Chapter Text
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, come here!”
Suppressing a sigh, Lan Wangji turned away from the door to their apartment building and walked over to his excited boyfriend, currently crouched down on the sidewalk.
“Look!” Wei Wuxian pointed at a sandy mound. “Anthills!”
Lan Wangji waited for the explanation of whatever was remarkable about these particular anthills.
“When you usually see anthills,” continued Wei Wuxian, predictably, “they’re like small cities, right? Kind of like our apartment complex—a bunch of buildings with a bunch of people inside. Well, but ants. So, like, an ant complex. But not complex like a mental complex but like—”
“Wei Ying.”
“Right, right, but do you see here?” He pointed at one of the hills and Lan Wangji obligingly leaned in closer. “This pair of hills here is curved at the top, almost like the soil wasn’t strong enough building material but ants don’t do shoddy construction and then leave it so this might be intentional, which would mean that there’s variated structural concepts which is like, architect ants doing daring new things. Lan Zhan, this may be the design of the ant version of Frank Lloyd Wright. How cool is that?”
Lan Wangji looked at Wei Wuxian, his breath caught yet again by how much he loved him. His ability to notice the smallest and strangest things, his curiosity about the world, his delight that splashed across his face like sunlight, the lightning speed of his mind to connect seemingly disparate information and invite the listener to marvel along with him, his generosity in sharing his joy over and over and over—how could Lan Wangji not love him? How could anyone not love such a brilliant and beautiful man?
"I wonder if there’s a way we could see through—oh.” Wei Wuxian interrupted himself as he finally looked up at Lan Wangji. “Oh, I know that look. That—you want to rail me into next week, that’s what that look is.” His grin widened and Lan Wangji loved him even more for having spent the time to understand even his minute facial expressions—although, to be fair, Lan Wangji wanting to rail Wei Wuxian into next week was a guess that would be accurate more often than not. “Well,” said Wei Wuxian, standing and brushing off his faded jeans, “fortunately I am such a fan of that look. And that plan. The ants can wait. Sorry, ants, but I have a gorgeous boyfriend who has that expression and even Ant Lloyd Wright isn’t better than that.”
Lan Wangji let himself be led by the hand into the building, his heart full beyond measure of love, love, love.
***
Someone had kicked the anthills. It was a strange thing to notice—Lan Wangji, unlike his irrepressible boyfriend, did not notice the small things around him all that often. Wei Wuxian called him focused, though many others had called him robotic; there were routines, patterns, boundaries to the world. It took Wei Wuxian’s chaotic sprawling into Lan Wangji’s life to show him how big the world was, boundary-less and teeming with interesting things. Lan Wangji thought of Wei Wuxian as his interpreter, translating the incomprehensible noise of everything into a language he could understand, and he would never stop being grateful for it.
Lan Wangji had learned, over the five years of knowing the unstoppable force of Wei Wuxian, to remember the things he pointed out—inevitably they would appear in a conversation whose beginning half was entirely in Wei Wuxian’s mind and Lan Wangji would scramble to catch up to the constant movement of his thoughts. It helped if Lan Wangji could keep some of the referents in his own mind so that the distance between what Wei Wuxian was thinking and what he actually said was slightly less.
Wei Wuxian had gone down yet another research rabbit hole about the anthills after pointing them out two weeks ago, which meant that Lan Wangji knew more than he would ever need about insect construction habits but also meant that he had started keeping an eye on the little city, carefully stepping around the mounds each time he returned from work or the store. It was inevitable that someone would knock them over—he understood better than most how the person wouldn’t even notice—but there was a strange kind of sorrow about it, this destruction of Ant Lloyd Wright’s engineering daring. He stood for a moment, looking at the abandoned anthills, and wondered where the ants would go next, and marveled at himself caring about ants in front of an apartment complex of all things, and loved Wei Wuxian again for teaching him to look at the world like this.
“No!” he heard shouted with the voice of the one constantly on his mind. Lan Wangji’s head snapped up. “Stop!”
Lan Wangji took off toward the sound, rounding the corner of the building to see the toolshed in the side yard.
“I said no!” came Wei Wuxian’s voice again from inside the shed. Lan Wangji shucked his messenger back to his back and pulled at the door of the shed—locked? Could you even lock a cheap toolshed from the inside? “Get off! Please, don’t!”
Lan Wangji looked for the join just under the closure on the door, feeling for the switch from the enforced mechanism to the thin metal underneath. Built-from-a-box sheds like this were not made for durability and Lan Wangji kicked with all his might into that vulnerable point, popping the mechanism free and twisting the door inward with an unholy screech of material. He tumbled through, uncaring of the long scratch on his leg now that bled through his torn trousers.
The shed was filled with the detritus of all toolsheds—garden implements and buckets shoved behind a lawnmower and several toolboxes—but in the corner was an Army-style cot. Wei Wuxian lay on that cot, his arms bent over his head, his t-shirt rucked up around his elbows, a man straddling his hips with one hand on Wei Wuxian’s nipple and the other curled into the button of his jeans.
Lan Wangji went cold, artic rage flooding his veins, as he strode to the cot and lifted the man off Wei Wuxian by the collar of his shirt. The man’s feet scrabbled for purchase as Lan Wangji yanked him backward. “See here—” he began and Lan Wangji distantly felt his knuckles scrape as he punched the man so hard he fell instantly, not moving.
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” came a gulping litany, drawing Lan Wangji’s focus away from the unconscious heap at his feet, “Lan Zhan, you’re here, you’re here.”
Putting one knee down at Wei Wuxian’s side, Lan Wangji looked him in the eye. “I’m here,” he agreed, his voice unrecognizable under the layers of anger and fear. He reached up to pull Wei Wuxian’s shirt back down and examine his hands. They were zip-tied at the wrist to the frame of the cot, the skin underneath chafed raw by the plastic as Wei Wuxian had struggled. Lan Wangji swallowed, damming the artic flow to the side as he searched for something to cut the ties. “Hold still,” he said once he’d found a pair of shears, and Wei Wuxian wrapped his fingers around the metal bar to keep the tremors rippling through his body from making his hands shake. Lan Wangji cut the tie and Wei Wuxian sprang up, launching himself into Lan Wangji’s arms. Lan Wangji held him tightly as Wei Wuxian sobbed into his shoulder, his hands running soothing patterns down Wei Wuxian’s back. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, Wei Ying, I’m here.”
After a few minutes, the trembling subsided enough for Lan Wangji to risk letting go with one arm and pulling his phone out of his pocket, his other arm still braced around Wei Wuxian. “Nine-one-one, where’s your emergency?” came the clipped voice after he dialed.
“There’s been an attempted—there’s been an assault,” Lan Wangji said, his voice still rigid and strange as he gave the address and answered the woman’s questions. After he hung up, he noticed the blood on the pillow. “Wei Ying,” he gasped, the cold sloshing over the top of the dam, “Wei Ying, where are you hurt?”
Wei Wuxian curled even more tightly into his chest. “Head,” he murmured into Lan Wangji’s collarbone.
Lan Wangji put his phone back in his pocket and ran tentative fingers over the raven-black hair, finding a still-bleeding mess at the base of his skull. “Wei Ying, can you tell me what day it is?”
Shaking his head, Wei Wuxian squeezed. “Lan Zhan, don’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Lan Wangji reassured him. “I’m here, Wei Ying, I’m here.”
The rattling noise of the stretcher told Lan Wangji the ambulance had arrived. He had no idea how long it had taken as he gently rocked Wei Wuxian on the cot and the other man did not wake up. He answered the questions of the paramedics as best he knew how—he had punched the man once, the man who was their building superintendent, the man who so often chatted with Wei Wuxian at the mailboxes, who asked Wei Wuxian technical questions sometimes about building structures, who took advantage of Wei Wuxian’s brilliant engineering mind and now took advantage—
“Sir, I need you to let go so we can put you on the stretcher,” said one of the medics, and Lan Wangji felt Wei Wuxian tighten his grip. Lan Wangji’s ribs strained under the compression and he didn’t care, but he knew that Wei Wuxian’s head was bleeding and that head wounds were always tricky and he could not bear to risk anything, to risk Wei Wuxian. “Wei Ying,” he said softly, ducking his head, “I will be right with you.” He felt Wei Wuxian breathe and nod, slowly letting go and allowing himself to be guided onto the stretcher. Lan Wangji followed close behind, hauling himself into the back of the ambulance and distantly realizing the attention of the medics to his own bleeding leg and bloodied hand.
“We’ll need to get a statement at the hospital,” said one of the uniformed officers Lan Wangji hadn’t even noticed arrive, and Lan Wangji nodded blankly as the doors were closed and the ambulance drove off.
***
There were too many people to talk to at the hospital. This was Wei Wuxian’s gift, talking to people; it was he who could strike up a conversation with anyone, he who could remember someone’s favorite color and the name of their cat (but never of the person), he who would know how to handle the building scream of frustration at repeating the same information over and over and over in the sweltering heat of the emergency room and then the medicinal chill of the patient room. But Wei Wuxian was not talking, lying glassy-eyed on the bed as the machinery of the hospital moved around him checking for all the internal injuries Lan Wangji could not fix. It was not until he was wheeled into the room with the MRI machine that Wei Wuxian began to respond, thrashing about in the bed.
“We need him to lie still so we can check for a concussion,” said one of the technicians. “Can you get him to stop moving?”
Lan Wangji almost laughed at the question; no one could get Wei Wuxian to stop moving. Movement was in his blood, in his soul—he was in constant motion, always, a river carving its way through the world. “I will try,” he said.
The tech let him into the machine room and he held Wei Wuxian’s hand in his own. “Wei Ying,” he said, and switched into Mandarin, their language of commands, of rules, of safety. “I need you to stop moving. I need you to lie still so they can take their images.”
Wei Wuxian latched on, gazing at him with wide eyes.
“Tap twice if you understand,” said Lan Wangji.
Two taps on his wrist.
“Good boy,” said Lan Wangji, “you are doing so good for me.”
“Lan Zhan,” rasped Wei Wuxian, “don’t leave.”
“I’m not leaving, baobei,” Lan Wangji replied. “I will not leave you. You know what to say if it is too much?” He had no idea how he would handle things if Wei Wuxian safeworded out of an MRI scan, but he needed both of them to pretend they had some kind of control here, today.
Wei Wuxian nodded.
“Say it.”
“Radish.”
“Good boy. Lie still.” He squeezed Wei Wuxian’s hand and stepped back, letting the look of fear on Wei Wuxian’s face tear at his soul and leave it bleeding.
“Sir, if you just keep your gaze straight up,” said the technician loudly to Wei Wuxian.
“He’s traumatized, not deaf,” said Lan Wangji in English, and at least the tech had the grace to look ashamed.
***
After several hours of waiting, of talking, and of reminding himself that these were people honestly trying to do their jobs, Lan Wangji realized that he had no car to drive them back once Wei Wuxian was discharged. “I need to make a call,” he said to Wei Wuxian in Mandarin, the language that seemed to have kept him grounded through all the tests and procedures. “I will be back.”
Wei Wuxian squeezed his hand and let go.
Walking away before he lost the momentum, Lan Wangji left the room and leaned against the wall as the phone dialed.
“Wangji,” came Lan Xichen’s warm voice, and Lan Wangji felt his throat close at the familiar comfort of it. He could not reply. “Wangji, are you all right?”
“Huan-ge,” he eked out, the childhood name suddenly the only one he could manage.
“Zhan-di, what is wrong?” Lan Xichen’s tone switched completely into concern, the focus of it almost palpable even over the phone.
“Wei Ying, he—I found—” He couldn’t, the words trapping themselves on his tongue, both languages failing him.
“Didi, breathe,” said Lan Xichen. “Where are you?”
“Hospital.” He heard a sharp intake of breath.
“For you or for Wei Wuxian?”
“Wei Ying.”
“Do you need me to come to you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Okay, Mingjue is getting the keys now and we’re heading to you. We’ll be there in twenty minutes, okay? Which part of the hospital are you in?”
“ER.”
“Okay. Do you need me to stay on the phone with you while we drive?”
“No. Need to be with Wei Ying.”
“Then go be with him, didi. We’re on our way.”
“Yes.” Lan Wangji hung up, realizing that he hadn’t told his brother anything about what had happened and knowing that he couldn’t have, anyway. He needed to ask Wei Wuxian if he wanted the story told.
“Lan Zhan,” said Wei Wuxian as he reentered the room, reaching a hand out for Lan Wangji to grasp.
“Jia xiong and da-ge are on their way,” Lan Wangji said. “Wei Ying—” He stopped, the words crowding thick in his throat again. He cleared it. “Wei Ying, I can tell them nothing if you wish.”
Wei Wuxian shook his head. “They’ll be wondering.”
“They can keep wondering. You do not—you do not owe them an explanation.”
“But everyone else in the ER gets to have one?” snorted Wei Wuxian. “How unfair.”
Lan Wangji pressed his lips together to keep in his commentary about “fairness,” today of all days.
“Go ahead,” said Wei Wuxian, waving his free hand aimlessly. “But—but you tell them, yeah? I don’t—but I mean, I know you don’t like to talk, maybe I can—”
“I will tell them, Wei Ying,” assured Lan Wangji, completely uncertain he could do any such thing.
“Wuxian Wei?” said a nurse as he entered the room, and Lan Wangji switched his brain back over to English as the man read through the diagnoses: strained trapezius, deltoids, triceps; lacerated wrists; mild concussion and minor hematoma above the occipital bone; bruising above the iliac crests. It had been hell to explain that some of the bruising had already been there, that the bites and green-yellow outlines littering Wei Wuxian’s body were desired, that their love was not dangerous. Lan Wangji could live another several lifetimes without having to watch Wei Wuxian differentiate what he had allowed from what he had not on the canvas of his skin.
Wei Wuxian signed the discharge papers and Lan Wangji took the prescription notes for painkillers and joint stabilizers, carefully paying attention to the way the nurse rewrapped the gauze around Wei Wuxian’s wrists against infection. “Keep it gentle for a couple of days while your head heals, Mr. Wei,” said the nurse, “and wear the shoulder brace for a couple of weeks while your muscles and tendons do their thing. Check in with your LP as soon as you can to set up a follow-up, okay?” Wei Wuxian nodded, his fingers twisting in the blanket, and Lan Wangji followed the nurse out to get any further instruction, any idea of what to do next.
“Zhan-di,” he heard as the nurse left, and he turned toward Lan Xichen’s gentle concern. Surprising them both, Lan Wangji stepped forward into a hug, holding Lan Xichen close as his body overrode years of distance to seek something strong enough to break on. “I’ve got you,” Lan Xichen whispered into his temple, “I’ve got you, didi.” His soothing strokes down Lan Wangji’s spine mimicked Lan Wangji’s own on Wei Wuxian and the parallel hurt enough that Lan Wangji remembered himself, stepping back and pulling down the dress shirt he was still in, the suit he was still wearing from having arrived just after work. Lan Xichen let him go.
“We just got the discharge information,” said Lan Wangji, his mind still bumping along in English’s cadence. “He—we came here by ambulance.”
“We’ll drive you wherever you need to go, Wangji,” said Lan Xichen. “Are you going back home?”
Lan Wangji hesitated. “Need to ask Wei Ying.”
“May we come in with you?”
It was absurd to make them wait in the hall, but Lan Wangji knew they needed to be prepared for what they were going to see. The time away from Wei Wuxian’s side chafed, but he had promised to speak where Wei Wuxian could not. “He was—Wei Ying was attacked.” He had gotten the flesh of the story listening to the bits and pieces Wei Wuxian had had to give to the police officers and the physicians, each new sliver digging under his skin and festering. “Our building super lured him into the toolshed and hit him over the head. He zip-tied him down. I came home before he—before…” His tongue refused the statement in any language.
“Oh, Wangji,” said Lan Xichen, grief in every syllable.
“What do we need to know? About what to do, or not do?” said Nie Mingjue, speaking up for the first time.
Lan Wangji was grateful for his pragmatism—grief could wait. “He is only comfortable with Mandarin right now,” Lan Wangji said, “and is easily overwhelmed. He is—he is obviously injured,” and he thanked the universe for Wei Wuxian’s clothing hiding the bites and the bruises from his own lips, his own teeth, the reality of their physical selves kept hidden from his brother’s eyes.
“We’ll follow your lead,” said Lan Xichen, switching to Mandarin, and Lan Wangji nodded curtly before sliding the door open again.
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” said Wei Wuxian, obviously distressed as he tried to stand with one shoe on, “Lan Zhan, I thought you left, I was going to catch up, Lan Zhan—”
“I am here,” Lan Wangji hushed him, “I am here, and so are Xichen-ge and Mingjue-ge. They are going to give us a ride.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, thank you! Thank you, ge, I didn’t even think—I mean, Lan Zhan is the details, right, I never notice, I never think—”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan interrupted, knowing that tone, fearing its powerfully deep roots. “Do you want to go back to our apartment?”
“You’d be welcome at our home if you’d prefer,” said Lan Xichen. “You know we have a guest room.”
Wei Wuxian grabbed at Lan Wangji as he knelt to put on Wei Wuxian’s other shoe, forgotten in the new conversation. Wei Wuxian dug his fingers into Lan Wangji’s shoulder, wincing slightly at the pull on his flayed wrist. “Er-gege, can we go home?” he said, his voice unnaturally quiet. “I—I want to go home.”
“Yes, Wei Ying, yes,” said Lan Zhan, and he tied the shoe before standing, resisting the urge to pick Wei Wuxian up in a cradle hold and never let him go again.
***
The drive back was silent, Wei Wuxian’s head leaning heavily against his window, his usual chatter achingly absent. Lan Wangji wanted to reach out to him, to pull him into his chest and curl him under his own ribcage, to hold him so tightly that fear had no room to take root.
He looked out his own window, instead.
Pulling into the lot of their apartment building, the quartet untangled themselves from their seatbelts and Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen took the unspoken agreement to lead. Lan Wangji walked just behind Wei Wuxian, almost bumping into him when he stopped suddenly on the sidewalk. Even in the dark he could see that the grass was twisted and scarred from the amount of people who had walked over it, from the weight of the stretcher and the chaos of feet. It looked as trampled as Lan Wangji felt.
“The anthills are gone,” said Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji looked. The overhead security lights highlighted the sand swept clean, almost, the sidewalk itself striped with blades of grass that had gotten caught in shoes and wheels and lay on the light concrete like haphazard confetti. Wei Wuxian took off, suddenly, around the building. Lan Wangji handed the bag of braces and pills and instructions to Lan Xichen before he followed, finding Wei Wuxian standing in front of the bright yellow X of police tape over the door of the toolshed.
“Wei Ying,” said Lan Wangji, his voice low and uncertain.
“He wanted me to look at one of the lawnmowers. The clutch was catching, he said. I was good with machines, he said. Stupid enough to have my head turned by an easy compliment.”
“Not stupid,” Lan Wangji replied, coming around to Wei Wuxian’s sightline. “Wei Ying, you were not stupid.”
Wei Wuxian raised an eyebrow. “No? Not even when I walked in and didn’t see him because he was standing by the door with a fucking brick? That’s a cartoon, Lan Zhan. That’s poor writing. That’s a cliché.”
“You were not stupid. He had asked you to help many times before and they were true requests.”
“One wonders how long I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Wei Ying.” Lan Wangji reached out and took Wei Wuxian’s hand, ignoring the limpness of it. “This was not your fault.”
Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes. “Lucky I have you to save the day, eh, Lan Zhan? Should start calling you Hanguang-Jun, bringer of light to the dark and shadowed toolsheds of nefarious villains and their inept victims.”
“You are not inept.”
“No, just completely unaware.”
“Wei Ying—”
“Leave it, Lan Zhan. Let’s not keep your brother waiting.” He turned and strode off, the long line of him a layer of dark in the night gloom.
***
It was Lan Wangji who asked his brother to stay the night. Wei Wuxian merely shrugged and rolled his eyes, dismissing the whole possibility of it, of himself. He did not say he was fine and this worried Lan Wangji even more—if he was not even pretending, if he was not hiding, if he was only accepting…
Lan Wangji called in sick for the both of them and Wei Wuxian glared at him. “I’m not sick, Lan Zhan.”
“You were in the hospital.”
“Yeah, but Jiang Cheng tells me all the time that stupidity isn’t a sickness.”
“You are not—” Lan Wangji felt his hands clench into fists and concentrated on his breathing, watching Wei Wuxian watch him with calculating eyes.
“Not--? There are a great many things I am not, Lan Zhan. Sick is among them. Well, medically sick, anyway.”
Lan Wangji continued breathing, continued focusing on loosening his hands, continued not crying, continued screaming inside. Wei Wuxian said his good nights to Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue and crossed to Lan Wangji. He hesitated and laid a tentative hand on Lan Wangji’s shoulder; Lan Wangji could only see the gauze wrapped around the wrist.
“Take your medication before you sleep,” Lan Wangji said.
Wei Wuxian grimaced. “If you say so, Hanguang-Jun,” he muttered, and Lan Wangji had never hated a nickname more.
“Didi,” said Lan Xichen after Wei Wuxian had left for the bedroom, “are you sure you want us to stay?”
Lan Wangji nodded. “I focus on Wei Ying. You focus on everything else.” He paused. “Unless you need to be elsewhere.”
“We’re here as long as you need us,” said Nie Mingjue. “That’s a good plan of yours, especially for the first few days.”
Lan Xichen looked at him. “Experience?” he said softly.
Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Lot of folks in college decided I was their brother. They didn’t have anybody else they trusted.”
“Protecting the world,” murmured Lan Xichen, reaching out and squeezing Nie Mingjue’s hand.
Nie Mingjue looked away, slightly flushed. “Nothing big,” he mumbled, and Lan Xichen smiled.
“Go, Wangji,” Lan Xichen said. “Go be with him. We’ll take care of everything else. Yes, we know where the linens are. Go.”
Lan Wangji went.
Wei Wuxian was already in bed, curled up tightly on his side under the covers, an unmoving lump that made Lan Wangji’s muscles ache in sympathy. Lan Wangji took his time getting ready, his movements telegraphed loudly as he kept Wei Wuxian’s watchful gaze in the corner of his eye. When he finally climbed into his side of the bed, he felt more closely wound than Wei Wuxian, each muscle taut underneath his skin. On his back, he waited for Wei Wuxian’s customary draping of himself as an extra blanket across Lan Wangji’s chest, a weight Lan Wangji had learned it was difficult to sleep without.
The space between them remained.