Chapter Text
He can do this in his sleep. Seriously! He, Wei Wuxian a.k.a @yilinglaozucrafts, has a Youtube Silver Play Button and thousands of followers on social media, not because of his stunning good looks, but his crazy dedication to building tiny houses out of scrap. His point is, with enough hot glue and determination, there’s nothing he can’t fix.
“There’s no way you can fix this shit in time.” Jiang Cheng says, staring down at the wreckage in the basement. Before his brother had come to find the source of the screaming, Wei Wuxian had been optimistically calling it his submission for MakerCon 2021’s Build Competition, but that name is slowly crumbling. Just like his towers – ah, there goes another one, he thinks as another set of golden spires snap, crashing to the ground.
“How on earth – you didn’t get some cheap glue off Taobao again, did you?” His brother crouches next to him, poking gingerly at some collapsed huts like they were poisonous. He almost tells him to stop, that he spent a lot of time on these huts, that the top coat of paint probably was poisonous because the acrylic paint he mixed with the black wash was like, a dollar fifty from Xue Yang’s ‘shop’, but then he realizes there’s no point. It’s already a wreck.
“Hyrule Castle has fallen,” He intones, as the castle caves in, crushing tiny plastic villagers. “Calamity Ganon has risen once again. The knight is dead,” Tipping over a yellow and blue figurine, he takes a moment to admire the paint job that had survived the flooding of Hyrule Plain. Despite soaking in water for almost five hours, the last layer of varnish he’d randomly slapped on the green slopes had held up well. He’d used all his static grass on his Shrek build three days ago and had opted to paint the terrain of Hyrule instead. Oh, and the Shrek build? Was now a real swamp in the far corner.
Wei Wuxian sighs, despair flooding his chest as he reaches for another figurine. “The princess has sealed herself to fight–”
Before his hand can close over Zelda, Jiang Cheng snatches it away. “— Jiang Cheng! Be careful with that!”
Jiang Cheng shoots him a glare. It’s a very expressive one, sweeping from Wei Wuxian over to the ruins of his miniature build of the Kingdom of Hyrule (not including the five or six neighbouring regions because he’s not that crazy) covering every inch of it, and back to Wei Wuxian again. It is a glare that screams I have no idea how you got yourself into this mess again, but I am going to leave right now and –
“I’m calling Lan Wangji.” Jiang Cheng states. He turns, cradling Zelda delicately in one hand, and makes for the stairs. It’s not the attempted kidnapping that snaps Wei Wuxian out of it, but Jiang Cheng’s threat hanging in the air.
“You can’t call him! Jiang Cheng, wait, seriously you can’t, I’ll never be able to show my face in Gusu again! Hey!” He takes one last, mournful look at the destruction of his basement, before sprinting up the stairs. He’ll stop Jiang Cheng, and then seal himself back into the basement so he never has to face Lan Zhan again.
Wei Wuxian’s current predicament can be chalked down to two things.
One: His decision to spend his extra money on twenty boards of Readifoam from the dollar store instead of actually paying people to clean the drains and pipes in his house.
Two: His bad habit of pouring paint water straight into the sink, instead of waiting for the water to separate from the paint residue.
Hey, it’s not Wei Wuxian’s fault he only has two buckets! He used to have three, but Wen Ning accidentally sat on one and broke it. Poor kid was very apologetic and offered to get a replacement, but Wei Wuxian had just seen him decide between a bagel or cup noodles for lunch and – well, he just couldn’t take the money.
Oh, and a third thing, now that he thinks about it: One of his buckets contains about three thousand Legos.
So, his basement pipes had gotten all clogged with paint, and instead of giving him some sort of warning like, dripping water, they had decided to simultaneously explode. At three pm in the afternoon. When Wei Wuxian was sleeping like a normal human being who has a normal sleep cycle!
By the time he had gone down to the basement to continue working on his build, it had been flooded. Jiang Cheng had reached just after he’d stopped screaming (it had been roughly 25 minutes).
I’m going to have to pull out of the competition, Wei Wuxian thinks as he leaps up the stairs. Cancel my panel, or change it to another topic. God, why did I agree to do a panel on something I hadn’t FINISHED? I have to tell Lan Zhan cause he’s –
The last thought feels like a solid punch to the gut. He halts in his tracks, watching dumbly as Jiang Cheng’s white socks disappear around the corner. An image of the Zelda figurine rises to his mind, sculpted by careful, precise hands, delicate stitching on her white dress. Wei Wuxian wasn’t great at figurine sculpting. It was too precise for him, and he preferred big sweeping terrains with plenty of room to experiment.
Which was why he’d asked Lan Zhan to partner with him for the competition. The two of them working as a team. The best team ever, Wei Wuxian had said.
And I’ve ruined it all.
The doorbell rings.