl in a neon yellow tracksuit skips out of it, a lollipop bulging her cheek. Xiao Xingchen clicks his tongue at the lollipop or the door left like that, but A-Qing, Wei Ying understands, has more authority in here than either of her fathers, because Song Lan calmly closes the door for her.

“It’s them?”

“Rude,” Xiao Xingchen scolds. “Say hello to Wei-xiansheng and A-Yuan first.”

“Hi,” A-Qing says obediently around the candy. “It’s you?”

“ A-Qing .”

“Cool tracksuit,” Wei Ying says. “It’s us.”

“It glows in the dark.”

“Really?” A-Yuan gasps, and steps forward. “Can I see?”

A-Qing looks him up and down. She is seven, Wei Ying remembers vaguely, and playing with kids of A-Yuan’s age is considered not cool because they are babies. But A-Qing nods, grabs A-Yuan by the wrist, and tugs. “Come with me.”

A-Yuan manages a quick look of pure awe in Wei Ying’s direction before the two of them disappear into what has to be the utility room. It’s dark there and Wei Ying definitely hears excited squeaking not long after.

“Don’t worry, she knows everything here and will take care of him,” Xiao Xingchen assures, and beckons Wei Ying closer. “So. Shall we warm up? How’s your cardio?”

Wei Ying is not entirely out of shape, but it takes him a minute to get his breathing under control. Xiao Xingchen doesn’t just stand there and direct him, he actually works out alongside Wei Ying. The warm-up is relatively quick but thorough; Wei Ying is panting by the end of it, and it feels really, really good.

Xiao Xingchen makes him squat and skip, and then calls the kids over to do it too. A-Qing is definitely a pro at it, doing criss-cross skipping and sticking her green tongue at Xiao Xingchen. Although A-Yuan struggles at first – for some reason, neither Wei Ying nor anyone kindergarten taught him how to do it – and hits himself with the rope a couple times, but he gets a hang of it, and soon enough, there is a little competition between the kids and the adults. It’s great.

“If you decide to continue training, I’ll tell you where to get the gloves and the tape,” Xiao Xingchen says, wrapping Wei Ying’s hands. “Don’t ever attempt punching without the protection, especially for fun. The knuckles and the wrist bones are easy to break, in case you didn’t know. And you have to type a lot.”

“I didn’t,” Wei Ying says distractedly. Deep into the gym, A-Qing and A-Yuan are watching a couple sparring on the smaller ring. “Isn’t it too much for her?”

“She loves it here,” Xiao Xingchen snorts. “I was against it before, because her biological family weren’t kind to her, but Lanlan said it would be beneficial for her. He was right. There is no violence in the gym, only hard work and a lot of sweaty people who would love to teach her how to throw an adult over her shoulder. Lanlan only watches the Olympics, reads the UFC and MMA articles and wants to try Sanda. No underground clubs or stuff like that, he hates it. Maybe Qingqing won’t take it up seriously, but at least she knows what to do if she’s in trouble.”

“Woah,” Wei Ying breathes. “You guys are incredible. And a daughter, wow.”

“So are you. Look at Yuan-er. He charmed my misanthropic daughter in no time.”

Wei Ying tries to scratch his head and instead almost knocks himself out. “He takes after me. Less annoying, though.”

“He is, what, four? Five?” Xiao Xingchen smiles. “Has room to grow. Come on, time to punch.”

Boxing, it turns out, involves a lot more peculiarities than Wei Ying anticipated. It’s not just punching and bouncing – who could have thought – because it’s primarily mental work, at least at the beginning. Everything has to be kept in check: his stance, breathing, his feet, his arms and how he punches.

“Don’t hold your breath and exhale when you punch,” Xiao Xingchen says, and proceeds to demonstrate why Wei Ying has to do this with two different hits – hard slaps, really. Wei Ying curls into himself and laughs, clutching his stomach. Yeah, exhaling is better.

The force he strikes the punchbag with is dulled because of the gloves, but it feels like fighting a wall nonetheless. Wei Ying’s arm starts shaking after only a few minutes of repetitive exercise. The instinct to go all-out doesn’t work here – you get tired immediately.

Xiao Xingchen, as far as Wei Ying can tell, is a great trainer. He notices Wei Ying flagging and reminds him once again, “Chin down, elbows to your ribs. That’s it. Protect your pretty face.”

A-Qing feeds A-Yuan her lunch and devours his, gives him a pink lollipop when they are done, then proceeds to further talk A-Yuan’s ears off. Xiao Xingchen pokes Wei Ying’s ribs lightly to bring his attention back to boxing.

“They are fine. Concentrate.”

They are. A-Yuan is a genuinely good listener for his age, but that aside, he is a wonderful kid who likes to share, and Wei Ying makes sure he has things in his backpack to do it. The kids finish the entire bag of nuts before Wei Ying is done with hooks. Eyes huge, A-Yuan watches A-Qing demonstrate how well she can do cartwheels, and then they roll over on the mats for fun.

Wei Ying chugs down what’s left in the water bottle and goes for a refill, and drops the bottle on his way there. The entire session hasn’t lasted that long at all, but he is so unaccustomed to working his arms in this way that Wei Ying fears he will have to leave the car at the gym parking space and return for it tomorrow.

Out of nowhere, Song Lan picks up the bottle and fills it for him. “Go rinse yourself. Feel exhausted yet?”

“Feel like I won’t be able to drive to work on Monday, or even today. But I think I’d like to do this again.”

“Good,” Song Lan says. “That’s good.”

/

He drives anyway, of course. A-Yuan naps in the car, and by the time they all arrive at their destination, A-Yuan is hungry again.

Xiao Xingchen’s home is small and unbelievably classy, with the kitchen definitely being something they must have invested in – it’s an extension of the building, chic and black, quartz counters and a tap that gives you boiling water straightaway. They have a gazebo in the backyard and an island that looks exactly like the one Wei Ying has wanted since he was seventeen.

There is no dog in the house, only A-Qing’s ancient and blind guinea pig that she brings for A-Yuan wrapped up in a towel. A-Yuan is fascinated by it. The plan was to adopt a cat, Xiao Xingchen says, so they went to a pet shop to buy all the necessary things first. A-Qing spotted the thing and refused to leave the shop without it, especially after they were told that the pet is blind.

While Wei Ying and Xiao Xingchen are chopping everything for side dishes, Song Lan takes over the task of entertaining the kids – he gives them work to do in the garden and follows them, preparing the gazebo for the barbeque, that is. The rain only adds to the excited screams.

Wei Ying is sore all over but not alarmingly so; the worst will come tomorrow and on Monday, and he is glad. Xiao Xingchen was right about the physically taxing part, which ultimately makes Wei Ying’s brain shut up.

“How did you guys meet?” Wei Ying asks. Not the best way to start a conversation, but also – he is really curious. Xiao Xingchen and his husband are completely different, and A-Qing is just. A-Qing.

Xiao Xingchen is making mocktails for them, kids included, bless him. “We were classmates since middle school, but the moment of truth happened when I accidentally protected him in a street fight.”

“You did what,” Wei Ying blurts out. He darts a glance at the boxing gym owner. “Street fight?”

“It’s a long story,” Xiao Xingchen hedges. “He started boxing soon after that and said that he'd protect me from now on.”

“Oh. I mean, that’s fate in her purest form.” And awfully romantic too, save the street fight.

Xiao Xingchen tilts his head in the direction of the gazebo. “Qingqing’s obsessed with him. He loved her since the day we met her, but she took some time to warm up to him. She called him “grumpy baba” and was a little scared of him at first. About a year ago, Lanlan taught her a couple of self-defence moves when she saw us spar at home. At first, she started running around the room and screaming that she can beat anyone’s ass now, and then cried for an hour in his arms.”

“She can certainly beat mine, I guess,” Wei Ying snickers. It’s a joke, but Xiao Xingchen did mention the issues in A-Qing’s biological family. “How old was she when you adopted her?”

“Five,” Xiao Xingchen says, an odd half-snarl in his voice. “It took us nineteen months to take her home and show her to our doctors. She was… very small and she bit me the first time I tried to take her hand. It took weeks for her to understand that we weren’t going to do any of the things her parents did to her, and months to make her smile. The first time she fell asleep on me, I cried.”

Wei Ying lets out a long exhale through his mouth, viciously stirring the potato salad. There are so many kids who have gone through this – are going through this at this very moment, and only some of them get to be found by people like Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen. Wei Ying himself is tentatively hoping to adopt someone of A-Yuan’s age in the next five years or so, when A-Yuan is at school and Wei Ying can afford two kids and a very long paternity leave. Maybe earlier, if he works harder. Maybe not one, but two kids. A whole bunch of them, screaming and trashing the place and sleeping on Wei Ying.

Xiao Xingchen looks at the row of glasses for a long moment, then pulls another one out and pours himself a decidedly alcoholic glass of wine. “I can only read stories, and although she can do that on her own, but you know they go, I want a story, tell me a story, and you have to do something about it, but all you have is tales about the shortage of drivers and the constantly growing costs for everything and the CC threads. But he’s great at it, among other things.”

In the gazebo, Song Lan has both A-Qing and A-Yuan on his lap, bundled into blankets and munching on the fresh radishes they had plucked in the garden. “They love you,” Wei Ying says.

“They make me laugh. She calls both of us baba and argues that ‘if I say baba, both of you will answer’. She wants a baby sister. I believe it’s going to be a baby brother after today.”

The rain goes from a drizzle to pouring to a steady splatter. The barbeque is delicious, although no alcohol is present except for Xiao Xingchen’s still full wine glass. A-Yuan eats like he has been through a famine or two, and A-Qing feeds the salad leaves to the guinea pig. Wei Ying groans as his ass starts to catch up with all the squatting and he has to get up and sit down.

Song Lan makes all the barbeque boats for his husband and fusses over him in a particularly quiet way. Wei Ying looks at the two of them and feels a vile pang of jealousy, but it’s instantly gone. He is truly happy for them, for A-Qing, who has warmed up to him too, deeming Wei Ying a cool dad and allowing him to hold her pet.

It is a good Saturday, by the end of which Wei Ying and A-Yuan have four new friends.

/

“A-jie is worried about you.”

“Why?”

“You tell me.”

“I literally did nothing wrong in my life, what are you talking about,” Wei Ying grumbles, pulling both carrot sticks out of A-Yuan’s nose. “No vampires in this house.”

Jiang Cheng breathes like he is walking somewhere really fast. “Give the little one the phone.”

“No, because you’ll ask him about me.”

“Exactly. Give him the phone.”

“Is that shushu?” A-Yuan says, and screams the very next moment, “Love you shushu!”

“Love you, bean!” Jiang Cheng roars back into Wei Ying’s other ear. “Give him the phone right now, or I’ll buy him a separate one.”

“And I will take it away,” Wei Ying says. “We’re about to have dinner. If you want to threaten me, do it to my face.”

“Okay,” Jiang Cheng says. “But I will take your bed if you haven’t put up the guest bed yet.”

“I fuc- I did , and I texted about – ” Wei Ying protests, and stops short. “Wait, are you coming over?”

“Yeah,” Jiang Chen says, which sounds like Stupid. “So? Do you intend to make the number of cat and human beds even?”

Wei Ying does a very mature jump of excitement. “No, because she is my queen and I am unworthy of having as many flat places to lie down on as she does. But I will make an exception for you.”

He did not expect Jiang Cheng to come over, because Jiang Cheng is about to go on a business trip somewhere Wei Ying can’t pronounce, and they are not going to hear much from him in the next couple of weeks. But Jiang Cheng has allocated a weekend for them before he goes away, and he is certainly going to bully Wei Ying into going to the gym early in the morning, which is so vindictive of him. 

“You’d better,” Jiang Cheng says.

Wei Ying hears the familiar railway station announcement on the other side. An overnight train, then. “Anything for Chengcheng.”

/

jiejie: how is the babysitter search going?

Wei Ying puts the phone face-down and resolutely doesn't twitch at the ping of two more notifications.

The summer break starts on Wednesday and Wei Ying has, in fact, been looking for someone to stay with A-Yuan until the new semester begins. He even contacted the girl Xiao Xingchen recommended and was impressed by her step-by-step plan of entertaining A-Yuan and the readiness to start the next day if Wei Ying needed her. But then Wei Ying imagined going to work on Wednesday and leaving A-Yuan with a complete stranger, and he just couldn’t do it. He can't. 

It's irrational, given the fact that A-Yuan goes to kindergarten and, out of the two of them, is least likely to freak out about the whole thing. But the only non-family member he has ever stayed with was Wen Qing, and she is Jiang Cheng's girlfriend, so she doesn't even count.

He knows he has driven himself into this corner of no babysitter and no family in the area, but – it's fine. He's just going to take A-Yuan to work every day and let him terrorise the office while Wei Ying terrorises other people over email.

It worked for about three days last year, when Jiang Cheng was out of town and Wei Ying had to bring A-Yuan along but was eventually banished from the office to work from home because A-Yuan became understandably fussy. This time, however, A-Yuan is a year older and can survive on crunchy snacks and a huge whiteboard he will be allowed to doodle on.

Wei Ying unlocks his phone to make a work call and it opens on the chat with jiejie.

jiejie: don't ignore me, because I am making dinner tonight

jiejie: [photo attached]

"Fuck!" Wei Ying yells, scrambling to his feet. "Fuck, fuck, oh my god, oh my god. "

Xiao Xingchen is wide-eyed and halfway out of his chair when Wei Ying barrels into his office and raps out, "My jiejie's coming and I missed her message, I need to – "

"Go," Xiao Xingchen says, sagging back into the chair with visible relief. "Ying-di, please don't yell like that again."

"Sorry! Thank you!!" Wei Ying wails and runs out of the building with the speed of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Driving out of the town in midday is not hard, but getting to the airport, which is an hour's worth of driving to and then some, is a completely different thing, and Wei Ying has already lost more than half of that time to, yes, ignoring his sister's rightful question. Idiot.

On the road, he calls the kindergarten and asks them to warn A-Yuan that he is going to be late for the pick-up, and tells it with a stupidly big grin on his face. The last time the two of them and Jiang Cheng have seen her was on New Year, and the number of times all of them were under the same roof since she moved to another city for her Ph.D. can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Wei Ying's chest hurts from the happiness that blurs his sight in the middle of the road, which is dangerous, so he tries to think about something gross like tiny flies that collect under the ceiling of their office building balconies and drop, overheated, into people's cups. If he is like that just from one message, he can only imagine the pitch of A-Yuan's scream when he sees his guma.

Wei Ying makes a couple of work phone calls to calm down and stress eats a half-empty bag of A-Yuan's chocolates that have melted in the car and merged back into a solid lump from the AC. He checks the photo at the red light and pressed the phone to his temple, digging the corner into the skull to stop freaking out. Nothing will happen even if Jiang Yanli has to wait for him for several minutes; it is, in the end, the middle of a workday and Wei Ying could’ve been too busy to see her message. But he wants to barrel into her at the airport and scoop her up and shriek like a coyote the second she is in his line of sight.

Wei Ying drums his fingers on the steering wheel, a bit steadier now that he is on the highway. If jiejie is coming for a couple of days or even a week, maybe he can bully Jiang Cheng to come here too, after he’s done with his work trip. And Wen Qing, if she wants, if she can. And if they do, then Wei Ying will have to shut himself in the bathroom and cry a little, because he has missed all of them so much and because the next time they see each other will be in February. But jiejie did point out the babysitter issue. If Wei Ying is correct, she is going to stay for much longer.

He has been to this airport twice: the first time when he came to view the flat and the second for the kindergarten bureaucracy. It is old and has outgrown its capacity many times over, especially the comfortable number of parking places. By the time Wei Ying has found a place to ditch the car and remembered the gods of every religion and faith he knows of, he is half an hour late to the arrival,  which should be enough for jiejie to land, walk the airport grounds, because they don’t have jet bridges, and get her luggage.

Wei Ying starts sniffling before he sees her and her massive overweight suitcase, before she notices him and her eyes redden, too. She smiles, speeding up, and laughs shakily when Wei Ying picks her up and spins her around, sobbing into her narrow shoulder. Both him and Jiang Cheng suffer from separation anxiety in varying degrees of severity, which could be hilarious, because they are two grown-up men and have no time for this shit, but it’s not funny. Here, with jiejie in his arms, Wei Ying is always home.

“Hi,” he chokes out into Jiang Yanli’s hair. “Hi. Hi. I missed you and I’m not letting you fly back, just so you know. I’m ready to fight your not-husband and anyone from the university staff that needs you back. The little one will hang off their arms to impede their movement if they come to get you. Your arm, if you try to escape in the middle of the night, and Tislit will - ”

“A-Ying,” Jiang Yanli interjects, reaching out to wipe his tears. “You have me, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

Wei Ying can barely comprehend how lucky he is. Jiejie could have spent her vacation with that dumbass of hers, or gone home to see Jiang Cheng and her friends, or she could have gone somewhere else entirely and had a proper holiday that she deserves. Instead, she flew here and is going to spend six weeks with them and take care of A-Yuan. And Wei Ying.

Wei Ying kisses her small hands and presses them into his face to keep her there for a minute longer. They need to rush to the kindergarten, otherwise A-Yuan will definitely freak out. And besides, Wei Ying can’t keep Lan Zhan at work because he can’t stop crying from being too happy. But it all will be worth it once A-Yuan sees why Wei Ying was late and Wei Ying drives Lan Zhan home and brings him a piece of jiejie’s cake before the summer break begins.

“Thank you,” Wei Ying whispers. “Thank you, thank you.”

/

Lan Zhan is wiping something from A-Yuan’s hands. Wei Ying notices open paint pots and an empty bag of dried mangos on the table, and he feels a tremendous stab of guilt for making both of them wait for so long. But it’s okay, it’s fine. Wei Ying will fix this. 

He clears his throat to draw their attention and makes a serious face. “Sorry, I didn’t bring any treats today. But I, um. I have a surprise,” Wei Ying says, beckoning Jiang Yanli into the room. “I brought someone with me.”

A-Yuan reacts exactly like Wei Ying: he makes a high-pitched sound and almost trips, scrambling out of the chair, but then stops dead and stares at jiejie with huge watery eyes, as if unsure if he is seeing right, if she truly is here. But it’s Lan Zhan who alarms Wei Ying, because his face becomes so blank and pale that Wei Ying involuntarily calls him to ask what’s wrong. Lan Zhan’s eyes snap to him, jaw clenched. Wei Ying baulks.

“Hello, bunny,” jiejie says, going down on one knee. “I’ve missed you so much. Can I have a hug?”

A-Yuan’s chin trembles. He slowly takes steps towards her, hands clenching and unclenching. Jiejie opens her arms and shuffles closer to him, spurring him on, and A-Yuan finally bursts into tears. He barrels into jiejie, wailing, “Gumaaaa!”

Wei Ying laughs and rubs his face, wiping away thin tears. He checks on Lan Zhan, who has turned away and is now closing the paint pots, shoulders squared. Wei Ying can kind of guess what this must look like to him and why Lan Zhan reacted like he did. Wei Ying, face swollen from sobbing, and a woman that made A-Yuan scream at his side. Maybe Lan Zhan is being overprotective of A-Yuan, too.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying calls. Lan Zhan turns to him, but there is no harshness in his gaze anymore, only his usual impassive expression. Wei Ying smiles.

“Lan-laoshi,” jiejie says, beaming at Lan Zhan and rocking A-Yuan, who is inconsolable. “I’m Jiang Yanli, A-Ying’s sister. And this monkey’s guma, as you have heard.”

Lan Zhan nods sharply. “Nice to meet you.”

“Okay,” Wei Ying says, clapping his hands together. “Everyone’s hungry and crying, and if we don’t vacate the premise, Sang-laobo will have to arrest us for staying here for too long. But I need to get bean’s backpack first.”

Wei Ying takes the empty mango bag and makes a note to pack more snacks from now on. Lan Zhan definitely didn’t eat a single piece, so Wei Ying will have to think of something for the next time for him to actually be okay with sharing A-Yuan’s bigger snack. Nuts? Yoghurt stickers? Oatmeal bars?

“Come on, I’m still driving you home,” Wei Ying says, because Lan Zhan definitely looks like he is not going to go with them. Unacceptable.

Lan Zhan doesn’t move, clutching the dirty wipes and smearing the paint all over his palm. “You need to - ”

“I need you in my car,” Wei Ying interrupts him. He would invite Lan Zhan for a celebratory dinner they are definitely going to have, and jiejie is cooking tonight. But that would be weird. “Come on, laoshi. The least I can do for you.”

In the car, A-Yuan clutches Jiang Yanli’s hand and talks nonstop. Jiejie is stroking his face, realising how much A-Yuan has grown since the last time she saw him. Wei Ying doesn’t notice it unless he sees the clothes A-Yuan grows out of, but Jiang Cheng makes comments about it all the time. Jiejie hasn’t seen A-Yuan for almost half a year.

Lan Zhan is looking out of the window, hands tucked under his thighs. Wei Ying doesn’t annoy him, but he has a weird urge to explain, to apologise, even.

“Thank you,” Wei Ying tells him before Lan Zhan opens the door. “I’m sorry I was so late today. It was a surprise for me, too.”

“No need to thank me,” Lan Zhan says, and nods at jiejie and A-Yuan.

Wei Ying honks him goodbye again, but Lan Zhan doesn’t turn around.

Jiang Cheng is cooking dinner and Wen Qing is there, too, pounding the meat.

Wen Qing was the one who led them through the unimaginable lawsuit against the guy who killed their parents, basically handled all the custody papers and process while Wei Ying was half-conscious from grief and taking care of his infant son, and was also the first woman to make Jiang Cheng blush. Wei Ying still doesn't know what it took Jiang Cheng to ask her out, let alone become a couple, but he is so proud of Jiang Cheng. So proud.

Jiang Cheng’s expression is extremely unsurprised at jiejie’s presence in the frame. Wei Ying splutters, “You knew she was coming! And you didn’t tell me!”

"Of course I knew, dipshit."

“A-Cheng,” jiejie scolds.

"What's dipshit?" A-Yuan says.

“Fish poop at the bottom of the sea," Wei Ying says. "Don't tell anyone I said that. A-Cheng ah, that’s not fair.”

Jiang Cheng massacres the ginger. “Oh, you want to talk about fairness? How about – Yuan-er, close your ears – how about I say – ”

Wen Qing smacks him on the ass, waving at the camera with her other hand. "Hi, genitor, hi, bean, hi, Li-mei. He’s grumpy today."

"Qing-ayi," A-Yuan preens, scooting closer to the phone. "Hiiiii."

Wei Ying has seen Wen Qing smile only twice: at her own brother – not even Wei Ying's – who is two heads taller than Wen Qing and has a disposition of a fawn, and at A-Yuan when he made her a birthday card at daycare. This is the third time, and it's astonishingly unfamiliar to see Wen Qing's war general face soften.

"Hello, bean. How is kindergarten?"

"Goooood," A-Yuan drawls, cupping his cheeks. Wei Ying is pretty sure he has a crush on her. "I like your hair."

"Why, thank you," Wen Qing smiles wider. It's bizarre. "Your baba meant to say that we should come over and swim in the sea, right?"

"Can you? Can you, Qing-ayi?”

“Sorry, little one,” Jiang Cheng says together with Wen Qing. “We need to do things over here. But now guma is with you, you can go there with her and take lots of pictures for us."

Jiang Cheng is going away tomorrow. Given how much he hates packing, Wei Ying guesses that’s why Wen Qing is there. Apart from other things.

“Alright, let’s give them a chance to say goodbye to each other, yeah?” Wei Ying says, hauling A-Yuan into his arms. “We gotta ask guma for something extra delicious to cook for tonight.”

On Wednesday, when the summer break starts, Wei Ying wakes up to breakfast and wildly off-tune singing coming from the kitchen, and throws a pillow over his face to smother a frantic yell of glee.

He finds the time to read and finish several books he has been putting off. Jiang Yanli forces him to do exercises either before work or after and makes him stretch until stretching hurts more than the exercises. On the weekend, A-Yuan decides that he wants to be a yoga teacher when he grows up, but quickly gives up on the idea after jiejie tells him that jumping off the sofa is not yoga, although standing on his head is.

They buy several pieces of missing furniture and Wei Ying doesn’t have to be stressed about the delivery time. They repaint the living room and Wei Ying’s ceiling, pickle vegetables for winter, and go to the sea, where all three of them get sunburnt despite the copious amounts of SPF. A-Yuan is sleeping in jiejie’s arms more often than in Wei Ying’s, and Wei Ying relates.

They buy a scary amount of plants and cacti and scatter them around the flat, which adds a truly indescribable level of cosiness to the place. Wei Ying has no knowledge of the south-facing windows and how it affects certain plants, but jiejie assures him that the plants will thrive. Wei Ying only needs to make sure Tislit doesn’t eat them, although they did make sure that the plants she can reach won’t be toxic anyway.

He goes for a run for the first time in ages. He goes to the boxing gym again, alone, and again, and buys a two-month membership in the end, training with either Song Lan or Nie Mingjue, who looks more like the gym owner, if Wei Ying is being honest. Where Song Lan is steady and almost gruff, Nie Mingjue is all barked orders and gentle hands. Wei Ying likes training with both of them, loves the way his mind clears and focuses on simple, strong things. He sleeps like a log after the workouts and his mood is so much better.

Jiejie bullies him into inviting Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan and A-Qing over for a retaliatory dinner, and it turns out to be one of the best evenings in Wei Ying’s life. This time, they do drink, and Song Lan actually laughs at Wei Ying’s dumb jokes. The kids have blanket permission to do whatever they want, which entails large amounts of chocolate and crashing something in the living room.

Wei Ying rests his head on Jiang Yanli’s shoulder and smiles. Building a forever home takes time. They are getting there.

/

"It's Friday," Jiang Yanli says out of the blue one morning. Wei Ying hums. "You have a short day today."

"That's why we all can eat ice cream an hour earlier," Wei Ying says around the piping-hot shakshuka in his mouth. Jiejie wrinkles her nose. "You don't want ice cream?"

"I want my brother to spend a Friday evening elsewhere. And night, preferably," she says, and fuck, Wei Ying is thirty and has a son, jiejie is thirty-four and engaged, but it still makes him blush and twist away.

He whines. "Jiejie, I literally smell like home cooking and mortgage, I am not fit for hook-ups. What if I lost all my alcohol tolerance and one drink will knock me out? Imagine me at a bar, drooling on the tabletop – "

"A-Ying," she interrupts him, which means she is serious-serious. Fucking hell. Wei Ying wants to hide under the table, but he also wants to finish his breakfast. "Listen to your jiejie. I will take the little one to the cinema after soft play and then we will have dinner somewhere he wants. Tomorrow morning, I will take him to the library and we will spend at least half of the day there. Please take care of yourself, at least tonight."

Jiang Yanli strokes the side of his palm with one finger, a caress that is not patronising like a full palm-clutching but not letting him believe this will be easy to shake off. Wei Ying pouts, and she makes a face so reminiscent of Jiang Cheng's when he gets too fed up with Wei Ying's bullshit, that he has to laugh. Might as well go down with this ship.

"Okay, what do you want me to smell like when I come back? Like another man or a gorgeous woman?"

"Both, if you want," she says calmly, which deflates the sole purpose of Wei Ying's teasing and makes his face positively burn. There's simply no winning. "A-Ying, please."

"Fine, fine, okay, if you want to get me laid, this humble one obeys," Wei Ying gives up to end the conversation, and stuffs his mouth full.

The day is an okay sort of workday and a challengingly humid evening. Wei Ying spends fifteen minutes in the shower simply washing the sweat from every crevice of his body. If he is being honest, he wants to curl up on his side and sleep through the entire weekend, which would do him more good than a one-night stand at this rate, but he promised he would make an effort. So he does.

Wei Ying unearths a nice shirt, his cologne, his non-dad jeans he hasn't worn in years but they still fit him, and even steals jiejie's chapstick in case he will be kissing someone today. The thought sends a feeblish shiver down his spine, tugging softly at his lower stomach. Kisses are something he can do, probably.

It has been many, many months since Wei Ying so much as touched someone who wasn't his family. He is okay with that, and nothing from his previous experience suggests that he is going to nail his personal life anytime soon, if ever, so he might simply try to make it work like that. Become, finally, someone who can have a good time with another person without even knowing their name. Maybe jiejie is right. Maybe he needs to kiss someone messily and unapologetically; forget, for just one evening, about the grocery shopping lists and the leaking shower head and the sound of animation films, and try to relearn how to be a handsome, cute man. But first, Wei Ying wants a drink.

He looks contemplatively at his reflection in the mirror, pinches his cheeks to look half-alive, and decides, "Yep, still a dad." Shrugs and pockets his wallet.

The bar Wei Ying chooses is the farthest one from his workplace and also the cinema jiejie and A-Yuan are in. Judging by the photos and reviews, the bar is quite nice, clandestine, almost, which Wei Ying is not used to, but it's not like he has been to a bar in over four years. Wei Ying experiences a rare luxury of empty hands, two earphones at the same time and no car, and just – walks. Sweats like hell, but stretching his legs and getting a bit lost on his way, because he doesn't know the town he is trying to make his home, is nice nonetheless. Wei Ying finds a dozen new places to eat at with A-Yuan and jiejie, stumbles upon a coffee shop with an insane flower installation and takes a photo of it, and discovers that the riverside in this part of the town is bigger and cleaner than the one they live close to.

By the time he arrives, it's well into the evening and almost all the tables in the bar – definitely the whole counter – are taken. The photos really do justice to the place. They have live music; it's cute and invites you to kiss a stranger while you listen to the ballads about unrequited love, and the stranger's mouth is an entirely different kind of beautiful. Wei Ying crashes on a tucked away sofa and orders three strong cocktails to avoid kissing anyone at all at the beginning.

The first one is so good and refreshing, hitting all the stressed points of his wired-up brain, that Wei Ying makes a dirty sound into the glass. Screw people. He can do this all evening.

He idly skates his eyes over the crowd and the band, appreciating everyone more and more as the alcohol kicks in. Wei Ying hasn’t had dinner, which is a stupid thing to do when you’re this old and know better than that, but the empty stomach adds to the weightlessness. Wei Ying finally, finally relaxes.

The bar is fully occupied, the chatter louder than music. The bartender entertains her customers with tricks and bottle juggling, on top of the fantastic cocktails, and pays a lot of attention to one man. Wei Ying can’t see his face, but, judging by how invested the bartender is in attracting his attention, the man must be awfully pretty and also completely indifferent.

It’s funny, really. Wei Ying sees the dawning desperation on the bartender’s face and how she goes through all stages of grief, and gives up at last. The man doesn’t pay her any attention. Wei Ying is thoroughly entertained, but then the man turns slightly, and Wei Ying almost loses his grasp on the glass.

Sat at the counter, looking like he is here for the same thing as Wei Ying, is Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying inhales his Ruby Punch and bends in half to hide a coughing fit. God damn. So much for choosing the most remote bar.

Was Lan Zhan here the whole time? Did he see Wei Ying? What’s the procedure in this case? Can Wei Ying say hello to him, or should he behave like they don’t know each other? Is the bartender trying to hit on him?!

When he resurfaces and peeks over the shoulder of the lady sitting in front of him, Lan Zhan is still there, looking in front of himself, only a glass of water by his hand. He has dressed appropriately for the place and it twists Wei Ying's gut savagely, because Lan Zhan is obviously really pretty. And now, wearing a loose linen shirt that frames his shoulders and hugs his waist when the door opens and lets the draft in, he looks outright hot. There’s skin. Wei Ying wants to claw his own face off.

He practically becomes one with the wall so that he is out of Lan Zhan’s view, should he turn around, and waits like a creep. Lan Zhan’s eyes flick to the door every time someone comes in, which might be reflexive, but maybe he’s waiting for someone. No, he is definitely waiting for someone, dressed up like that. It’s ridiculous how little effort it took him to look like he wants that kind of attention. Is Lan Zhan – is he on a date? Is he looking for someone?

Wei Ying bites down on the glass, teeth clanking. He has never thought about it. How could he, swamped with his own stuff, for one thing, and because Lan Zhan - well, is Lan Zhan? Who is Wei Ying to think about him in this way? It shouldn’t curdle his mood, but it does. 

Lan Zhan is right in front of him, but something is wrong.

Nothing happens. Lan Zhan becomes restless – picks up his glass and wraps both hands around it, that is. Oh, he is nervous. He looks at the counter, where his phone probably is, back at the door. Wei Ying has been sitting here for a good while. Whatever Lan Zhan is waiting for, it’s not going to happen. Someone stood him up. Abruptly, Wei Ying is furious.

Wei Ying beckons the waiter over and ducks his head, pointing in Lan Zhan's direction. "Give him the best non-alcoholic and not overly sweet thing you have and put it on my own bill. The best. If he likes it, make him another one. If he doesn’t, give him something else. And you didn't see me, deal?"

The waiter gives him a deep nod. "I can bring you a menu to hide behind."

"I'm going to tip you so hard," Wei Ying swears. "And a refill, please."

Wei Ying sees the exact moment the bartender is told to make a cocktail for someone she was trying to impress. Her face is priceless, but, to her credit, she quickly schools it back into a welcoming smile. No trouble, then.

In this lighting, Wei Ying can’t see a thing in the menu and can’t see Lan Zhan’s face when he is served, hiding behind said menu, which is such a shame. But then again, Wei Ying shouldn’t have done this. It’s not his place to comfort Lan Zhan. This is personal. But something has undeniably happened, and Wei Ying can’t bear knowing that Lan Zhan is left alone, without a single drink, even a soda.

There’s a drag of a chair at his table. Wei Ying doesn’t pay it any mind, because the table next to his is getting louder, so someone must have joined them and they needed an extra chair. Since Wei Ying is not planning – it’s decided – to make a move on someone, he is perfectly fine with it.

He lowers the menu when he deems it safe, and is met with what he can only identify as a bitchy glare.

“Fuck,” Wei Ying jumps. Lan Zhan is sitting across from him, the most casual posture Wei Ying has ever seen him in, the cocktail on the table. “Lan Zhan, what the fuck.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t flinch. Bastard. He has been here the whole time and didn’t make a sound, had probably seen Wei Ying when he entered the bar. "Thank you for the drink."

"It wasn't me," Wei Ying says immediately, but Lan Zhan’s stare becomes even harder to hold. "What gave me away?"

"You."

"Damn, gege,” Wei Ying rubs his hot face. Maybe he has reached that stage where alcohol equals bad decisions and not fun. “Straight for the jugular. Is the cocktail any good?"

Lan Zhan pushes the glass in his direction. "You can try it."

"Nah, I believe the bartender's skills and – wait, you don't like it?" Wei Ying narrows his eyes. "I asked for the nicest thing.”

"It is nice," Lan Zhan says, nonchalant. Is he angry? Wei Ying doesn’t know what an angry Lan Zhan looks like. "Thank you.”

Wei Ying cannot sit still for the life of him, so he grabs a napkin and starts shredding it in tiny pieces. "Am I making trouble by treating you to a drink? I just thought – nevermind. You didn’t have to thank me, Lan Zhan."

Lan Zhan takes the glass back and turns it in his hands. The ice jiggles, making the bubbles come up to the surface and fizz out onto his palm. "My brother suggested I find a companion. He was persistent."

What a fucking coincidence, Wei Ying thinks. "Cheers to all the siblings who believe that bedding a stranger will help release months of pent-up tension."

"They are not entirely wrong," Lan Zhan says. His eyes travel to Wei Ying’s empty glasses, then over Wei Ying’s shirt, too. It is, admittedly, a great shirt.

"Sorry, am I interrupting your companion scouting?" Wei Ying cocks his head. If anything, he could try to remedy the situation. "Tell me who you like, I'll find someone really fast. Give me half an hour and I will have options for you."

"I did not say it worked for me," Lan Zhan says, and there it is – the bitterness. "The person I had agreed to meet with didn't come, anyway."

"Sucks for them, not for me," Wei Ying says, oddly relieved, and amends, because he can’t be territorial over this, "I mean, sucks for you. At least I am alone and just wanted to get wasted."

Lan Zhan hums, a deep sound. "You are not looking for a stranger?"

Wei Ying could laugh it off. This, unlike many other things, is excellent territory for teasing, especially now that they have bonded over the meddling siblings, but Wei Ying cannot. It’s stupid, to want to be honest about it, but here he is, drinking with A-Yuan’s kindergarten teacher who has become something more to him. A friend, at the very least. "Lan Zhan, I can't do casual. I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, maybe both. And anyway," Wei Ying lifts his glass. "I haven't had any of this for god knows how long either, and it's admittedly better than looking for someone to get handsy with. I could say I'm out of practice, but that would be a lie. I have none."

Lan Zhan’s features soften. Belatedly, Wei Ying realises that Lan Zhan is being defensive over this failed date, assured that Wei Ying wants to tease him about it. The bought drink only worsened the situation and added to the humiliation. Wei Ying really is a dick to him, after everything Lan Zhan has done for them.

“Hey,” Wei Ying says gently. He wants to touch Lan Zhan, too, but he has done enough already. “I’m sorry. About the drink and about your – companion. You look stunning.”

Lan Zhan looks up from his drink, fingers twitching. He has really nice hands. A lot of children have been held and nursed by those hands, and there is a lot more to come. "Would you like me to show you the town?”

I would like to dance with you. I would like, so much, to make you smile.

“Yeah,” Wei Ying beams at him. “I would really like that.”

There is no awkwardness when they leave the bar and walk down the streets. Both of them are conditioned for slow walks with children, but Wei Ying doesn’t want to speed up, or can, while the alcohol wears off. His hand feels empty without a smaller one in it.

They are past the summer solstice; the nights are getting longer, louder, now that the crickets have come. A shy wind picks up and teases the ends of Lan Zhan’s shirt and his hair, and washes the town with the scent of their river. Wei Ying has forgotten the taste of night walks, how heady they are and how much they hide. Show, too, if you know where to look and who to watch.

Lan Zhan shows him the apartment building he lived in when he first moved into the town. He was twenty-three, with only a year of job experience behind his back, and it was the first time he ever dealt with landlords. Not the most pleasant experience, he says. The kindergarten met him with open arms because of the shortage of teachers and not because of Lan Zhan’s good grades. Lan Zhan saw the need himself when he was entrusted to a group of three-year-olds, his partner teacher on sick leave for several months, and there was no one to teach them.

“I learned more in one month than I learned in four years,” Lan Zhan says, kicking a stone out of the cycle lane. “I was not prepared for the children and what they could teach me in return.”

“But you had already worked with the kids before that,” Wei Ying says. “What was different?”

“The kids,” Lan Zhan says simply. “I worked in a private kindergarten with a small group of children from wealthy families. All they needed was love and time. Their parents wanted them to be properly educated and know the etiquette before they were potty-trained.”

Wei Ying’s eyes widen. “No.”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, mouth twisted. “I like where I work now.”

“That’s why you moved town?”

“After shufu passed away, brother and I decided it would be best if we sold the house,” Lan Zhan says. “I didn’t want to stay in the city and work in private kindergartens, as shufu hoped I would, and decided to move. I believe my mother lived here before she met my father, but I am not sure. You?”

“Work,” Wei Ying says. “I was offered a better place in a new office of the main company, but the condition was this town. It took time to understand how lucky I got with the promotion, especially with bun changing kindergartens. I don’t care about myself, but he really took it like a champ. Only thanks to you, honestly.”

“I did nothing,” Lan Zhan protests.

Wei Ying jabs him in the shoulder. “You are very wrong, laoshi. If he weren’t obsessed with you, it wouldn’t have happened so quickly and smoothly. I mean, all he cared about in the first few weeks after we moved was you and the sound that the rusty door of our building makes when you open it. Now it’s just you.”

“Wrong. He is obsessed with you.”

“Eh, it doesn’t count. I’m his father and only parent.”

Lan Zhan takes him by the elbow and pulls them to a stop. “Wei Ying, I have seen many families. It counts.”

Wei Ying turns away from his earnest face. It is unbearable, considering how Wei Ying still hates himself for abandoning his home city, the kindergarten and the school he had chosen for A-Yuan, and leaving Jiang Cheng behind. They had argued horribly about it. Jiang Cheng had yelled, You can’t do this. What he meant was: you will be alone, and if something happens, there will be no one out there to help. What Wei Ying heard was: you are uprooting all of your life and running away, and taking your son down with you. Both were correct.

He resumes walking, choked up, and rubs under his nose until it hurts and he is sure that he won’t start crying in the middle of the alley. "When he was little, I'd talk to him all the time. I talk to him all the time anyway, but that was just – I was looking at him and thinking, grow up faster so that we could chat. I was so silly, Lan Zhan. I barely managed to get used to him holding his head upright, and now he is scolding me for leaving used up paper towels on the kitchen counter."

"The first group of children I taught are now in middle school. They still recognise me on the street."

"I bet they do. Imagine forgetting Lan-laoshi. I could never."

Lan Zhan stops abruptly and points at the ground. "This corner is dangerous in winter, because the water runs down the gutters and freezes this square of the road."

Wei Ying can’t imagine a situation where he will need to be on this side of the town and actually walk down this particular alley ever again, but fuck, Lan Zhan is so cute. Who remembers such things? "Thank you for potentially saving my life."

"You are welcome."

Wei Ying bumps their shoulders, laughing. "What else do you want to talk about? I can talk about my work and tell you all about my favourite spreadsheets and customs clearance and everything about maritime shipping, or we can talk about the little brats that you obviously love to bits, but I think neither would be a good choice."

Lan Zhan, the perfect man, offers, "Your cat. A-Yuan often draws her."

"Tislit? What do you wanna know about that short-legged worm?

"I have researched the name," Lan Zhan admits. "It is unusual."

"It's not that tragic or even romantic in my case, I promise. I wanted to name her after a star discovered in the year of A-Yuan's birth, but since all the stars discovered that year only had letters and numbers and I didn't want my cat to be called like Elon Musk's son, I looked through the planets and found out about Tislit. We found her about a year and a half ago on the street. I say we, but it's bun who saw her near a waste bin, because I took her for a lump of dirty snow. A-Yuan screeched that he saw a bunny, but it turned out to be a half-dead kitty."

Wei Ying fishes his phone out of his pocket and searches through the camera roll to show Lan Zhan the photo of Tislit he had taken when they brought her home from the vet and she’d slept in the crook of his elbow the whole afternoon. Wei Ying didn't take any photos of her when she was on the brink of death, but as soon as everyone was sure that she was a survivor, he snapped this picture and sent it to the family chat with a caption look at my new girl.

Lan Zhan looks at the photo and says softly, "She is beautiful."

"It took many days and a lot of money to make it to where we are now, but it was worth it. I thought she was afraid that if she's not nice, we'll kick her out, but she really is so cute and cuddly. Small and fat. A year ago she and the little one both slept on my chest, and guess who doesn't anymore."

"Not guessing."

Wei Ying huffs. "My human baby. My fur baby is basically a bunny with claws and a need to vomit up her hair. Do you have pets?"

Lan Zhan shakes his head. "I have plants. They are no less demanding.”

“Aaah, but they can’t cuddle you.” A weak argument, considering how much cuddling Lan Zhan receives on a daily basis.

“They are comforting in their need for meticulous care.”

“Basically kids, but with a lot less fuss.”

“Depends on the plant.”

Wei Ying throws his head back and laughs breathlessly, fascinated by the protectiveness over nearly everything they talk about and how Lan Zhan argues in favour of inanimate things. Lan Zhan’s deadpan face only adds to the hilarity. Wei Ying laughs harder.

“You’re so stubborn! How can you have something to say to counter my every point? Lan Zhan, that never happens. Usually I’m the one to argue with people and annoy them with my replies until they give up. It works with everyone except my brother, but he’s a very specific kind of person anyway.”

Lan Zhan makes a vague sound, clearly smug, and tilts his head to the right side. “We can go to the riverbank, if you don’t mind.”

“I won’t mind if you tell me about your pendant,” Wei Ying wheedles. “It’s so pretty. But only if you want to, of course.”

Lan Zhan’s hand closes around it right away, but briefly. The pendant is nothing like Wei Ying has ever seen, because it has mountains on it. It’s very simple, clearly taken care of, but now that Wei Ying can see it closely, it’s not new.

“It belonged to my uncle,” Lan Zhan says. “When ge and I were children, he would take us to the mountains whenever he could, which was every other month until father passed away. We were taught to climb high and with great care. The pendant has a lake twin, which our father had. Ge wears it now.”

Wei Ying says nothing; reaches, instead, to squeeze Lan Zhan’s wrist. Lan Zhan doesn’t throw him off.

Wei Ying doesn’t have anything from his biological parents, and every adoptive family he had been adopted by liked to point out that Wei Ying had nothing of his own either. The clothes he wore when he was brought into the orphanage were burned. When he changed families, he wasn’t allowed to take his drawings.

It grew over time, and now Wei Ying considers himself a greedy person and a hoarder. It concerns everything – people, food, love. Not the money, oddly. He has long reconciled with this soft belly of his and knows that A-Yuan is, faintly, the extension of it – Wei Ying needs to love as much as he needs to be loved. A-Yuan is his, blood and flesh and soul. No one will take him away.

“So this is where your arm strength comes from, mm?” Wei Ying muses. “A tall and mighty summiteer Lan-laoshi. How are you not married yet?”

“Arm strength has nothing to do with marriage,” Lan Zhan says, which is not an answer. “I do bouldering every week and go to the mountains during the summer break.”

“Oh no, you are insanely cool,” Wei Ying coos. “You don’t look like someone who’s into extreme sports.”

“Mountain climbing is not as extreme as people make it. It is mostly about safety, techniques, and gear.”

“And that makes it extreme sports.”

They arrive at the riverbank, crowded despite the late hour. Wei Ying hangs over the railing to look at the ducks, the ripples on the water. Here, the river is broader and faster, almost no scent of still water. The ducks are cute, but what is not cute is Lan Zhan taking him by the back of his shirt and yanking him down.

“Spiders on the railing,” he explains with a disgusted face. “Big spiders.”

Wei Ying can’t string two words together because of what he just did – Lan Zhan didn’t tell him to go down, didn’t warn him, just took him almost by the scruff and yanked him off like a naughty child. Wei Ying’s knees do a baby stallion thing and he trips on air, hot under the collar.

Meanwhile, Lan Zhan is wholly unperturbed by his deed. He walks away and onto the bridge bedangled with hundreds of locks with names on them. Wei Ying picks up several and checks the dates on a couple – 2002, 2011, last month of this year, clearly a wedding, but nothing before 2000. 

"Bit pointless, don't you think?” he tells Lan Zhan. “Leaving your names on a piece of metal to burn under the sun and suffer under the rain and snow? What if you fall out of a relationship? Do you come back and find the lock and throw it out, and that's given that you have the key to unlock it in the first place."

Lan Zhan steers clear of the railing and the spiders, but Wei Ying can tell that it’s his favourite place, because Lan Zhan slows down and pays no attention to the mosquitos. Watching the river flow under your feet is exceptionally therapeutic and mesmerising, and even though the locks are dumb, it’s charming to see how many people decided to entrust their fates to the infrastructure. The river freezes up in winter, and it must be a sight to watch the ice break in spring.

"Isn't it what happens to a relationship?” Lan Zhan says. “You grow older under the sun and the rain, and rust reaches so deep even the key will not help open the lock. You are stuck together."

Wei Ying snickers. "I mean, that's one way to look at it. You are a romantic, gege."

"No one is flawless."

"Oh, but you are."

"I assure you that I am not."

That, Wei Ying decides, has to be challenged. "Okay, name one thing that you consider your flaw and I'll tell you why it's not."

Lan Zhan turns slightly to him. "Why?"

“Just because,” Wei Ying flashes him a smile. "Laoshi ah, indulge me, will you? Pretty please?"

Wei Ying wholly expects him not to, because Wei Ying is a brat and Lan Zhan’s reactions are steadily losing their severity; he is tired and even looks sleepy, and Wei Ying is no better. But then Lan Zhan says, "I am stubborn, as you have pointed out."

"Okay, it means you will get what you wish for no matter what, that you will push through the obstacles and difficulties and reach your goal."

"It means that I am unable to drop things that are no longer good for me because I have been working hard to get them," Lan Zhan says."I am petty."

"You have a good memory and remember all the shitty things people do so that you won't have to deal with them ever again."

"I can be very rude."

"It's self-care, Lan Zhan."

"I am possessive."

"Care for another person, then."

Lan Zhan stops, and Wei Ying almost barrels into him. He expects a bristling comment, because he is being extremely annoying, but Lan Zhan only looks confused. "Wei Ying, I'm not perfect."

"Okay,” Wei Ying says. “Maybe not now, because it’s hard to be perfect in this weather, but overall, I disagree. And anyway, are you hungry? I know it’s late, but I didn’t have dinner, so how about some hot dry noodles?"

Lan Zhan pays for the noodles, to Wei Ying’s loud dismay, so Wei Ying buys a large box of nuomici and forces him to accept it. A-Yuan once brought a couple to the kindergarten and then delivered the news that Lan-laoshi loved them, and who is Wei Ying if not a willing slave of both of them?

They eat in a badly lit park on a bench, Lan Zhan in a proper citizen way and Wei Ying with his legs crossed on the chafed wood. The talk circles back to their hobbies and Lan Zhan’s mountaineering eventually, since it’s the end of semester, but Lan Zhan says he isn’t going anywhere this year for personal reasons.

“When you attempt climbing Everest,” Wei Ying says patronizingly, “be careful. Bun and I have watched many documentaries about how people die there and it’s so expensive to bring their bodies back that they are thrown down the opposite side of the mountain route. It’s like a frozen graveyard.”

Lan Zhan puts the carton box down. “I already did.”

“Did what?”

“Climbed Everest,” Lan Zhan elaborates. “Three years ago.”

Wei Ying drops his chopsticks. "You didn't. Tell me you’re joking."

Lan Zhan smiles. “I did.”

Wei Ying realises, with outrageous clarity, that he wants to kiss Lan Zhan. That he wants to climb into Lan Zhan’s lap, press his palm where the neck of the shirt is damp with sweat, and kiss Lan Zhan stupid. Or better yet, Lan Zhan could either climb into his lap or press him into the bench and kiss him stupid too, and take him by the ankle, and drag him somewhere dark and without spiders.

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan calls. Wei Ying snaps out of it, blinking rapidly.

“Yes?”

“I said that if you don’t believe me, there is a running list of everyone who has ever reached the top. You can check it.”

“I believe you. Of course I believe you, silly. Who would lie about reaching the top of Everest?”

Lan Zhan ducks his head. "People on a date.”

“Good thing we’re not on a date,” Wei Ying says, bitter even to his own ears, picks up both their boxes to throw them away. “Come on, laoshi, we’re not teenagers. We need sleep.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t get up right away. Wei Ying could do the same thing Lan Zhan did to him on the riverbank but decides against it. He gives Lan Zhan his hand to tug him up, and Lan Zhan takes it.

/

Wei Ying doesn’t expect a pterodactyl screech of, "Dadaaaaa!" when he opens the door, as it is past midnight and all he wants is to lock himself in the shower and let the water wash away all the bullshit that is clogging his common sense. A-Yuan is definitely more awake than he is, pulling on the shirt collar and grinning, "Guma said you will come back when I'm asleep, so I didn’t sleep."

"Aiyo, what if I came back in the morning?” Wei Ying chides. “You’re lucky I couldn't be away from my stinky son for too long and came back early."

"Not stinky. You smell nice," A-Yuan says, tucking his face into Wei Ying's neck. "What is it?"

"My cologne,” Wei Ying says. Jiang Yanli shoots him a questioning look from the sofa. "Dada had things to do and decided to smell nice for that."

“Mmmaah,” A-Yuan yawns. "Can you smell like that all the time?"

Wei Ying has learned how to live with guilt like he learned to live with his chronically high blood pressure - it makes him bleed and sway at times, but more often than not he knows what to do when it suffocates him. He breathes and holds his son tight. "Of course. Now, let’s put you and guma to bed, alright?"

/

Qiu Yingtai grins. "What do you think?"

"I'm down," Wei Ying says, boyishly giddy. "The little ones won't shut up about it. Who's coming?"

"Decent people," Qiu Yingtai says patronisingly. "Take whoever you want. I wanted to ask our teachers too, actually. Not for, like – "she waves her hand in the direction of the kids, "but to just chill. They deserve it more than we do."

Wei Ying flicks through the calendar, biting his lip. If he deals with the cargo to Gwangyang fast enough, he can pester Xiao Xingchen to give him the Friday before off, and maybe have half of Thursday as well if –

"Wait, isn't it the meteoric shower weekend?" Wei Ying asks. "I think the little one said something about August."

Qiu Yingtai strokes her bump leisurely, absently. Wei Ying looks away, boring into his phone. "Exactly. If you can source a telescope or a pair of binoculars, you’ll get a parent of the year award."

"And the award entails?"

"Nothing," Qiu Yingtai grins. "Just a bunch of kids remembering you as the coolest parent among us all."

Wei Ying huffs a laugh. "I will think of something."

Decent people turn out to be shy of the half of their group, one or both parents on each kid's side, some siblings, jiejie, and, surprisingly, both Lan Zhan and Xu Wenling with her husband. Wei Ying laughs at the list of twenty-three people and types that they need to book an entire hotel for their field trip into the chat.

Tao Yunru: no hotels

Tao Yunru: only mud and insects and salmonella

Shen Xiang: i vote for at least a mini-fridge

Tao Yunru: for 23 people

Shen Xiang: why are you like this

Jiejie is sat on the floor with A-Yuan making a list of things they will need to take, including Wei Ying's reading glasses for some reason, and buy or rent. Jiejie is the most unequipped one of the three of them, so the list of the things they need to buy is already half the size of the take from home one. Wei Ying watches them, drumming a knuckle on his mouth and thinking about how to lure Lan Zhan into his car for the journey.

It has been a little over a month since their – encounter. Five weeks of thoughts about Lan Zhan’s unreasonably sexy hobby, his waist, his lips shiny with oil as he chewed the noodles, and Wei Ying’s absurdly yipping jealousy. Because of jiejie’s presence, he has been having a lot of free time that he has chosen to spend thinking about other partners that didn’t show up to the dates and those who did, and Wei Ying hated all of them equally. 

He is no longer late for the pick-ups and he doesn’t need to drive Lan Zhan home, doesn’t see Lan Zhan choosing between the ice creams - Lan Zhan does that now, it’s immensely entertaining and makes Wei Ying feels like he is providing, dammit - but it’s over. Yes, it will start all over again in autumn, and Wei Ying will switch to hot drinks, but for now, he is sulking about not seeing A-Yuan’s kindergarten teacher. What a great way to realise you’re a wuss.

"A-Ying, Yuanyuan needs a couple of new long-sleeves, and you too," Jiang Yanli murmurs, making her own list on her phone.

"Okay," Wei Ying says, sliding off the sofa and knee-walking up to them. A-Yuan smacks a wet kiss onto his cheek and resumes drawing another star on the margins of the list sheet. "Do you need me for that?"

"You can rest. I will buy everything."

"You will take my card."

"No," Jiang Yanli says, mild but brooking no argument, and Wei Ying rolls his eyes. Even if jiejie is using that bastard's money, it doesn't mean she can spend it on Wei Ying. A-Yuan, fine. But not on him, it's gross. Wei Ying rolls onto his back and heaves a long sigh of misery.

"A-jie."

"Can I take your card?" A-Yuan pipes up.

"What for?"

"To buy flowers for Lan-laoshi."

"There will be an entire field of them, bean. You can bring him as many as you can hold."

"Okay," A-Yuan says, menacingly promising. Wei Ying reaches out and tugs on one of his tiny pigtails.

"I'm serious. If you buy me clothes with that – with his money, I will take them off and burn them in a sacral bonfire deep into the night, and everyone will know why."

Jiang Yanli shows him a multitude of sleeping bags from a local store. Wei Ying nods, as if he understands a thing there. "I'm sure Lan-laoshi will appreciate it."

"Jie ."

A-Yuan bursts into impish giggles and earns a ruthless tackle from Wei Ying for that, opting for a safe escape through the need to monitor Tislit’s urge to scratch the hell out of the leg of their dining table. Wei Ying is left bright red in the face and too warm in the pit of his stomach. If his sister knew about the evening spent with Lan Zhan, she would never let him live it down.

"You are so so so mean," Wei Ying whines, hooking a chin over her knee. "I was actually going to ask him to go with us, but now I won't. You are making everything weird."

"I can ask him myself."

"No ."

"A-Ying, it is only polite to offer. You have a big car, and he doesn't drive."

"You don't know that."

"A-Ying," Jiang Yanli admonishes softly. She runs a hand through his hair and scratches a little at the scalp. "If you don't want him to go with us, he won't. We are renting a van for those who won't drive, and he is supposed to go with them."

Wei Ying covers his face with both hands and digs the heels of his palms into the eyes until he sees white and feels nothing but bone-to-bone pressure.

He wants Lan Zhan in his car, where Wei Ying knows A-Yuan will fall asleep eventually and jie will too, and even if she won't, she will look like it, because she is that nice and horribly supportive. Wei Ying wants to talk to him again – to listen to him, more than anything, to hear Lan Zhan talk about anything at all. Hum to Wei Ying's half-finished thoughts. Wei Ying will not utter a word if it's what Lan Zhan wants. If he doesn't like Wei Ying's music, Wei Ying will give him headphones if he doesn't have any, or they will drive silently until A-Yuan is awake, but even then Wei Ying can press and say that Lan-laoshi needs silence, even if Lan Zhan says otherwise.

Wei Ying wants him close. Wei Ying wants.

"I do."

Jiang Yanli covers his hands with hers. "What if he doesn't?"

Wei Ying barks an ugly, half-hysterical laugh. "It means he's really going to chill."

"In a van full of parents and children."

Wei Ying opens his mouth for a rebuttal, but words get stuck in his throat. Other parents had surely asked him about it already, and Lan Zhan did deny, opting for the van. Maybe he does want to chat with all the parents and children, with Xu Wenling's husband, with Xu Wenling herself. Have a lapful of children demanding road stories and songs and snacks after snacks from his pockets. Maybe Lan Zhan will play pretend and curl up on his seat and drift to the kids' chatter, happiest and safest in the noise he chose to dedicate his life to.

Jiang Yanli taps his forehead lightly and cups his cheek. "You are telling yourself no in his stead."

"Mm."

"What if he says yes?"

Wei Ying drags his hands over the face and blinks until his lids burn. Jiang Yanli is smiling above him. "If he says yes, then I'm a fool."

/

"Yes," Lan Zhan says. "Thank you."

Wei Ying drops A-Yuan's water bottle and picks it up on the second try, after his fingers have grazed the grass and he makes peace with knowing that he cannot screech into Lan Zhan's face.

He has lured Lan Zhan into a playground with boba and had to suffer – still is suffering, in fact – the impact of their laoshi out of his teaching uniform. Lan Zhan is in a grey tank top and a pair of shorts, his nose is burnt, flaky at the tip. Wei Ying is positively not going to make it.

Lan Zhan, it turns out, has just come back from his brother’s wedding.

"Cool," Wei Ying says. He feels stupid with happiness and he can live with that, for now. "Cool. Great. You're sure? Like, I know you have a place already, and a-jie's coming with us in case you – forgot. That she is coming. You're a guest of honour and your music is superior. Snacks are jiejie's business and not even God can argue with her. A-Yuan sleeps half of the way, the other half he sings rhymeless things. I – " Wei Ying cuts himself off as Lan Zhan is clearly making an effort not to laugh at him – the corners of his lips are trembling, and it's so unfair. "Do you prefer the front or the back?"

Lan Zhan ducks his head at that and reaches to smooth a tuft on A-Yuan's head. Wei Ying's face is going to melt off his skull from overheating. "Whatever is available."

"I – jiejie – Lan Zhan," he says, pained. A-Yuan is busy with a squeaky toy Wei Ying does not recognise. "Whatever you want."

"I sleep half of the way, too."

"Good," Wei Ying says, too loud and parent-strict. Lan Zhan is not looking at him. His ears are the shade of Wei Ying's shame. "You'll rest. I will drive. I will pick you up from your home?"

"Mm."

"Right," Wei Ying breathes and pats A-Yuan's shoulder. "Say thank you to laoshi and give that wretched toy to its owner.”

It doesn't take long before jiejie gets added to the group chat and rules it, assigning tasks and sending links for things other parents say they need. She discusses food options with mums and goes shopping with several, and pays for everything. Wei Ying walks past the bags and boxes of things piling up in their hall with grim determination.

"I thought we were going there for two nights?" he says, signing off a delivery of whatever it is he's holding. "We had less stuff when we moved house."

"It's for Lan Zhan," Jiang Yanli says. "I ordered a separate tent for him.”

“He doesn’t - ” Wei Ying cuts himself off. Lan Zhan definitely doesn’t need a tent, he probably has everything already, with that hobby of his. But Wei Ying can’t disclose that he knows about it. He drops the box mercilessly.

Asking Xiao Xingchen for a one-and-a-half-day vacation is useless because Wei Ying barely manages to sort out the papers for the cargo to Australia and gets a lapful of A-Yuan on Friday afternoon, whining that they are going to be late. Wei Ying shuts the laptop and downs the morning coffee that sticks to the back of his throat and promises nothing but trouble on the way to the meeting spot. He hasn't showered yet.

Wei Ying assesses the tower of things his beloved sister has piled up in the hall to take with them. He is genuinely interested to know where all this stuff has been stored in the flat all this time and where the hell is he going to keep it after the trip.

“It won’t fit into the car.”

"It is bare minimum," jie says. She empties the fridge and A-Yuan carries the food to the door. Tislit had been deposited into the neighbour's care and Wei Ying has already gotten a picture of her drinking out of the aquarium. "There is space for his things."

"Thank you," Wei Ying says, and heads to the bathroom.

A-Yuan knows that Lan-laoshi is going with them and was instructed not to pester him. Lan Zhan is on holiday and will be treated accordingly, which Wei Ying is willing to ensure and take care of in his car and out in the field.

Wei Ying’s pulse picks up slightly at the sight of Lan Zhan waving at them, but excitement quickly dissipates. Lan Zhan looks uncharacteristically tired and rumpled, and says that the air conditioning in his flat is not working. Wei Ying whistles sympathetically. August hasn’t been particularly hot, but humidity at ninety-five percent makes it hard to do basic things, most of all sleep. Lan Zhan hasn’t been sleeping well for quite some time, Wei Ying guesses. Which is why he is fiercely glad to have Lan Zhan in his car and see him nod off pretty much as soon as they drive out of the town and the sun is no longer beaming into their faces. Wei Ying looks in the rearview mirror and shows A-Yuan a finger pressed to his lips. A-Yuan nods seriously, then leans in and carefully strokes Lan Zhan’s shoulder with one finger. Wei Ying makes an effort not to look at his sister.

The stargazing spot they arrive at is actually a small functional camp at the edge of a barren rapeseed field with a deciduous forest stretching far beyond. Zhu Delan says that this is where a bunch of photographers gather to take pictures of the meteor shower and the night sky in general, since the light pollution is passable here, and now a whole horde of people and children has arrived and disturbed their peace.

The kids are ecstatic and hungry, so half of the parents are pulling out the chairs and blankets and food to appease them, and the other half is sombrely staring at the bags of tents they have to set up. Nobody has any experience in living outside a furnished apartment or a house, but everyone is eager to try. Plus, the camp has a shower and cheap wifi. Wei Ying, personally, could live here until winter.

He shoves a bag with a new tent into Lan Zhan's arms and pleads, "Don't ask." Wei Ying couldn't tell jiejie that he hung out with Lan Zhan that night, and now he can't confess that he didn't tell jiejie that he knew that Lan Zhan wouldn't need a tent. And anyway, someone must have asked Lan Zhan if he needed anything, and Lan Zhan said no. It's just that jiejie wanted to be extra considerate for Wei Ying's sake.

Lan Zhan understands anyway, and proceeds to make everything worse. "I will pay for it."

"Oh my god," Wei Ying groans. "No. If you try, I will literally scream. It’s a gift.”

"But your sister - "

"My sister," Wei Ying begins way too loudly, drawing everyone’s attention. Jiang Yanli looks up from the stone ring she and two other kids are laying out for the evening bonfire. Wei Ying waves a hand at her. "Lan Zhan. Please, just take it. If this thing is decent, I hope you can get good use out of it. If it's no good, you can, I don't know, throw it away. Maybe we can return it. I don't know what people do with bad tents."

Lan Zhan gently squeezes the bag that Wei Ying had dropped dramatically. "Store at the back of their garage and never throw them away."

"You don't have a garage."

"Ge has."

Wei Ying barks a laugh. Lan Zhan is right, a garage is used primarily for storing stuff you never look at unless your spouse hisses at you that they have run out of space to hide their own stuff there. It’s not like Wei Ying has a garage or a spouse, but he imagined he would at some point. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t have either – no one can yell at him for keeping a fifty-year-old turntable that he wants to restore one day.

He and Lan Zhan scout half of the field and the nearby forest for snakes or large spider holes, basically anything that can bite the kids or scare Lan Zhan. Wei Ying finds a tiny little grass snake and quietly carries it deep into the field. It is getting dark and kind of chilly, and a proper fire is in order. They have bought firewood, but the forest kindling is understandably much better at holding the fire than the old newspapers.  

Lan Zhan, of course, causes a stir by casually setting up his new tent in five minutes flat. Wei Ying bites his lips and patiently struggles with theirs, watching other parents walking up to their laoshi and asking him for help. Lan Zhan, of course, helps everyone and earns himself the title of the man of the year, which is insane. Lan Zhan doesn’t need to earn anything, he is the man of every year. Out of spite, Wei Ying does not ask him for help and shoos jiejie away when she threatens to call him over. 

Everything goes well until a kid screams that Lan-laoshi is bleeding. Wei Ying drops the tarp and runs to the other side of their camp like the completely calm and disinterested person he is.

Lan Zhan is indeed bleeding, but only from his index finger. He is looking at his hand like it betrayed him, brows scrunched up and lips thin. He looks grumpy.

“Lan-laoshi,” Wei Ying calls, obviously unbothered. “This one is humbly asking you to follow him for a minor surgery.”

“No need,” Lan Zhan says, and licks away the blood.

Wei Ying is having none of that barbaric behaviour and grabs him by the wrist. “If we don’t take care of it now, you may get tetanus. Lan Zhan, come on .”

The cut is deep but clean because Lan Zhan poked himself with a piece of metal equipment. Wei Ying sits him down in the back seat of his car and spends an annoying amount of time fishing out the first-aid-kit.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan calls tentatively. “It’s fine.”

“No. Be a good boy and sit still. I just gotta – oof. I got you, laoshi. No tetanus for you.”

Lan Zhan’s ears are bright ted as Wei Ying sanitizes the wound and blows on it, because the medicine bubbles up and stings him. Wei Ying realises what he’s doing and giggles. “Sorry, it’s a habit.”

“I know.”

Lan Zhan smiles at the Dino-sore band-aid, dinosaur-shaped, too. The strip fits around most of his finger, so Wei Ying overlaps two to make sure that the first one doesn’t slip off. In the distance, somebody is trying to finish setting up the tent that wounded Lan Zhan and curses very loudly about it.

"When did A-Yuan become interested in space?" Lan Zhan asks suddenly.

Wei Ying scratches his nape. “It’s kind of my fault, really. He saw me bawling over an article about Opportunity's last words, which were ‘My battery is low and it's getting dark’ and freaked out. I didn’t expect to cry? But I just – I don’t know. I imagined it there, alone, depleted. It's a machine, Lan Zhan, a dead machine on Mars. I cried like I lost a relative."

Lan Zhan looks contemplatively at his finger, at Wei Ying. “I would cry too.”

" Thank you . So he comforted me like the filial child he is and asked what Opportunity was, and then we both cried, and then I found out that those words weren’t true. Not entirely. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Now he is obsessed with space. I fear that he's either going to have huge troubles with his future Astronomy teacher when he goes to school or it would be a match made in heaven."

"Why would there be troubles?" Lan Zhan frowns. "Yuanyuan is a bright boy."

"I had troubles with my Math teacher. She thought I was smarter than her and hated me for that. She was right, kinda."

“For hating you?”

“For thinking I was smarter than her. I was.”

“She was wrong,” Lan Zhan insists. He looks grumpy again. “She should have supported you.”

“Well, not every teacher likes it when their students surpass them, especially when you’re fifteen and you argue with someone who hates their job and children in general. And anyway,” Wei Ying smiles, patting Lan Zhan’s hairy knee. “I was smarter than her and was a little shit about it. I deserved it. Now, instruct me how to finish my tent, will you?”

A-Yuan makes good on his promise and brings flowers for jiejie, Lan Zhan, Xu Wenling, and Meihui, who Wei Ying vaguely remembers as the quietest girl in their group. It doesn’t matter that it takes A-Yuan three trips into the field and each bouquet is thinner and less robust than the last one, because he promised that he would do it. Little Meihui’s cheeks are the colour of a poppy A-Yuan included only in her bouquet. Wei Ying shoots her mum a thumbs up and receives one in return.

Dinner is loud and long. The kids pretend to make a potion, throwing things into the pots to reheat and roasting marshmallows on the sticks. It takes some practice to manoeuvre several pots and a cast iron to fit everyone’s dish of choice, but eventually, they eat. And of course, there is alcohol. 

The night carries on as the kids go to bed. Wei Ying drinks a little bit, content with watching everybody relax and have fun, but especially Lan Zhan, who eats like a growing boy. Wei Ying itches to stand up and give him everything jiejie has cooked.

Xu Wenling’s husband raises his hand. “I have brought a guitar, but I have no idea how to play it. Does anyone?”

“Oh, A-Ying can,” jiejie says. “He sings really well.”

Wei Ying rolls his eyes. “A-jie.”

“No-no-no,” Qiao Shufen says. “Wei Ying, come on. If your jiejie says you can do it, you have to do it, it’s the law. You know that.”

Well, Wei Ying can’t argue with that. “I haven’t played one since I was in my third year of university, so if I break a string – ”

“You’re most welcome,” Xu Wenling’s husband laughs. “Maybe then I finally will get rid of it.”

Wei Ying riles the crowd up by asking what they would like to hear and then plays a song that jiejie was obsessed with when she was eighteen. He remembers downloading the sheet music and learning it for her when she was at university and how he heard her scream for the very first time at her birthday party.

Jiejie can’t sing for shit, but it’s not like Wei Ying would ever stop her. Her face lights up at the first notes and she bumps his shoulder, laughing. They sing together, making faces at each other like two dumbasses, and Wei Ying loves every second of it.

“ – and if we go someplace to dance, I know that there's a chance you won't be leaving with me. Then afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two, and then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’.”

The crowd hoots. The song is silly and delightful, perfect for teasing someone and singing while you’re drunk or in love. Jiang Yanli is already laughing more than singing, blushing either from the fire or because she remembered how her birthday party ended, so Wei Ying sings alone, facing the rest of the crowd.

“I practice every day to find some clever lines to say to make the meaning come true, but then I think I'll wait until the evening gets late and I'm alone with you. The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red and oh, the night's so blue,” he drawls. Without any intention whatsoever, he looks at Lan Zhan and finishes the chorus. “And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’.”

Lan Zhan stops eating. Wei Ying finishes playing out of sheer muscle memory, looking at nothing but cinnamon fire and feeling the dinner rise up his throat. He can't look at Lan Zhan. He didn’t just – this is so stupid, this is a song, and it’s jiejie’s favourite and nothing else. Wei Ying wasn’t going to – it’s not. It’s not.

Lan Zhan doesn’t stay long after that and doesn’t eat anything else, and Wei Ying doesn’t touch the guitar. He is definitely overthinking it, but maybe, maybe –

No. He did the same thing he did at the bar and Lan Zhan glared at him, and now Wei Ying has done it again. He throws a twig into the fire and downs the rest of the beer in one go.

Lan Zhan leaves. Wei Ying ponders following him for a breath and then gets up too, feeling jiejie’s fingers on his wrist as she probably tries to prevent more damage. But Wei Ying is Wei Ying. He fixes and destroys things equally well. He follows Lan Zhan to the tents.

“Lan Zhan – ”

“I am going to sleep,” Lan Zhan cuts him off. “If I may, please.”

Wei Ying wants to dig up a hole and hide there. “Of course. I mean, I can check your tent for spiders," he says, and adds hastily, "Literal spiders. Nothing else. They're kind of big here, and they climb into tents all the time. Or – I mean, you've probably seen much worse than a field bug. In the mountains."

"I have."

"Right," Wei Ying exhales. "If you need – goodnight, Lan Zhan."

Lan Zhan looks like he wants to punch Wei Ying, and he would be right to do it. “Goodnight.”

Wei Ying returns to the fire, nails digging into the meat of his palm. Nobody so much as looks at him in a weird way, too drunk and tired after a day of countryside adventures. Jiejie is the only one who shoots him a troubled look but asks nothing.

The fabric of Lan Zhan’s fancy shelter is thick and dark, so Wei Ying can’t see what Lan Zhan is doing there, nor should he. He ruffles up the logs and casts the last glance in the direction of the tent. The night is not as stuffy here and the ground has cooled already. Lan Zhan should sleep well tonight.

/

The morning is cold. Wei Ying wakes up enough to let A-Yuan climb into his sleeping bag and tuck him in, and drops back into sleep with the added comfort of a cuddly child. The second time he wakes up, he is alone in the tent and the kids outside are playing tag.

Wei Ying whips out his old Chemex and goes through a routine he used to have before he got a coffee machine. His hands do all the work before his brain fully wakes up. It is comforting to go through a million preparations, wait for the kettle to boil and rub his hands over a low fire. Wei Ying makes a lot just in case someone would like to drink this and not instant coffee, although Wei Ying is not the one to judge. Soon enough, parents peek over his shoulder to see if they can have a cup, too, and in the end, Wei Ying brews coffee twice.

The day is nice and blissfully chill. Wei Ying spends most of it eating away the snacks and whatever others have brought over for sharing and befriends several parents on the grounds of the number of chilli peppers they add to their meals. A-Yuan isn’t that keen on heat, he prefers really acidic and pickled foods. There is a constant spread in the camp and people nibble on everything and do whatever. The kids are happy with running around and taking care of themselves, so Wei Ying sprawls out on someone’s blanket and picks up the book that has been left there. He does need his reading glasses.

Lan Zhan goes into the forest and spends the rest of the morning and whole afternoon there. Wei Ying decidedly doesn’t count the hours, nor is he willing to face Lan Zhan in the light of day after yesterday’s singing mishap. When he gets bored of reading about teenagers solving adult crimes, he roams the edge of the forest for a while, breathing the cool dampness of the soil and hearing nothing but the wind high in the trees. As much as he loves big water, forest calms him down like very few things do.

The meteor shower starts way after the kids’ bedtime. Wei Ying promises to wake A-Yuan up once it begins, although he doubts A-Yuan will even remember his wish. And it’s not like he will look up at the sky and see a hundred stars at once. It takes time. But even so, Wei Ying is ready to deal with the morning grogginess. Until then, he and the other parents huddle around the fire and have the time of their lives. No singing tonight, just stories and more alcohol and food cooked over an open fire, which is ultimately what everyone came here for. Lan Zhan doesn’t drink or tell stories, but he empties the tupperware of halloumi and roasts the cheese until it’s almost black. Jiejie drinks too and texts her more-than-boyfriend every two seconds because of that, and he replies religiously. Wei Ying can give him that.

He waits until he counts at least three stars in one minute and climbs into the tent. Wei Ying failed to find a telescope for tonight, so A-Yuan won’t be able to look at other planets and the Moon like he wanted to, but the sky is beautiful nonetheless, and the stars Wei Ying has spotted so far were the brightest he’s ever seen.

“Hey,” Wei Ying whispers, stroking the blob of A-Yuan’s body in the sleeping bag. “Do you still want to make a wish or would you rather sleep?”

A-Yuan grumbles something, rolling over. Wei Ying pets him more energetically. He will stop if A-Yuan won’t get up in the next minute or so, but he suddenly jolts awake, almost headbutting Wei Ying. “Now?”

“Yep. Got your wish ready?”

“Yuh.”

Wei Ying carries him out in the sleeping bag and sees that most of the parents have done the same. A-Yuan rubs his eyes and hugs Wei Ying’s neck, looking up.

“Don’t scream, okay?” Wei Ying says.

“Yeahh,” A-Yuan says quietly, and then he spots a star and tenses up with a squeal. “I saw it! Dada, I saw a star!”

Wei Ying ruffles his hair and looks around to see how many people are doing the same. The fire is dying down already, only odd phone flashes disturb the darkness, but otherwise, the night is clear and quiet, save for the kids’ excited gasps. At the edge of the camp, Wei Ying sees a figure and doesn’t need to guess who it is.

Under bruisings of a night sky, Lan Zhan wishes for something. Wei Ying makes a wish for him to have it.

 /

Jiejie leaves on the last day of August. It’s raining miserably, like nature is echoing Wei Ying’s viscid gloom. He is kissed on the forehead and told to take care of himself and be good. Wei Ying can do neither, but his sister knows it. He smiles at her and then watches her plane take off, A-Yuan sniffling on his shoulder. This, Wei Ying knows how to take care of.

/

The first day of the new semester is a blast. A-Yuan is red-cheeked and breathless in the evening and corks off on the way home pretty much as soon as he is buckled in. Wei Ying calls him after he has parked, but A-Yuan doesn’t even stir. Wei Ying shakes him by the knee then, and still no response. The blush that Wei Ying took for excitement hasn’t disappeared and has spread across the bridge of his nose and down his neck.

Wei Ying swears.

A-Yuan’s cheeks and forehead are violently warm. He makes a small sound from Wei Ying’s cool palm on his face, and blinks at him with great effort. His eyes are bloodshot too.

“Oh, bun,” Wei Ying grimaces. “Did you cuddle the wrong people today?”

The night is rough and predictably sleepless. A-Yuan cries from exhaustion and fever, and even that little bit of dinner Wei Ying had coaxed into him ends up half on Wei Ying’s chest and half of the floor, which makes A-Yuan cry harder. He refuses to be put down and throws up water and bile, shaking in Wei Ying’s arms. Wei Ying knows what to do, this is nothing new, but the lump in his throat grows and chokes him at the sounds of A-Yuan’s misery.

The fever breaks not long before dawn, granting them a few hours of restless sleep.

In the morning, Wei Ying calls the kindergarten, Xiao Xingchen, sends a message to the family chat, and takes A-Yuan to the hospital.

Shockingly, the whole thing is a breeze. The paperwork is quickly done with and the doctor smiles both at Wei Ying’s inside-out t-shirt and A-Yuan’s fiery throat. A-Yuan is prescribed basically everything Wei Ying knew even without the doctor, but it still calms him down. It will be hard, but it’s fine.

Jiang Cheng calls as soon as they’re home and spends a full hour talking to A-Yuan despite Wei Ying’s protests that steadily grow in volume because A-Yuan needs to sleep. Jiang Cheng argues that he can listen to A-Yuan’s whistling breathing while Wei Ying showers and orders a food delivery, so Wei Ying leaves him to it. A-Yuan is better after the nap, manageably fussy, too warm but not alarmingly so, and even asks for a soup and a tornado omelette.

Wei Ying acutely feels his age and the lack of someone by his side as his eyes burn and he butchers the omelette. He scrapes it out of the pan for himself and starts anew. He can no longer do all-nighters without consequences, which is not something he thought would ever happen, because literally last year everything was fine and he could go a solid two days with no sleep.  He slaps his cheeks with cold water and drinks another coffee. By midday, he is tired and has palpitations.

In the evening, Lan Zhan messages Can I call? which is unbelievably considerate of him. Wei Ying calls him first.

“He’s not sleeping,” he says in lieu of a greeting. “Laoshi, working overtime, eh?”

“Do you need help? Anything at all,” Lan Zhan says, straight to the point. So painfully sincere and ready to take off and save the day that Wei Ying has to close his eyes for a second.

“Lan Zhan,” he manages, unsteady. Not because he is tired, but because it’s Lan Zhan. Wei Ying is fairly sure he wouldn’t do this for other parents, and thinking about it makes him want to scream. “We’re fine, I promise you. The doctor confirmed the flu, so it will take a while to get through it. But other than that, we’re good, we have everything. I promise. Has anyone ever told you how wonderful you are?”

Lan Zhan is quiet at first, and then, “No.”

“No?”

“Wei Ying.”

“Sorry,” Wei Ying titters. “Laoshi, you are wonderful. Caring, unfathomably kind, and I have been told that you give the best hugs, which means you can come down with flu very soon as well. It’s a crime that no one’s told you that before.”

Lan Zhan makes a weird sound like he has stepped on something sharp. “Wei Ying is a good father.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Of course.”

A-Yuan is in Wei Ying’s bed, awake but not paying any attention to what is happening on the laptop screen whatsoever.

“Someone wants to talk to you,” Wei Ying nestles the phone between A-Yuan’s cheek and the pillow, and leaves the room.

The food delivery is massive, so Wei Ying spends a good chunk of an hour arranging everything in the fridge and the cupboards, stocking up for the week. He can hear A-Yuan’s wheezing exclamations that throw him into short dry coughing fits, but apparently Lan Zhan can talk for this long . Astounding.

A-Yuan pads into the kitchen, a skirt of blankets and a towel trailing after him, and makes grabby hands at Wei Ying.

“Lan-laoshi said he found a kitty on the street,” he mumbles, lips dry against Wei Ying’s neck. “But because he has work and he can’t take care of it, he took it to the doctor too.”

“That’s very nice of him,” Wei Ying says. “Did he say what the kitty looked like?”

A-Yuan nods sluggishly. “Black and very small. He didn’t find the kitty’s mama or brothers. The doctor asked him to give the kitty a name so that they could write it on his crate.”

“What name did he choose?”

“Isli.”

Wei Ying makes a sound exactly like Lan Zhan’s. “Really.”

“Uh huh,” A-Yuan breathes. “I like it.”

Wei Ying shushes A-Yuan’s painted grumbling with kisses and lets him stir the soup. Lan Zhan ah, Lan Zhan. What are you doing?

/

"What flavours do you want?"

A-Yuan looks appraisingly at the contents of the cupboard, lower lip poked out in concentration. "Hmmmm. Three?"

"Three what? Mooncakes?" Wei Ying says. "One for you, one for Tislit, and one for dada?"

"Three kinds," A-Yuan decides, deep in thoughts. "Bean. I want coconut and black and purple."

Wei Ying boops his nose. "That's four. So, red bean, coconut, sesame, and sweet potato, yes?"

"Yes," A-Yuan says, and wriggles out of Wei Ying's arms. "Can I have chocolate now?"

It's the weekend, and the plan is to dedicate it wholly to making a truly disturbing amount of mooncakes for themselves, the kids in the group, the kindergarten staff and separately Lan Zhan, Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing, and jiejie. Wei Ying has already come to terms with his hands giving out today and tomorrow, but he has a little helper and a little furry jerk whom he has to lock in the bedroom because she knocked over a bag of flour. 

Wei Ying sweeps and washes the floor, thinking that yes, he could buy a bunch of mooncakes. He probably should, at least for the kids and kindergarten staff. But A-Yuan practically begged him to make them from scratch so that he could press out the mooncakes and then show them off to his friends. So dying in the kitchen it is.

The older A-Yuan gets, the more actual assistance he can provide, even if it's simple things. He measures out the ingredients, cleans up, stirs, hugs Wei Ying and makes excited noises at every ball. Wei Ying does all the hard and messy work of rolling, wrapping, boiling and so on. A-Yuan presses all of his considerable weight on the handles and proudly lays the finished things onto the trays.

While the regular mooncakes are baking, they recite A-Yuan's lines for the play the kindergarten is doing for the festival. Wei Ying was not at all surprised that A-Yuan got the main role of Hou Yi, but what made everything even better was that A-Yuan blushed and said he liked his "wife". Wei Ying hasn't been to a single rehearsal, but Lan Zhan once messaged him a photo of A-Yuan in the costume, with the arrows and all, and Wei Ying stifled the work of the entire office by moaning at everyone about how cute he looked.

The next day they make the snowy mooncakes and wrap the parcels for Jiang Cheng and jiejie, whose parcel with her mooncakes should be here tomorrow. A-Yuan carries the box for Jiang Cheng that has cactus stickers on it while Wei Ying has jiejie's, which is lovingly covered in dinosaurs. By the time they are done with the post office, it's late afternoon.

They have lunch in the park and collect chestnuts; these ones are not edible and will be scattered around the apartment for decorative purposes and for Tislit to kick around at night. A-Yuan feeds the ducks in one pond and carps in the other, collects a bunch of pretty leaves and makes a bouquet out of them, which wilts as they walk, and whines until Wei Ying gives up and steers him into a shop to buy more plants and soil.

"Promise you'll come to the play," A-Yuan says in bed, pulling Wei Ying by the fingers. "Okay? Xu-laoshi said we'll eat the mooncakes after that and someone will bring five rabbits. We'll pet them."

"Of course I'll come, bean," Wei Ying says. He had cleared his schedule and warned Xiao Xingchen about the play. "Now, sleep-sleep-sleep, or your wife will take you for a gui."

The morning of the play day is a disaster. Wei Ying oversleeps, and if it weren't for A-Yuan's morning person inner clock, they would have been critically late for kindergarten. Running late means no breakfast for adults, so Wei Ying buys a half litre cup of coffee and spills it all over the passenger seat and his phone as soon as he gets into the car.

In the afternoon, fifteen minutes before he has to set off for the kindergarten, the office receives a call that all three trucks they sent up north got into an accident caused by the freezing rain and two drivers are severely injured, with most of the cargo destroyed, overturned, or scattered along the road.

Wei Ying spends twenty minutes in the bathroom stall, biting his forearm to a bloody mess and sweating through a nice shirt he chose to wear for the play, which – he can't look at his watch, otherwise he will burst into tears – is going to start soon. His phone is a dead piece of metal, drying in a load of tissues.

The door to Xiao Xingchen's office is closed, but Wei Ying can see his pacing shadow stretching from under the door. The procedure of dealing with such accidents is mostly battling various insurance companies of the victims who claim that a truck driver is to blame for the accident. They usually are,  according to the statistics. Wei Ying doesn't give a fuck about statistics right now.

He knocks.

Xiao Xingchen is deadly pale, one hand clenched behind his back and the other holding a phone playing an annoying wait-in-the-line government tune as he paces back and forth.

"Is there any news about casualties caused by the cargo?"

Wei Ying shakes his head. Here, at least, they were spared. "I need to go to the kindergarten."

"You need to make sure we won't be shut down after the court decides that the cargo wasn't secured properly and the trucks tipped over because of that. Or that the drivers weren't drunk or unconscious with tiredness. Have you talked to the supplier?"

"Yes."

"And?"

Wei Ying swallows. "He says that - Xingchen-ge, I need to go. Please."

"Wei Ying," Xiao Xingchen says, so much steel in his voice Wei Ying fights the urge to flinch. "There are fifty tons of glass and metal twisted and covered in icicles in Inner Mongolia. Can you fix that?"

Wei Ying audibly grits his teeth. There is no point in arguing - Xiao Xingchen is correct. The new cargo has to be shipped immediately and via another route, because the chain supply is called chain supply for a reason. No kindergarten play stands up to profound financial and time losses, to injuries and wages.  "Yes."

"Go."

The arrangements are made and the trucks are loaded. Wei Ying calls the kindergarten.

/

A-Yuan is asleep in Lan Zhan's lap, colour high and patchy in his cheeks. Wei Ying doesn't need to ask to know that he had cried himself to sleep.

Lan Zhan doesn't ask anything and refuses to be driven home, a single shake of his head, and for once, Wei Ying doesn't argue. He carries A-Yuan to the car, bundles him up and drives home.

He cooks dinner. The phone is buried deep inside a rice bag. Wei Ying can hear the calls and notifications coming in, but he doesn't touch it, even though most of those are likely from Jiang Cheng and jiejie asking about the play. When Jiang Cheng finds out that happened, he is going to single-handedly deprive Wei Ying of parental rights, no Wen Qing needed.

A-Yuan stumbles into the kitchen when it's already past seven in the evening and stops at the threshold, rumpled, puffy, and heart-wrenchingly quiet.

"Bun," Wei Ying starts, going to his knees to be on eye level with him. "I'm sorry, bunny. I – I'm so sorry. I know. I'm sorry."

"You promised," A-Yuan says, hoarse from crying and sleeping, "to come."

"I did."

"You promised!" A-Yuan shouts, a half-sob that wracks his whole body. He starts crying again, hiccupping. "You said - yesterday - I was - no one saw me."

Wei Ying's stomach spasms painfully as he tries not to cry in front of him. He has no right to, watching A-Yuan clutch the edges of his sweater and glare, because he has failed A-Yuan, who never asks for things. None of what he can tell A-Yuan matters and no explanations will stop his son's tears, nothing will fix the fact that A-Yuan stood on the stage and had no one to watch him perform. Wei Ying wasn't there. "Bunny -"

A-Yuan wipes his tears angrily and cries out, "That's why mama left!"

Wei Ying's heart, somehow, doesn't give out from his broken scream. "Wei Yuan!"

"Get lost!" A-Yuan yells, stumbling as he tries to run away too quickly. "Don't touch me!"

The door to the nursery slams shut. Wei Ying doubles over and bawls.

He had missed most of the kindergarten events in their home city, but Jiang Cheng or jiejie were there to back him up, and A-Yuan was too small to remember them anyway. Here, because they have no one else, A-Yuan doesn't have any extracurricular activities because Wei Ying doesn't have time to drive him around. He teaches A-Yuan swimming on the weekends, when they go to the public swimming pool or when they go to the sea. He tried to teach A-Yuan drawing, but A-Yuan is content with doodling crooked houses and supernovas, and music doesn't hold any appeal for him unless it's a cartoon.

A-Yuan doesn't mean any of this. He is angry, but he is not cruel. He won't remember shouting those words and won't even remember that dada missed his play when he was four. Wei Ying, because he is lucky, will not remember weeping on the kitchen floor, the wisps of their burnt dinner licking the fire alarm.

/

A-Yuan refuses to eat breakfast in the kitchen and doesn't say a word to him throughout the morning. Wei Ying stands in front of the coffee machine, empty-handed and sick to his stomach with the realisation that he almost presses the wrong button, completely unaccustomed to doing this alone, and doesn't call for him.

There are over a hundred messages and calls from jiejie and Jiang Cheng, even a couple from Wen Qing, growing in frequency starting from five p.m. and ending at three in the morning with Jiang Cheng's i hope you lost your phone but Wei Ying cannot talk to either of them. Jiejie must have texted other parents she had befriended in summer and asked them what happened. She might have even texted both Lan Zhan and Xu Wenling, which Wei Ying will definitely have to apologise for – both to his sister and the teachers.

I didn't go, Wei Ying writes in the group chat, and adds, i'll call later.

A-Yuan runs off into the depths of the kindergarten and doesn't spare him a glance, not even when Wei Ying calls him twice. The parents from the group are sneaking pitiful glances at him, Xu Wenling squeezes his shoulder compassionately, saying that A-Yuan's performance was outstanding and there will be an official kindergarten album later. Surely other parents filmed the play and took photos. A-Yi’s dad promises to send him everything he filmed yesterday, as do several other parents, which ends up with Wei Ying genuinely trying not to cry in front of them, but he can feel how red his nose and eyes are.

Lan Zhan's heavy gaze is hard to avoid. Wei Ying can tell there is no judgement there, only his unnerving need to assure Wei Ying he hadn’t fucked up irreversibly. Wei Ying is grateful for that.

"We had – issues," he explains, when most of the parents have gone. He doesn’t owe an explanation to anyone but A-Yuan, who understandably doesn’t care about it, but if he doesn’t explain this to Lan Zhan, at least, Wei Ying is going to break. "I couldn't come. I tried."

"I know," Lan Zhan says quietly. Kindly. "He knows, too."

Wei Ying toes the carpet. "I bet he does. Anyway, I hope he'll let me take him home today, because – yeah. Maybe his shushu will beat me to it. You’ll recognise him right away. He looks like he wants to skin you alive for breathing the same air as him, and it applies to everyone except the baby and our sister, sometimes his girlfriend. So don’t take it personally."

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan says. "You did what you could."

"What I do is not enough, Lan Zhan."

"You are enough."

"I'm not," Wei Ying says blatantly. Lan Zhan wouldn’t understand, and Wei Ying would never wish on him that he did. "That's the problem."

/

Jiang Cheng: what the fuck do you mean you didn't go

Jiang Cheng: you didn't see him perform?

Jiang Cheng: why didn't you tell ME that you wouldn't be able to go

Jiang Cheng: fuck you

Jiang Cheng, on the other hand, means every word he says. There is no I told you this would happen message because he is too angry at Wei Ying and his own schedule that didn’t allow him to come and see A-Yuan in the first place.

Jiejie’s voice messages are all pretty much what Lan Zhan said, but a lot lengthier and a little louder. Wei Ying gathers she hasn’t told Jiang Cheng what she had pried out of the other parents, but even if she did, it’s not like Jiang Cheng would be kinder about it. He knows there is a reason why Wei Ying couldn’t go, so his frustration is aimed at that particular obstacle. It’s just that Wei Ying is the reason more often than not.

There is a lot of work to do today, and even though the festival is a holiday, Wei Ying will have to work from home the entire time.  

"How bad is it," Xiao Xingchen asks, placing a huge cup of coffee from an expensive coffee shop in front of him. Wei Ying has only been to that place once and decided that even if their coffee is awesome, it's unreasonably overpriced. He doesn't remember mentioning to Xiao Xingchen that he liked it.

"Which one?"

"The play."

"Don't," Wei Ying begs.

Xiao Xingchen nods briskly. "You can have the rest of today off and the day after the festival."

"Can't," Wei Ying smiles. Xiao Xingchen did what he had to, no one is at fault for what happened, but Wei Ying can't hold back his sardonic grin. "Thanks, but I can't. If I do, we will lose time and money. A lot of both if I take three days off."

"You can come over to our house tomorrow. We will work it out. A-Lan will take care of the kids."

"Xingchen-ge," Wei Ying says, pushing the cup away. "You don't have to do this. You don't have to fix everything."

"Neither do you," Xiao Xingchen says. "Take these days off. It's an order."

Wei Ying packs the notes, waters the plants, and calls Jiang Cheng, who doesn’t make a single sound when he picks up.

"Can we come over?” Wei Ying says. “We can stay in jiejie's flat if Wen Qing is home, or if you don’t want us there."

"You can stay wherever you want, but the little one is staying with me."

"Jiang Cheng," Wei Ying exhales, and his tone must betray something, because Jiang Cheng doesn't push further.

"Are you coming tomorrow?"

"Yes. Is that okay?"

"Idiot," Jiang Cheng hisses. "You haven't lost the key, have you?"

"No," Wei Ying says. His brother loves both him and A-Yuan equally, it is unquestionable. Wei Ying doesn’t need to hear the proper words to know that. "It's on my key ring."

"You are cooking the entire weekend," Jiang Cheng bits out and hangs up.

It is okay.

/

Miraculously, he is an hour early for the pick-up. Mostly because there was so much he could do today and because he will work from home later today despite Xiao Xingchen’s overly generous command. The administrator flashes him a smile and says, "They're either making more lanterns or playing, the classes are done. Do you want to come up or you'd rather I call for him?"

Wei Ying nods. "Please call for him."

He expects more tears and screams, pinching the folded paper of the lantern above his head while he waits. Wei Ying doesn't care about what others will think about the tantrum, he will accept and deal with whatever A-Yuan is going to do, but it doesn’t mean Wei Ying can keep a straight face while his son cries out vicious accusations at him. More than anything, Wei Ying is terrified of A-Yuan recoiling from him.

He doesn't expect to see Lan Zhan carrying A-Yuan and murmuring something. A-Yuan is small for his age, but held like that, expression not at all enraged or upset but clearly contrite, he is tiny. He doesn't look like he is about to bawl or roll on the floor because Wei Ying has come to pick him up. He looks like he is about to cry because he did something bad and he knows it.

Wei Ying holds his breath and strokes A-Yuan’s curled fist, his cheek, his cowlick that he didn’t let Wei Ying take care of in the morning. A-Yuan did scream about not touching him, but Wei Ying physically cannot comply. But A-Yuan doesn’t scream and doesn’t push him away.

“Hi,” Wei Ying tries. 

"Go on," Lan Zhan prompts.

A-Yuan takes a huge breath. "Sorry, dada."

"No - bunny,” Wei Ying objects, nose burning already. “Little one, you didn't do anything. It’s my fault."

A-Yuan shakes his head. "I made you cry and said very bad words. I – I said – ” he wrings his hands, inhaling quickly. “I love you and, and I want to hug you. Forgive me?"

Wei Ying yanks him out of Lan Zhan’s arms and presses A-Yuan flush to himself, not even a hug but a feral need to have him close and soothe his anxious little heart. Wei Ying would carve a safe place for A-Yuan under his ribs and keep him there if he could.

“Forgive dada?”

“Forgive dada,” A-Yuan sniffles. “Forgive bean.”

Thank you so much Wei Ying mouths at Lan Zhan over the top of A-Yuan’s head. For the play, for this, for things Lan Zhan has done Wei Ying does not even know about.

Lan Zhan smiles. A guardian angel indeed.

/

The Tiangong space station model costs a lot. Wei Ying has been eyeing it for a while and had thought about buying it for A-Yuan’s birthday, or even for when he graduates kindergarten, because it’s not a toy but a whole piece of art. Not like the Shenjian set that A-Yuan takes wherever he goes and drowns in the bath sometimes, imitating the end of its mission. Wei Ying places the order now because he can still get away with a present as a means of apologising to his child.

It’s past dinner now; Wei Ying works in his bedroom, keeping an eye on what is going on in the living room. A-Yuan has been told to pack for the trip, but instead he is watching something trashy on the TV and teasing Tislit with a corded fish. Wei Ying has to resort to noise cancelling at first, because the throbbing headache that started yesterday is getting worse from the sounds. But then the parents start sending him the videos and photos of the play.

Lan Min sends the footage of what was happening behind the curtains – A-Yuan and Jingyi buzzing with excitement and Lan Min dusting the crumbs off Jingyi’s costume. There is only a little of the play, mostly the beginning and the ending, where A-Yuan is.

The mother of A-Yuan’s “wife” sends him a link with a full video of the play that Wei Ying can download, and also a load of photos of the two of them before the play. A-Yuan is smiling at the camera and at Meihui, clutching the quiver.

Wei Ying, half-dead with exhaustion, doesn’t cry. He starts the video but has to stop because two more emails drop. One is work-related, and the other one has no subject, which is weird. He doesn’t recognise the address. Wei Ying opens it and finds another full video of the play with Kind regards, Lan Zhan the end of it. Wei Ying locks the phone for a second and lets out a string of silent curses.

The video is nothing like other parents’ because Lan Zhan talks. Wei Ying hears him murmur the kids’ lines as the play goes on, the tiny hums of praise at every single kid who stumbles or stutters and keeps going,  how Lan Zhan shushes a parent chatting under his elbow. Wei Ying sees A-Yuan’s lost face when he repeatedly glances at the empty space that had been reserved for Wei Ying, how he visibly collects himself and keeps going, too. His brave little boy.

“Good boy,” Lan Zhan whispers as A-Yuan delivers his last words. 

The video ends with applause. Wei Ying rewinds it and watched it again, and then the third time. He will never repay Lan Zhan, but he will try.

“Dada?”

Wei Ying startles. A-Yuan is standing at the threshold of the bedroom holding a cup.

“What is it?”

“I didn’t make it today and yesterday,” A-Yuan explains. He puts the cup on the bedside table – it’s coffee – and climbs into bed. “I can reach it on a chair now. What are you doing?”

“I – this,” Wei Ying manages. He once heard that people cry a litre of tears per year. Obviously the person who came to this conclusion wasn’t a parent.

A-Yuan looks at the phone. “That’s my play!”  

“It is.”

“Ooooh. You can watch it now.”

Wei Ying pulls A-Yuan on top of himself and throws a corner of the duvet over him. “I have, three times. You did really good, bean. My big boy. Did you pet the bunnies after the play?”

Neither the scent of coffee nor A-Yuan’s chatter changes his headache for the better. Wei Ying closes his eyes and lets it get worse.

/

me: you're coming over for dinner tomorrow. no objections.

Lan Zhan: Wei Ying.

me: read the previous text: no objections.

me: unless you have a date, but even in that case, I'm willing to talk to them and explain the vastness and importance of what you did and that I need to thank you, otherwise death famine and plague

me: do you want to deal with plague laoshi

me: i don't think you do

me: they'll understand.

me: and then you can go on with your date

Lan Zhan: You don't have to thank me.

me: read message number one

me: :heart:

/

Lan Zhan is holding a bottle of something too expensive-looking and a pot with a flower so beautiful Wei Ying falters right at the door, fingers stuck in the knot of the apron.

“Kalanchoe blossfeldiana,” Lan Zhan explains instead of a greeting. “A-Yuan liked it at the arboretum.”

Wei Ying thumps his head over the doorframe. If Lan Zhan keeps being so good, Wei Ying will have to move town again. “He likes red pandas as well. Do you have one hiding in your pocket?”

“Perhaps,” Lan Zhan allows, definitely judging Wei Ying’s apron while at that. “I – ”

“Gege!”

A-Yuan barrels into Lan Zhan's torso with the speed of a friendly torpedo. Wei Ying tsk-s at him.

"What did I say about jumping on Lan-laoshi? You're a big boy now, what if you topple him over?"

Because Lan Zhan is an absurdly kind person, he crouches and lets A-Yuan strangle him in a hug, while holding the flower - cactus? succulent? It doesn’t look like aloe, whatever – out of the way. A-Yuan whispers something into Lan Zhan ear and giggles in a way that chills Wei Ying's backbone a bit.

"Oi, what did you just tell him?" Wei Ying demands, dragging A-Yuan away by the arm. "Don't share corporate secrets!"

"What's corporate - is that Flaming Katy?!" A-Yuan gasps, noticing the pot, and starts running around Lan Zhan like a yoyo ball. "Is that from the arboretum? Is that for me ?"

"For you," Lan Zhan agrees, "but not from the arboretum. A friend of mine helped me find it."

Wei Ying tugs the bottle and the pot out of his hands to let Lan Zhan free and makes grabby hands at the coat, which smells of Lan Zhan and kindergarten food and Lan Zhan’s favourite season.

“Can I, can I look?” A-Yuan jumps, clapping. “Can I touch? Lan-laoshi, please?”

“Wei Ying?”

Wei Ying opens his mouth for a comment about A-Yuan being responsible for the plant from now on, thank you very much, when Tislit trots up to Lan Zhan and meows questioningly.

“Hello, Tislit,” Lan Zhan says, and bends down to let her smell his hand. Wei Ying is convinced he knows the names of every kid’s pet.

Tislit nudges Lan Zhan’s palm, an obvious approved, so Wei Ying says, “I have a lint roller,” and Lan Zhan immediately gets the hint. He picks up Tislit and strokes her in wide, indulgent swipes. Of course she purrs into his face.

“Good girl,” Lan Zhan says, not at all sounding like he’s being besieged.

Wei Ying spares a glance at the stove through the hall. “She likes everyone except spiders.”

“I don’t like spiders either,” Lan Zhan says, addressing Tislit. A-Yuan whines about being ignored.

In the living room, where a variety of A-Yuan’s belongings he wants to showcase and brag about is currently taking up half of the carpet, A-Yuan flops down on the floor and makes pleading eyes at Wei Ying. Wei Ying carefully places the pot into his hands and Lan Zhan says, through Tislit’s sonorous purring, “It needs light and warmth.”

A-Yuan nods frantically, petting the flowers with the tips of his fingers. “I will put it on my desk. Can I name it?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Wei Ying says, clasping his hands. “Someone’s gotta feed the crowd and make sure Tislit doesn’t chomp on your beautiful gift due to malnourishment, Yuan-er.”

“Thank you, dada, thank you, Lan-laoshi,” A-Yuan says, distracted but no less sincere. “It’s very pretty.”

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying calls. Lan Zhan looks up from the pile of things depicting all of A-Yuan's scattered interests. "This is not work."

A-Yuan looks up too, glancing between them. Wei Ying winks at him to indicate adult talk.

"I know," Lan Zhan says, simple. "Do you need us to help you?"

Yes. But if you do, it will look like something I really want. "Nah, I'm good. Keep this imp occupied before he manages to snatch all the snacks from the counter and spoil his appetite."

"Not all of them," A-Yuan protests, and thrusts a mini solar system model into Lan Zhan's calf when Lan Zhan steps around it to get a closer look. "You eat them when I can't see you."

Wei Ying wheezes, waging a menacing finger at him, but then Lan Zhan smiles. It's so small but distinct and directed at him Wei Ying feels like hiding in the fresh zone of the fridge and maybe, maybe screaming into Tislit's fur. Lan Zhan, this absolute mass destruction weapon of a person, ducks his head and listens to A-Yuan's explanation about the criteria for planets, ears as pink as the kalanchoe’s flowers. Wei Ying wants to bite them so much.

"No," Wei Ying decides aloud, about himself, about Lan Zhan's ears and smile, about A-Yuan being a little shit, and before anyone can question him, he flees.

Tislit has peppered the food with her precious hairs, as per usual, so Wei Ying spends a good amount of time plucking those from the bowl with marinated pork. So much for letting it sit unattended for a handful of minutes.

The oven dings. A-Yuan whoops in the living room but doesn't run into the kitchen to terrorise Wei Ying about sending photos of pumpkin boats to his guma. Wei Ying shoves a spatula into the oven door and gets to dealing with the dessert part.

When it becomes too quiet, Wei Ying peeks into the living room and finds only a neatly stacked pile of everything A-Yuan has brought to show off, but no A-Yuan or Lan Zhan in sight. Nursery tour, then.

"Show Lan-laoshi the bathroom," Wei Ying hollers, "dinner in ten."

The dinner is full in a way Wei Ying refuses to investigate, with Lan Zhan silently refilling A-Yuan's glass with water and not being shy about the food, which does more to Wei Ying's heart than A-Yuan declaring that they haven't had friends for dinner for a very long time. Not that he remembers how long exactly, or would remember Wei Ying's friends' names. And yet.

"Dada cooks good," A-Yuan says. "Guma taught him. I help him a lot. And then I clean the table with puff-puffs and push the buttons on the washing machine."

"Your dada cooks very well," Lan Zhan agrees. Wei Ying stifles the need to kick him under the table. "What's puff-puffs?"

Tislit jumps onto Lan Zhan's lap mid-dinner and Lan Zhan doesn't bat an eye at her, resting a hand atop her head, which makes her feel settled and compliant and Lan Zhan's .

A-Yuan skips dessert in favour of showing the plant its new home and tormenting Tislit before she escapes into Wei Ying’s room to nap, so Wei Ying whips out Lan Zhan’s bottle, which turns out to be some fancy red wine. Lan Zhan shakes his head at the glass Wei Ying offers but nods to the teapot and another pastry. The wine is so annoyingly good and exactly what Wei Ying needs, running smooth and cool down Wei Ying’s throat, that it takes him everything not to moan about it.

“So good,” Wei Ying comments with a sigh, “I’m going to save it for special occasions and sleepless nights.”

“Does A-Yuan have trouble sleeping?” Lan Zhan asks.

“My sleepless nights, Lan Zhan.”

“I see.”

The silence that stretches between them is of the tired, content kind. It’s the end of the week and Wei Ying is having wine while Lan Zhan is sitting across from him, across the dining table in Wei Ying’s kitchen, fed and so wretchedly fitting.

“May I ask you something?” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying salutes him with a half-empty glass.

“I don’t know where his mother is, Lan Zhan. And frankly, I have no desire to.” Lan Zhan, as Wei Ying had anticipated, gives him a half nod, half rueful turn of his head. It’s not like everyone Wei Ying meets doesn’t ask him about it.

"We were so excited," Wei Ying begins. Almost every story of this kind begins like that, and his is no exception. "When she changed her mind, it was too late for the abortion. And I know I sound horrible for saying that I'm glad about it – " Wei Ying wipes the condensation on the glass that rolls down the sides like fat, stubborn tears, "but it's true. She left shortly after birth, and we haven't seen her since. She sends Yuan-er cards and toys for birthdays, each year from a different place. I don't know if she really is such a traveller or the post office does her bidding somehow, but it doesn't matter. I left our address to the new tenants when they move in, but who knows if they will send us whatever she sends. If she does, that is."

When Wei Ying chances a glance at Lan Zhan, he doesn't look like he pities Wei Ying, but his frown is deeper than Wei Ying's ever seen. It's profoundly relieving, somehow. A quiet, familiar concern. Lan Zhan is looking at him – has been, perhaps, this entire time.

"I don't blame her, Lan Zhan. She's an orphan like I am, and she got scared. I blame myself for failing to prove to her that I would have done everything for her and the little one, that what we had when we were children – A-Yuan is safe from that."

Lan Zhan's expression darkens. "Wei Ying, your family – "

"My stepparents died when A-Yuan was three weeks old. Until jie and Cheng-di were done with the funeral and the will, I was alone with him, yes."

Lan Zhan looks away. It's such a helpless move, but Wei Ying finds it funny in its twisted, survival way. They are here now, they made it through. "A-Cheng and a-jie made A-Yuan inherit all the money earned from selling the family house."

"And you?"

"I wasn't mentioned in the will."

A-Yuan chooses this moment to run into the kitchen, shouting, “I love it!” at the flower he can’t let go, bless his little bursting heart. Wei Ying catches him and sits him on his lap.

“But you only love me, monkey,” Wei Ying pouts, “don’t you? Oh no, I’ve been betrayed by my only son, he now loves a pretty flower more than his dada, I’m hurt ah.”

“Nooo,” A-Yuan wails. He carefully deposits the flower on the table before throwing his arms around Wei Ying’s neck. “I love dada, guma, shushu, Tislit, Lan-laoshi and Xiao Hua.”

“I love A-Yuan too,” Lan Zhan says immediately, and gets up to make tea for himself before Wei Ying even thinks of dislodging A-Yuan off his lap. “Xiao Hua is a lovely name.”

A-Yuan hums. He is buzzing from all the overwhelming joy of having Lan Zhan here and the present, which means he will be either impossible to put down or will crash very abruptly before Wei Ying has a chance to bathe him. “Thank you, Lan-laoshi.”

Behind Wei Ying’s back, Lan Zhan is helping himself with tea without the stifling coyness. “You were alone.”

“For some time,” Wei Ying acquiesces. “We had our share of long nights, didn’t we, bun?” Wei Ying says, tickling A-Yuan’s ribs until A-Yuan slides off his lap and sticks his tongue at him. “Go run a bath for yourself.”

“Don’t wanna,” A-Yuan grumbles. “Can I play with Lan-laoshi?”

“No,” Wei Ying says. A-Yuan sticks his lower lip out, petulant. “Lan-laoshi should rest, don’t you think? There’re so many of you and only him and Xu-jiejie to play with all of you. They need rest like you do when you play for a looong time.”

A-Yuan considers this, then nods, brows drawn in deep thought. “Fine.”

“Good boy. Now, bath.”

Wei Ying breathes out a laugh when Lan Zhan refills his wine glass.

“A-Yuan loves you very much.”

“He’s a funny little guy,” Wei Ying says, skipping the part where he tells Lan Zhan he loves A-Yuan so much it hurts to breathe sometimes. “We’re the jolly devils who, back to back against the mainmast, held at bay the entire crew, you know? He’s so fussy about everything being clean and tidy! He likes putting my socks into the laundry basket, wiping the table and mopping the floors, loves pressing every button in the vicinity, but especially on the coffee machine and the rice cooker. When he was little, I could leave him in front of the working washing machine and go brush my teeth, you know?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying knows that baby talk is all Lan Zhan hears day in and day out, but it’s not just him being polite – Lan Zhan undoubtedly loves every child he guides and teaches, and Wei Ying can only marvel at that memory tank of his. “Do you require help with him on the weekends?”

“I – Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying laughs, but it makes his cheeks heat up awkwardly. “No, I’m fine. Yuan-er gets tired of me sometimes, though. When he does, he calls A-Cheng and tells him about you.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan offers, like he doesn’t know the universal truth of being obsessed over by his kids and their parents alike.

Wei Ying folds his arms on the table as the wine makes him warm and kind in a way spice doesn’t. “How about you, laoshi? Got a sad life story to share?”

“My brother is overseas,” Lan Zhan says, “continuing and expanding family business. He is all I have.”

“Well,” Wei Ying says, “if you ever need proper home food, you’re always welcome.”

“If you need someone to watch A-Yuan over the weekend, you are always welcome,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying cannot even imagine a scenario in which he would dare bother Lan Zhan on the weekend, or at all, but he smiles anyway. Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan ah. A-Yuan will be enrolled into school in a couple of years, and Wei Ying has a feeling that leaving Lan-laoshi behind will be a greater blow than the move. For both of them.

“Dada,” A-Yuan peeks into the kitchen. There’s soil on the tip of his nose. “Bath’s ready.”

Wei Ying looks at Lan Zhan, who taps his fingers on the cup. More tea. Wei Ying mouths I’ll be quick, and gets up.

A-Yuan rubs at his face violently to stay awake as Wei Ying washes his hair. His shoulders are slumped and he doesn’t chatter excitedly, just sighs when he gets rinsed and towelled dry. Wei Ying kisses his wet forehead.

“Want me to carry you to bed?”

“Say goodnight to Lan-laoshi?”

“Of course, bun.”

Wei Ying rolls his eyes when he finds that Lan Zhan has cleaned the table, which – later, when he is alone and has emptied the wine bottle by half – and clicks his tongue. “My son commands the washing machine and his teacher cleans the table. Where does it put me, Lan Zhan?”

“At the top of the hierarchy,” Lan Zhan says. 

Wei Ying snorts hard and ugly. “Okay, now say goodnight to Lan Zhan, monkey.”

Half of A-Yuan’s goodnight gets swallowed by the yawn as he waves at Lan Zhan and rubs his eyes tiredly. Lan Zhan hugs A-Yuan and murmurs goodnight to him and to Xiao Hua that gets brought to A-Yuan’s room too.

A-Yuan is out within the introduction to the story.

Lan Zhan is in the living room, sitting cross-legged in front of A-Yuan’s treasured possessions, Tislit in his lap and half-asleep herself. Something hurts in the solar plexus area, a hushed ache.

“Not bad for our first date, huh?” Wei Ying teases, and bites the inside of his cheek when Lan Zhan shoots him a complicated look. “Sorry, sorry, I know I’m horrible.”

“No,” Lan Zhan says, “but I haven’t been on the first date for many years.”

“Same here. Being a hot single father means father comes first and everything else depends on how the chips fall.”

“People rejected A-Yuan?”

“Eh,” Wei Ying croaks. “My fault, honestly. My last boyfriend was nice. Like, nice-nice. So nice I introduced them, and I thought – this is it. Then he said he couldn’t love children that are not his, which I respect. But I wish I hadn’t been so – ” in love and in need of someone accepting us, “rash about it, but I was sure I wasn’t. A-Yuan liked him. He stopped asking about the guy when I told him he wasn’t moving house with us.”

Lan Zhan rises to his feet in one smooth motion, not disturbing Tislit in the slightest. Wei Ying wonders if it’s from the experience of working with kids, or it’s just Lan Zhan being strong and capable in Wei Ying’s home. Both, perhaps.

“He rejected A-Yuan,” Lan Zhan says, something dark and incomprehensible in his tone as he walks up to Wei Ying. “He rejected both of you.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying exhales, tired and long resigned. Lan Zhan wouldn’t understand, and Wei Ying would never wish him anything that would facilitate this understanding. Jiejie had been quietly furious about the whole thing and Jiang Cheng had been less so, angry on A-Yuan’s behalf, mostly. “I don’t expect people to love him, but he is all I have. If someone doesn’t accept him, I will be the one to put an end to it. I was.”

“Wei Ying.”

“Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan’s lips are tight and his gaze is heavy; angry, Wei Ying would say, if he didn’t know better. Lan Zhan is the best, the most comforting and giving person besides a-jie, the best thing that could ever happen to both of them. Which makes everything slippery with hope, makes Wei Ying feel wrong-footed and scared, unfortified. A dinner, a flower. This has to be enough. 

“Thank you for having me,” Lan Zhan says, too low even for a sleeping child next door. “My offer still stands.”

“So does mine,” Wei Ying smiles, taking Tislit from his arms. “Thank you for everything.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Lan Zhan says at the threshold as Wei Ying nudges the remaining pastries into his hands.

“I’m not. If it hadn’t, would I have had you for dinner tonight?”

Lan Zhan is so good he doesn’t even check his phone to see any notifications before he leaves. He is so, so good.

“Goodnight, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. 

Wei Ying watches him disappear down the stairs. “Night, Zhanzhan.”

Jiang Yanli picks up almost immediately and waits for Wei Ying’s gushing comment. Wei Ying presses the lukewarm glass of wine to his temple, digging his elbows into the dining table until pain shoots through his arm.

“Jie, I’m so fucked.”

/

A-Yuan’s fifth birthday falls on a Wednesday, so the celebration is postponed until the weekend. The cake, understandably, surpasses the day of the week issue and is the first thing A-Yuan sees when he wakes up on his birthday and runs into the kitchen.

He yells when he sees the cake that looks like the Running Chicken Nebula – god bless mirror glazes and educational videos on how to utilise your toothbrush when you can’t tiptoe into your kid’s bedroom to steal a brush for some decoration purposes.

Wei Ying got about three hours of sleep in total, mostly because of the numerous rounds of doing fucking dishes during baking and chilling the sponges, the filling and whatnot. He would buy a custom made cake if A-Yuan asked for something like a proper planet-like cake, with a core and the inedible but pretty fondant cover and maybe satellites, but A-Yuan didn’t ask for it because Wei Ying bakes something for him every year anyway. Because it’s relatively easy and makes A-Yuan shriek in ultrasound, jump around the dinner table for several minutes, and then nearly send Wei Ying sprawling when he pounces at him, Wei Ying will gladly continue to spend hours upon hours in the kitchen doing dishes and sifting icing sugar.

“I can’t eat it,” A-Yuan sighs, kneeling on the chair and looming over the cake. It’s not properly set yet, so he giggles every time some of the glaze sticks to his fingertips as he pokes at the red webbing. “It’s too pretty!

“It won’t be if you keep touching it,” Wei Ying admonishes and covers the cake with the lid. A-Yuan shoots him an absolutely soul-withering look. “Now go find my phone and call guma and shushu to say thank you for the presents.”

There is no present from A-Yuan’s mother, as expected, and Wei Ying had hesitated about buying one in her stead until the very last minute, but then bought something nonsensical anyway. He doesn’t want to lie to A-Yuan, but then again, it’s just a present A-Yuan will open after he’s done with everything else and set it aside because it’s boring and always out of his current interests range. But it is, at the end of the day, a present from her, and Wei Ying will not ruin his son’s birthdays with his own feelings about it.

When Wei Ying picks him up in the evening, A-Yuan brandishes little presents and cards he’s been gifted. A-Yi nags at him the entire time they put on their outer clothes and says that A-Yuan can absolutely have cat stickers on a spacesuit, because if people have their country flags slapped onto them, why not add cat stickers?

“Come on, come on,” Wei Ying cheers as A-Yuan slurps his birthday noodles, “I know you have some space in your left cheek.”

A-Yuan bites through the noodles when he can no longer stuff more into his mouth with chopsticks and then grins with his bulging cheeks. He looks like a very happy chipmunk. He is now a year older than Wei Ying was when he lost his parents.

Jiang Cheng arrives on Friday evening, dog-tired and pale, and doesn’t grunt when Wei Ying hugs him, just hugs back and carries A-Yuan to the car on his shoulders. He is quiet but not distressingly so, and plays with A-Yuan while Wei Ying cooks. The four of them doze off on the sofa, dinner-unwieldy and slouched against each other, until a very loud ad comes up on the TV and scares the hell out of everyone.

On Saturday, Wei Ying drives them early to another city, because one of the birthday presents was the tickets to the ginormous planetarium. They go through half of the permanent exhibitions and by lunchtime A-Yuan starts to snivel because he wants to go to space and find a tiny black hole now.

Jiang Cheng pays for all the offensively overpriced souvenirs and merch and buys a separate t-shirt for Wen Qing that says “We have a plutonic relationship”. Wei Ying thinks of Wen Qing’s face when she sees it and cry laughs at the image, which makes Jiang Cheng smile in that boyishly smug way of his that Wei Ying hasn’t seen on him for so long it hurts to think about. He looks younger – his age, that is.

“She’ll love it,” Wei Ying says. They have chosen a little seafood restaurant and A-Yuan was adamant he get baby octopus noodles, so here they are, Wei Ying finishing the noodles for him because A-Yuan started crying when he saw the tiny things and freaked out, and A-Yuan eating prawn dumplings.

“I know,” Jiang Cheng says mildly, but then frowns. “I should’ve bought something for Ning-er.”

“We can go back and pick up something else for him. Or A-Yuan can share,” Wei Ying says, turning to A-Yuan. A-Yuan nods.

“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng says, vitriolic. “No, he can’t. It’s his presents. I will think of something. We’ve already driven far away and – ”

“I can share!” A-Yuan shouts, reaching for his overflowing backpack. “Who am I sharing with? What do they like? Do they like space? Shushu, you can take everything.”

Jiang Cheng opens his mouth and shuts it because A-Yuan moves his plate aside and pulls out a science kit, an adorable sad alien plushie that definitely looks like Wen Ning, now that Wei Ying thinks of it, a book, and then pats the Moon landing set, tucked securely behind his back like the most prized possession. Wei Ying leans over the table and kisses him soundly on both cheeks.

Wei Ying takes mercy on both Jiang Cheng’s anguished soul and A-Yuan’s unsparing one, tossing the plushie into Jiang Cheng’s lap. Jiang Cheng picks it up and seems to come to the same conclusion as Wei Ying, because he strokes the grey polyester and unclenches his jaw until it pops. He has been grinding his teeth since before Wei Ying was adopted.

“Lizards,” he mumbles. “He likes lizards. Thank you, little one.”

On Sunday, they drive to the sea.

Jiang Cheng kicks and throws pebbles with A-Yuan for a while, then sits down and criticises the spot Wei Ying’s chosen to lay the blankets on until Wei Ying shuts him up with spring rolls and coffee. The backs of his palms used to be so red and cracked every winter because Jiang Cheng invalidated gloves and the weird feeling of restriction they gave him, but now he wears them. Jiang Cheng’s hands are soft now because he slathers them with what surely is Wen Qing’s hand cream – it smells like jie’s fancy stuff A-Yuan likes to play with when she comes over. Wei Ying would bet his head that Wen Qing didn’t even tell him anything, Jiang Cheng just wanted to cup her furious little face with as much tenderness as he could muster.

It’s cloudy but not freezing cold, although the coast is ice-bound. The water underneath the ice makes it crackle constantly, but it’s muted and distant. Tired groans of winter. There is so much ice they can only see the water lapping softly at the heaped-up pieces on the shore. A-Yuan squats beside them and blows warm air on them until Wei Ying tells him to stop because he will get a sore throat.

“I want to bring her over for New Year,” Jiang Cheng admits, “A-Ning, too, if he wants, but I think he has some friends who already invited him. I don’t know if she wants to go at all or sleep the whole week.”

“She can sleep the whole week in jie’s house, you know,” Wei Ying says, “but if she comes, she won’t have to worry about cooking or think about anything but her grumpy boyfriend who smells of patchouli.”

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng grumbles, “aren’t you bringing your laoshi over?”

Wei Ying feels so scandalized he drops the rest of the salted egg yolk bun into his cup. “Why the hell would I?”

“You are miserably stupid, ge.”

“Shut up. Shut up.”

Jiang Cheng sighs, then barks at A-Yuan to come over and eat. Wei Ying pours out the coffee and the soaked bun piece into the pebbles and gets up to throw some stones onto the ice.

He doesn’t hear them land through the sound of his thrashing heart.

/

The idea churns in his mind and overshadows every other thought. Wei Ying's workload suffers because of it, as he doodles Lan Zhan in red, doodles the food Lan Zhan might like eating at New Year, dreams about other, non-celebratory things. A-Yuan calls him several times before Wei Ying snaps out of it and realises that he has been washing the pan for much longer than needed.

"What's wrong?" A-Yuan says, face scrunched up in worry.

Wei Ying promptly distracts him by having him wipe the dinner plates and a bunch of mugs Wei Ying had rescued from the bedroom. "Nothing, bean. Just silly things."

"Like me?"

"Of course I'm thinking about you all the time, that's a given," Wei Ying kisses him. "But you're a smart silly thing, and dada is thinking about not smart things."

A-Yuan, like the clever little monster he is, wraps the towel around his fist and shoves it inside the mugs to dry them. "Can I help?"

"Yep, you actually do," Wei Ying says, and leans into his space again. "Kiss me three thousand times and hug five thousand. It'll help."

They lose count at twenty-three, but A-Yuan promises to finish kissing and hugging him before bedtime.

Wei Ying lies on the sofa, Tislit a snoring weight on his chest, and considers all the pros and cons – and ends up with no cons, obviously. The only thing that can go wrong is Lan Zhan saying no, and when he does, Wei Ying will have to resort to cheap plastic surgery and move town and never see Lan Zhan ever again after that.

Lan Zhan has a brother, who will probably come here to celebrate, or Lan Zhan will go to him. Or he will celebrate with someone else – whoever those people could be, distant or immediate family, or – or he is going to be alone, which is the worst and unacceptable.

Or he could go with Wei Ying and A-Yuan.

"Do you think it's a bad idea," Wei Ying mumbles, scratching Tislit's head. "I mean, you like him. Everyone likes him. I like him. He saved my life so many times and I really, really like him. It's only a couple of days before the holidays, and surely he already has plans, so if I invite him to jiejie's, he will feel bad for having to reject me, because he is perfect, and I definitely don’t want that. What do I do, your ladyship?"

The cat stretches, comfortable with suffocating Wei Ying as usual, and bumps her head into his palm. She is freshly washed and properly brushed out before the holidays, no extra fluff now. A-Yuan suggested they make a hat for her from the fur they have combed out of her, but Wei Ying disagrees. She is soft-headed as it is, so the hat will simply sever her communication with the global cat forces.

"Yeah, you're right. I should try, and if he says no, I will do what you did today. Eat canned food and sleep.”

The next day, he is purposefully late for the pick-up. Lan Zhan had stopped arguing about Wei Ying driving him home after the second time, so Wei Ying plays a dirty move and opens his mouth while Lan Zhan is putting on his coat.

"So I was thinking. You can say no. If you say no – I mean, you will probably say no, and it'll be fine, I promise. I probably shouldn't offer this, but I just thought. Jiejie wants – and Jiang Cheng said – and I agree with them, obviously, but you don't have to. Only if you want, laoshi."

Lan Zhan, one arm inside the coat, patiently watches him spew out nonsense. A-Yuan raptly watches his dada malfunction in front of his teacher. It's mortifying. The last time Wei Ying was this bad at talking was when he couldn't yet form words.

"What do you want me to say no to?" Lan Zhan frowns.

Wei Ying huffs, frustrated at himself. "I don't want you to say no to it, but you can. It's a family holiday, and I know you have a brother, and obviously family besides him, but – " Wei Ying cuts himself off as Lan Zhan’s frown becomes worse, takes a breath and shoots out, "Lan Zhan, will you celebrate New Year with us? With all of us?"

"Woah!" A-Yuan gasps, and slaps a hand over his mouth.

Lan Zhan stares at him. The silence stretches, A-Yuan literally chews on his nails in anticipation, looking between them, and Wei Ying’s panic turns into a soundless hysteria. It’s one thing to invite Lan Zhan over for dinner and send him mooncakes, tease the life out of him and – think about him, but asking him to spend a family holiday with Wei Ying – with them, with Wei Ying’s entire family – is suggestive at the very least. He is not overstepping. He is blatantly tying Lan Zhan to himself.

Wei Ying swallows. “Lan Zhan – ”

“I will not say no,” Lan Zhan says at the same time, “unless you want me to.”

“N-no? You will – with us?” Wei Ying squeaks, and immediately clears his throat. This is so embarrassing, but his mouth stretches into a dumb smile on its own accord. “I mean, good. Great. You’ll go with us.”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. He doesn’t even question anything, doesn’t say that it’s inappropriate and that people don’t invite their kids’ teachers over for family holidays unless they want those teachers to become part of it. “With you.”

Wei Ying drives him home. A-Yuan is uncharacteristically quiet during the ride, and as soon as Lan Zhan is out of view, he asks, “Dada, why is Lan-laoshi coming with us?”

“Because I want him to.”

“Okay,” A-Yuan says, clearly satisfied with the explanation. “Me too.”

At home, Wei Ying waits until A-Yuan is asleep, takes all of his pillows and sofa cushions, and screams into them.

/

To battle the highway traffic and the impending snowstorm, they leave early in the morning, just past four. Lan Zhan texts him that Wei Ying doesn’t have to leave the car to put Lan Zhan’s suitcase into the boot and Wei Ying texts back that if Lan Zhan can try to be a little more high-maintenance, he would really appreciate that.

Wei Ying keeps both thermoses on the passenger seat until Lan Zhan emerges from his apartment building, and only then does he get out of the car. Lan Zhan gives him the stern look of a very displeased teacher. He has combed his hair as best as he could, but you can only look put together so much in the middle of the night. Wei Ying doesn’t kiss him then and there.

A-Yuan is dead asleep and snoring into his scarf, one hand balled in a blanket that was supposed to be for Lan Zhan and the other with fingers into Tislit’s crate. Lan Zhan squeezes his knee and taps the crate, which – Wei Ying is at his limit of not tackling him, and this is not helping.

“The green one is with ginger tea and the red one is with hot chocolate,” Wei Ying says quietly. “There’s food near the little one if you haven’t eaten. Have you, laoshi?”

Lan Zhan makes a nest behind himself out of the coat and his enormous scarf.  “Where is your coffee?”

“If I have a thermos full of coffee, no one will like the outcome. So, tea.”

“Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Get the food, then.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying chides. “If I could have breakfast, I would’ve. We have to go. But if you haven’t eaten – ”

Lan Zhan interrupts him with a raised hand. “You will eat right now or I will feed you. We will not go until you have eaten.”

So Wei Ying eats his breakfast and Lan Zhan eats Wei Ying’s breakfast too, and drinks hot chocolate out of the cup that Wei Ying had drunk out of less than twenty minutes ago, because it’s dark in the car and Lan Zhan can’t see that the cup is dirty. Wei Ying keeps his mouth shut about it because he is a jerk.

Lan Zhan has a bag of food too and peels two tangerines for him, and even takes off all the pith to the very last bit, as far as Wei Ying can tell. He suspects that Lan Zhan did see that the cup was dirty and didn’t care about it, which is gross and wonderful. It’s impossible to be squeamish if you work with kids.

Lan Zhan falls asleep. Wei Ying commits a crime of pulling over and disturbing A-Yuan to retrieve the blanket, but A-Yuan merely makes a small sound and tips his head forward, snoring louder. Wei Ying doesn’t need any background music to keep him awake.

/

“Lan-laoshi, huh,” Jiang Cheng says, only mildly abrasive because he is holding A-Yuan and therefore can’t be in his full dick mode, but he also can’t be nice specifically to someone A-Yuan and Wei Ying are mooning over. 

Wei Ying stands between them just in case, assessing everyone’s reaction to Lan Zhan. It’s hard not to stare at him, so everyone obviously does, especially Jin Zixuan, who sees who Wei Ying’s sister has potentially been friends with since summer. His twitchy hand on Jiang Yanli’s waist is a joy to look at. The only person who treats Lan Zhan normally is Wen Qing.

Jiejie is over the moon to have him here, and she does what Wei Ying can’t do – she hugs Lan Zhan. Wei Ying watches him for any signs of discomfort, both from the hug and the sight of this family, but there is nothing, only Lan Zhan’s immaculate politeness and diplomatic demeanour he acquired from dealing with difficult adults. Wei Ying is vibrating out of his skin by the time the silent initiation is over and everyone can finally let Lan Zhan be.

The fun part starts when jiejie says that now that everyone is here, the house has to be prepared for New Year, which means decorating and cooking. A-Yuan screeches that Lan-laoshi writes prettily and he makes the best lanterns, so naturally he has to do all the crafts. Jiang Cheng, who was in charge of that until this year, whisks A-Yuan away into a study and emerges three hours later with a load of freshly cut decorations and A-Yuan covered in paper shavings. Meanwhile, Lan Zhan has been drinking tea and talking about child protection programmes with Wen Qing and did not realise that Jiang Cheng was being nephew-territorial right under his nose.

Wei Ying is no help in the kitchen because he does puppy eyes at jiejie and she feeds him more than she actually prepares for the celebration. He pillows his head on his arms and watches her chop and dice things, both for dinner and for tomorrow. She finds comfort in repetitive movements and in the unhurried magic of cooking that Wei Ying never fully embraced, because he had to learn how to cook to feed himself and the little one, while jiejie cooks out of love for others. Watching her now, Wei Ying remembers her confessing her childhood dream of wanting to be a cook on a cruise ship and travelling all over the world. Now, with seven people under her roof, she is calm and collected because she knows how to make everyone feel good.

That’s why it comes as a complete shock to see Lan Zhan in the kitchen once he decided that he has to be useful and freaking compete with jiejie. Wei Ying watches them stand shoulder to shoulder and try to outdo each other in the number of dumplings and whose plaiting is the prettiest. It starts slowly and innocently: Lan Zhan pulls his sleeves up and starts to silently roll out the rest of the dough, and when he is done with that, he starts wrapping the dumplings. He is ruthlessly efficient. Jiang Yanli looks over her arm, sees a full tray, and speeds up. Lan Zhan speeds up too. Jiejie lets out a tiny huff and whips out her mama-invited-fifteen-people-over-for-dinner type of speed wrapping, but Lan Zhan doesn’t yield. Wei Ying genuinely expects him to stop and be civil about it, but Lan Zhan smirks and keeps going.

The show is over way too quickly because they are out of filling, and both jiejie and Wei Ying realise that Lan Zhan has won. Marginally, by the looks of it, but still. Wei Ying gapes at him. No one beats jiejie.

Jiang Yanli leans her palms on the counter and laughs. “I admit defeat. Maybe next year I will win.”

“Perhaps,” Lan Zhan smiles. “I will be better prepared, too.”

Wei Ying makes a sound he can’t be held responsible for. Lan Zhan and jiejie look at him, alarmed and no longer smiling, but Wei Ying can’t, he can’t. He stumbles off the stool and flees.

The house is Jin-huge and Wei Ying has never been here before. He goes from room to room looking for something, maybe a giant object to hide and spend the rest of the week behind and bang his head on, because he is an idiot and a coward and a selfish asshole. He invited Lan Zhan here. He had it coming.

Wei Ying finds a balcony full of boxes and bags and kicks them out of the way to make space for himself, heaving. He imagines bringing Lan Zhan over next year, which will be the last year of kindergarten, less than half a year before graduation. In seventeen months, A-Yuan will have his last day at kindergarten and Wei Ying will say goodbye to a person he made his anchor by accident and without permission. Wei Ying slumps on the wall and hugs his knees.

He knows that Lan Zhan lets him get away with everything because Lan Zhan likes him. Wei Ying cannot comprehend why and doesn’t know how to tell him that Lan Zhan is wrong, that the parts of him that Lan Zhan might be attracted to is nothing compared to the parts that only two people know about. Lan Zhan doesn’t know that Wei Ying is weak and impossibly selfish, that he cries into Tislit’s fur because what happened to her is what happened to him many years ago. That Wei Ying is small and needy too, that he wants nothing more but to climb into Lan Zhan’s lap and feel safe under his hand. To fall asleep, knowing that he won’t be thrown away at the first inconvenience.

Wei Ying hears the steps and wipes his face. He doesn’t need to look up to know who they belong to.

Lan Zhan helps him off the floor first thing and cups his cheeks like he expected to find Wei Ying crying. He doesn’t say anything. He looks sad. Wei Ying breathes through his stuffy nose and burns under that touch.

“So it’s decided, then. You’re coming over next year.”

“If you want me to.”

“What do you mean if I want you to?” Wei Ying snaps. Another thing Lan Zhan doesn’t deserve. “There is no if I want something.”

Lan Zhan lets go of him. No – he lets Wei Ying step back and take a breath, and trip on a broken chair. Wei Ying laughs despite himself.

“Wei Ying,” he says, “why am I here?”

“Because I didn’t want you to spend New Year alone.”

“I cancelled my flight. I wouldn’t have been alone.”

“Why did you cancel your flight, then?”

“Because you asked me to go with you.”

“What do you want me to say?” Wei Ying says. “That I wanted Lan-laoshi to see my family so that he’d decide for himself if he likes them?”

Lan Zhan’s pupils are blown wide. He presses his arms to his torso, to his ribs. Maybe Lan Zhan wants to touch him and doesn’t let himself. Or maybe he knows boxing and he wants to protect himself, too. “Don’t tease.”

“Who’s teasing, gege? I’m telling the truth. I wanted you here. I wanted you in my car and in my home, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t have things that I want. I can’t have – you.”

“You can.”

“No,” Wei Ying chokes out, swaying with the force of it. “Lan Zhan, don’t do this to me. I know I fucked up and you will hate me after today, as you should. I can’t – this is my fault. It’s always my fault, and I don’t know how to fix that. Gege, you don’t need me and the mess that I inevitably make of everything I touch. Of you.”

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan says, voice cracking. "I have nothing to offer you but myself." He swallows but doesn't look away. So brave, so infinitely patient. If Wei Ying tells him no right now, Lan Zhan will walk away. He won't even leave the house or disrupt the celebration, won't go home. He won't treat A-Yuan differently, won't say a word. If Wei Ying says no, Wei Ying will not fall.

"I have nothing to offer you at all."

Lan Zhan's inhale is horrible. Wei Ying flinches from it like he did from his stepmothers' slaps, stinging and wide on his baby cheeks.

"Lan Zhan," he tries, pushes through the lump in his throat, through the clawing need to kneel and trust. He wants to soothe away the nervous clench of Lan Zhan's jaw, stroke his fingers that are curled in a fist – not a violent one, but the force of his desperation is just as white-knuckled as fury. "Lan Zhan. Zhanzhan. I'm scared. I've been bitten enough times to know when it's going to get to my bone."

"Wei Ying – "

"Lan Zhan, please."

"I have you here," Lan Zhan rasps, touching his temple. His lovely, lovely hand is shaking. Then he touches his heart. "I keep you here. Both of you."

Wei Ying twists his fingers into knots. "You can't say that. Lan Zhan, I have a child from a woman I thought I'd die on one day with when we get old. I fell in love with a guy who sent me voice messages every two hours when I didn't want to see or hear anyone, and he told me he loved me at the end of every one. They all left because of A-Yuan. You love him. Don't love me because of him."

"I am not going anywhere," Lan Zhan says. He raises his hand again, determined and stubborn, and Wei Ying doesn't stop him. He never could. He leans into the touch with what feels like his whole soul, kisses the heel of the palm, the veiny dip of it. Lan Zhan's hand smells of jie's lemon soap and A-Yuan's shampoo, faintly of the sour smell of metal doorknobs. Pieces of home he barely had a chance to get to know but made his all the same. Lan Zhan cups his face with both hands and looks at him with such raw hope Wei Ying wants to cry and beg for his forgiveness for dealing with Wei Ying's inextinguishable fear of loss. All Lan Zhan has ever done is give. "Wei Ying. Please."

"If you leave, I – "                                    

Lan Zhan kisses him. It cuts through Wei Ying's train of thought and leaves him boneless and weary at once, and Lan Zhan catches him. Wei Ying wants to say no, but the sound he makes at the back of his throat comes out as a pitiful plea for something else entirely through his closed mouth. Lan Zhan digs his fingers into Wei Ying's chin and gives.

Wei Ying loves him. He loves him and it is vined through him, rooted uncompromisingly. Wei Ying knows he had loved A-Yuan’s mother, knows that what he had felt for his last partner was nothing short of brimming, resplendent devotion. He had barred those people from his life and mind. Watched A-Yuan’s mother leave the flat with several suitcases while A-Yuan, whom she had only held twice, was whining on his shoulder and Wei Ying rubbed his back. Wei Ying had deleted the phone number and all texts, voice messages, photos with his boyfriend, who had held him through so many tears and taught him that hope is indeed cruel. He had loved and had been loved, he had lost it and not once had he allowed himself to fall apart.

It chipped at him even in the happiest moments of A-Yuan’s life, in the shortest nights, while he did the most mundane things, and he hated himself for that. He felt betrayed, lonely, and angry because he was like that. Wei Ying had a son, the eclipsing force, the brightest thing in the universe, his universe, and felt desolate. Then, Lan Zhan happened.

Wei Ying bursts into tears.

He grasps at Lan Zhan's shoulder and chest, where his heart thuds loudly, and lets everything go; forgives A-Yuan's mother, his boyfriend, and himself. Lan Zhan kisses him still, kisses him quiet and loose, kisses him until Wei Ying can't breathe because he can't stop crying and kissing him back. 

Lan Zhan pulls away, alarmed by Wei Ying's whistling breathing. "Wei Ying," he whispers against his lips and kisses Wei Ying's wet lashes, his jaw where the tears gather only to drip onto Lan Zhan's sweater. Lan Zhan strokes his back, the back of his head as Wei Ying heaves and falls and trusts. "You are too cold."

Wei Ying shakes and clings to him, kissing everything within reach – Lan Zhan’s cold nose, the corners of his mouth, his fingertips when Lan Zhan’s thumbs brush fresh tears from Wei Ying’s cheeks, Lan Zhan’s trembling lashes and between his brows. There is so much of him to love.

Lan Zhan shushes him again because Wei Ying tries to apologise and then keeps thanking him, which sounds unbelievably pathetic and exactly how Wei Ying feels. Grateful isn’t the word for it. Wei Ying feels as if his soul has given in because it has finally found shelter.

“Sorry,” Wei Ying mutters, wiping the snot off of his face. Gross. Lan Zhan loves him anyway. “We need to go back, you are freezing.”

He isn't. Lan Zhan's hands are always so warm, and Wei Ying kisses them because he can. He kisses Lan Zhan's pendant, usually tucked into his clothes, but now out because A-Yuan wanted to draw it and needed the reference. Lan Zhan patiently allows Wei Ying to worship these bits of him. Lets Wei Ying love him.

A-Yuan is nowhere to be found, which is an unexpected blessing, but everyone else is in the main living room with no dinner in sight.

"I'm fine," Wei Ying says immediately to a wide-eyed jiejie and Jiang Cheng who is on his feet and fist already tight. Wen Qing holds him down by a belt loop. “Calm down, both of you. Everything’s fine, I promise. I just need to – Lan Zhan?”

Lan Zhan is quiet and remarkably calm after everything. He hovers near and doesn’t touch Wei Ying, not knowing if Wei Ying wants his siblings to know about what has just happened. In truth, Wei Ying just wants a drink or ten.

But he also wants this.

He takes Lan Zhan’s hand and kisses his knuckles, then wrist, in a silence so absolute it feels like vacuum. The tiniest smile on Lan Zhan’s face is as devastating as ever.

Wei Ying leaves.

To find alcohol in a kitchen so needlessly massive is hard and perhaps impossible since Jin Zixuan doesn’t drink. Wei Ying still tries and goes from cupboard to cupboard quickly before anyone decides to have a talk. Wei Ying doesn’t want to talk, he wants very selfishly to get wasted and kiss Lan Zhan until his jaw gives out.

The yield is a half-full bottle of mijiu. Wei Ying takes it and snatches an orange from the fruit bowl.

Mijiu is very mild and not nearly enough to give him the state of a putty-brained safety Wei Ying desperately needs, but it hits him anyway. His cheeks burn a little and his fingers stop slipping off the orange as he peels it. Good choice of fruit, he thinks distantly as the oil hits his nose and makes him smell like a holiday and not like a spiralling lunatic. Perhaps he should text Lan Zhan and invite him into his room, but Wei Ying resents the thought of asking him to go back and sleep in his guest bedroom because of A-Yuan’s early morning wandering.

Wei Ying stretches his legs out and takes a deep breath, a little more clear-headed. His lips tingle from the kissing and biting, although the biting is entirely Wei Ying’s neurotic doing.

Lan Zhan is a good kisser. He is an excellent kisser, in fact, which is ill-timed knowledge and there was only so much comforting in how he gripped Wei Ying’s jaw. Wei Ying wants those hands back on his waist and everywhere Lan Zhan hasn’t put them yet.

He waits until the light flush from the alcohol wears off and most of the house has to be asleep, Lan Zhan included. He’ll just try, and if Lan Zhan is asleep, it’s for the best. If Lan Zhan is awake, perhaps he would like to have a drink, too.

In the kitchen, Jiang Cheng is doing the dishes with Jin Zixuan and keeps arguing about some business shit Wei Ying’s brain refuses to appreciate, which means no more liquor for him or Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan will have to make do with whatever is left on Wei Ying’s cracked lips, or go downstairs and face Wei Ying’s brother.

Lan Zhan opens his door almost immediately, but Wei Ying has no will to joke about him waiting this entire time. Lan Zhan did wait for him. He tugs Wei Ying inside and closes the door softly.

/

Jiang Cheng looks at them once at breakfast and walks back out of the kitchen with a disgusted, "Oh, for fuck's sake."

“A-Cheng,” jie admonishes in time with Wen Qing’s heavy, “Language.”

Wei Ying sips his coffee and winks at A-Yuan, who looks between the adults and hears no explanation from anyone. He had climbed into Wei Ying’s bed this morning and showed him another growing tooth, and then proceeded to pester Wei Ying to have cereal for breakfast.

“What happened?” Jin Zixuan asks. He tugs jiejie by the elbow like a lost child, which looks both stupid and funny. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” Jiang Yanli says mildly. “A-Cheng is simply adjusting.”

“To what?”

“To a new family member,” Wei Ying says. Underneath the table, Lan Zhan squeezes his thigh.

/

When Wei Ying turns the engine off in front of Lan Zhan's block and reaches to turn on the light, Lan Zhan gently pulls his hand away and nods at the sleeping A-Yuan.

"He'll be fine," Wei Ying grins. "You know how he sleeps."

Lan Zhan shakes his head and looks at A-Yuan again. They should wake him up to say goodbye to Lan-laoshi. Better yet, Wei Ying should drive Lan Zhan to his flat and give him the spare room, or Wei Ying's bed, or the keys to the flat, or everything at once. Wake up early the next morning and hear Lan Zhan breathe by his side, put a hand on his chest and feel the slow rise as he dreams of the two of them, of the three of them, and hope that A-Yuan doesn’t come barging through the door when Wei Ying decides on the most efficient way to say good morning to someone who is stubborn enough to be content with the size Wei Ying’s bed.

But they will have to make do, for now, to explain everything to A-Yuan first, that Lan-gege can come to them whenever he wants, and that he can – he will stay with them. With dada.

"I do," Lan Zhan whispers, leaning in and slotting their mouths.

In the unkind silence of the car, Wei Ying's exhales are loud, just like Lan Zhan's heart when Wei Ying trails his fingers down his neck and stops at the pulse point. Lan Zhan is pressing him backwards and leans further, moving as if to climb out of his seat and into Wei Ying's lap. They only had a handful of hours together back in jiejie's house, breathing into each other’s skin, with Wei Ying’s mind finally quiet after that. The car is not enough. Nothing but Lan Zhan waking up in Wei Ying's arms could be enough.

If he brings Lan Zhan home right now, A-Yuan will climb all over him and demand his attention, will want to be carried around by his beloved laoshi, refusing to go to sleep. Wei Ying wants to do that himself. He wants Lan Zhan all to himself, too, but even thinking about that makes his stomach hurt. Wei Ying's desire for this bubble of undisturbed closeness is wrapped in shame and guilt, but he wants this – him and Lan Zhan, no closed doors, not necessarily loud, just alone. Just for a little bit.

The tentative peace Wei Ying has made with his clamorous love for Lan Zhan is shaking like his hands that he buries in Lan Zhan’s hair and tugs him gently by it, away from himself. "You need to rest."

"Let me help," Lan Zhan murmurs against his lips. His hands roam restlessly all over Wei Ying's body. "I will walk home. You need help to take everything upstairs."

"Lan Zhan," Wei Ying breathes a laugh. Silly, kind man, his Lan Zhan. He thinks Wei Ying would let him go, banish Lan Zhan from his home after Lan Zhan has put A-Yuan to bed and said goodnight, Wei Ying. Wei Ying has been doing it alone for longer than Lan Zhan can imagine, even before he became a father. "We're fine. You need to have some quiet time after all the family sounds, mm?"

Lan Zhan frowns. "Want to be with Wei Ying and the little one."

Wei Ying feels like opening the door and sticking his head in the snowdrift. He hides his face in Lan Zhan's shoulder and immediately feels a grounding hand on the back of his neck. "You can't say that."

"You don’t want me to come?"

“No, Lan Zhan. Stop that.”

Lan Zhan strokes him down his neck and between his shoulder blades, one long, soothing motion. Wei Ying feels small and safe, like a stray kitten that has suddenly found kind hands. Like Tislit, then Isli. Lan Zhan kisses Wei Ying’s temple and forgives him this last bit of fear clinging like a burr. The armrest is digging into both their hip bones, but Wei Ying shifts closer still, breathing in Lan Zhan’s warmth, and feels home.

“I will text you when we’re home and he’s in bed,” Wei Ying says. Lan Zhan nods, still holding him. “Or, you will probably be asleep by then, so – Lan Zhan ah,” Wei Ying whisper-whines, because Lan Zhan trails small kisses from his ear, across his cheek, and lands a chaste one on the lips. Wei Ying doesn’t cry, but it’s a near thing.

A-Yuan is groggy after he is told that Lan-laoshi is leaving, but his features relax the second Lan Zhan says they will meet very soon and smooths the concerned frown between A-Yuan’s scrunched up brows. Wei Ying sees how much he wants to do more than to just hug A-Yuan. Lan Zhan casts him a questioning look. Wei Ying nods.

“Goodnight, little one,” Lan Zhan says quietly and kisses A-Yuan on the forehead and both his sleep-pink cheeks. A-Yuan, bleary as he is, blinks owlishly and lands a sloppy one on Lan Zhan’s chin in response.

On top of Lan Zhan’s own bag, there is a separate bag with jiejie’s food for him, and Wei Ying coos at the flush on Lan Zhan’s face.

“Get used to this,” Wei Ying smiles, closing the boot, “the next batch will be spicier.”

Lan Zhan ducks his head minutely and adjusts the bag straps in his hand. His ears are bright red in an instant. He hasn’t buttoned his coat, and Wei Ying itches to do it for him because of the chill. “I will.”

Wei Ying kisses him for that, and before he can cave, Lan Zhan pulls back and kisses his forehead, too.

Lan Zhan looks back several times before he enters the building; Wei Ying stands there long enough to start trembling. He doesn’t know where Lan Zhan’s flat is, but when he looks up and sees a window light up on the fifth floor, he hopes he guessed right.

A-Yuan clings to his neck and whines softly as Wei Ying gets him out of the warm car and covers his eyes from the blinding lights in the foyer and the elevator.

“Stay here,” Wei Ying instructs, tugging his coat and boots off and sitting him on the sofa. “I need to bring the kitty and our things from the car.”

A-Yuan nods, leans sideways until he hits one of the pillows, and corks off before Wei Ying is out of the door.

Tislit scrubs lazily through her fresh litter before jumping out of it and disappearing into A-Yuan’s bedroom. His bed is perpetually full of dust from the litter, and despite Wei Ying’s best attempts to teach her out of sleeping in either of their beds, it’s easier to wash the sheets than to look into A-Yuan’s big eyes and say that the kitty can’t sleep with him. It’s not like Wei Ying himself minds waking up to a purring blob on his chest.

Wei Ying finishes stacking the fridge with the leftovers and unloads the washing machine after midnight. Lan Zhan hasn’t answered his message with the dark photo of A-Yuan already asleep, but that’s expected. He must have showered and gone to bed before Wei Ying has dealt with waking his son up for the third time. Jiejie and Jiang Cheng got the same message in the group chat, but the answers were vastly different. Jiang Yanli sent a myriad of hearts and asked about Lan Zhan, while Jiang Cheng was annoyed because he couldn’t see A-Yuan properly. Wei Ying wonders how soon a-jie will add Lan Zhan to the family group chat. He might as well beat her to it at this point.

The phone buzzes.

Lan Zhan: Finished the leftover niangao.

Wei Ying loves him so much his chest rattles with it.

me: good boy

me: why are you awake?

Lan Zhan: Talked to ge. Why are you awake?

me: how’s he?

me: daddy responsibilities <3

The dots on Lan Zhan’s part appear and disappear quickly several times. Wei Ying huffs a laugh and takes mercy.

me: gone through one load of washing and stacked the fridge so that when bun wakes up so he can snack while I sleep

Lan Zhan calls him.

“What else do your responsibilities include,” he says, voice unnecessarily deep, the second Wei Ying picks up. Wei Ying bumps his forehead on the cold fridge door.

“Oh, you know, sewing toys Tislit bites to the preliminary death, watching the same cartoon until it becomes a background set for your nightmares, dealing with a very cute child when he’s poorly because he has an ear infection and wants to scream his little lungs out, and you have a deadline to meet. And cuddles. Lots and lots of cuddles.”

Lan Zhan hums. There’s a rustle of sheets, and then he yawns. Sleepy boy, Wei Ying thinks, busying himself with wiping the counter from the condensation the containers have dripped. My boy.

Lan Zhan finally settles and his voice gets muffled by layers of cotton around him. “I would like to share these responsibilities with you.”

“Lan Zhannn,” Wei Ying drawls, “you already do. You take care of him a lot of hours in the day.”

“Want to take care of Wei Ying.”

“Ai, that’s naughty. Has anyone told you how naughty you are?” Wei Ying clicks his tongue, swiping too hard and knocking down the pepper grinder.

Lan Zhan instantly sounds way more awake than he should be. “Wei Ying?”

“Sorry,” Wei Ying mumbles, “bad reflexes.”

“You are a father.”

Wei Ying rolls his eyes. “How’s your brother?”

“Happy for me,” Lan Zhan says. He yawns again. He could be yawning in Wei Ying’s kitchen or even bed right now, but Lan Zhan is home and he is talking to Wei Ying despite Wei Ying denying him that. “He would like to meet you when he comes for a visit.”

“Oof, Lan-da-ge wants to talk to me? Get to know the guy who roped his baby brother into a relationship through his precious pupil? Should I prepare a speech for the defence?”

“I talked to you sister,” Lan Zhan says, which, fair. “You didn’t rope me into anything.”

“Liar,” Wei Ying smiles. “Of course I did. Look at you, all mine now.”

Lan Zhan makes a small sound that may be a half-conscious hum of approval or a sleepy request for more. Wei Ying loves him. Wei Ying loves him so much and feels it in every cell of his body and every crevice of his soul. Wei Ying loves him and it doesn’t hurt.

“Sleep, sweetheart,” Wei Ying says quietly. His palms almost throb with the need to feel the warmth of his beloved and touch him, curl into him.

“Lan Zhan?”

“Mm.”

“Which floor do you live on?”

Lan Zhan is barely awake when he manages, “Fifth. Why?”

Wei Ying hangs the cloth on the oven door to dry, smiling so hard the corners of his lips might tear. “Nothing. Night, Zhanzhan.”

Lan Zhan lets out a long mmm and doesn’t hang up. Wei Ying hears how his breaths even out, becoming deep and scant. He kisses the phone screen.

/

A-Yuan is tucked into his side, both hands curled into loose fists under his chin, when Wei Ying blinks awake with great effort. He shifts carefully to avoid dislodging a leg resting on his stomach, and finds no phone on the nightstand, but it’s clearly past eight already. It must be snowing, because the room is dimly lit and Wei Ying hears a struggling car somewhere on the streets.

A-Yuan very rarely indulges in such lie-ins, so Wei Ying touches his forehead just in case. A-Yuan lets out a tiny nn at the press of Wei Ying's lips on his forehead and tilts his face up for the kisses once the temperature is deemed safe.

Wei Ying runs a hand down his son’s back, his shoulder and arm. He can feel that the sleeves of the pyjama top are getting too short on the forearms, and it’s definitely not because the fabric shrunk in the wash. It’s A-Yuan’s favourite set with whales spewing water and stars out of their blowholes, and he is slowly but surely growing out of it. By the end of spring, Wei Ying will have to repurpose it somehow. Maybe Lan Zhan knows how to sew and they will make some kind of a soft toy for A-Yuan, or a small comfort blanket that will cover half of his body come autumn. He lacks properly sized summer pyjamas altogether. Almost all the clothes A-Yuan grows out of Wei Ying donates, knowing deep down that saving them for the future is too much to ask the fate for.

Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying scrubs a hand over his face and smiles, palm resting over his eyes. Hiding. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me either. But Lan Zhan always sees through him, sees through Wei Ying’s smiles and hits the sore spots, some hidden better than the others, and soothes them with his presence alone. He had met Wei Ying in the moment of despair to begin with, saw a struggling parent and just – helped. Quietened a child and then, like a mother hen he is, tucked A-Yuan under his wing and mitigated a child’s worries.

Wei Ying knows that Lan Zhan doesn’t play favourites – he has kids hanging off his arms and legs on a daily basis, crouches or kneels in front of every baby to be on one level with them, and gratefully accepts half-melted chocolates, pretty flowers for his hair, and made-up stories. His patience and attention are always undivided, sincere, absolute. Kids love adults who can listen to them, and Lan Zhan is nothing if not the best listener one could ever hope for. A big sea that makes you fall in love with it no matter how often you see it, or sit on its shore and watch the sun dip below the horizon. Unfailing.

Wei Ying rolls onto his side and carefully slides A-Yuan’s leg off himself and onto the mattress, scooping him closer still. A human-sized hot water bottle, he kicks like crazy in his sleep. When he was very little and slept with Wei Ying, he’d migrate on the bed and find his way into Wei Ying’s side no matter how far apart they slept or how hot the weather was. Wei Ying would wake up with a foot – at best – on his face or unconsciously tug A-Yuan onto his chest and tuck him into his neck, chin resting comfortably on the fluffy head. The amount of drool Wei Ying’s throat has experienced is too creepy to think about.

A-Yuan’s breathing stutters briefly when Wei Ying shifts him to lie more comfortably on the pillow and he makes a sound about it, so Wei Ying hushes him and his displeased frown disappears, but he settles fully only after he has reached out and patted Wei Ying’s chest. Made sure that Wei Ying is not going anywhere. Silly little bean. Wei Ying will have to purchase a bigger bed not because of a suddenly bestowed gift of a beloved, that too, but because A-Yuan will soon be too big, and Wei Ying obviously wants to at least nap with him until A-Yuan gets all teenage-cringy about it.

Wei Ying’s mind circles back to Lan Zhan and sharing a bed. He feels affection-bold and imagines naps where A-Yuan is lying between them, or just Wei Ying observing them in the confines of his bedroom, or – Lan Zhan’s bedroom? If Lan Zhan allows. If he wants that, if he naps at all. If his bed is big enough to fit them and their needy cat.

He should talk to A-Yuan about the whole thing today, before the workweek starts tomorrow. Lan Zhan will meet them in the kindergarten hall and Wei Ying will blush and be all weird about not touching him in public. He needs to tell A-Yuan about not disclosing Lan Zhan spending New Year with them for both Lan Zhan’s privacy and also a simple peace of mind for everyone involved. Wei Ying doesn’t care if he is dragged in the parent group chat and in the pesky comments shot in his direction every now and then, but A-Yuan will get affected the most here. Children are cruel, and at the behest of their parents, things will get nasty very quickly.

A-Yuan is still sleeping, and Wei Ying follows suit.

The hands stroking his cheeks are much warmer than they should be, Wei Ying’s alarmed mind supplies, and he peeks one eye open. A-Yuan is standing by the bed and practically vibrates from all the extra sleep he’s gotten.

“I brought coffee,” he says urgently. Wei Ying circles his wrists, smudges kisses over both palms and murmurs a thank you into them. “Lan-gege said good morning to me already. He texted.”

Wei Ying's stomach drops so hard it might have made a dent in his spine. Lan Zhan wouldn't send anything that could indicate a relationship until Wei Ying has discussed it with A-Yuan, but Wei Ying needs to make sure anyway. "Just good morning? Did you reply?"

"No," A-Yuan says, eyebrows drawn. "I waited for you. But, dada, I made coffee and I cleaned the litter box. Can we talk to Lan-gege now?"

Wei Ying releases A-Yuan's wrists and rubs his eyes briefly before a cup is thrust into his face. "Yeah, little one. We can."

He feeds Tislit first and heats some leftovers for both himself and A-Yuan in the meantime, bless the aluminium tins being all full and delicious-smelling in the oven. A-Yuan hops around him all the while and demands to see gege and ask him to go play in the snow in the afternoon.

"I want to make snow angels," A-Yuan says. He is standing on his little stool by the counter and fishing pickled chillies out of the jar. "Lan-gege's angel is going to be sooo big, a hundred times bigger than mine."

"A hundred," Wei Ying says. He inspects the half-filled fridge shelves, a couple of sad-looking aubergines in the fresh section, and closes the door. They need to go to the shop to buy fresh vegetables for the week, and since they have none right now, A-Yuan is trying to cajole Wei Ying into letting him try adult food. Hence the chillies.

A-Yuan neatly arranges the fiery clump on the plate before hopping down the stool and bringing the plate to the table. "Yes. So big you can see it from space."

Wei Ying grabs him under the armpits and hauls him onto the hip in one swoop. A-Yuan makes an abortive sound.

"Bun, I need to talk to you."

A-Yuan wipes the flyaways out of his face, eyes big. "Is it about Lan-gege?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Wei Ying takes a slow breath. The last time he did it, A-Yuan was still little and didn't really realise what it meant when Wei Ying told him that he loved someone and that that someone would like to meet A-Yuan and become friends with him. How everything went horribly wrong after that. How terrified Wei Ying is, now.

"Little one," Wei Ying begins, and stops.

The words he is supposed to say tumble over each other like train cars in a crash, screeching, warped. He should say that no matter who Wei Ying dares to love, if they leave, it’s never A-Yuan’s fault. That Wei Ying is not going to love him less if A-Yuan doesn’t want anyone else in their home, in their lives, because it’s all he’s really known – Wei Ying and his siblings, and A-Yuan might not like having somebody else in their home. Wei Ying wants to apologise, too, for sort of stealing Lan Zhan for himself a little. For the fact that if Lan Zhan really does stay, there will be times when Wei Ying will want to be alone with him, be gross and kiss Lan-laoshi on the mouth, and A-Yuan will definitely not want to see that. That no one in the kindergarten can know that he and Lan Zhan belong to each other, now. Maybe one day Wei Ying will be brave enough to ask A-Yuan if he hates him for not having a mother.

"You can tell me," A-Yuan says with all his unholy kindness. He strokes Wei Ying's shoulder for added reassurance. Wei Ying doesn’t know who he inherited it from. Jie, most probably.

Wei Ying breathes out a laugh and flicks A-Yuan’s nose. “I like him very much. He likes me too.”

“Like mama liked you?”

“Yes. No,” Wei Ying falters, dumbfounded. “I – yes, like that. But Lan Zhan is not going to leave.” He promised. He kept whispering the same words deep into the night, letting Wei Ying clutch him so hard he left painful bruises on Lan Zhan’s shoulders and sides. “He loves you very much. He loves me too. So I wanted to ask you something.”

A-Yuan nods very seriously.

“Do you mind that? Your favourite gege loves your dada and he wants to hold my hand. Like a big boy. A boy a hundred times bigger than you.”

Wei Ying expects anything, from teary eyes to screeching support, but not A-Yuan saying evenly, “I know he loves you.” Wei Ying’s brows shoot up to his hairline. Were they so obvious? “He looks at you when you can’t see,” A-Yuan elaborates.

“A-Yuan, that’s – ” Wei Ying protests automatically, but then it really, really catches up with him. Lan Zhan – what? “He does?”

A-Yuan nods vigorously, then starts counting on his fingers. “In the kindergarten, in guma’s home, in the field, when you drive him home and he doesn’t go inside until we’re gone. I saw that.”

Wei Ying looks away, honest to heavens blushing in front of his son. Everything that A-Yuan has just said would mean barely anything if it weren’t for the confession already said. Wei Ying could say that Lan Zhan was being a diligent teacher and making sure A-Yuan was well, but now it means that Lan Zhan might have been checking on him as well – silently, insistently, and, if A-Yuan noticed it, unsubtly. Wei Ying would preen at the sudden discovery, tease Lan Zhan about it, but right now it makes his insides twist and coil like a cobra’s body.

“I know that you love him, too,” A-Yuan continues softly. “You talk in your sleep.”

Wei Ying laughs. He laughs and A-Yuan starts laughing too. Wei Ying feels tears well up in his eyes and wipes them furiously with one hand, but they keep dripping down his cheeks and onto his t-shirt, and his laughter is more of a pathetic chuckle after a few long breaths and a throaty, “oh no.” A-Yuan realises that something is very wrong and stops giggling.

“Dada, what’s wrong?”

He shouldn’t see Wei Ying breaking down like that.

Wei Ying sets him down, a string of apologies and excuses to escape to the bathroom to cry ready on his tongue, but A-Yuan clings to his neck and peppers kisses all over Wei Ying’s face, mumbling don’t cry and it’s okay and love you, love you, love you.

Wei Ying goes down on his knees and buries his face in A-Yuan’s little shoulder. His pyjamas smell a little like Lan Zhan’s cologne from when he was carrying A-Yuan to breakfast during their New Year stay, allowed A-Yuan to play with his pendant, let A-Yuan nap on his lap and not once moved during it. From when Lan Zhan was holding A-Yuan tightly and didn’t know that Wei Ying was watching him, too.

A-Yuan strokes his hair and scratches at the scalp soothingly like they both do to Tislit when she’s anxious and her eyes are all black from fear during summer thunderstorms. It helps. A-Yuan, accepting him when he’s like that, undone and small, helps. Having a son for a friend helps.

The sobs recede. Wei Ying feels like curling on the floor and inhaling a week’s worth of dust. He does, pulling A-Yuan on top of him and relishing in the way A-Yuan wiggles his way up like a little caterpillar until he headbutts Wei Ying’s chin and sighs, tired. The oven dings. Tislit emerges from whatever hideout she’s generously sprinkled with her hair and meows into Wei Ying’s face. She rolls onto her back, paws up, either mimicking them or demanding tummy scritches, or both. Neat chaos. A family.

“When have you become so grown up?” Wei Ying asks, poking A-YUan's sides. “Lao-Yuan, huh?”

A-Yuan shrieks, digging his knees into the hollowness of Wei Ying’s stomach. “I dunno! I – noo, it tickles! Dada – !”

“Do you have any idea how much I love you, Yuan-er ah? Do you?” Wei Ying needles. “I loved you when you were so small you were just two lines, and now you are all grown up and know when adults are being silly.”

A-Yuan pushes himself off and scrambles to his feet and away from the onslaught, hiding behind the furthest table leg. He wheezes something incomprehensible and goes limp at once, plopping himself on the floor. He’s giggling still, watching Wei Ying through the slits in the back of the chairs. He looks like what Wei Ying must have looked like when jiejie had chased him around the house for the first time since he’d been taken in. Messy and terribly loved.

Wei Ying pats his stomach to assess the number of bruises A-Yuan’s kicking is going to yield. Not that many, apparently. “So you approve?”

“Approve. But, why did you cry?”

“Because my son loves me so much he kept dada’s secret without me even asking you for it. I didn’t know I loved Lan Zhan, but you did. Little smarty-pants.”

A-Yuan crawls out of his very see-through asylum, stands up and declares solemnly, “I’m gonna be an astronaut.”

“Yeah, you are,” Wei Ying smiles. The snow keeps falling. The cars are still stuck. His heart is so full the International Space Station crew can probably see it from space. “You are.”

Breakfast is quiet. Wei Ying cuts three millimetres off a chilli pepper to go with some fish and A-Yuan chews it thoughtfully, scrunching up his whole body while at it, but he doesn’t spit it out. A tentative smile blooms on his face and then it’s a full-on give me more grin. Wei Ying will have to reconsider his chilli oil stock. Jiang Cheng, too.

“Good? Feels a little like eating one of Lan Zhan’s cacti, right?”

“Uh huh,” A-Yuan sticks his tongue out to show off his empty mouth. “More.”

“Just a little, or your tummy will hurt and we won’t get to make snow angels,” Wei Ying says. He slices off another microscopic piece and then shoves the rest into his mouth to prevent theft. While A-Yuan chomps down on the fish, Wei Ying moves the plate with the chillies away from his reach. Again, to prevent theft that will result in stomach ache and possibly vomiting.

“What are you going to do with your red envelope money?” Wei Ying asks.

“Nothing. I have everything I want.”                                                             

Wei Ying rocks back on his chair and looks at his son. A-Yuan is harassing a stray bay leaf around his plate with a chopstick, swishing his legs idly. Wei Ying thinks about his own parents who, according to the limited data he’d dug out in dusty and digital archives and through relentless pestering of Jiang-shushu, never had simple lives. Wealth doesn’t mean you can have everything you want. Case in point: Wei Ying’s siblings. Money A-Yuan was given is enough for a fancy toy or two, a load of books and thick space magazines, but Wei Ying doesn’t need to ask if A-Yuan only means something he can buy. Every time Wei Ying looks at him, he feels proud of his son, and now, sitting across a little human who easily denotes what a sense of life is, he feels proud of himself, too.

“You didn’t say good morning to Lan-laoshi,” A-Yuan reprimands suddenly. “He misses you, and you still haven’t replied.”

Wei Ying puts a hand on his heart. “You are right and I plead guilty. I was too busy loving my son to reply to him. I shall rectify this misdeed right now.”

A-Yuan gives him such a dirty look, having no idea what rectify means, that Wei Ying has to bow his head to hide his face-splitting grin. Somehow it feels like in the relationship with Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan is going to be the one with an ally. Wei Ying is more than happy to live with that.

“I’ll text him right now.”

“You’d better,” A-Yuan says, hopping off the chair and beelining straight for the TV.

Wei Ying chokes on his second coffee.

The message was sent at a civil nine in the morning, but it’s almost midday now. Wei Ying scratches his faint stubble and marvels at a very unassuming Good morning, little one. Makes sense why A-Yuan thought Lan Zhan was addressing him.

me: who did you mean, sweetheart?

Lan Zhan video calls before he finishes counting to ten. Wei Ying is met with a dad angle before Lan Zhan sets the phone down.

“Whoever sees it first,” Lan Zhan says as he turns his back – his ass – to Wei Ying. His forearms are bare and he returns to cleaning the back wall of his fridge, apparently. He’s in sweats.

“What am I propped up against, mm?”

“Soy.”

“And why didn’t you dress like that in jiejie’s house?”

Lan Zhan looks over his shoulder. “Because I respect her.”

“You can disrespect me and clean my fridge,” Wei Ying says. And then, just because he can, “Missed a spot in the left corner.”

Lan Zhan, this extremely self-aware of how he looks asshole, indulges him and leans into the fridge to carefully clean said corner. His back muscles shift and his ass – well.

“Good boy,” Wei Ying praises. “I’d like to employ your services. I can’t reach the topmost cupboard and I’d like to have my spotlights checked. Are you familiar with electrics?”

“You can stand on a chair to reach the cupboard.”

“Duh.”

Lan Zhan throws the dishcloth into the sink and shuts the fridge, then pointedly pours himself a glass of water like Wei Ying is going to take heed of his example. The last time Wei Ying willingly had water was when he took a dose of painkillers that could knock out a horse, what, almost two years ago, when he cried himself into a headache?

“I want to kiss you,” Wei Ying says. He pulls one knee to his chest and rests his chin on it. Lan Zhan looks at him over his glass and keeps drinking water in proper, small sips. “I woke up today and thought about napping with you. Do you nap?”

“No,” Lan Zhan’s voice is funny because he speaks directly into the glass. Working with children affects him more than he can possibly fathom.

“But would you? With me?”

“Yes.”

Wei Ying preens a little. “You’re propped up against my second coffee of the day. What are you doing after being all productive in that kitchen of yours?”

“I need to repot some plants and cook,” Lan Zhan says. He sits down and folds his arms, pillowing his head on them and looking at Wei Ying with sad cat eyes. He looks very soft and like he belongs in Wei Ying’s kitchen. “I want to kiss Wei Ying, too.”

Wei Ying stares at him, Lan Zhan stares back. It’s not a sombre kind of gazing or an ill silence. They might as well be in one room and pining for each other, sitting within arm’s reach. It makes Wei Ying’s stomach hot and heavy with the knowledge that he now has Lan Zhan in every sense possible, but he is, unfortunately, still a little dumb with fright – and that’s okay. Lan Zhan had said so.

He snatches the phone and kisses the screen and the camera, smearing whatever oil’s left on his lips over both. On the other side, when he looks at the screen, is just black. Wei Ying guesses it means a hug.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth yet, ew,” Wei Ying scrunches up his nose. He’s not sure Lan Zhan can hear him because of his chest. “Sorry for that close up.”

“I don’t mind,” Lan Zhan says, muffled.

Wei Ying sighs as Lan Zhan sets his phone back against the bottle of soy. He wipes the screen clean with the corner of the t-shirt, and if Lan Zhan sees a sliver of his belly, it’s on him.

“I want to ask bun to not disclose us,” Wei Ying begins. Lan Zhan sits up so straight it must hurt his spine.

“Why?”

“I don’t want him to be bullied because I love you. I don’t want other kids to feel like you choose him over them because I love you, because I know you don’t, you won’t . Because you will defend him if other kids say shit like that, and their parents will fuck the kids up even more because of that when they find out. I don’t want you to get bullied too, you know.”

Lan Zhan shakes his head and touches his pendant. He looks, astonishingly, more nervous than he was when he confessed. “The kids will not say anything that you, or Yuanyuan, will not like.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Lan Zhan insists. He gets up, disappears inside his apartment, and returns with several drawings that he lifts for Wei Ying to examine.

There are people and there is a sky with loads of stars in it. The crowd is obviously the parents and the kids, but there are two people standing uninvolved, holding hands. The clothes and Lan Zhan’s separate tent are painfully familiar.

The other two drawings have two people kissing in the middle of some meadow and what looks like the hall of their kindergarten. Wei Ying recognises the benches and the greenish colour of the walls. There’s a smaller figure lurking in the background of the third drawing, and it definitely is A-Yuan with his toothy smile and the t-shirt with the solar system on it.

None of the three looks like they were done by A-Yuan.

“How do you know it’s – ” Us. Wei Ying knows he sounds stupid, but to see that pre-schoolers have been shipping them like main characters of some show for months would be cute if it wasn’t for his son being in the midst of it.

“They told me.”

Wei Ying flinches.

He knows A-Yuan doesn’t tell him everything, doesn’t talk about any little clashes he might be having with other kids. Wei Ying doesn’t blame him and never could, and he knows A-Yuan would tell him – Lan Zhan would tell him – if there was anything that went beyond regular squabbles between children. But A-Yuan never told him about this. He listened, silently, or perhaps was even asked if his dada was in love with his favourite teacher. He watched Lan Zhan receive such drawings and told Wei Ying nothing.

Wei Ying knows that by not bringing this topic up, Lan Zhan was protecting both him and A-Yuan, because a reaction is what gets a thing going, even if it’s not anything malicious. He helplessly scrubs both hands over his face.

A-Yuan had asked him for a sibling from a tummy and for a dog once, in one conversation. He was two and a half and he knew that other children around him and in cartoons had something he wanted and thought he could get if he asked his dada. Wei Ying had knelt before him and said that he could get him neither. A-Yuan, features tense from mulling over the double denial, had started with the easiest part.

"Why no doggie?"

"Because dada is scared of them."

"Why?"

"Because they bit me when I was very little. Like you are."

Wei Ying had braced himself for a very mild explanation as to why he'd been bitten, but A-Yuan's features had turned even more severe.

"No doggie," he'd said, and flung himself at Wei Ying. "Never. I protect dada."

Wei Ying had shuddered and clutched him close, overwhelmed by the force of A-Yuan’s trust and love for him at all times as it is, but especially after admitting one of his biggest fears. Then Wei Ying had said that he couldn’t get him a sibling because he didn’t have a mommy to give him one, adoption being an option he considered much further down the line exactly because of that, and A-Yuan cried. He knew he had a mommy, Wei Ying would not lie to him about that, but he couldn’t tell him why she left, so he told A-Yuan she left because of dada. All  A-Yuan knew about her was how she looked, that she loved him and loved dada. And then she was gone. 

He knew that his mommy left them. Dada’s new friend liked dada very much and he left. With Lan Zhan, Wei Ying wonders how A-Yuan didn’t pick fights with other kids about the alleged love interest.

“After the field trip,” Lan Zhan admits, “several kids started drawing us and gifting me their art. I asked them to stop. They did.”

“But?”

“But they still role played family for a little while. Me and you.”

Wei Ying breathes until his stomach stops spasming and trying to give the breakfast back.

“A-Yuan never told me about it. No one told me about it.”

“He didn’t know,” Lan Zhan says firmly. He flips the drawings face-down. “It happened when he was ill. By the time he came back, the children had stopped playing and drawing. It didn’t last.”

The partial relief is so overwhelming it forces Wei Ying to double over and let out a wounded sound, muffled by his cupped hands. Of course A-Yuan knew anyway.

“Lan Zhan, do you know what he told me earlier today? He said he knew I loved you because I talk in my sleep. He said you looked at me when I didn’t see. He knew, Lan Zhan. As much as I want to keep this a secret, I think we’ve already failed. And the drawings… That was almost half a year ago. Six months , Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying murmurs. “How – how long have you loved me for?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t answer. Wei Ying lifts his head and finds him looking at his knees. “Lan Zhan?”

“Longer than that.”

Longer than that. Wei Ying wants to slap himself for both being so slow and for making Lan Zhan look and feel like that.

“Sweetheart, look at me. Please,” he says. Lan Zhan looks so guilty it shreds Wei Ying’s soul. “Me too. I mean, I knew I loved you when you left after dinner. I called jie and said that I – Zhanzhan. You should’ve seen me after I came home from your failed date. And before that I just really, really wanted you to smile at me. I wanted you to look at me, ge.”

Lan Zhan’s tormented expression softens bit by bit, he unclenches his jaw and lets out the tiniest sigh. His ears are all red. “I did.”

“I know you did, sweetheart,” Wei Ying smiles, “look at all the evidence.”

Lan Zhan shoots him such a betrayed look Wei Ying can’t hold back a snicker. It really is ridiculous, all of it.

“Yuan-er,” Wei Ying bellows, “come say hello to your favourite person that’s not me or guma or shushu.”

A-Yuan shrieks, “Lan-gege!” and barrels into the kitchen with a handful of puzzle pieces in both hands. “Gege, good morning!”

Lan Zhan shifts in his chair, as if scooting to one side will help him see A-Yuan sooner. Wei Ying feels like a douchebag for sending him away yesterday and the happiest person at the same time because of how eagerly A-Yuan climbs him like a stump and drops puzzle pieces into Wei Ying’s lap on his mission to get to Lan Zhan despite everything, and Lan Zhan doing everything possible to make sure that A-Yuan is always protected. Even if it means protecting him from Lan Zhan himself. 

“Morning, little one,” Lan Zhan says. Wei Ying sticks his tongue at him. “How did you sleep?”

A-Yuan stretches his arms out and almost slaps Wei Ying in the face. “I had a big sleep! Dada slept even longer than me. I brought him coffee, I can reach the coffee machine by myself!”

“You are very tall,” Lan Zhan agrees, “thank you for making coffee for your dada.”

“I make it every day. Dada used to hold me, but now I’m so tall I can reach it by myself.”

A-Yuan rocks back on Wei Ying’s lap and talks about the chillies, then asks Lan Zhan if he’s ever tasted a cactus, if he likes to play in the snow. Wei Ying hands him several puzzle pieces and it derails A-Yuan’s train of thought on how he needs to see how deep Lan Zhan’s snow angel could be so that A-Yuan could hide in it completely.

“My puzzle,” A-Yuan declares proudly, showing off a piece of something that belongs to a planet, “I’m almost done. Can I show it to you when it’s done?”

“Of course, Yuanyuan.”

Don’t tell him I cried Wei Ying whispers threateningly into A-Yuan’s ear to prevent further oversharing, so A-Yuan looks directly at Lan Zhan and says, “Dada cried.”

Wei Ying bites back a long curse. A-Yuan just hops off of him, screaming bloody murder. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan calls, anxious, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Lan Zhan, really, it’s nothing, stop making that face,” Wei Ying says, lifting the plate to the camera. “See? Breakfast is being had, we’re missing only one component.”

“Which is.”

“You,” Wei Ying grins.

Lan Zhan is unconvinced. He doesn’t buy it and looks at Wei Ying the same way he must look at very disobedient children. “Why did you cry?”

“Because I have a perfect son and now I have a perfect boyfriend too, and they both love me so much I will combust if I think about it too much.”

This seems to work, because Lan Zhan’s expression changes from stern to mildly embarrassed. Being a perfect boyfriend is indeed taxing for him.

“So, the whole hiding thing,” Wei Ying waves a hand, “if the kids are onto us, the adult must’ve been discussing very nasty things about us for a while now. Lan Zhan, we’re stupid. We could’ve been doing those things for many months.”

Lan Zhan shrugs. 

Wei Ying finishes his already cold breakfast and Lan Zhan makes himself tea. There is no rush, anyway. Lan Zhan is not coming to live with them just yet, although Wei Ying suspects A-Yuan would have no objections if he did. Lan Zhan, perhaps, even less than that.

“Wei Ying.”

“Mm?”

“I’m familiar with electrics.”

/

Monday morning is survived thanks to the half-naps Wei Ying had grown to appreciate when A-Yuan was the length of his forearm and a little past that. He showers, brushes his teeth, and spends most of breakfast-making and eating with his eyes closed. He whines until A-Yuan ditches his book and combs dada's hair instead. Wei Ying naps harder while he's at it.

They had a very brief talk last night and the overall conclusion was: nothing is different from now on except Wei Ying picking Lan Zhan up after work and driving him home. When A-Yuan asked whose home, Wei Ying, immobilised by his child's perfect logic, texted Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan said, "Wherever you want me," leaving the choice up to him.

Brutal and unfair.

"Bun," Wei Ying says when the caffeine finally kicks in and he can blink without risking falling asleep on the spot. "I was thinking about inviting gege for dinner. You good?"

"Tonight?"

"Tonight. But it’s a secret."

A-Yuan flings the backpack onto his shoulder and bends to kiss Tislit goodbye.

"'kay. Can we have chocolate cake, too?"

"Aiyo," Wei Ying clicks his tongue, "is it a bribe for you or for Lan Zhan?"

"What's a bribe?"

"When you give someone something good so that they do whatever you want."

A-Yuan beams. "For me."

"Come here, you cheeky - " Wei Ying growls, which makes A-Yuan screech and speed-run out of the flat and down the first flight of stairs.

Lan Zhan called him after A-Yuan went to bed last night and Wei Ying had the honour of witnessing his knifework as Lan Zhan cooked a very late dinner, and Lan Zhan watched him sort out A-Yuan's toy basket after all the New Year's gifts. Wei Ying felt a little delirious at the unabashed domesticity, the long-forgotten comfort of it. Lan Zhan in his proper home clothes, in his spotless kitchen that he made a tour around just for Wei Ying, sleepy and hungry.

"Should've kidnapped you and fed you dinner," Wei Ying smiled, only half-joking. "We had fish-fragrant aubergines. The little one's on his way to emptying my chilli stacks."

"A tragedy," Lan Zhan said. The oil sizzled and spattered a little too much, a sound of love-caused negligence. "I do not mind kidnapping."

Wei Ying squeezed the wrong toy and spooked his cat.

Lan Zhan ate and Wei Ying munched on the sesame crunch in solidarity.

Wei Ying had gotten used to seeing him every day, to sharing breakfast, lunch, dinner and Wen Qing's snacks with him in a span of a week. He had lived with Lan Zhan under the same roof and watched him cook in jiejie's house and jiejie had said nothing about it. His jiejie, who very gently steers you out of the kitchen the second you attempt to take over her zone of responsibility. Wei Ying had remembered what it was like to have a beloved within arm's reach. Wei Ying had learned very quickly what it was like to be Lan Zhan's beloved.

"Okay," Wei Ying exhales when they park at the gate of the kindergarten. They are a little early despite his attempt at sleeping through every spare second. "Okay, let’s go."

Inside is post-celebration amiable. Both teachers and parents are well-rested and the kids are discussing what they got for New Year. A-Yuan sees A-Yi and beelines straight for the unfamiliar set of owl charms on his backpack.

Lan Zhan emerges ethereal as always and gets beset by his ducklings in seconds. Wei Ying's stomach flips when A-Yuan runs up to him and says something, and Lan Zhan's gaze snaps to Wei Ying immediately. It is inebriating, to be the centre of his attention. Wei Ying feels like crawling up to him and wedging himself between the kids to get more. To take all of it.

A-Yuan couldn't have said anything besides good morning, but Lan Zhan looks like all of Wei Ying's evening plans have been disclosed and he wants dinner now. Wei Ying wants that, too, but instead he gives Lan Zhan a wry smile and beckons A-Yuan to come back.

"Have a good day at work," A-Yuan says into his shoulder before pulling away. He's fully on board with this whole not-so-secret situation and knows that if someone asks if there is something between his baba and Lan-laoshi, he doesn't have to lie, and if someone's too nosy about it, he has to tell Wei Ying. But Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan will step in earlier should anything happen while they're in the kindergarten.

A-Yuan grins toothily, swinging their hands. Little rascal. Wei Ying ruffles his hair and casts the last glance at Lan Zhan's red ears.

/

"Ying-di," Xiao Xingchen says, savagely pinning a list to the corkboard in his office, "you look like all the good luck wishes have already come true for you."

"Do I."

"Yep. You also look like you didn't have to meet your husband's distant family."

Wei Ying twirls a severely bitten pencil between his fingers. "I don't have a husband, Chen-ge."

Xiao Xingchen hums thoughtfully. The corkboard looks threateningly full and with a lot of urgent reds on it after all the days off, and both their phones light up with notifications so often Wei Ying has a feeling the Suez Canal is having a moment again. "Yet?"

"Yeah," Wei Ying says. He has a moment to realise what Xiao Xingchen's just said before Xiao Xingchen starts patting his shoulder patronizingly. "Yeah, yet."

Lan Zhan texts him during naptime, and Wei Ying genuinely feels like calling him just to hear something other than the yells about the fucked up border papers and a string of issues with their customers because of that. At least the Canal is functioning.

Lan Zhan: Tell me the address of your office.

me: laoshi?

Lan Zhan: I'm ordering lunch for you and I need the address for the delivery.

me: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

me: lan zhannnn

me: lan zhan no

me: i have lunch packed

Lan Zhan: You do not. Yuanyuan said you were very tired this morning and didn't pack any lunch for yourself.

me: you believe everything that monkey says?

me: my blood’s conspiring behind my back, I am WRONGED and WOUNDED at my WORKPLACE

Lan Zhan: Did he lie?

He didn’t. A-Yuan very rarely lies, and when he does, he is very aware of the fact that Wei Ying knows what he’s doing. No, he didn’t just try to eat Tislit’s treats, and Wei Ying was right there, scrubbing the dinner table clean after the paint pots had been knocked over. Dada, I only watched two short cartoons, and it can’t have been two hours already. No, I didn’t eat the cake before lunch and I don’t know whose those cream-smeared handprints are.

Wei Ying spins in his chair, feeling fizzy and cherished and coddled.

me: so you know what I’d like for lunch huh

Lan Zhan: Address, please.

Wei Ying sticks his tongue out, takes a selfie and sends it to Lan Zhan along with the address, to which Lan Zhan sends a couple of extremely lunch-unrelated messages about Wei Ying’s tongue.

The heat from kung pao prawn and the dry-fried green beans Wei Ying eats is nothing compared to how hot his cheeks and ears are.

Somewhere between the twelfth email and sending warnings about the side loading, Wei Ying notices that it’s the end of the day only because he suddenly needs to turn on the desk lamp to scribble down the notes, because the light from the screen is not enough. He snaps his head up to look at the clock.

He’s running late.

Wei Ying curses through the chewed up lunchtime chopstick he snapped in a rush of frustration and finishes writing the note standing and with his left hand, right hand already tugging the coat off the hanger.

It’s not like it’s the first time he’s late to pick up A-Yuan, but it’s the first time he gets to pick up – yeah. Lan Zhan is coming with them, Lan Zhan is coming home with them, even though he doesn’t know about it yet. Wei Ying honks furiously at the asshole who cuts him off so crudely he bounces in his seat when he hits the brakes. It doesn’t affect his mood in the slightest.

The kindergarten parking space is full when it shouldn’t be, because Wei Ying is forty minutes late, which is only a little reassuring. The parents and the kids, hand in hand, trickle out of the front gate and nod at him, and he all but skips past them. He’s going to hold A-Yuan’s and Lan Zhan’s hands when they go home.

A-Yuan cannons into him like a torpedo and whispers-yells into Wei Ying’s ear that he didn’t tell Lan-laoshi about his secret and that Lan-laoshi knows that dada was very sleepy this morning. He giggles and then just collapses onto Wei Ying’s chest, sighing. Wei Ying kisses him on the top of his head and says nothing. He can’t be mad at A-Yuan for trusting Lan Zhan so much he shares things that he used to only tell his guma or shushu – that his silly dada is doing his best, but it’s not enough sometimes.

“Wei Ying.”

A-Yuan whips around in his arms and Wei Ying lifts his eyes too, and his stomach somersaults.

Lan Zhan is watching them, as he has been for many months, but now that Wei Ying himself is a permanently besotted thing, the affection in his gaze is so barefaced and honest Wei Ying wonders how people are not pointing their fingers at them. How he himself managed to misinterpret it for so long. Wei Ying finds he cares very little about everyone else’s opinion if Lan Zhan decides to kneel too and kiss him then and there.

“Hi,” he creaks. “Lan – Lan-laoshi. Hi.”

“I need to show you something,” Lan Zhan says, and oh, Wei Ying already knows this voice. “Yuanyuan, can you please wait for dada for a couple of minutes?”

A-Yuan uh-huh’s and gets thoroughly distracted because Wei Ying gives him his phone as appeasement.

Lan Zhan shoves his tongue into Wei Ying’s mouth the second Wei Ying kicks the door shut and takes a breath for an inappropriate joke about desecrating a school desk. Something falls off the wall when Wei Ying hits it full-force and Lan Zhan cushions the blow to his skull with a fist in his hair.

Wei Ying tries to be reasonable and quiet - because they’re in the kindergarten, in the room where little kids, his child, learn how to count and read cute and illuminating stories, where Lan Zhan and Xu Wenling spend hours upon hours shaping future generations, where he should not kiss Lan Zhan like he really wants to - but every intelligent thought evaporates from his mind because Lan Zhan starts making soft grunts that Wei Ying would happily trade his soul for. It strips his conscience of the woeful vestiges of common sense.

Wei Ying whimpers and wriggles to climb him like a utility pole and doesn’t moan about it just yet, he just breathes very excitedly, but Lan Zhan slips his hands under the coat and into the back pockets of Wei Ying’s jeans and grips him. Wei Ying jumps and wraps his legs around Lan Zhan’s waist, wet boots and all, and locks his ankles.

Wei Ying gets the upper hand and tangles his fingers in Lan Zhan’s hair and manoeuvres him to his mouth’s content until Lan Zhan switches tactics and pulls away, mouth red and curved smugly. He is so pretty like that, kiss-rumpled and unrepentant at his workplace. Absolutely appalling and detrimental to Wei Ying’s psyche. He has started sweating a little and nudges Lan Zhan impatiently with a heel, because if he spends one more second looking in Lan Zhan’s pleasure-hazy eyes, they are done for.

“Gege, what’s this for? So impatient ah,” Wei Ying grits out as Lan Zhan pops open the top shirt buttons with his teeth and starts to enthusiastically maim the collarbone. “You said a couple minutes. What if he barges in and sees us right now?”

“You wanted to kiss me,” Lan Zhan murmurs between the licks, as if it absolves him from this kind of menacing behaviour. Then, quieter, “Missed you.”

Wei Ying sighs and kisses the crown of his head. “I was going to – sweetheart, wait, listen, I wanted to drive you home and sulk over voice messages for the rest of the evening, but maybe you’re free this evening? At least?”

Lan Zhan hums, busy.

“How about dinner?” Wei Ying says and unclenches his shaky legs. They really need to go.

“When?”

“Now.”

Lan Zhan looks up and casts a glance in A-Yuan’s direction. He looks so undone and happy Wei Ying could probably get away with kidnapping him once and for all.

“His baby science episodes air every Monday evening, he’s dead to the world for twenty minutes. I can cook dinner in that time and you can kiss me. You can cook dinner and I can kiss you. We can – ”

Lan Zhan kisses him and smiles, smiles, smiles.

Wei Ying tries to school his features into something remotely resembling his thick face. “How do I look?”

Lan Zhan strokes his cheekbone, no better himself. “Happy.”

“That’s not fair, your touch undoes my every effort,” Wei Ying whines and steals another quick peck. “Horrible. Say something that will make me frown.”

“Traffic.”

“Ai, you’re helpless. Yuan-er requested a chocolate cake for dessert, maybe you want anything specific?”

“Wei Ying.”

“Mm?”

Lan Zhan’s quick breaths tickle Wei Ying’s throat. Both his arms are wrapped around the small of Wei Ying’s back, thumbs brushing over the sides in slow swipes. Wei Ying feels how comfortable he is – Lan Zhan is loose and heavy in his arms, dragging small kisses above the collar of the dress shirt. If Lan Zhan doesn’t mind crowding Wei Ying against a wall in the kindergarten, how can Wei Ying shy away from holing him up in his home?

“What are you laughing at?” Wei Ying asks, shoving him lightly on the shoulders, but Lan Zhan clings and makes affronted noises about being disentangled. He sounds like a bear cub. “Zhanzhan, we need to – ah, you can cuddle me all you want after we’re out of this building, I promise. If you want, we can have a takeout and forego cooking altogether in favour of kissing while A-Yuan learns about Mars craters.”

He pats Lan Zhan’s hair to smoothness when Lan Zhan pulls away. Half of his face is pink from being pressed into Wei Ying’s neck.

“Want to cook,” Lan Zhan says. “Twenty minutes is too little to learn about craters on Mars.”

“You are very wrong, my love, it’s actually a perfect amount of time to learn about them when you’re five and you think Perseverance or Curiosity will spot aliens at some point. Or dig them out, which is more viable.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes widen slightly. “Say that again.”

“Curiosity or Perseverance will spot aliens at some point,” Wei Ying says solemnly. “I believe this too.”

“No. Before that.”

Wei Ying runs the sentence backwards in his mind. Lan Zhan is not entirely wrong, though, twenty minutes is not enough, but A-Yuan is still tragically little to learn about Mars’ methane conundrum. Wei Ying frowns, but then it all suddenly clicks and he dissolves into a smile. “My love. Lan Zhan, my love, my darling. Beloved. Light of my life, fire of my loins – ”

“Quiet,” Lan Zhan rasps and covers Wei Ying’s mouth with his hand. Wei Ying laughs and licks his palm, but this time, Lan Zhan doesn’t give in and just glares. Wei Ying loves him.

At home, A-Yuan brings Lan Zhan Xiao Hua for an inspection and looks extremely pleased with himself when Lan Zhan says that Xiao Hua has indeed grown since he brought it.

“Like me,” A-Yuan chirps, “we grow together.”

The cat is just as excited to have their laoshi back, so Lan Zhan has to put her on his shoulder before he goes to wash his hands, because Tislit does that thing when she destroys people's clothes by clawing at them to stay close to her human. Lan Zhan ducks from Wei Ying’s hands when he tries to take her away.

"No," Lan Zhan says stubbornly, "we missed each other." Wei Ying is horribly outnumbered in his own home in minutes.

He turns the hob on and puts the skillet on top. Dinner in the first half of the week is mainly reheating whatever he bulk-cooks on Sunday, so this shouldn't take very long.

Lan Zhan's arms snake around his waist as soon as Wei Ying whips out his spatula and tosses some spices into the pan. "What's for dinner?"

Wei Ying's stomach flips hard. "Whatever this no longer single father cooked yesterday."

Lan Zhan hums appreciatively into his hairline and resumes the neck kissing, more forward than in the kindergarten classroom. Wei Ying did promise that Lan Zhan could cuddle him all he wanted, so he just tilts his head and bares more skin for Lan Zhan to play with.

Wei Ying makes him change into his clothes, which are supremely tight on Lan Zhan's shoulders and a little short on his ankles, and it makes A-Yuan laugh.

"Gege grows too!" he giggles. He's covered in chocolate crumbs and so far has stolen Lan Zhan's phone twice to play some strategy game.

Wei Ying hears the clank of dishes and the sound of the litter box being taken care of as he reads the bedtime story with A-Yuan, who treated the fact of Lan Zhan staying over for the night as a given.

"Dada."

"Mm?"

"Where Lan-laoshi is going to sleep?"

"Where he wants, bean."

A-Yuan hums thoughtfully and pats the space beside him. "He can sleep in my bed, if he wants."

"I'll tell him," Wei Ying promises. “I love you.”

Wei Ying stays in bed and strokes A-Yuan’s forehead long after he’s fallen asleep. He gets bigger and taller and heavier in Wei Ying’s embrace what feels like every other week, and kicks harder in his sleep, too. He isn’t kicking right now because he is exhausted after the first day of kindergarten, tucked in and chocolate-dopy, kissed into a peaceful slumber.

Lan Zhan is on the sofa being Tislit’s designated human cuddling service for the evening. Wei Ying could never imagine that a cat could be louder than a person, but here he is: his cat is draped over Lan Zhan, purring so hard Wei Ying swears he feels the vibrations in the floorboards, and his Lan Zhan, eyes closed as he methodically, diligently strokes her entire body. He must be exhausted, too. Too bad Wei Ying has things to do to him.

Lan Zhan hears him shuffle closer and blinks. Not only is he tired, but he looks anxious, too. “How is he?”

Wei Ying grabs Tislit under her belly and dumps her on the floor. Lan Zhan’s expression changes from worried to heated faster than Wei Ying climbs into his lap.

“Done,” Wei Ying says, clenching his thighs around Lan Zhan’s. “My turn.”

Lan Zhan meets him halfway, hands on Wei Ying's waist, on the bare skin the next instant.

The kiss is filthy and wet and soul-healing. It wipes out every thought in Wei Ying's mind and burns its way through every cell of his body.

It's not how they kissed on the balcony, or in the guest bedroom, where Wei Ying was shaking so hard his teeth clattered and he bit Lan Zhan several times before Lan Zhan realised it wasn't him being hot but plain choking on adrenaline and love; or against the wall in the kindergarten, sneaky and hungry, or in the kitchen. It's wildfire.

He feels sun-hot, devoured, owned. Lan Zhan's fingers dig into the knobs of his spine, dip below the waistband, grab his thighs, and bruise everything in their wake. Wei Ying lifts himself on his knees and towers over him to kiss him deeper and louder still, but Lan Zhan yanks him back down by the hair and flings him onto the sofa.

Wei Ying struggles just because. He tries to prop himself on his elbows and push Lan Zhan away with both knees against his chest, but Lan Zhan just folds him in half and wrenches his legs apart, pressing Wei Ying into the sofa with all of his beautifully considerable weight. Wei Ying digs his heels into Lan Zhan's lower back and it must hurt like hell, but Lan Zhan kisses him again, and again, and again.

Wei Ying's consciousness gets fuzzy around the edges from the lack of air and his lips feel like they've been stung by a swarm of bees. Lan Zhan's elbow is constantly slipping off the edge of the sofa and he becomes less brutal, too, but he doesn't stop. Kisses turn into licks into tugs into pecks into a solid press of lips on lips. Wei Ying wants to pass out with each breath drawn but pushes Lan Zhan's head into his neck instead and pets him while Lan Zhan takes care of his own lung capacity. Wei Ying's foot slides off of Lan Zhan's butt and hits the floor with a dull thump.

They breathe. Lan Zhan noses under Wei Ying's ear and mumbles something unintelligible. Wei Ying kisses the shell of his ear in apology for not being able to open his mouth to ask what it was about.

They roll heavily off the sofa, both loose-limbed but Wei Ying moreso, so Lan Zhan has to bodily lift him off the floor and then scratch Tislit as an apology. He is so cute.

"Yuan-er asked me where you're going to sleep tonight."

"Mn."

"I said we'll see. Where do you want to sleep tonight, Lan Zhan?"

"I don't."

"Zhan-er,” Wei Ying scolds when Lan Zhan picks him up and makes for the bedroom, “we – you need to sleep. If I'd spent a little longer with bun, you would've corked out until morning on this very sofa."

"I can go without sleep for many days."

"No you can't, you work with imps. When was the last time you stayed up past your bedtime?"

"At your sister's."

"Ah, fuck, you're right."

They share Wei Ying’s toothbrush. Lan Zhan undresses him, hands lingering where they should, which is everywhere, and then himself. Wei Ying gives him his sleeping t-shirt, possessive at the sight of Lan Zhan in it in a way he never thought possible. The t-shirt is stretched so badly it leaves even Lan Zhan’s shoulders a little bare when he moves to put Wei Ying’s phone down to charge, so Wei Ying doesn’t fight the need to suck a bruise on one. Lan Zhan jerks stunningly under his lips and bites him in five different places for that.

Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything about the bed that Wei Ying bought after A-Yuan’s mother had left and he couldn’t stand sleeping beside the empty space that would have been her. Wei Ying calls it a no-hookups-bed, but in reality, it somehow feels less cruel to curl up into a pitiful ball on a smaller bed than on a giant one.

It’s not that late yet, but both of them are tired and Wei Ying can’t keep his eyes open no matter how much he wants to turn around and watch Lan Zhan drift to sleep. Lan Zhan mouths lazily at his neck, content with everything.

Wei Ying yawns so hard it makes his eyes water. He hears Tislit knock something over that does not shatter or break, thankfully, before she jumps onto the bed. She kneads his calf for a bit and settles in the space between their legs. Lan Zhan yawns too, stroking the thin skin over Wei Ying's ribs, nose tucked into his shoulder. Wei Ying doesn’t ask how long it’s been since Lan Zhan had a chance to hold someone who was not a child not out of jealousy, but because he is fairly sure he is going to cry if the answer is “a while”. Lan Zhan is – he is perfect, brilliant, funny, beautiful and so, so kind. The way he just accepts Wei Ying dragging him to different places, into his family, into his bed, wears Wei Ying’s clothes and doesn’t make himself seem smaller, but just – belongs here. With Wei Ying.

"Lan Zhan."

“Mm.”

“See you tomorrow, my love.”

"See you tomorrow, Wei Ying."

/

He wakes up habitually comfortable – alone, warm. Wei Ying smacks his phone and cuts off the blaring alarm.

The little space beside him is cool and the bedsheet is wrinkled. He touches it and smooths down the evidence of Lan Zhan's attempts at rolling over during the night. Neither of them got a good night's sleep, and a sweet, hushed morning after is out of the question because it's Tuesday, for one, and because Wei Ying is painfully unaware of Lan Zhan's morning routine.

Lan Zhan is awake and not even in the shower because the bathroom is quiet and dark. The door is ajar – not like Wei Ying leaves it, wide open to make up for the poor air circulation. Wei Ying is only a little disappointed he wasn't invited.

The door to his bedroom is closed for the first time in many, many months.

Wei Ying smiles at the ceiling, at the sun, at Lan Zhan's clothes that are folded atop the chest of drawers, which means he is still wearing Wei Ying's, the wet towel Lan Zhan has hung on the doorknob, and rolls out of bed.

The TV is on and the weather forecast is barely audible, but there's no one in the living room. Maybe it's a habit of Lan Zhan's, exactly like Jiang Cheng, to turn on the TV or the radio, like his father did when they were little, because sometimes silence becomes oppressive.

The presenter promises sunny weather for the rest of the week, which means puddles upon puddles from the melted snow, and maybe, Wei Ying thinks, if you ask the universe well, the beginning of spring. Almost a year since they moved into this town.

Wei Ying tiptoes into the kitchen, where A-Yuan is currently chattering Lan Zhan's ears off about his dream about polar bears. He peeks around the doorframe and sees Lan Zhan standing by the stove and frying something. Smells like eggs and tomatoes.

"Dada's coffee now," A-Yuan instructs.

Lan Zhan nods and beckons him over, hauling A-Yuan snugly onto his hip. "This button?"

"Yeah!"