Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Do you think we can stay like this forever, jiejie?” 

The air is cool, the dense heat of the incoming summer in the city rapidly losing face to the cold chill of spring still blowing in from the north. It blows across Wei Ying’s alcohol-hot cheeks, makes her skin rise with goose pimples and a minute shiver run down her spine. She tightens her fingers on Lan Zhan’s, wrapped around them like the stubborn, invasive vines coiled on telephone poles she used to see all the time back in Yunmeng.

She’s too hot, and eagerly welcomes the cold. She’d been at drinks-turn-karaoke-turn-more-drinks with Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing, and had severely overindulged. It was something of a tradition for them, though it had used to be just to let go of the stress of the semester. More and more, as Wei Ying is loath to admit, she’s been using the outings as a distraction, a way to ignore the pit in her stomach that seemed to have no intention to stop growing any time soon. 

(Nie Huaisang has been hounding her for the real reason for her recent bouts of stress and melancholy. He asks all of his questions with a knowing look in his eyes, the same way he looks when he asks her about her continued singledom, like he’s privy to some sort of information that even she has not yet learned. It’s as frustrating as it is disconcerting. He has the same unconscionable look when he’s asking about Lan Zhan, though those questions are fewer and less vague than they used to be. He asks knowing questions, pointedly. In the back of her throat, it makes Wei Ying’s gorge rise a bit, because she just doesn’t know, she doesn’t know, and she’s not sure if she’s ready to admit that there is something about Lan Zhan that she isn’t an expert in.)

“Lan Zhan?” she asks quietly into the night air. She can hear Lan Zhan breathing lightly next to her, can feel the tickle of her sparse arm hairs against Wei Ying’s own skin. Even with the din sounds of traffic so many metres below in the streets, Wei Ying thinks she’d be able to discern the smallest of Lan Zhan’s noises, the minutest of movements. Wei Ying thinks that she might be able to hear Lan Zhan blink from how closely she pays attention to her. 

“I wish we could stay like this.” Lan Zhan’s voice is quiet, not sombre or lethargic, but lacking in energy. It might be the late hour, or the early near-summer insects buzzing away somewhere far below, where the rest of the world is still wide awake. Wei Ying stares up at the underside of the upstair’s neighbour’s balcony. Months ago, when Lan Zhan had been indulging in Wei Ying’s fantasies to stargaze together, she’d haphazardly taped cheap glow-in-the-dark stars there. The placement is hardly perfect, and Wei Ying had by no means been claiming to be an astronomer, but that night had been the first time she and Lan Zhan had had one of their beneath-the-stars picnics. It had been the highlight of her semester. 

Now, the stars are dull and dim, barely visible through the light pollution that still festers this high up off the ground. She wonders if she’ll have to replace the stars next year. If Lan Zhan will even still live in this flat, or if she’ll go somewhere else, closer to her uncle and brother — farther away from Wei Ying. 

“You really wish so?” Wei Ying asks. Her eyes steadily stare at the biggest star on the ceiling, willing it beyond will to shine brighter. She wonders if making a wish on this star will be granted, or if she’d be cosmically ignored the way her childhood wishes had been ignored. 

Lan Zhan tightens her fingers, squeezing Wei Ying almost uncomfortably. The bones in her fingers grind together painfully, and if it were anyone else she would have pulled away already. “Mn,” Lan Zhan hums affirmatively. Familiar and comfortable and warm. Just like she always is. 

Wei Ying’s not sure what overcomes her in that moment, but she feels the heat of tears beginning to sting behind her eyes. She’s never been a crier — dramatic and the type to overreact to any and all situations she’s put in, sure, but never the type to cry real tears. The weeks and months must be catching up to her, she thinks as she shuts her eyes. The weight of Nie Huaisang’s questions, the heft of the pit she carries inside of her, weighing down like a stone in her stomach. Her words wobble on her lips more than she would like as she utters out, “Let’s stay together, then. Just the two of us.”

“I cannot,” Lan Zhan says quietly. Wei Ying’s eyes snap open, her head turning to stare directly into Lan Zhan’s as her best friend stares back. “Football practice in the morning,” she explains. 

Wei Ying stares dumbly, disbelief colouring her face as the ghost of a smile flutters over Lan Zhan’s lips. The reaction is late, but Wei Ying can’t contain her unreserved laughter as it bubbles out of her. “Lan Zhan! You’re not allowed to make jokes like that!” she says as she tapers off into a giggle. “Ah, jiejie, this is why I love you. You’re the best; my absolute favourite, you know that? You must know, right?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t answer for a moment. She squeezes her fingers against Wei Ying’s again, painfully sharp, letting her eyes close. Her face is tranquil, at peace, the same way that she looks when she’s sleeping. Wei Ying wants to reach out, to cradle her face, to press their foreheads together and rub noses. Her heart clenches — she wants Lan Zhan so damn badly, but she doesn’t even know if she knows what she wants. She’s not even sure where these feelings had come from, isn’t sure if she’s allowed to have these feelings. A nervous laugh bubbles out of her, uncontainable, shaky, out of control. Too loud, too much. 

“Shh,” Lan Zhan mumbles quietly. “You’ll wake the neighbours.”

Wei Ying hums as her laughter breaks off. Closes her eyes, lets the cool air chill her body, and ignores the stone in her stomach that feels heavier with the words they’d spoken. 

Wei Ying and Lan Zhan had met in her last year of secondary school, the first time. 

Wei Ying had been sixteen, and she’d been sent to the same private preparatory school that her foster sister Jiang Yanli had attended years prior, in an effort to make her the best version of a young Jiang representative that she could be. 

Gusu Academy for Girls is known for many things — a strict dress code, bland food that wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as the local cuisine would suggest, and an alumni of the best of the best to pad out their records. Wei Ying was sure that there had never been a stain on the spotless reputation of the school before she’d got there. 

The first time Wei Ying had seen Lan Zhan her hair had been pulled back from her face in a severe, tight plait. Her uniform was prim and proper and buttoned all the way up her neck, held tightly in place with a necktie, half-Windsor knot perfectly centred between the lapels of her blazer. She’d been the picture of everything Wei Ying had imagined that Gusu Academy for Girls, well, girls would look like — save for one thing. The second thing that Wei Ying had thought at the time was wow, she’s so pretty.

It hadn’t been right away that they’d become friends, either. 

Wei Ying had intended to try that first day, had wanted to make conversation with the pretty girl sitting right at the front of the classroom, and had fallen flat on her metaphorical face.

“Hi,” Wei Ying started, beaming with the biggest smile she had, the same charming way Jiang Yanli always giggled at whenever they went shopping and Wei Ying flirted with the shop boys. “I’m Wei Ying!”

“You’re wearing your uniform wrong,” pretty-girl said, tone flat, and her eyes resting on the tops of Wei Ying’s thighs that had been exposed by her rolled up skirt. 

“Ah — well, that’s just because it’s cuter this way.” Wei Ying turned side-to-side, let the pleats of her skirt dance around her legs. “Don’t you think so, jiejie?” 

“I will be writing you a detention slip. Please arrive promptly at the library after your last lesson of the day.” Wei Ying had a piece of paper, written down with the details of her infraction, thrust into her hands before she could even think of a retort. The girl looked severe, yes, but Wei Ying hadn’t actually expected her to be severe. She hadn’t even noticed the silver button pinned to the lapel of the girl’s blazer, identifying her as a prefect.

“Wait, it’s my first day!” she exclaimed as the pretty prefect-jiejie started walking away. Her breath caught in her throat when she turned.

“I expect you should take this lesson seriously, then,” she said, and walked off. Wei Ying didn’t even have a chance to ask her for her name. When she showed up for detention that afternoon, pretty prefect-jiejie hadn’t been present. 

She ended up learning that pretty prefect-jiejie was actually called Lan Zhan the following day, after having made sure her skirt wasn’t rolled up as she made her way to her desk, and heard the girl’s name called out from the roster. It had taken another three days after that to have a proper conversation, one that wasn’t simply to hand her a detention slip — no running in the halls, no excessively loud conversation, and, most ridiculously, no black socks. 

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying whisper-shouted, quiet enough in the library that the strict librarian didn’t shush her, and so Lan Zhan in all her prefect perfection couldn’t slap her with a detention for causing a distraction. “Is this where you go every lunch hour? To hide in the library and study?”

“Studying is important.”

“More important than eating?” 

“I eat.”

“When?” 

“Before I come to the library.” Lan Zhan shut her book with a little puff of dust rising into the air, visible in the beam of sunlight. Wei Ying watched as her nose didn’t even twitch, and wondered if Lan Zhan even breathed. 

“Is it true you play on the football team?” Wei Ying asked instead, still quiet enough that there were no reprimands from the librarian. “I’ve never played on a team. I’ve done tennis with my sister, but never a team sport. Oh! Swimming, too, since I’m originally from Yunmeng, but my brother always says I’m just there to distract him whenever he trains so I’ve stopped going with him and haven’t been in a while.”

Lan Zhan looked at her, face blank, not saying a word. Wei Ying flashed a smile at her, the same big smile she loved to wear so much. “Aren’t you going to tell me about yourself?” she asked finally.

“No,” Lan Zhan said as she pushed her chair out from the table. The book she’d been reading was easily placed in a return cart, and she turned away from Wei Ying, making to leave the library.

“Why not?” Wei Ying asked, following her close on her heels. Now that she’d finally gotten the chance to speak to Lan Zhan, she didn’t want to waste it. “I know you play football; tell me about that.” 

“I’m on the team with fifteen other students. Feel free to ask any of them about it.” 

“Lan Zhan, so mean!” Wei Ying gasped. “You’ll let me talk to your friends, but not to you? Is it because I’m so pretty, you can’t stand the thought that you’ll have competition as the prettiest? Worried I’ll win, jiejie?” 

Wei Ying watched Lan Zhan look back at her with the poise of porcelain, like she didn’t even have to try hard not to roll her eyes at Wei Ying’s antics. “Shameless,” she said.

“Yep, that’s me!” Wei Ying giggled with a bounce in her step. “Shameless and pretty Wei Ying, stealing your spot as prettiest jiejie around. You know, if you let me give you a different hairstyle and you unbuttoned a few buttons, you might not even have to worry about me stealing your number one spot.”

Wei Ying watched as Lan Zhan gave her a once over, as if assessing if she really had any competition, as if taking in the words Wei Ying had and weighing them with grave consequence. Then — another slip of paper. Another detention.

“I would suggest wearing your skirt at the standard length as outlined in the code and ethics guidebook to avoid further detentions.”

Wei Ying didn’t have a chance to snap back, dismissed by the end-of-lunch bell warning.

Becoming friends with Lan Zhan had been a lot of nothing for weeks, and then everything suddenly and all at once. 

It started with Wei Ying, who had been told by some girls in her class that there was a party over the weekend, and it would be so cool to see you outside of school, and the call of acceptance and the desire to be wanted was too great to ignore. 

And then, Wei Ying had run into Lan Zhan — had run into, of course, being something of an exaggeration because despite Lan Zhan’s cool and aloof demeanour toward her, she still did her best to annoy Lan Zhan into a friendship with her. Thus far, it had not worked, but she had weedled herself into Lan Zhan’s schedule enough that it felt only right to invite her along to the party, too. 

“You need to come to this party with me, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying said, nearly bouncing in her seat in the library, quiet enough not to be scolded but loud enough to get the scornful eye of a few other students.

“I do not go to parties.” 

“Come on, this will be fun! There will be music, and food.” Wei Ying waggled her eyebrows suggestively, “There will even be boys.” 

Lan Zhan’s grip tightened on her book, knuckles a shade paler than they usually were. Wei Ying knew this, of course, because she had been paying particularly close attention to Lan Zhan’s hands since she’d injured herself in football practice the week prior and had worn an elastic bandage wrap around her sore wrist for a total of four days, weekends not included and Wei Ying had insisted on helping Lan Zhan with ensuring optimal wrist health. She’d done very little other than put Lan Zhan’s library books back on the return cart, but Lan Zhan hadn’t stopped her and that had felt like progress in their quasi-friendship.

“I am not interested.” Lan Zhan spoke quietly, clipped.  

“Ooh, is there already a special someone? You need to be a good wingman for me then, Lan Zhan! Help me vet a good boy, will you?” 

“There will be none,” Lan Zhan said. 

“I can assure you that there will be boys. I have intel from what I believe to be a reliable source,” Wei Ying said as she winked exaggeratedly.

“There will be no good boys.” Lan Zhan turned the page of her workbook, and started writing anew, copying some text from the thick textbook she had next to her. Leave it to Lan Zhan to do homework in the middle of the day on a Friday, Wei Ying thought. Once the words registered, Wei Ying gave out a fake, exaggerated gasp, drawing the attention of the librarian who looked at her with ire. 

Wei Ying ducked sheepishly before returning to blabbering at Lan Zhan. “You can’t generalise, Lan jiejie,” she said dramatically, splaying her arms or in front of her on the table they shared. “Though, now that I think of it, the peacock my sister is dating is nothing short of a rotten, spoiled brat. And Jiang Cheng never lets me have the bigger youtiao when we get breakfast. You know what, Lan Zhan, I think you’re right — boys aren’t shit.”

Lan Zhan fixed her with an austere look, eyes almost comically pained, like she had some deep knowledge Wei Ying simply hadn’t learned yet. It made Wei Ying burst out with laughter, even more so when she caught sight of Lan Zhan’s pinkened ears. When she was kicked out of the library, it was worth it, even if she didn’t get to confirm with Lan Zhan if she’d be coming to the party or not. 

The party was nothing special, much to Wei Ying’s disappointment. 

She has been expecting more, if she was to be fully honest with herself. The girls that had invited her had boasted of good music, good food, and good alcohol. They’d spared no details when telling her about all the fun parties hosted by the Wen’s were — be it the older brother who would bring cute university boys, or the younger who always seemed to have a good supply of alcohol that he legally shouldn’t be able to buy, but no one says no to the Wens, you know. The girls said it with a knowing wink, an airy giggle, and a tickle against Wei Ying’s wrist like she should know, too, like the familiarity was something she was meant to understand inherently. 

The party, though, was not as expected. This one was held by the younger brother, apparently, with house music that was just this side of too loud rumbling the floors with the trembling of its bass. The alcohol was flowing — that hadn’t been a lie nor an exaggeration. Wei Ying had downed two beers and a glass of what some girl called Wang Lingjiao had been calling the cocktail of the century, though it tasted to Wei Ying like watered down cranberry juice with too much sugar and not enough hard liquor to get her anything past slightly buzzed. 

Perhaps, Wei Ying thought as she sipped idly at the lukewarm concoction, heated from the warmth of her hand through the plastic cup, the party would have been better if she’d come with friends. She wasn’t so naive as to believe that the girls who had invited her — girls who, really, she didn’t even know the names of — were her friends. She barely even talked to them. She wondered what it would have been like if Lan Zhan had come with her. 

She’d gotten her answer easily enough about whether Lan Zhan would come to the party. After an hour and a half of looking back at the door every time it opened only to be slightly disappointed that it was never the tall, pretty prefect coming through, Wei Ying had stopped looking. She wasn’t even sure what it was she was disappointed about, was the problem. She and Lan Zhan weren’t friends, they were barely even acquaintances, and Wei Ying was sure the only reason Lan Zhan hadn’t decked her yet in the weeks they’d known each other was simply because she was a prefect and had an image to uphold. 

Something about the perfect and straight-laced Lan Zhan drew Wei Ying in like a moth to flames, though, made her want to know so much more, to break through the shell that Lan Zhan wore like armour and dig around to know every little secret that was hidden beneath. Perhaps it was that she was so guarded that made Wei Ying want to know so badly. She’d always made friends easily, from when she’d been little and met her foster brother and sister and had won them over for the first time, to when she’d started her first classes at school and had shucked the chrysalis she’d kept safe in to become the social butterfly she was today.

Lan Zhan was truly the first person to be so completely resistant to Wei Ying’s charms, and it made her skin crawl like fire ants with the desire to dazzle Lan Zhan and change her mind. Wei Ying wanted to see the stony coldness of Lan Zhan’s stare crack into a smile, and there was no logical explanation for her obsession. 

She sighed dejectedly, swirling her cup around in a circle the way she’d watched Auntie Yu do with her expensive red wines the times they’d eat at a restaurant for Jiang Cheng or Jiang Yanli’s birthdays. It didn’t have the same effect, the sloshing red of the cranberry juice sticking in fat droplets to the plastic walls of her cup, but it gave her something to focus on, a distraction away from thoughts that weren’t party vibe appropriate.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing, sitting all by herself with no one to talk to?” Wei Ying heard from beside her, the sofa dipping as the boy who spoke sat down next to her. He was barely passably handsome, the kind of guy that could use a good makeover in the chick-flicks Jiang Yanli liked to watch with Wei Ying, cuddled under the covers on her bed late on Friday nights. His hair was slicked back in a bun with either too much product or simply the natural oiliness of his scalp, the strands framing his face stringy and limp. Overall he made for an unattractive character, despite the nice clothes he wore. 

Wei Ying had seen him earlier — Wang Lingjiao had been clinging to his bicep and simpering at him and striving for even a sliver of his evidently divided attention. She’d rolled her eyes at them then, and she barely resisted the call to roll her eyes now, utterly unphased by the attention he was paying to her. 

“Weren’t you with Wang Lingjiao before?” Wei Ying asked, her eyes focusing back on the waves she was making in her juice. 

“She doesn’t matter. I’m with you, now, aren’t I?” he said. “Wen Chao,” he introduced, holding his hand out like he was expecting her to shake it. She didn’t, just continued swirling her cup.

“Do you have a name?” Wen Chao prompted, his voice losing some of its false friendliness as he became obviously annoyed at her refusal to engage. 

“Wei Ying,” she answered curtly, flickering her eyes to look at him in a way that she hoped conveyed her lack of interest. She shuffled in her seat, Wen Chao having moved ever so closer to her, crowding into her space to watch the swirling of her cup’s contents.

“Wei, huh? Don’t think I’ve met any Weis. You’re new around here then? I can show you where we like to have a good time, if you’re interested.” He didn’t wait to move his hand to the scant space between them on the sofa, fingers edging eerily close to one of the large rips in her jeans, just a hair’s breadth too close for comfort. 

“I have friends to show me around, thank you.” Wei Ying moved to stand, unsteady on her feet as the alcohol she’d consumed hit her all at once now that she was no longer sedentary. She stumbled, losing her footing, only for Wen Chao to reach out and steady her as he, too, stood up.

“If you wanted me to hold you so badly you could have just asked,” he said, winking egregiously. The stringy bits of his fringe swayed along his forehead, and Wei Ying was almost positive that the strands genuinely left a streak of greasiness along his forehead and that it wasn’t just a trick of the light. She wasn’t entirely sure whether the queasiness she felt in her stomach and the back of her throat was from the alcohol she’d consumed or if it was because of the gross sound of Wen Chao’s mouth opening again wetly, as if he was going to say something else to her. 

She didn’t wait to find out, pushing him away harshly as she felt more and more like she wanted to be violently ill. When she looked around she realised that not only was the room shaky in her vision, but she realised that no one — not a single party-goer, not a single one of the girls who had invited her to come in the first place — was paying her any attention. There was no one around who cared enough about her to come to her rescue, to come make sure that she was all right and safe and didn’t need help. The realisation made her heart drop to her stomach, resurfaced a bone-deep ache that she had buried deep inside of her so long ago.

She remembered the first time she felt the ache of being all alone, of having no one who would ever go out of their way to chase her down and patch up her scrapes and bruises. She’d been only young at the time, fresh to the Jiang family, and had made some minor mistake or another that was so miniscule that she couldn’t even remember where it was she had gone wrong, but it had been enough to send Auntie Yu into a spiral. She’d yelled at Wei Ying, her voice nearly hoarse from how long she’d spent scolding her loudly. Wei Ying remembers Jiang Yanli, barely a preteen at the time, passing around dishes of food as if to ease tensions. Jiang Cheng had spent the lot of the time looking into his bowl of rice, resolutely refusing to make a sound. Worst of all, Wei Ying had felt in the moment, was how Jiang-shushu hadn’t looked at her once. There had been no attempt at comfort. 

It wasn’t the same sense of discomfort in the moment, though, because she had come to terms, to a certain extent, with the standoffish and subservient natures of her aunt and uncle respectively. She had grown never to expect them to respect her or care for her the same way they did their own children, and had since grown close with the Jiang siblings. While there was no relief in the moment, at least she knew if she made a mess of things there was a hug from her jiejie waiting for her before the night would end. In that moment, though, with no one around that really knew her, she didn’t have that same comforting thought.

“Don’t touch me,” Wei Ying finally snapped, showing her teeth like an angry animal. She didn’t care if she looked feral — all the better to deter Wen Chao and his filthy hands, she thought. 

“You’re drunk,” Wen Chao said. He slid an arm around her waist, staring at her with a look that was nothing short of a leer, lecherous and distasteful. “I can’t risk a pretty girl like you going home alone, let me take you upstairs. Make sure that someone is looking after you.” He slid his arm around her waist, fingers dipping close to her hip, where the waistline of her jeans dug into her skin in an uncomfortable pinch. She wanted to crawl out of her skin, to turn around and hit him and scratch his eyes out from the sheer audacity to look at her the way he had, but she froze, afraid of what would happen if she did. She couldn’t afford to make trouble for Auntie Yu again.

“She has someone looking after her.”

Wei Ying’s head snapped to the side so quickly she nearly lost her balance from it. 

There stood Lan Zhan, as tall and as imposing as ever. She gave off the same authoritative air that she did in school, despite the lack of her neatly pressed blazer and shiny prefect pin to adorn her breast. She was the best thing Wei Ying had ever seen.

“Miss Lan,” Wen Chao sneered, saying her name like an insult. “Not already home in bed?”

Lan Zhan ignored him, holding out a hand for Wei Ying to grasp on to, and grasp on she did. Once she was out of Wen Chao’s grasp she breathed easier, like she hadn’t even realised she’d been on the brink of drowning, and Lan Zhan had pulled her out of a riptide she’d been swept away in without notice. 

“Are you all right?” Lan Zhan asked quietly, her eyes roving over Wei Ying as if to check for any damage that Wen Chao might have caused. Wei Ying wasn’t sure if she had it in her to explain that any damage was entirely emotional, that she was perfectly fine so long as Wen Chao never looked at her again with those same beady, salacious eyes. She nodded her head instead, not wanting to say anything quite yet. 

“She’s fine,” Wen Chao said, and the roll of his eyes was almost audible, though Wei Ying still refused to look at him to confirm her suspicions. “We were having fun. She wanted me to take her upstairs.”

“Wei Ying, would you like to go home?” Lan Zhan asked. There was a rumble in her voice that Wei Ying didn’t recognise, something akin to disgust or anger that she’d never heard before, for all the time she spent teasing Lan Zhan and getting on her nerves. 

Wei Ying nodded as Lan Zhan let go of her hand, steady enough on her feet finally. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, looking toward the door and avoiding eye contact with Wang Lingjiao who was watching from the door frame to another room. 

“You can’t just come into my party and steal my guests,” Wen Chao argued, and his hand reached out to snatch Wei Ying’s wrist. He only had a grasp on her for half a second before he stumbled back in shock, the hand that had reached out to grab her now groping at his face. 

Wei Ying whipped her head around to look at Lan Zhan, bicep taut as it retracted from its extended position, having just decked Wen Chao directly in the face. Wei Ying felt her jaw slacken in shock — prim and proper Lan Zhan, who had never displayed an ounce of violent aggression toward another person, had just hit someone. Had hit someone for Wei Ying. 

Wei Ying couldn’t close her mouth from the shock.

Wen Chao gripped his nose, blood slipping over his lip to drip down onto the rug at his feet. “She was fucking flirting with me, you fucking dyke bitch,” he shouted, swinging his free hand wildly toward Lan Zhan like he was trying to grab her blindly. “You’re going to regret this so much. Someone call the cops!”

Wei Ying didn’t have time to catch her breath and shout back a retort, lionhearted and brave now that she felt like she could fight back, but — her legs were moving without her conscious thought, her wrist grabbed tightly in the grip of Lan Zhan’s strong hand. She didn’t hear the music anymore, couldn’t make out the faces or the words of the people around them, didn’t register the horror and shock on Wang Lingjiao’s face, as they all but ran from the front door of the house and into the quiet of the street. The neighbourhood was fairly residential and relatively deserted, the houses just spread out enough that the slapping of their shoes against the asphalt didn’t echo around them.

It felt like an eternity passed as Lan Zhan dragged her, running down odd streets and taking hidden alley turnarounds until they had spent so much time running Wei Ying wasn’t sure they were even still in the same neighbourhood. 

When Lan Zhan finally slowed to a stop and dropped her wrist, Wei Ying doubled over, bracing herself on her knees to catch her breath. Her breathing was no longer shaky, instead coming out in huge, heaving breaths and working her diaphragm like the piston of an engine. 

She was barely able to focus, but her eyes drifted over to Lan Zhan like a magnet to the North Pole. She realised, as she gasped for breath still, that it was her first time seeing Lan Zhan in anything but their school uniform and her tight plait. Her hair was loose, now, framing her face delicately, most of it hanging down her back, and it made her look so human, so much younger than she looked at school. She was so pretty, Wei Ying thought, enough so that it might make catching her breath even harder if she didn’t look away. 

“I didn’t know you could run like that,” Wei Ying huffed out finally after what felt like an eternity of catching her breath.

“Football,” Lan Zhan replied. Her breathing was also heavier than usual, though not nearly as frantic as Wei Ying’s own. 

“Didn’t know you could punch like that, either.”

Lan Zhan did what could be considered a shrug only to her, the action so minute that on anyone else it would have amounted to little more than a twitch. Her voice was steady as she said, “My uncle taught me how, as a precaution.”

The laughter that bubbled out of Wei Ying felt way too loud, way too crass for the moment. It started quietly, like she wasn’t actually allowed to make noise so late at night, with only the distant sounds of trains and far away traffic to remind her that she was in the land of the living, and that the world existed outside of her and Lan Zhan in that moment. Then her laughter turned into great sobs, the guffawing making way for hiccoughs to burst out of her chest. Lan Zhan stood quietly still, close enough that Wei Ying could reach out and grab hold of her if they needed to run again, but far enough to give her the space she may need. It was oddly touching, in a way, though Wei Ying would be hard pressed to explain why.

It was only after her tears had dried up, her sniffles disappearing along with the heavy breaths that she had been taking, that Lan Zhan spoke again.

“There is a twenty-four hour convenience store a block away. They have food and iced tea.” Lan Zhan stared at her, waiting for an answer. 

“Do they have ice for your knuckles?” 

“I believe so, yes.”

Wei Ying giggled, reached her hand out to the one Lan Zhan hadn’t used to punch Wen Chao, and clasped their palms together. “Let’s go, then, Lan Zhan. I can even hold your tea for you while we get that hand on some ice.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes smiled, sparkling and dazzling like the stars above them, though her lips stayed firmly pressed together. It was enough for Wei Ying — the weight she had been carrying in her chest lightening significantly. She smiled back, careless of the fact that she felt like an absolute mess of tears and snot and the lipgloss she’d been wearing at the party. The call of cheap canned sodas and cheung zai bao from under too-warm heat lamps just couldn’t be ignored, and she smiled at Lan Zhan.

“Lead the way?” 

“Mn,” Lan Zhan said, pulling her along by her hand. 

Chapter Text

The university library is so different from the library at Gusu Academy for Girls, but there is one constant: Lan Zhan’s steadily paced breathing beside her, the rhythmic scratching as she takes her notes, and the sporadic flipping of pages and cracking of book spines. 

When Wei Ying had first started at university she’d only studied in her dorm room, holed up until the wee hours of the morning crash-reading any textbook or assigned readings as outlined in her syllabi because the prospect of learning everything she could was too great of a draw against the prospect of learning gradually. It would drive Jiang Cheng crazy when he’d see her the following day, hair messy and knotted and eyes drooping with the weight of the knowledge she’d absorbed the night (morning?) before. 

It was only later, when she’d reconnected with Lan Zhan, that she finally understood the impeccable vibes of the library, of the private study rooms Lan Zhan always reserved for herself and graciously allowed Wei Ying to intrude upon to make as much noise as she might need while working on her projects and consuming her textbooks at a more sustainable pace. There had been a period, at the beginning, when she’d adamantly refused to intrude on Lan Zhan’s personal study time, thinking back to their days back when they’d been friends in high school. She’d been nothing but a nuisance, then, absolutely infuriating to be around. She had worried that it would be the same, that Lan Zhan wouldn’t want her around and would tire of her antics more easily. 

She’d learned, though, that Lan Zhan had changed. Just how Wei Ying herself was different, too.

Sometimes, though, she still is that annoying, shameless menace that she’d been as a teenager. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whines, face down on the heavy oak table they have their books sprawled across. Her voice is muffled, breath hot and wet against the lacquer of the wood, condensing in a gross puddle of Wei Ying moisture that she’ll have to wipe away with the sleeve of her pullover when she finally decides to get up. “Lan Zhan,” she says again. “If you strangle me I won’t have to go to dinner with my family. They can’t be mad at me if I’m deceased.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says warningly, not even bothering to lift her eyes away from the line of her notes she’s underscoring with a pale blue highlighter.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Wei Ying concedes. “Always so smart, jiejie. Your assessment is spot on, as always.  Auntie Yu would hurl insults at my grave and Jiang Cheng would dig up my corpse just to push me back in for ruining yet another meal with them. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan chastises again, this time looking up to look at Wei Ying, then lowering her eyes to stare at where Wei Ying’s nose is pressed uncomfortably to the desk. 

“Ridiculous, dramatic, shameless, with perturbing thought processes? I know, I know.” Wei Ying sits up, surreptitiously wiping away the moisture she’d left behind on the desk, though she knows that Lan Zhan had seen it. “I just don’t want to deal with Auntie Yu telling me once again that I’m doing something wrong. Who knows what it’ll be this time.” 

“Jiang Yanli will be there, will she not? Perhaps it will not be all negative.”

“She will be!  You’re a genius, you know that, Lan jiejie?” Wei Ying asks rhetorically, perking up, smiling at the thought. “It can’t be all bad if my jiejie is there. Even if she does bring up the wedding.”

Lan Zhan hummed in agreement. Of Wei Ying’s family, she got on best with Jiang Yanli, if only because she was the only one of them that Lan Zhan didn’t have not-always-one-sided beef with (see: her contentious relationship with Jiang Cheng). They both liked cooking and shared recipes on the odd occasion that they spent any time together. It didn’t hurt, either, that Lan Zhan’s family knew Jiang Yanli’s fiancé’s family, and she had vouched for him and his positive intentions, liked him still despite Wei Ying’s utter disdain for him. Lesbian credibility, Wei Ying had called it when Lan Zhan had told her that she had no problem with Jin Zixuan. Lesbians wouldn’t like him if he was all bad, Wei Ying had teased, as if Lan Zhan was the supreme voice of lesbian opinion everywhere. Frankly, Wei Ying did believe that, because Lan Zhan was and is the best, and has only good opinions. 

(She begrudgingly accepts that Lan Zhan and Jin Zixuan have a nice friendship between the two of them, even if she does gag a little when she hears from Lan Zhan that she’s going on one of her tea dates with the peacock. She refuses to change her opinion on him, in spite of the fact that her two favourite people obviously don’t have a problem with him.)

“I will only be a phone call away should you need me,” Lan Zhan placates, her pen stilling after she finishes whatever note she’d been jotting down.

Wei Ying smiles at that, says, “I know,” and starts packing her notebook and laptop back into her bag. She does know, very much so, since Lan Zhan had had to actually follow through on that promise before. Wei Ying can’t even remember what the argument had been about or how it had started at the nice restaurant that they’d been eating at, only that it had been after Wei Ying moved in with the Wens and Auntie Yu had yelled after her, calling her a, “No-good whore, just like you mother was back when she was still alive to spread her legs.”

Wei Ying firmly believes it’s only through Jiang Cheng holding her back physically, and Jiang Yanli holding her back emotionally, that she didn’t get charged with homicide that day. Lan Zhan had been at the restaurant in ten minutes flat, breaking who knows how many traffic laws, to take Wei Ying home. She doesn’t like to think about that dinner, or the months of tension that had followed, but she never forgets the way that Lan Zhan had wrapped her steadily in her toned arms, had rubbed her back and wiped her tears away. It was one of those enlightening moments that Wei Ying doesn't like to dissect, one of those times that made her realise what love really was, familial or otherwise. 

Neither Auntie Yu nor Wei Ying had ever apologised for the incident. Jiang-shushu had brushed it under the rug, and life went on as usual. The only difference was Lan Zhan. For all of her apparent pacifistic and ascetic aura, Wei Ying had learned that day that Lan Zhan neither forgives, nor does she forget, when she doesn’t have a good reason to. No matter how many times Wei Ying has tried to get Lan Zhan to let it go and not hold such a grudge against her family, it hasn’t worked, her efforts bearing no fruit. She still isn’t sure if that makes her happy or not. 

“Wedding plans have been going well,” Yu Ziyuan says. She speaks as though she’s not addressing the bride to be, as if Jiang Yanli is a passive participant in her own wedding. She very well may be, Wei Ying thinks, remembering just how controlling both Auntie Yu and Madam Jin are. Her chopsticks are poised, placing a slice of marinated lotus root onto Jiang Yanli’s plate. “We still have a few months to go, a-Li, don’t eat so much meat.”

Wei Ying barely manages not to roll her eyes, and restrains herself from putting some fatty beef onto Jiang Yanli’s plate herself. Leave it to Auntie Yu to find something to make sure Jiang Yanli’s wedding preparations are stressful. “Wei Ying, on the other hand,” Auntie Yu continues, “Can stand to gain some weight. The Wens aren’t feeding you well, I presume?”

Wei Ying smiles a terse little grin, like she hasn’t just shoved a mouthful of food into her face to simply avoid speaking out in defense of her jiejie’s honour. “I’m sure A-Ying has been eating well, she’s just very busy with her studies,” Jiang Yanli cuts in. If Auntie Yu is like a shark sniffing out blood in the water, then Jiang Yanli is like a dolphin, the stronger coming to defend the weaker of the pod. 

“The Lan girl surely must be feeding you? You might as well get something out of spending so much time with her.” Yu Ziyuan looks directly at Wei Ying, ignoring her daughter in favour of giving her ward a deathly cold look with her eyes. Wei Ying almost sees the thunderstorm in her eyes, the tension cracking like lightning. “Your continued association has brought nothing but a stain to us, thus far.”

“Dear…” Jiang Fengmian starts, but doesn’t continue. Wei Ying’s whole heart throbs, her chest feeling cold. Everyone is quiet at the table — Jiang Cheng keeps his head down, Jiang Yanli nibbles a slice of carrot, and Auntie Yu continues staring Wei Ying down, eyes boring into her soul like she’s staring down a bull. 

“I’m just worried for our family. Lan Qiren is famously single, and he raised a homosexual. Surely you must worry, too, that this is a learned behaviour? I have every right to worry about this.” She directs the latter half of her admonishment at her husband, as if waiting for him to contradict her or argue back. He doesn’t, though — he never does.  

“Lan Zhan has a great reputation,” Wei Ying argues back weakly. 

“Thankfully for her,” Auntie Yu says. “You don’t have the same positive image to fall back on when everyone calls you a lesbian.” 

“I’m not a lesbian?” 

“People talk, Wei Ying.” Auntie Yu is extra condescending, now. “When a-Li was your age, Jin Zixuan had been courting her for a year.”

“Jiang Cheng is still single, too!”

“A-Cheng is busy.” 

“And I’m not?” Wei Ying feels fury start to rise in her. She always tries her best to stay calm, not to let the words get to her. She can bear the pressure that Auntie Yu puts on her, can stomach the insults and sly digs and backhanded compliments. What she can’t stand is the way that Lan Zhan gets dragged into it — Lan Zhan who has been nothing but good and respectful on the occasions she’s interacted with Wei Ying’s family. 

“Come on,” Jiang Cheng speaks up finally. “You know it’s different for me,” he says, and Wei Ying immediately loses all faith in him. She shouldn’t be shocked that he’s placating his mother, she knows his patterns of behaviour, but it still stings. She’s fallen enough times to expect the pain, but the anticipation doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“It’s only different because every woman has blacklisted you,” Wei Ying says. 

“That’s enough,” Yu Ziyuan raises her voice, just enough to rein in their argument but not enough to reverberate in the room the way she used to when she’d yell at Wei Ying as a teenager. The silence is heavy, thick as freshly fallen snow after a storm. Wei Ying can barely handle it, her eyes burning, her throat closing up and too tight to swallow through. There’s only the clinking of their chopsticks against plates, and glasses lifting and being placed on the table. 

“Madam Jin tells me there will be lotus flowers in the centerpieces,” Yu Ziyuan says, resuming a conversation that had never started. 

“Yes, we wanted to feature water, with Jiang motifs,” Jiang Yanli answers, and Wei Ying spaces out of the conversation. She pokes around at her bowl of rice, but her appetite is gone. The violently red chili pepper that Jiang Yanli had placed in her bowl seeps spicy oil into her rice, but she makes no move to eat it. 

She stays silent the rest of the meal. 

After the disastrous party at which Lan Zhan broke Wen Chao’s nose, they became inseparable. 

Whether it was sitting together to eat lunch, or to study together in the library, everyone knew that where one was, the other was sure to be close behind. Wei Ying even began attending Lan Zhan’s football practices, after she’d enjoyed herself so much cheering for her new best friend in the stands of an away game. She’d even been able to pester Lan Zhan into explaining to her why she was even on the football team to begin with (a team sport her brother and uncle insisted she join so as to not completely ostracise herself from her peers. The fact that she ended up enjoying the challenge just worked out for her, in the end).

“Hey, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying asked one night when they were having a sleepover at Lan Zhan’s house. It wasn’t her first time over, not once Auntie Yu realised she could be relieved of having to lock Wei Ying in from going out to parties. She knew Lan Qiren, the uncle Lan Zhan lived with, through some distant connection that Wei Ying didn’t care to look into, and knew that he was nothing short of a disciplinarian. Thus, Auntie Yu was more than happy to let Wei Ying sleep out, for her rebellious streak to be curbed in favour of staying at home with a responsible friend. 

Wei Ying waited for an answer, waited for Lan Zhan to give some sort of sign that she was still awake. It wasn’t that late for Wei Ying, but she supposed that she also hadn’t been the one running around on a field all evening, winning the scoring goal for the school team. She would argue that her enthusiastic sideline cheering was also definitely a workout, though perhaps a less intense one, if no less passionate. 

She popped her head up from the air mattress laid out for her on the floor to watch Lan Zhan in her bed. The first time Wei Ying had seen Lan Zhan sleep she’d laughed herself hoarse, loud enough to wake not only Lan Zhan but also her severe uncle. It had been her first and only warning, and she’d made a conscious effort to be quieter since. Lan Zhan slept like a vampire, she’d chortled, teasing Lan Zhan by showing off her teeth like she was going to bite her. Wei Ying had wondered for a second what it might be like if Lan Zhan bit her, then immediately wondered why she was thinking these things to begin with, and let it go from her mind.

Lan Zhan had her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling in a steady pattern. Lan Zhan’s breathing patterns were always so stable, though, so it didn’t give Wei Ying any indication if Lan Zhan was faking her sleep or not. 

“Lan Zhan?” she asked again, a little louder. Lan Zhan didn’t move, body still and serene as a lake with no wind to make waves or ripples across the surface. Wei Ying wondered how it was that Lan Zhan was able to sleep so soundly, as if she’d been made to be perfect even in her unconscious state. Wei Ying had always been a restless sleeper, late to bed and late to rise on the days that she didn’t have to get up early. Weekends and holidays had always been her favourite for that, for being able to take things at her own pace. 

Wei Ying wasn’t sure what came over her, but she didn’t feel tired and she didn’t want to sit in silence by herself, and Lan Zhan’s bed looked so comfortable. She climbed up slowly, hoping not to disturb Lan Zhan even as the mattress dipped beneath her weight. She didn’t stop until she was laid right next to Lan Zhan, her nose almost pressed into Lan Zhan’s pristine, smooth cheek. 

“Lan Zhan, are you awake?” she tried again, voice still quiet in the silent room. There was a part of her that felt like it was almost criminal to make noise, but the part of her that called on her to tease and torment Lan Zhan was greater. She nearly shouted, “Lan Zhan!” 

“What, Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan answered, her eyes snapping open much too quickly for someone who had been asleep. 

“You’re awake?”

“Evidently,” Lan Zhan snarked, and Wei Ying smiled. She loved finally getting Lan Zhan to snap, to cease being so composed. 

“Lan jiejie,” Wei Ying whined. “I can’t sleep.”

“Have you tried to sleep?”

“No, but that’s not really the point.” Wei Ying turned her head, looking closely at Lan Zhan’s face. Her eyelashes were long enough that they could cast shadows along her cheeks under the light of the sun, but in the darkness of the room, all Wei Ying could see was the flawlessly smooth skin of her face. “Your skin is so pretty, jiejie,” Wei Ying said instead. She wouldn’t have heard Lan Zhan’s inhale if she hadn’t been so close. 

“Go to sleep.”

“I’m not tired, though, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whined. “Aren’t you still all riled up from your game earlier?” 

“I am not,” Lan Zhan said. If there was enough light, Wei Ying might have said that there was a smile on Lan Zhan’s face based on the tone of her voice. 

“Say, jiejie — you’re on the football team. There’s destined to be some interesting gossip there, no? I know, you don’t have to tell me — ‘gossipping is forbidden’ — but sometimes it’s a little fun to bend the rules, isn’t it? You have to indulge me, jiejie, I haven’t been breaking any rules recently.”

“You got escorted out of the library for yelling two days ago.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan hummed, a disapproving one, like she didn’t agree with Wei Ying. Wei Ying laughed, the sound loud in the quietness of Lan Zhan’s bedroom, but she couldn’t stop herself. Something about Lan Zhan made her feel unrestrained in a way that she wasn’t sure she knew how to explain.

“Anyway, I wanted to ask,” she said, sitting up so that she could cross her legs and lean her head on her hand. She still couldn’t see Lan Zhan’s features clearly, but she didn’t need lights to be able to run her mouth. “Gossip, right? Tell me, I heard that someone on the football team is gay. Do you know who it is?” 

“I am…” Lan Zhan hesitated, like she was choosing her words deliberately. It wasn’t any different from how she was usually selective with the things she would say, but it kept Wei Ying on the edge of her metaphorical seat, waiting to hear what Lan Zhan had to say. “I am not familiar with the sexualities of my teammates.”

“Don’t you think it's a bit weird though?” Wei Ying asked. “I mean, like, wouldn’t it be weird in the locker room? Wouldn’t you worry, jiejie? You’re so pretty I’m sure you’d be stared at, and that has to be uncomfortable, right?”

Wei Ying bounced a bit on the bed, her mind racing as she thought out loud. She’d never really paid attention to the way someone might be watching while she’d changed in a locker room, but Wei Ying knew that her own eyes were drawn to Lan Zhan and she would inevitably watch her change if she had the opportunity. She definitely wasn’t creepy about it, though, which is what made her observations different. It was just admiration, really, over the fact that Lan Zhan was so pretty and was always so conservative about her body. Even her shorts and knee socks while playing football covered her so chastely. 

“I have not noticed being stared at.” Lan Zhan sounded clipped, like her words were measured and careful, uncomfortable. 

“You’re so observant that you would notice, jiejie,” Wei Ying contemplated aloud. “I guess there aren’t any gay girls on the team then.” When she noticed Lan Zhan was quiet still, Wei Ying continued, “I don't have a problem with it, I just don’t get it. Like, why would anyone want to be that way? It seems really complicated and all, boys are so easy. It is so different, right, because boys are interesting — boys that aren’t like Jiang Cheng, or the guy my jiejie thinks is cute, I mean. Like, I guess if I were a lesbian, I think I’d just be a bit embarrassed. I don’t know how anyone could just… work with the same equipment, you know? Am I making sense?"

Lan Zhan stayed silent, her breathing steady and her chest rising and falling in a rhythm that sounded so soothing and perfect to Wei Ying’s ears. It made her slightly envious, if she was being honest, that Lan Zhan was able to sleep so soundly without having to air out all of her thoughts. She wished, fruitlessly, that Lan Zhan would speak up a little more. “Jiejie?” Wei Ying asked, finally, “You still awake?”

“Go back to the air mattress, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said. She didn’t turn over, didn’t literally give Wei Ying the cold shoulder, but it didn’t matter. There was something about the chilly dismissal, the way her eyes hadn’t even opened to tell Wei Ying to get off of her bed, that made Wei Ying feel like a stone had dropped in her stomach. She didn’t even know where the weight came from, nor the reason why she suddenly felt so short of breath, but she didn’t say anything.

She crawled out of Lan Zhan’s bed, making sure to pull the duvet back into place how it had been before she’d messed it all up. She didn’t bother getting under the quilted blanket that was laid out on the air mattress — it felt like a punishment akin to the ones Auntie Yu had doled out when she’d been younger, forced to stay just slightly too cold to be comfortable. She didn’t know why she wanted to punish herself, but the coldness of Lan Zhan’s flat affect made it seem like the right choice. 

“Goodnight, Lan Zhan,” she said quietly once the squeaking and groaning of the air mattress had settled. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Lan Zhan didn’t answer. 

“You have not yet told me how your family dinner went the other night,” Lan Zhan prompts. 

The two of them are at Lan Zhan’s flat, with the afternoon sun shining in brightly through the large windows. Even in Lan Zhan’s spotless home, the beams of light highlight the dust particles suspended in the air, and Wei Ying can’t help but be entranced by the sight. It humanises her best friend, even though she full well knows that Lan Zhan is only human. She wonders if Lan Zhan ever takes people — women — home. She wonders if they ever get to see Lan Zhan in all her glorious humanity, with her glasses and fuzzy socks and soft linen  lounge clothes on a weekend. She’s not sure where the thought comes from, nor does she care to identify the feeling inside of her, prowling like an apex predator hunting weak prey. Lan Zhan is allowed to have her friends from the football team over, or the study group Wei Ying knows she attends with Luo Qingyang visit. Wei Ying does have a monopoly on Lan Zhan’s flat, as much as she likes to pretend she does. Even if she knows she’s the only person other that Lan Zhan’s uncle and brother that has a dedicated pair of slippers in the entry closet. 

It’s only when Lan Zhan tugs on the strand of hair she’s weaving into a plait that Wei Ying remembers to answer. “Dinner was fine,” she says without elaborating. 

Lan Zhan hums in acknowledgement, but says nothing else. Wei Ying thinks the conversation is over until she feels another tug on her hair. “Lan Zhan! What was that for?” 

“You are not telling me the whole truth about how the dinner went.”

“Do you need a whole play-by-play like we’re doing a run down of one of your matches?” Wei Ying whines, tilting her head back to try to look into Lan Zhan’s eyes. Like this, in this position, she can see the way that Lan Zhan so carefully looks at her, the concentration on her face and the way her eyes shine that Wei Ying has internally dubbed Lan Zhan’s ‘I’m pretending to not like how bratty you’re being but I secretly enjoy this’ eyes. 

“I like to know all of the details of your life, whatever you wish to share,” Lan Zhan says quietly, and she goes back to plaiting Wei Ying’s hair once Wei Ying puts her head back into position. The motions of Lan Zhan’s plaiting feel almost like a massage, and Wei Ying lets herself sink into the feeling, into the vulnerability of the moment. 

“Auntie Yu got on my case again,” she starts. “Too skinny, too busy for a boyfriend, too many 'homosexuals' in my life.”

“Does that bother you?”

“What, that I’m friends with a lot of gay people? Not at all, I wouldn’t trade my friends for the world.”

“Not that,” Lan Zhan says. She’s at the end of Wei Ying’s hair now, the strands all pulled together neatly and away from her face. It’s so different from her usual messy ponytail, makes her feel more adult, more put together, and she wonders if Lan Zhan always feels this way. “About being too busy for a boyfriend,” Lan Zhan elaborates.

“Oh.” Wei Ying has to think about it. 

She’s never craved a relationship the way that some people around her have. She enjoys flirting, the thrill of back and forth banter with someone cute at a bar, or the teasing winks to ice cream scoopers when getting a sweet treat after one of Lan Zhan’s games. She doesn’t feel like something is missing, and frankly doesn’t want to include someone new who might take away from the bit of free time she still has between classes and work. She can’t imagine blowing off one of Lan Zhan’s games to go on a date with some faceless man, can’t imagine skipping studying in a private room at the library, can’t imagine sleepover nights being cancelled.  

“Do you ever feel like something is missing?” Wei Ying asks instead. Lan Zhan always has the right answers, she thinks. Lan Zhan always knows the right thing to say. 

“I do not.” Lan Zhan has her hands clasped in her lap the same way Wei Ying does when she’s trying not to fidget. “I’m perfectly content with the way I spend my time.” 

“I am too,” Wei Ying says. “I can’t imagine wanting to spend time with anyone half as much as I want to spend time with you, let alone a man.”

“Is it just men you can’t imagine spending time with?” Lan Zhan asks pointedly. Her face remains impassive, but there’s something in her eyebrows that tells Wei Ying that she’s thinking deeper than she’s letting on. 

“I can’t imagine making any friends that can compete with you.”

“Mn.” Lan Zhan says nothing else, but Wei Ying needs no invitation to make herself comfortable against the back of the sofa, sticking her perpetually cold toes under Lan Zhan’s thigh. 

“You’re sure you don’t mind studying here today?”

“It is never a matter of minding when I’m with you,” Lan Zhan says, leaning back on the sofa, too, pulling her laptop onto her lap to work on whatever project she’s got going on currently. Wei Ying smiles at her brightly. She truly wouldn’t trade this feeling for the world. Lan Zhan is the best friend she could ever ask for; she never wants to put their friendship in jeopardy again. She’s not sure that she could survive the heartbreak of losing Lan Zhan. Not again. 

“You’ll always be my friend, right?” Wei Ying asks, voice small. She rarely feels insecure about anything, but she has to admit to herself, however reluctantly, that something about Auntie Yu gets under her skin. Her words, in her condescending and judgemental tone, always seem to haunt Wei Ying like a ghost after they part ways, and no exorcism could possibly be strong enough to cleanse the negative energy that Auntie Yu sends her way.  

“I will.” Lan Zhan looks up from her laptop to make eye contact with Wei Ying, reading her face like a book. “You don’t need to put so much value on the things your aunt says. You don’t need to do anything to get her approval, so long as you are happy.” Lan Zhan still for a second, her face still like she’s not sure if she should say anything else. In the end, after a moment of silence, she says, “You are more than enough just the way you are.”

Wei Ying feels her heart ache fiercely in her chest. She’s had the feeling a few times recently, wonders whether it’s worth it to see a doctor about the feeling, but completely forgets her train of thought when Lan Zhan reaches over to tuck one of her thick, woven blankets over her legs. Wei Ying smiles — she doesn’t even have to tell Lan Zhan she’s cold. 

Wei Ying isn’t entirely sure that Jiang Cheng knows what good food is. 

Their twice-a-month lunch is, as always, at a restaurant that he handpicked, citing her inability to pick a spot that satisfied his three restaurant essentials: good ambiance, good food, good prices. This time, the restaurant is a little Hunan place, recently remodeled and with the dim, exposed lighting of a place that is obviously trying too hard to have an industrial look while being in a clearly not-industrial building, smacked right in the centre of a well-off and mostly gentrified neighbourhood. The food itself isn’t the best she’s ever tried — the braised pork is a touch too dry, the rice vermicelli is mushy, and the yongfeng sauce leaves something to be desired. 

At the very least, she thinks, Jiang Cheng seems to be enjoying the food, even if he, too, is liberally adding spicy sauce to his plate. At least the geotagged pictures he’ll upload later to his social media profiles will be aesthetically pleasing. 

“Anything new with you, then?” Jiang Cheng asks finally, after an awkward silence that had been broken only by the sounds of chewing food and slurps of pear juice. Wei Ying smiles tightly, feeling so ungenuine that she’s not sure she would get away with pulling such a face if her brother was looking at her instead of in his bowl.

“Not really,” she says, poking at a stringbean with her chopsticks just to have something to do. “Classes have been busy. The lab job has been really kicking my ass, too, but Lan Zhan has been making me lunches on the days that I have work so —”

“Are you finally going to come out to my parents or are you going to continue to do this song and dance?” Jiang Cheng cuts her off unrepentantly, his brows stitched so closely together it almost looks like the time she’d drawn a unibrow on him after an argument they’d had as children. It’s significantly less funny now that it’s a result of his ire, and she elects not to comment on it at all while her brain processes what he’s saying. “Lan Zhan this, Lan Zhan that,” he continues, “at least jiejie had the decency not to flaunt about Jin Zixuan before he was formally introduced to my parents.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“We get it, Wei Ying: Lan Zhan is the absolute best and you can’t help but blow shit up her ass every second of the day —”

“That saying doesn’t even work here and I’m almost one-hundred per cent sure that is not the way that it goes —”

“Not the fucking point, and don’t try to change the subject,” he snaps. “Can you just act a little more normal about your weird ass relationship with her in front of my parents for once?”

“Nothing about it is weird.”

“You must be joking.” Jiang Cheng slams his chopsticks to the table, his face falling into a look of utter disbelief. “You can lie to my mother all you want — whatever, do what you want — but don’t sit there in front of me and act like you’re not fucking obsessed with Lan Zhan.”

“She’s my best friend?” 

“Okay, and?”

“It’s normal to be obsessed with your best friend,” Wei Ying says slowly, enunciating the words like she’s talking to a particularly stupid classmate. She’s not surprised she has to explain this concept to him, frankly. Jiang Cheng is not known for his particularly friendly demeanour, and she doesn’t think that she’s ever actually met anyone who he would willingly call his best friend. 

“It really isn’t.” Jiang Cheng shoves another mouthful of noodles into his mouth, slurping loudly. “Are you daft? Literally no one else is like… like you with their friends.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” 

“I mean,” he draws it out, his tongue darting out to the corners of his mouth to lick away any leftover sauce. “You’re always all over each other. You stare at her like she hung the moon, and she looks at everyone but you like she doesn’t even see them. You can’t possibly think that every friendship is like that?”

“Obviously not, asshole.” Wei Ying rolls her eyes — his bullshittery is reaching new levels of absurdity, and she’s frankly still pissed off enough from the disastrous family dinner they’d had recently to not have the amount of necessary patience for this conversation. Top it off with the bizarre and irritable way that Jiang Cheng always speaks about Lan Zhan and, well, it was simply a recipe for disaster. 

“So you admit you have a thing with her, then?”

“Why does it always have to be something with you?” Wei Ying bursts out. “For someone who can’t fucking stand to be in the same room as my best friend you sure never shut up about her when you get the chance to start going off.”

“Don’t try to twist this onto me, now,” Jiang Cheng says. “I talk about her because she’s the only thing you ever talk about. Work? Oh, Lan Zhan makes you lunch now. Classes? Going well because Lan Zhan keeps you on track for your studies. Dates? None, because Lan Zhan has some pretentious art gallery or a game or you need to cuddle, which is — again — not fucking normal. Just come out and say you’re too fucking obsessed with her to even think of anyone else and stop pretending like you’re not.”

“Lan Zhan is my friend, Jiang Cheng. What aren’t you getting?”

“Did she reject you? Is that what the problem is? And now she’s just stringing you along?”

“She didn’t do any such thing! Can you just drop it and let me have my friendship without your weird complex about my relationships, please?” Wei Ying feels her voice rising, her breath coming faster, caught in her chest like a physical force actually pulling her down. She can feel herself begin to shake, like too much pressure built up in a canister and ready to explode out. 

“Don’t yell, you’re going to get me banned from this restaurant and I —”

“The food isn’t even good, Jiang Cheng, stop caring so much about your image. You’re so much like Auntie Yu —”

“You’ve always held such contempt for my family,” Jiang Cheng hisses, voice dropping low, his eyes blazing with fiery cruelty. “Took you in and gave you everything, and you still can’t even apologise for abandoning me for the Wens.”

“For the love of — I did not abandon you, how could you say that?” Wei Ying struggles to lower her voice down to an acceptable volume, her hands shaking as she asks her question. She’s at a point of frustration and irritation where she could feel her teeth clenching, her hands balled into fists in her lap, trying her damndest to dig her nails into the soft flesh of her palms as some sort of primitive distraction from her emotions. It isn’t the most effective method, she has to admit, but combined with the heaving breaths she takes, she starts to feel her blood pressure lower just the slightest bit.

She doesn’t look up when she hears Jiang Cheng’s chair push out from the table, and keeps her head down while he fumbles angrily with his wallet. The bills he throws onto the table easily cover the meal, like he’s forgotten the way he’d told her when she moved in with the Wens that he wouldn’t cover her again, and if she had to do dishes then so be it since it was no longer his problem. She’s not sure if she should laugh at the fact that she’d managed to anger her brother to the point of forgetting his grudge, or if she should break down into tears.

She does neither, and doesn’t even poke around at the cooling plates of food still sitting in front of her. She’s not sure how long she sits by herself, feeling drained and exhausted from the adrenaline no longer rushing through her veins. Eventually she sees a glass of water in a cute plastic cup placed in front of her. The older auntie looks like she’s in her forties, the crows feet starting at the corners of her eyes deepening with the sympathetic smile she gives. When she collects the cash from the table, she leaves a few pieces of candy, wrapped in brown wrappers that somehow fit so well with the industrial aesthetic of the place. 

She almost wants to laugh at the gentle dismissal, at the subtle request to vacate the premises, but she doesn’t. She smiles at the wait staff while she leaves. She needs a drink, she thinks. 

Wei Ying hadn’t meant to be expelled.

Frankly, with all components considered, she had not even considered being expelled to begin with. She knew she broke rules, and she knew she was far from being an exemplary student. She also knew that, despite the black marks against her in her file, she managed to score perfect or almost-perfect scores on any of the tests she took.

Though, despite being the number two student in her year (behind Lan Zhan, to no one’s surprise), she was relatively unengaged with the school culture. Perhaps being so aloof to the activities of Gusu Academy for Girls was considered a red stain against her in the ledgers, but it was what it was. She was used to the unfair reality of her life. She was nothing if not a follower of her own rules; those of Gusu — and the Jiangs, if she were to be fully honest — be damned.

She remembers when Wen Qing, years older than her and dealing with a plethora of her own life-handed bullshit, had stepped in to help. She remembers Wen Ning, a sweet boy but terribly timid, trying his best to back Wei Ying up as she defended him. She doesn’t, in the slightest, rue the day she had decided to help Wen Ning, nor does she regret meeting Wen Qing and the fallout with her family afterward. She wonders sometimes how things might have gone differently, though, if she’d had the support of her family. If she’d been at a different place at a different time and hadn’t been a part of the whole ordeal to begin with.

She makes it a personal goal not to dwell on it. What happened happened, and she wasn’t going to be able to change anything, even if she’d wanted to.

It had been something of a mistake, really, to stumble upon Wen Chao again. Gusu Academy for Girls, after all, didn’t admit men to the school, and so it was definitely like she ever expected to run into him near her school. It had just been by chance, really, that she’d run into him.

The last time she’d seen him had been when Lan Zhan had decked him in the nose, had become her own knight in shining armour. She wasn’t in the right state of mind then, at that party. She wasn’t in her right mind in the moment, either, when she’d stumbled upon Wen Chao ganging up on what appeared to be a timid boy, shaking in his boots and stuttering out apologies.

When she’d approached, angry and shouting, Wen Chao looked at her, and immediately recognised her.

“Oh, it’s the little bitch who had her dyke friend break my nose,” he said, sneering. Wei Ying noticed that his nose seemed to have healed well — either Lan Zhan had a steady hand and the fighting instincts to make a clean break, or he had access to one hell of a plastic surgeon. It didn’t matter much to Wei Ying either way, not when her blood ran cold then burning hot in her veins at the insult toward Lan Zhan. She didn’t care what he could say about her, but insulting Lan Zhan was out of the question.

Her own hit was less practiced than Lan Zhan’s, but no less powerful. The boy that Wen Chao had pushed up against the wall had been left to fend for himself when Wen Chao had turned toward her, and he could only stand and witness the crunch of Wen Chao’s freshly broken nose as Wei Ying punched him directly in the same spot that Lan Zhan had a few months earlier. 

She’d grabbed him and run, not looking back, not bothering to check who had witnessed her transgressions.

The first time that Wei Ying ran into Lan Zhan at their university it came as a great shock.

It was late afternoon, already a few weeks into the semester, and Wei Ying had been entirely out of it, still adjusting to her schedule of classes and labs and work, not to mention the flat she had moved into a few months earlier and still didn’t sleep in as well as she had back home. The chill of winter hadn’t weaned, but under her coat she had been sweating so much her skin was beginning to itch. She had been so strung thin getting to every one of her appointments that day that she hadn’t even given it much thought, only remembering her discomfort every so often when she would slow down for just a second at random during the day. 

Lan Zhan didn’t seem to be touched by the weather in the same unflattering way it touched Wei Ying. Her long, black hair wasn’t stuck to the back of her neck, not soaked through with sweat the same way Wei Ying’s ponytail was. Her nose and cheeks were stained a faint pink that made her look healthy and young, in her prime. She was unmistakable, even when she was out of the Gusu Academy uniform Wei Ying had been so used to seeing her in — even in her unremarkable coat, plain slacks, and leather gloves.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying yelled, bursting into a sprint across the slightly crunchy grass to chase down her — friend? Acquaintance? She wasn’t sure anymore how she was supposed to refer to their relationship. It had been over a year since she’d last seen Lan Zhan; she wasn’t sure if she could call it a friendship if they’d had no contact. She wasn’t even sure if Lan Zhan had tried to reach out after she’d been expelled — her phone had been confiscated, and she’d subsequently changed her number when she’d scrounged up enough money to buy a seasons-old model that was chunky, clunky, and with just enough memory available that she wouldn’t have to pay some ridiculous fee for cloud storage. When she’d tried to send Lan Zhan stickers on WeChat, months later when she had saved enough to buy a phone, the messages had gone unopened. 

Lan Zhan didn’t slow as Wei Ying ran after her. She kept walking, adjusting her shoulder bag where it had started to slip down her arm, pulling her scarf tight up to the underside of her chin. She was still so tall, her gait pulling her across the courtyard quickly without even having to run. It wasn’t like Wei Ying wasn’t equally as tall, her strides just as long as Lan Zhan’s own, but there was something about the imagery of literally chasing down her friend — former? She still wasn’t sure — that just didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t slow her speed down until she was close enough to justify jogging in the awkward half-run-half-casual way that always had her feeling a little bit like a spooked horse whenever she had to speed up to catch the lift before the doors closed on her. She had gotten a little too used to the doors closing in her face to say that her awkward run-jog was in any way genuinely useful.

Lan Zhan didn’t even spare her a glance when they were finally side-by-side, Wei Ying just the slightest bit out of breath from pushing herself to sprint at speeds hitherto unknown to her body — she was always more of a marathoner, in for the long haul toward a nebulous finish line. It was funny, then, that she always felt like she was running at speeds toward hurdles, always jumping over one problem and into the next. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. And then, she thought a little ruefully, directly into the lava.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying said loudly, conscientious of the fact that yelling directly at Lan Zhan probably wouldn’t do her any favours. “You should slow down! We can catch up!”

Lan Zhan slowed her steps just long enough to cast a sidelong glance at Wei Ying, sizing her up like a butcher does a cut of meat. Wei Ying couldn’t tell if there was genuine irritation on her face or if it had just been long enough that she hadn’t had to read such subtleties in affect that she’d lost her touch.

“I’m on my way to practice,” Lan Zhan said, pointedly lifting her bag on her shoulder. “Good day, Wei Ying.”

Lan Zhan strode away, and Wei Ying didn’t bother keeping pace with her. At least — the very least — Lan Zhan remembered who she was. That was absolutely a start. A good start was debatable, but it was a start nonetheless. Wei Ying was a lot of things, but a quitter she was not. She scuffed the toe of her trainer against the ground, kicking around the dirt underfoot, and resigned herself to catching Lan Zhan another time.

Wei Ying, since she’d been a child, hadn’t been one for the library, but even she could admit to herself when online searches of haphazardly scanned texts with poorly digitised images just wouldn’t cut it. She knew in her heart of hearts that the library was a place for those that learned by observing, and she was ultimately someone that learned by doing, always had been, and so the library just hadn’t become a haunt of hers. That wasn’t to say that she never went, just that, frankly, she usually asked one of her roommates to grab something for her when they were on their way to the library anyway.

It must have been the fate of the gods, then, as she saw Lan Zhan through the shelves, nestled away in a corner nook with a few decrepit looking books strewn about her. It made for an odd if endearing image — perfect Lan Zhan, hair falling pin straight down her back, a couple of strands obscuring her face, with her prim and proper laptop sat atop its pale blue carrying case, surrounded by tomes as ancient as can be.

Wei Ying felt the urge to take a picture, for reasons unbeknownst to herself. Perhaps it was another manifestation of the urge she’d always had to mess Lan Zhan up, to prove that underneath all that perfection Lan Zhan was still a human who could rise to the provocations of one Wei Ying. Lan Zhan was like a still and serene lake, and Wei Ying wanted to skip stones across her surface to make a mess of her perfect and undisturbed surface. She wanted, though she didn’t recognise it in herself, to prove to herself that under the water there was an undercurrent, that Lan Zhan wasn’t as unflappable and tranquil as she projected. Wei Ying, frankly, had no idea where the desire came from. 

There had been times when she was younger, in those months that she first knew Lan Zhan, that she’d sometimes sit in silence. She’d take in the quiet and calm that radiated off of Lan Zhan, a beacon of steadiness in solitude, so very far and different to Wei Ying’s tumultuous chaos. Wei Ying had found that, despite her ever unceasing desire to pick Lan Zhan apart, there was also a part that just wanted to watch — to draw Lan Zhan’s profile on a page in her notebook instead of taking notes or copying lines. The times where they would sit together, silence the only thing grounding them, and Wei Ying would just stare and stare. She wanted that again.

She was only half as quiet as a usual library goer as she sat down, her bookbag flopping to the wayside with an audible thump. Lan Zhan didn’t look up, her eyes fixed directly on her laptop screen, though her fingers had stopped dancing over the keys.

“Wei Ying,” she said, still not looking up. How she knew who it was that had sat across from her at the narrow table Wei Ying had no idea. Maybe she had a sixth sense for detecting the identities of the people who passed by her. Frankly, were it the case, Wei Ying would not be surprised. Lan Zhan was, after all, rather good at everything, so who was to say that she didn’t also develop magical abilities?

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said. She didn’t whisper, though her voice was hardly too loud for a library. She’d gotten good at that in her youth, keeping her voice at just the right decibel to not be forcibly removed from any given locale. “You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?” 

“You will be quiet and not disrupt my focus,” was all Lan Zhan said. Her eyes still hadn’t left the screen of her laptop, though from so close Wei Ying could see that there was a tension to her shoulders, a vein in her forehead that pulsed quicker than the average heart rate for women their age. 

“Yes, ma’am,” Wei Ying saluted, putting her hand to her forehead in mock patriotism. Lan Zhan didn’t look up with her head, still kept herself resolutely still. Her eyes, though, did not lie. The pale, golden colour gave her away immediately, betraying the glance she’d taken at Wei Ying under the cover of her long, dark eyelashes. Wei Ying grinned, the smile taking over her face and making her eyes crinkle and turn into half-moons as she did so. Lan Zhan did the closest thing to a scowl her jade-like face would allow her to and flicked her eyes back to her laptop, ignoring Wei Ying as she not so quietly situated herself at the desk.

They sat together there in relative silence save for the clacking of keys on either of their laptops and the scratching of Wei Ying’s pen against her notebook when she’d decide to write something down. It was nice, Wei Ying thought, that they could do this. Even if Lan Zhan didn’t want to speak. The silence lasted only a short while, though — Wei Ying was fidgety at the core of who she was, and though she’d learned patience through meditation she’d never quite mastered being patient outside of her meditative practice. 

It was after a minute of her flicking her pen against the table in a four fourths rhythm that Lan Zhan spoke. “Wei Ying,” she said, “Stop that.”

“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, I need it to think. I can’t sit still and be proper like you, I need something to do with my hands.” 

“It’s enough.” Lan Zhan said it with the same authoritative tone she had used to take in high school, though now it was much more forceful, like she’d come into her own and knew how to wield herself. It was enough, then, for Wei Ying to stop tapping her pen. It was not enough, however, to completely overturn Wei Ying’s need to do something, anything, to physically externalise her energy. 

She began bouncing her foot, tapping it against one of the legs of the desk over and over. It wasn’t a nervous tick the way that lots of people tapped their feet — it was just something she’d always done. She’d always had too much energy, too much that burned too hot inside of her that she needed to release. It had used to drive Auntie Yu absolutely mad, Wei Ying remembered, when Wei Ying would be unable to stop herself from shaking her feet at the dinner table. She’d been told it was improper, unlady-like, an irritant. Wei Ying had always done her best not to instigate further, but would silently agree in her mind that, frankly, she was improper and unlady-like sometimes. She liked it that way. Everyone seemed to disagree with her that it wasn’t a problem.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said again. It wasn’t only her eyes that time. Her whole face turned toward Wei Ying’s, impassive face not so stone-cold anymore with her brows slightly furrowed, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to express her irritation. 

“I need —”

“This is a library,” Lan Zhan cut her off. Interjected, Wei Ying thought, because Lan Zhan had told her that a big rule from her uncle was not to speak over others. Perhaps Lan Zhan had loosened up a bit, then. “You must stop.” 

Nevermind, then.

“I just don’t understand why the librarian has a problem with me,” Wei Ying griped, her eyes rolling as she splayed across her textbook on the table in front of her. To her side, Lan Zhan sat silently, still not speaking much, but never quite giving cold enough energy to truly convince Wei Ying that Lan Zhan didn’t want her around. She may have had issues with reading the room in the past, with understanding Lan Zhan when they’d first met, but she knew better now. It had only been a few weeks since the tentative rekindling of their friendship, and Wei Ying wasn’t going to push her luck.

“I’ve only ever been late with my returns, like, maybe two or three times,” Wei Ying continued, her head turning to look more closely at Lan Zhan’s facial expressions while using her own crossed arms as a makeshift pillow against the unyieldingly hard wood of the tabletop.

“One time may constitute an error in time management. Thrice is simply a pattern of carelessness.” Lan Zhan looked at her with a side-eyed glance, as if almost daring Wei Ying to dispute the words she’d said.

“Lan jiejie,” Wei Ying gasped with faux shock. The smile on her lips only grew wider as Lan Zhan steadfastly looked away, but she could hardly hide the fact that her ears had pinkened at Wei Ying’s too-loud reaction. It delighted Wei Ying that still, even with the odd distance between them, she was able to make Lan Zhan blush. She continued, “I can’t believe you’re accusing me of carelessness! It’s the opposite — in fact, I care so much about my subjects of study that I simply cannot be parted from the books that feed me knowledge.” She smiled widely, pushing herself up from the slumped over way she’d been laying, just to be able to shove herself a little closer to Lan Zhan at their shared table. 

She wasn’t sure what compelled her to do it,  but she reached a hand out to push against Lan Zhan’s shoulder, the same kind of friendly shove she’d try to give back in their preparatory school all the time. Lan Zhan used to be so good at dodging her, avoiding the physical touch she seemed to hate so much. Then, with the touch coming so suddenly, Lan Zhan wasn’t able to dodge. 

Her eyes opened in shock like she couldn’t quite believe that Wei Ying had the audacity to touch her, and the laughter that had started to bubble out of Wei Ying’s throat suddenly died on her lips. Lan Zhan didn’t move away, though, and the look of shock on her face was easily masked with her flat affect. Wei Ying froze, too, like she wasn’t sure if the delicate and tentative peace forming between them might somehow fall apart if she retracted her hand or moved. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan suddenly said, voice a quiet and respectable volume for the library that they both still occupied. Sometimes, Wei Ying was so suddenly reminded about the way that the world would melt away from her mind while spending time with Lan Zhan, so easily that she would simply forget where she was and what was technically appropriate behaviour. 

“Sorry, sorry,” she huffed out a little, like she was caught between a laugh and a loss of words. She whispered rather loudly instead, “I’ll bring my overdue books back, I promise.” She mock saluted at Lan Zhan, winking deviously. 

“I believe controlling your volume would help, too.” 

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying laughed. “I can’t believe you’re so snarky. When did you learn to banter?” 

Lan Zhan didn’t have a chance to answer before a stern-looking student-librarian walked by and shushed them both, harsh words on his lips that they were in a library and to act like it. Wei Ying smiled sheepishly before going back to her work. When she looked up from the corner of her eye, she could see that Lan Zhan’s exposed ear was flushed pink. 

“I brought you tea,” Wei Ying said quietly. The disposable cup in her hand was burning even through the cardboard sleeve the barista had put on it, but she wasn’t complaining about it. The weather wasn’t exactly cold still, but it hadn’t reached the part of spring where she didn’t always catch a chill in her too-boney fingers when she’d leave her apartment. The warmth of whatever overpriced drink warming her always-too-cold hands never bothered her. 

Lan Zhan only glanced up with her eyes at Wei Ying’s words, her facial expression barely changing at all. It was only through familiarity and relearning the micro-changes to Lan Zhan’s typically flat affect that Wei Ying was able to discern the minor shock and slight happiness in her former best friend’s eyes.

“Thank you,” Lan Zhan said. It came out almost apprehensively, like she wasn’t sure whether or not to say anything, but Gusu rules always came back to haunt her a little, making certain that she remained polite. 

“It’s ginseng tea, just like the one your uncle always used to make,” Wei Ying said as she sat down across from Lan Zhan at the small table they’ve made a habit of sharing in the mornings before either of their respective classes on Wednesdays. It’s not in the library — Lan Zhan would never accept anything other than her trusted double-insulated water bottle in the presence of books — but rather in a sunny little corner of an open seating area of their university. She wasn’t entirely sure how she managed to get Lan Zhan to continue to meet her there, but it was just another little thing she wouldn’t complain about. 

Lan Zhan just hummed at her words and went back to typing on her laptop, a textbook open next to her. Wei Ying couldn’t help but stare at her just a little bit, her eyes fixed on Lan Zhan’s sculpted features as she focused on whatever assignment it was she was working on. She’d always appreciated how pretty Lan Zhan was, but like this, with the morning sun shining off of her dark hair, she was all the more beautiful. 

Wei Ying grabbed her own drink, and only when she picked it up did she realise her hands were still shaking from the cold of the morning winds. The coffee slopped in its cup, spilling out of the sipping hole in the top to drip over her hand. She gasped at the feeling, putting the cup back down as quickly as she had picked it up and shook her hand free of the hot droplets of the coffee.

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan asked, looking up at her with concern in her eyes.

“I’m all good!” Wei Ying reassured her. “Just cold hands — you can imagine how cold skin doesn’t mesh well with hot coffee.” 

“You don’t wear gloves?”

“I lost my pair,” Wei Ying said sheepishly. “Misplaced them somewhere and haven’t been, erm… able to buy another pair yet.”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan hummed. From her backpack she pulled out a neat stack of tissues, handing a few to Wei Ying. “Clean up,” she said, and then went back to her laptop.

A week later, long after Lan Zhan had left and Wei Ying was packing her own laptop and notebooks into her bag, she noticed a little fabric sack.

She pulled it out gingerly, wary of where it had come from, when she noticed a little note pinned to the outside of the bag. ‘For your hands, while it’s still cold’, the note read. The writing was undeniably Lan Zhan’s, familiar from even all the way back in high school. It made Wei Ying feel something that she couldn’t quite pinpoint, but opening the little bag and pulling out a pair of warm mittens only exacerbated the feeling.

Pale grey and tufted sheep’s wool, they were hardly a pair that she would typically pick out for herself. It didn’t matter though — anything of Lan Zhan’s, even more so a gift given to her, she would cherish like precious treasures. 

“You’re wearing the mittens,” Lan Zhan said a few days later, her eyes quickly sweeping over Wei Ying’s frame before slotting back to her laptop. Lan Zhan had always been particularly observant, so it didn’t necessarily come as a shock to Wei Ying that the mittens were immediately pointed out, but it did surprise her that Lan Zhan would mention it all so shamelessly. 

“Of course,” Wei Ying ended up responding, a small smile on her lips as she set down her bookbag on the empty chair next to Lan Zhan. She took her time unwinding her scarf and setting it down, and shucking off her leather jacket. Wei Ying couldn’t help but think it was a little embarrassing to still be wearing a scarf and mittens so late into the semester, but it was made significantly easier knowing that it was Lan Zhan who had wanted to make sure she had warm hands. It made her feel a little fuzzy, taken care of and looked out for the same way she had felt with Lan Zhan when they’d first become friends. 

Lan Zhan’s smile was little more than an extra glossiness to her amber eyes, never quite meeting her lips. It wasn’t any less pretty than a look of happiness on anyone else; in fact, Wei Ying had always thought that Lan Zhan’s muted and demure expressions were the prettiest of them all. There was something about the fact that she could still bring out some sort of positive emotions from Lan Zhan that made her feel happier than she knew how to deal with.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said, feeling a confidence she wasn’t sure she knew the origin of but was above questioning. “Can we get coffee? Or, I guess, tea for you? I would really like to catch up. Properly, I mean. Not just in the library or sitting in the sun lounge.”

Lan Zhan looks at her for a moment. The glossiness of her eyes that had made up the bulk of her smile had all but faded, and Wei Ying felt a sudden stab of nervous energy that rattled through her chest. “I would like that,” she says after a few moments. Her face is a little closed off, like she’s not entirely sure if she can trust Wei Ying that, and while it does hurt a little, it only makes Wei Ying feel more determined than ever to get her friend back.

“I didn’t know you were expelled,” Lan Zhan said. Her hands — elegant and clean, with short nails neatly maintained and manicured in a clear lacquer — wrapped around the cup of steaming hot tea. Her wrists, Wei Ying noticed, were somehow dainty and strong at the same time, thick to prove her athleticism, but adorned with a nice watch and a tennis bracelet that probably cost more than Wei Ying made in a month at her job. 

Wei Ying did her best not to stare, but even then it was hard for her not to look directly at Lan Zhan. She might have been trying her best to get Lan Zhan’s attention once more, but this time around it felt different than it had not long ago. Somehow the stakes felt so much higher, then, like their friendship in high school was nowhere near as consequential as their potential friendship going forward might be. It was hard, too, when Lan Zhan just had something about her that made Wei Ying want to stare.

Of course, Lan Zhan was beautiful and smart — the only person who had ever given Wei Ying a run for her money to get top grades. It wasn’t that, though, that made it difficult to look at her. There was a shame, perhaps, that Wei Ying couldn’t quite identify, but that she desperately wanted to put a name to so that she could apologise for whatever it was that she had done to make her feel such a way. She’d never been great at reading Lan Zhan’s face, hadn’t perfected reading the emotions swimming in her eyes despite her otherwise flat affect. She still wasn’t great at reading her, and couldn't pinpoint what Lan Zhan was thinking.

Lan Zhan’s lips were slightly pressed together when Wei Ying gathered the courage to look up at her face. The look made Wei Ying’s heart squeeze. “I found out after. It had been a week,” Lan Zhan continued. “I heard it in passing from some other students. No one told me.”

“I wish I could have,” Wei Ying said earnestly, torn between leaning forward to emphasise her words and curling back into herself as if to protect from the potential judgement. “Auntie Yu took my phone away at the time. I had to save up to pay for this old brick, and to change my number. I hadn’t memorised your number yet. You didn’t answer my WeChat before my phone was taken away.”

“I changed it,” Lan Zhan said. There was something flippant about the way she said it, like she was meaning for the words to come off as casual, but her acting skills weren’t nearly as strong as she believed. Wei Ying could spot a loaded statement easily. 

“Why?” Wei Ying asked. She reached out, grabbing her hot chocolate to bring up to her lips, waiting to listen, ready to hear it all so long as Lan Zhan continued to feel a bit talkative.

“Bullying,” Lan Zhan said, simple and to the point. “It was not so bad, though I admit the messages were annoying. My phone began to get overly heated from the consistency of messages, and so I changed numbers. The problem ceased to persist.”

“Can I ask what it was you were being bullied for?” Wei Ying asked. She was shocked, frankly put. There was no reason for Lan Zhan — perfect, pretty, phenomenal Lan Zhan — to get bullied. It was inconceivable to Wei Ying, like fitting a piece from a different puzzle in. 

“Wang Lingjiao told everyone I am a lesbian.” Lan Zhan took a sip of her tea, her eyes never leaving Wei Ying’s face even as she tipped her head back to swallow. 

Wei Ying swallowed. “That’s not very nice.” 

“It is the truth.”

“Still not her truth to tell.” 

“She thought it was embarrassing. That I must be staring at other girls in the locker room, hence why I was on the football team.”

Wei Ying felt her breath catch in her throat. It wasn’t a surprise that Lan Zhan remembered such words — Lan Zhan frankly remembered everything, her sense of memory the polar opposite of Wei Ying’s own forgetfulness. Still, the reminder that she’d said hurtful things through Lan Zhan’s paraphrasing hurt her. She hated the feeling bubbling in her chest, and she could only imagine the way that Lan Zhan must have felt when Wei Ying had said the things she had.

“I don’t think that. I didn’t, either — at the time, you know, when I said things like that to you, back then.” Wei Ying wanted to let out a huff or an uncomfortable laugh, but held in the noises she felt stuck in her throat. She swallowed thickly, watching Lan Zhan watch her with impassive eyes, boring down into the depths of her soul. It was intimidating to say the least, and though Wei Ying was never one to be at a loss for words, she couldn’t bring herself to speak any further. 

It was only made worse by the uncompanionable silence Lan Zhan kept her in. No hums of encouragement, no indication that she had anything to add to Wei Ying’s comment, no attempt to keep the conversation going. She barely even looked at the drink she was cradling between her palms, her eyes just blankly looking at Wei Ying, judging silently.

“I didn’t — I know it’s not their fault, but the Jiangs were, I mean, they are, homophobic. I don’t want to blame them, it’s my own fault for saying such dumb shit. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need.”

“No need? For what, like… making excuses for myself?”

Lan Zhan said nothing. Her eyes moved from Wei Ying’s face to look over her shoulder, out the window as if to watch the people walking by. Wei Ying could tell, somehow, that even though Lan Zhan’s eyes were focused, her mind was elsewhere. Finally, after a silence that Wei Ying thought was entirely too long but didn’t have the courage to ruin, Lan Zhan finally spoke again. “You were expelled?”

“Ah, yeah, haha,” Wei Ying cupped the back of her own neck, awkward that the focus was back on the transgressions that Lan Zhan felt comfortable talking about. “Some shit went down, and it got back to Auntie Yu and the administration at Gusu and, well, they didn’t want someone who got into fights at their school anymore. Sorry, Lan Zhan, but even your detentions couldn’t have prevented this one.”

“Got into fights?”

“Yeah, with Wen Chao, if you can even believe it — I thought I’d seen the last of him, and then… it turns out I hadn’t.” She smiled uncomfortably. She knew she was being a bit disingenuous, only telling half truths, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell the Wens’ secrets. It was a miracle she still had them to rely on, if she thought about the situation truthfully. 

“Hm,” Lan Zhan hummed.

“Do you live on campus?” Wei Ying asked, trying her best to ease the heavy air. 

“No,” Lan Zhan spoke clearly. Beneath the table, Wei Ying could feel the way Lan Zhan’s legs shifted apart, a masculine stance on such a pretty and proper woman. It made her feel almost dizzy, like the prim and rule-abiding Lan Zhan she had known was no longer the same, even though she visually hadn’t changed at all. She was dazed, only remembering to listen when she realised Lan Zhan was still talking. “I live right off campus in a flat my brother used to rent. He lease transferred to me at the beginning of the year.” 

“That’s cool.” Wei Ying swirled her cup around, watching as droplets clung to the walls before sliding down again like they were racing on a track. “I live with some flatmates now. I left the Jiangs,” she said quietly. She wasn’t ashamed of having left, rather the contrary, actually, but it was still something of a sore spot to talk about. 

“I meant to ask you how they are doing.”

“Me too! I mean, your brother and uncle, obviously, not my own family.”

“My brother is well,” Lan Zhan said. “My uncle, I believe, is suffering from an empty nest. He has recently adopted a cat.”

“Damn, no kidding? I never thought Old Man Lan would have it in him.” Wei Ying let out a chuckle, and laughed harder at the stony look that Lan Zhan fixed her with at the unflattering nickname she had used back in high school to refer to Lan Zhan’s uncle. “My family — or, uh, the Jiangs, I guess — are fine. Jiang Cheng is a student, too. Yanli graduates soon. Auntie Yu has been pressuring her boyfriend to propose.”

“You mentioned moving out?” 

“Ah, yeah,” Wei Ying held her drink tighter, her fingers flexing on her cup. She didn’t like talking about the whole story — and what a long story it was, starting in her youth before her parents had even died, with Auntie Yu’s conspiracy theories about Wei Ying’s parents, her blatant disapproval of her husband’s friends, and a distaste for their daughter. Wei Ying, truly, had been dealt the worst hand when it came to foster parents after her own had died. Couple that with wanting more from life than standing in Jiang Cheng’s shadow, at his beck and call to make sure that any and all of his failures had a target to pin the blame on, and Wei Ying hadn’t been surprised when tensions finally boiled over.

There hadn’t been any apologies from the parts of Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian — Wei Ying hadn’t really anticipated one, though, if she was going to be totally honest about her feelings and expectations. Jiang Yanli had been apologetic since she’d first met Wei Ying, and her support hadn’t wavered despite the new strain on all of their relationships. Jiang Cheng had been the greatest wildcard in Wei Ying’s humble opinion. Her relationship with her foster brother had always been slightly contentious, though most times it simmered at such low levels of combativeness that she was ambivalent to the bad-tempered nature of him. When she’d finally left her home of ten years in a fit of tears and anger, Jiang Cheng hadn’t been kind to her — accusations of lacking love, lacking loyalty, lacking respect for his family had flown in abundance. He’d made it clear since then, too, despite a shaky apology and tentative truce — his family was his family, and Wei Ying was a ward, not a sister. 

It had been more than Wei Ying had expected. The thought about being so unwelcome with the people she had called family for most of her life didn’t even sting as much anymore. Back when her whole life had fallen to pieces at her feet, she thought the sharp ache of sadness would stay with her for the rest of her days. Now, it was reduced to a dull throb, and only when she’d think of it.

“I moved in with my roommates over the summer, before the semester started,” Wei Ying finally said, silently noting to herself that Lan Zhan was still as patient as ever. It was somehow as surprising as it was not. “They’re great, but busy. Wen Ning is in nursing, and Wen Qing is in pre-med, so they’re always either studying or out studying,” Wei Ying laughed. “It almost reminds me of you, honestly.”

Lan Zhan’s eyebrow quirked at that, as if to challenge that she wasn’t always buried nose-first in a book, case in point how they were sat in a café chatting. It made Wei Ying giggle, some of the nerves she was holding tense in her shoulders lessening. “Okay, so you don’t study all the time,” she said, extending the word way too long for dramatic effect. “And you obviously still play football. Tell me, what else have you been up to, Lan jiejie?”

Chapter Text

“Do you want to get food with me tonight?” Wei Ying asks. Her feet are planted firmly on the bench she’s sharing with Lan Zhan, except she’s not sitting on the seat like Lan Zhan is. Her knee knocks against Lan Zhan’s shoulder, an easy feat from the way she’s sitting on the back of the bench. It brings her some kind of silly joy that she doesn’t get pushed away anymore when she touches Lan Zhan. She’s matured so much, somehow, since being in preparatory school, despite not being that long ago. It makes Wei Ying proud for reasons that she, once again, cannot explain to herself.

“You should sit properly,” Lan Zhan says instead, not answering the question.

“I can’t help but eschew the rules of society, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying says almost as dramatically as she rolls her eyes. “I’m a rebel, obviously.”

She slides down the bench anyway, sliding next to Lan Zhan close enough that they’re almost touching. “Dumplings tonight, then?” Wei Ying asks, looking at Lan Zhan through her eyelashes.

“I must apologise,” Lan Zhan says, turning her face toward Wei Ying to make eye contact. “I have practice tonight with the team. We are doing a team bonding activity afterward.”

“Oh,” Wei Ying responds, a little dumbfounded. She usually knows when Lan Zhan’s practices are, but she’s a mess enough with keeping her own schedule sorted out that she can’t fault herself for messing up on remembering this once. It doesn’t mean that a weight doesn’t drop like a stone in her stomach, as if a reminder that she isn’t the centre of Lan Zhan’s universe and that there are other things that her best friend might have going on on any random day of the week. She almost wants to berate herself for having gotten her hopes up so early, like it isn’t the end of university football season and of course the other athletic and pretty jiejies on Lan Zhan’s team will want to practice. Even that makes her feel sick to her stomach — because who is she, ultimately, to judge the other women on their university football team? 

It takes only a few moments, but it feels like an era has passed between them, when Lan Zhan looks at her again a little funny, like she’s not sure what Wei Ying is thinking, why she isn’t saying anything else. “Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan asks, her eyebrows getting a little more knitted, a little more concerned.

“Ahaha, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying laughs, hoping the noise sounds less self-deprecating than it feels. She says, “You can’t be mad at me for forgetting your schedule a little, you know how bad my memory is!” It comes out sounding a little stale even to her own ears, but she doesn’t have enough energy and sais-quoi to have any rebuttal to put to voice. 

“Mn.” Lan Zhan’s voice is so steady, so one-note, that Wei Ying can’t tell if she’s asking a question, agreeing with what’s being said, or is just dealing with the words being thrown in her direction with no reaction.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to bring you out some time this week to get food,” Wei Ying tries to say confidently, though she’s not sure if she manages. “We can get dumplings another time. Plus! I think I might have other plans in the works!” 

Wei Ying winks saucily, as if trying to rile up Lan Zhan to the point of jealousy, though it doesn’t seem to work. 

“It is I that will lament not being able to spend the evening together, I assure you,” Lan Zhan says somberly, so seriously. Wei Ying almost laughs at the severity of Lan Zhan’s words, like she doesn't quite believe them. 

“I’ll be here next time, baby,” Wei Ying says instead. The term of endearment comes to her as a surprise, but somehow she doesn’t feel corny or silly saying it. She is unsure if that is because of the fact that she is saying shameless things, or because she has surpassed embarrassment to the point of being able to call her best friend such things. Lan Zhan pauses but doesn’t have a big reaction, either, which just serves to confirm to Wei Ying that her shamelessness is unbound and entirely expected, at this point. 

“Everything will be all right, then?”

“Of course! I swear it,” Wei Ying says. She holds out her stretched out pinky finger toward Lan Zhan, the chipped, black polish on her nail dull despite the good lighting. She doesn’t squeal when Lan Zhan links their fingers through sheer force of will, but she does feel her heart jump into her throat at it. She continues, “Yanli-jiejie wanted to catch up — I’ll call her!”

Wei Ying does call her sister a little later — well after she has a bit of a sulk and Lan Zhan goes off to her training session. Wei Ying isn’t even sure, really, why she’s feeling sulky. It’s not like it’s the first time that Lan Zhan has had plans without her. Lan Zhan is plenty independent when she goes off to her footie practice, or when she does bi-weekly lunches with her brother, and once-a-month afternoons gone back home to spend time with her uncle. She has her own time that she spends how she sees fit, often without her best friend. There’s the music shop she goes to get supplies to restring her guqin, and the protests that she participates in (something that had shocked Wei Ying the first time she’d heard about it — goodie two-shoes Lan Zhan, protesting at their university campus!)

Wei Ying does her best not to let any sort of disappointment seep into her tone of voice when she calls Jiang Yanli, though. The phone is answered after two rings with her sister’s jubilant and happy voice, “A-Ying! I was just thinking about you,” she says. Wei Ying doesn’t know if that’s actually true, but it makes her feel nice to hear it either way.

“Jiejie,” Wei Ying answers, unable to keep the smile from her voice. “I have some free time this afternoon, can we get lunch?” 

“Ah — Zixuan has a golf event with a few colleagues today, what perfect timing!” Jiang Yanli says enthusiastically, and it doesn’t even sound fabricated. “Come over, I’ll cook for us.” 

Wei Ying’s grimace at hearing about Jin Zixuan’s rich-people plans immediately shifts into another big grin as she accepts, and immediately starts looking at the metro schedule.

Wei Ying arrives at Jiang Yanli’s high-end flat forty minutes later with a bottle of the lowest ABV wine she was able to get her hands on from the shop down the street from her sister’s. It’s a nice bottle from what she can tell, especially for how cheap it had been, but she’s not too hung up on it. Her sister doesn’t judge her for the lack of disposable income — the only one, really, from her foster family — and it makes Wei Ying happy to be able to do something nice for her sister. 

She’s buzzed almost the same second that she presses her finger to the button in the lobby. The doorman is mostly asleep at the front desk and doesn’t pay her any mind as she waits for the lift. Yanli is already in the hallway, peeking side to side like there isn’t only one direction that Wei Ying can come from when she exits the lift. The sight of her makes Wei Ying smile like a fool, just the sight of her sister making her feel infinitely better than she had on the ride over, moping over Lan Zhan being busy. 

“Jiejie!” Wei Ying yells, jogging the rest of the way to Jiang Yanli’s until she can scoop her sister into her arms for a hug. It gives Wei Ying a little kick out of it every time she’s able to hug her sister so tightly that her feet lift off the ground, and she’s never able to do it when her foster parents or brother are around.

Jiang Yanli laughs gleefully as Wei Ying puts her back down on her feet. “A-Ying, come in, come in,” she says, almost breathless from the tightness of Wei Ying’s hug. “I already set the table and everything.”

“I got us some wine,” Wei Ying says, brandishing the flimsy bag out in front of her as she toes off her shoes at the entryway. “Just a little something, nothing fancy.” 

“Anything you bring is just perfect,” Jiang Yanli says, disappearing into the house and going toward the dining room. When Wei Ying walks in, she sees the table already laden with food — smashed cucumber salad, rice, pork rib and lotus root soup, charred long beans. It makes her mouth water immediately, and she’s more than ready to sit down and dig in when her sister comes back with a pair of long-stemmed wine glasses to put on the table.

Wei Ying pours them wine, and they settle in to eat. Jiang Yanli indulgently watches as she valiantly tries so suck all the meat off of a short rib, gasping like it will save her from the inevitable burns of the hot soup. It’s a moment later that Jiang Yanli turns to her with a serious look on her face. “A-Ying,” she says, her eyes big and serious as she stares down the barrel of her glass of wine. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry for what happened at family dinner the other day. It wasn’t kind to you at all.”

“Ah, jiejie,” Wei Ying says, waving a hand as if she will be able to actually physically swipe it all away. “You know that it doesn’t matter. Auntie Yu is just, you know… like that. I’m used to it.” 

“You shouldn’t have to be used to any of it. Not the comments about your weight, nor the comments about your roommates, and certainly not about Lan Zhan.”

Wei Ying feels a weight in her chest that she doesn’t quite know what to do with. She doesn’t often cry, and rarely lets her occasional melancholy express itself in front of her sister, but there must be something on her face that gives her away. She doesn’t even know why she wants to cry. Perhaps it’s the emphasis on certainly not about Lan Zhan, like her sister knows something that she doesn’t, or like Lan Zhan is some big, huge part of her life like Jiang Cheng had insinuated at their last lunch. It just makes her feel even more panicky because — well, isn’t Lan Zhan a big part of her life? Is that such a bad thing, or something that shouldn’t be noticed or acknowledged by the people around her? 

“Is something wrong, a-Ying?” Jiang Yanli asks, her hand coming to rest on where Wei Ying’s own is still on the table. She can feel the tension in the muscles of her hand and wrist, and she hopes that her sister doesn’t feel it, too.

It takes Wei Ying a moment to regain herself, to forcibly pull herself out of the memories of all of the uncomfortable feelings Auntie Yu has made her feel over the years. She pulls a smile onto her face, putting the pain behind her and hand waves away the question. “You know me, jiejie,” she says. “I’m just thinking too much about it. Auntie Yu will have something new to complain about soon, with the wedding coming up.” She winks at Jiang Yanli, smiling broadly. 

“A-Ying, you have no idea,” Jiang Yanli says. She takes the abrupt change of topic with all the social grace of someone who has grown up navigating the tumultuous waters of conversation at the Jiang household. She continues, “We’re still stuck picking destinations for the honeymoon, and his cousin — you’ve met Jin Zixun, even if you don’t remember him — he asked if he could tag along!” 

The audacity of the statement has Wei Ying almost choke on the sip of wine she’d taken while listening to her jiejie speak, and she can’t help but break out into giggles at the same time as her sister. 

“Please tell me the peacock told him to fuck off,” Wei Ying says, mouth stuffed with food. 

“A-Ying,” Jiang Yanli warns, “you have to swallow first.”

“Yes, jiejie.”

“Anyway, Zixuan gave him all the wrong details,” she giggles. “Told him we’re going to a fancy spa retreat up north near Qinghe. He’s going to be in for a surprise when he shows up to the male-only spa.”

Wei Ying laughs at that, imagining the look on her soon-to-be brother-in-law’s worst cousin when he’s confronted with a plethora of old, naked men instead of beautiful young women on a beach. The image makes her shudder. She’s not sure if there’s anything worse, really, and watching her sister laugh — when she knows has been stressing over the wedding for longer than she’ll ever admit — makes her feel warm inside. 

“We’re sending out the invites soon,” Jiang Yanli says after they both stop laughing and eat a few more bites of food each. “You’ve got a plus-one, a-Ying, and I’m sure Zixuan would love to have Lan Zhan there, too.”

Wei Ying tries not to let her stomach clench too hard at that. So everyone — even her sister — assumes that Lan Zhan will be her plus-one. That’s all right, there’s nothing wrong with it. They’re best friends. 

She smiles, and slurps down her soup faster. If she ignores the weird feeling in her chest then she doesn’t need to think about it. 

Wei Ying remembered well the last time she’d slept over at Lan Zhan’s.

It had been only a short bit before their friendship fell apart and deteriorated, and then she’d been expelled, her phone taken away, and kicked out of the Jiang’s the moment she’d graduated from the publicly under-funded school Uncle Jiang had managed to shoe-horn her into at the last minute. At the time, she had just felt grateful that her acceptance into university hadn’t been rescinded, and she hadn’t had enough time to dwell on anything other than figuring out her life. 

It wasn’t until then, at the next sleepover with Lan Zhan, that she could think about it. There was a sickly regret in her stomach, the kind of feeling that she hated remembering and felt so shitty for. Still, then, a few months after rekindling her friendship with Lan Zhan and even more so miraculously maintaining that friendship even over the summer break, she was able to convince Lan Zhan to try it again.

It was different, of course. There was no Old Man Lan Qiren to keep an eye on them. They weren’t in the nice, traditional house with low tables that Lan Zhan had grown up in, with the out-of-place blowup mattress on the floor beside Lan Zhan’s old huanghuali wood bed. Instead, they were in the flat that Lan Zhan rented right near their university, a stone’s throw away from all of the fun student activities that Wei Ying liked to sign up for and Lan Zhan resolutely ignored. The furniture was still nice, well made and obviously expensive, but it was more Lan Zhan, in a way that Wei Ying didn’t know she had all the words to articulate. 

The sofa, at least, she could easily pinpoint as a certifiable Lan Zhan choice: comfortable and pale beige in colour, and so comfy she could sink into it. It didn’t have the stiff wooden frame and thin cushioning of the couch Lan Qiren had had. Wei Ying hadn’t been there when Lan Zhan had picked it out, of course, but she could imagine it in her mind: prim and proper Lan Zhan, furniture shopping and rebelliously picking a sofa that still so easily fit her clean aesthetic but was obviously indulgently comfortable. She loved it.

It was on the very same couch that they spent their evening. If Wei Ying had ever thought that it might be awkward, she was dead wrong. After the few weeks of courting friendship, they’d slipped back into routines that shouldn’t have felt so easy but did. She didn’t try to think too much of it, because then she just ended up feeling a little guilty over the way that she’d never been able to contact Lan Zhan again and had so easily given up what had felt like the only genuine friend she had.

She was staring up at the smooth ceiling when the question popped out of her mouth before she could rein it in. “What’s your type then, Lan Zhan?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Your type, jiejie, your type!” Wei Ying said, bouncing a little on the sofa to turn and look Lan Zhan in the eyes. She didn’t look impressed, and that just made Wei Ying laugh a little. She could see some tiredness in Lan Zhan’s flawless face, her bedtime long surpassed, and some of the sleepiness had left her usual expressionlessness vulnerable. A frown appeared on her brow as Wei Ying continued, “You know what I mean, Lan Zhan. What kind of girls do you like?” 

“I don’t see how that matters,” Lan Zhan said.

“Of course it matters!” Wei Ying argued, rolling her eyes dramatically and flopping forward on the couch so that her face was close to Lan Zhan’s and she could read every little change to her expression. Her eyes darkened in a way that was exceptionally pretty, and Wei Ying would have told her if she didn’t suddenly feel her heart beating in her throat, unable to speak the compliment aloud. She didn’t know what that was all about, but she didn’t let it stop her from yapping on, ignoring the compliment that she felt bubbling up inside her. She asked instead, “How am I going to make sure to be the perfect wingwoman for you if I don’t know who to scope out for?” 

“Wingwoman?”

“You know,” Wei Ying nudged with her knee against Lan Zhan’s. “If we go out, and you see a pretty girl and you want to approach her. I need to know who to look out for for you.” 

“No one.”

“There must be something you like, that you find pretty.”

“What do you look for?” Lan Zhan asked suddenly, her eyes clearer than they’d been moments before. It shocked Wei Ying a little, not only because it wasn’t like Lan Zhan to ask such things but, also — what did she look for?

Someone who made her laugh, maybe. Someone with intense eyes and soft hair, that would listen to her talk and ask her good follow-up questions to egg on her nonsense and who she would never have to beg for attention. Someone who would look at her like she was their whole world. Someone like —

“Someone like you!” Wei Ying exclaimed happily before realising what she’d said. “I mean — you’re the best, I’m so happy you’re my friend.” She backed away from Lan Zhan’s face just quick enough to be able to see the shock written there before she could make her face a blank slate again.

“Someone like me?” Lan Zhan’s face was closed off in a way that Wei Ying hadn’t seen in months, not since Lan Zhan had spent her time trying to avoid any conversation with her. It was hard to parse, and it made Wei Ying feel uncomfortable, like she had offended Lan Zhan without meaning to. And so Wei Ying did what she did best, and kept talking.

“Of course someone like you, you’re already my favourite! And you’re so pretty, jiejie, and I know you know it because I say it to you literally all the time. How could I not want someone like you?” Wei Ying smiled, a little strained, because Lan Zhan was just staring at her like there was something she wanted to say but was refraining from. She would do that sometimes, like there was some deep and important secret that she had to tell Wei Ying but never had the words to say out loud. It made Wei Ying want to prod, to annoy Lan Zhan the way she was wont to do but never had the guts to go through with. It was no different, then, wanting to ask but being scared. 

“Wei Ying is…” 

“The problem is that you’ve never introduced me to your brother,” Wei Ying cut her off, speaking over Lan Zhan before she can even register that her best friend is speaking. 

“My brother,” Lan Zhan said, a little trite. 

“You’ve mentioned that you two look alike! And if you’re so beautiful he must be handsome, too, right? And who better for him than your absolute best friend in the world?” 

“No.” 

“No?” Wei Ying repeated, questioning. The refusal had come faster than she could have ever anticipated, as if the simple idea of meeting Lan Zhan’s brother was the worst thing her best friend had ever heard of. It made Wei Ying’s heart stutter in her chest again, like she had said another thing that was absolutely out of pocket.

There was a minute of silence between them that seemed to stretch on forever. “He is not good enough for you.” Lan Zhan sounded so sure of herself, like what she’d said was the absolute truth. Coupled with the way that she was looking so intensely at Wei Ying, there was no way that either of them could break the silence that had settled between them at the declaration. 

It didn’t sound accurate either. From what Wei Ying knew, Lan Zhan had only praise for her brother, and had only spoken well of him. Even though she’d never had the chance to meet him, she knew that Lan Zhan was very fond of, and close to, her brother. It was unthinkable that something had happened between them so suddenly that now she didn’t think he was good enough.

“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, don’t be silly,” Wei Ying said finally, trying to clear away the tension between them. “You love your brother, don’t you? If anything, I’m the one that’s not good enough for one of you prestigious Lans.” Lan Zhan just continued to stare at her like she’d lost her mind, and she didn’t know how to take that, other than to pivot back to her original question. 

“You know my type now, then, so no more avoiding the question,” Wei Ying scolded playfully. “Tell me what you like in a girl. Big boobs? Long legs? Ah, wait! I bet Mianmian is your type! I’ve seen you share your notes with her.” Mianmian was someone Wei Ying mostly knew from the periphery — friendly with some of the other girls on their school’s football team, and who shared a few classes with Lan Zhan. She’d seen them speaking on a few occasions and had liked her well enough, though her gut did twist a little knowing that she might have competition for Lan Zhan’s affections. Platonically, of course, but affections nonetheless.

“I am not attracted to Luo Qingyang.” 

“So tell me what you are attracted to, then!” Wei Ying insisted, waggled her eyebrows playfully, and nudged her knee up again.

Lan Zhan was contemplative for a moment before she continued carefully, “I like someone with a pretty smile.” 

Funnily enough, Wei Ying’s smile slowly dropped at that. A pretty smile. So vague it could be anyone, but specific enough that Wei Ying wondered if Lan Zhan already had someone in mind.

“You definitely have a crush on someone, jiejie, that’s such a specific preference.” Wei Ying winked, bouncing again a little in excitement. “You have to tell me who she is. Oh, oh, I can help set you up on a date! It would be so much fun!”

“Fun.” Lan Zhan’s repetition was difficult for Wei Ying to parse. She couldn’t tell if Lan Zhan was repeating the words because she wanted to understand, or if she was poking fun at the whole situation. Or perhaps, though Wei Ying seriously hoped not, Lan Zhan was angry at her. Maybe she thought that Wei Ying was being disingenuous, or trying to make fun of her. It made Wei Ying’s chest hurt, the thought that Lan Zhan might believe she was anything other than supportive of the love that Lan Zhan has always deserved. 

“Yes, fun!” she said finally, moments later after trying (and failing) to collect her thoughts. She never had been the strongest at organising the jumble of thoughts that would go through her head, and usually that was fine. She managed to get by just swell. Most of the time.

“Going on dates is lots of fun, Lan Zhan, you can trust me on that,” Wei Ying said with a confidence that sounded completely genuine. “You know, I’ve been on plenty of dates. I’ve got lots of experience, I’m sure I can give you some pointers.” She winked, putting on some sort of bravado, hoping that maybe Lan Zhan would be more comfortable and genuine if she believed that Wei Ying would be able to genuinely give her advice. It was also — if she was being fully honest — just a lot of fun to rile Lan Zhan up, to watch as her ears grew pink and her brow furrowed just the slightest bit. Her nose would scrunch up a little when she was particularly irate, and Wei Ying had to fight the urge to reach out and pinch her cheeks.

“You’ve been on dates?” Lan Zhan asked. Her voice was low, not only quiet but also deep. Scary, almost, if it wasn’t still so pretty. Wei Ying thought it sounded almost sensual, and then felt her chest flush with heat at such a shameless thought. 

“Of course,” Wei Ying lied easily, breezily. “I’m very desirable, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan looked at her, her face closed off and unreadable. It made something in Wei Ying churn, torn between wanting to tease Lan Zhan more and understanding that she was playing with fire. “I could show you,” Wei Ying teased with a wink, moving close to Lan Zhan’s face. 

Lan Zhan stood in a split second, almost knocking Wei Ying off kilter. Her nostrils were flaring, her chest moving quickly with her heavy breathing. “Ridiculous,” she said, almost like an insult, before speeding off to her bathroom. Wei Ying immediately felt ashamed of her behaviour, disgusted with herself. It was cruel of her to tease Lan Zhan like that, someone who was so prim and proper. Even more cruel was that Wei Ying had teased her like that knowing, knowing, that she’d been awful to Lan Zhan about being a lesbian back at their preparatory school. She didn’t want Lan Zhan to think that she herself thought anything bad — she was an ally, she wanted Lan Zhan to feel safe expressing herself. 

When she could walk to the bathroom after evaluating her shitty joke, she walked on jelly legs. The door wasn’t closed, just pulled over a little, and she pushed it over to open the room so that she could walk in.

Lan Zhan was hunched over the sink, one hand on the stone of the countertop and the other using a towel to pat dry her face. Her eyes looked a little off, red rimmed and intense, and Wei Ying felt even worse than she had moments ago.

“I’m sorry, Lan Zhan.” 

“No need.”

“Of course there is a need,” Wei Ying insisted. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You can be honest with me. I… You’re my best friend, and I love you no matter what.” The confession of love tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop it, but she didn’t regret it, she realised, when she saw the tender, kind look in Lan Zhan’s eyes. 

“Forgiven,” Lan Zhan said. “I apologise for my reaction.”

“No need,” Wei Ying parroted, and smiled at Lan Zhan in the reflection of the mirror. She held her hand out and asked, “Ready to go to sleep, then?”

Lan Zhan nodded.

It was an hour of scrolling idly through her phone and another of sitting with her thoughts later that Wei Ying left the couch to go to Lan Zhan’s room. As comfy as the couch was — and by the gods, was it comfortable — she couldn’t sleep. Maybe the quietness of the room, with only the whirring of an air purifier distantly and the occasional honk of a car horn in the busy streets below, was making her uneasy. 

It wasn’t like Wei Ying never had trouble falling asleep. It was common, actually, with images of her youth cruelly playing through her mind’s eye, or a hundred and one ideas about topics to look up and theories to extrapolate upon whirring through her brain. It was made worse, though, by the quietness. Usually she had the sound of Wen Ning snoring quietly through the thin walls of their shared flat, or Wen Qing coming into the house at odd hours after a shift at the hospital. She wasn’t used to the lack of pandemonium. 

She wasn’t loud when she opened Lan Zhan’s door, but the rustling sound of her pyjamas and the small breeze created by opening the door woke Lan Zhan as if she’d never been asleep. Maybe she hadn’t been, Wei Ying thought, she hadn’t been asleep either. 

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan asked quietly, just enough for Wei Ying to hear, and with none of the grogginess of someone that had been awoken abruptly. So, then, she hadn’t been sleeping. “Are you okay?” 

“Can I sleep in here with you, jiejie?” 

The sheets moved, folding over as Lan Zhan opened her bed up for Wei Ying to crawl into. It was the first time she’d ever done so. Even in their youth, Wei Ying had never slept in Lan Zhan’s bed. It was one of those funny Lan Zhan-isms, the not liking being touched thing. She wondered, briefly, what had changed in the months they’d gone without being friends, that she was now comfortable enough with it to share a whole bed with Wei Ying. It was a bitter thought, Wei Ying supposed, because she wanted to know it all and Lan Zhan was never one to share without good reason. 

Lan Zhan’s bed wasn’t small by any means, but it also wasn’t massive. It was bigger than Wei Ying’s own, for sure, but that was hardly an accomplishment. When she climbed in, there wasn’t a whole ton of space to move. Lan Zhan had always been a back sleeper, and Wei Ying didn’T know whether it was more odd to face her or to face away, or if she should just mimic Lan Zhan entirely and also sleep on her back. She felt a stinging in her eyes, like she wanted to cry but couldn’t, at how weird she was being. She should have just stayed on the sofa and slept poorly.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said a few minutes later, when she’d still failed to settle in comfortably. Lan Zhan turned to face her, on her side, until their faces were so close their breaths were shared, the air leaving Lan Zhan’s lungs to enter Wei Ying’s.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said, and then couldn’t say anything else. She could feel how fast her heart was beating in her chest, and wondered if Lan Zhan could hear it. She nearly flinched when Lan Zhan’s hand came up from where it had been neatly pressed above her sheet to tuck Wei Ying’s fringe behind her ear. It was tender, comfortable, and Wei Ying couldn’t help but close her eyes, luxuriating in the feeling of being taken care of.

“Let’s sleep now,” Lan Zhan said. She didn’t turn, stayed on her side, and the hand that had tucked hair behind Wei Ying’s ear moved down, over her arm, to rest on her waist. A loose cuddle, the kind Wei Ying hadn’t had since before she’d left home, in the few times that she and Jiang Yanli were allowed to sleep in each other’s rooms.

It was comfortable, more so than even the extra comfy couch she’d been trying to sleep on. 

It was easily the fastest she’d fallen asleep in years. 

“Yanlie-jie said that the wedding planning is going really well,” Wei Ying says, propping up a foot on the stool she’s sitting on, gargoyle-like in her stance. It’s comfortable, even if she looks ridiculous. She’s learned there’s absolutely no point in being self-conscious around Lan Zhan — she’s never been judged for her odd antics, and has never once made Wei Ying feel stupid for her gremlin-like tendencies. 

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says. She’s cutting up a variety of produce — capsicum peppers, onions, ginger — on a nice, wooden butcher’s block cutting board that looks more expensive than a textbook. Her knife is sharp, slicing through the foods like they’re as soft as butter, with the grace and confidence of someone who has been cooking for her whole life. Wei Ying knows it’s somewhat true; she remembers back when she’d known Lan Zhan before, as she’s taken to thinking of it in her mind, that Lan Qiren would have her cook at least once or twice a week to develop her independence. Wei Ying, on the other hand, had been swiftly banned from the kitchen after one too many incidents of the aroma of her spicy noodles making Auntie Yu tear up.

Lan Zhan takes care of cooking for them, now, when Wei Ying spends the night over. Wei Ying has offered, even if just to be the designated sous-chef doing all the preparatory work, but Lan Zhan has always refused. She claims it’s therapeutic to go through the motions, which Wei Ying thinks is ridiculous, but she doesn’t complain, because Lan Zhan’s cooking is delightful, and she always makes sure to have the best chili oil on hand so that Wei Ying can add as much as she wants to her serving.

“I have a plus-one,” Wei Ying continues. “My jiejie says Jin Zixuan would love to see you there.”

“And what would Wei Ying like?” Lan Zhan’s knife slows to a stop as she looks up at Wei Ying, keeping direct, unwaveringly steady eye contact with her.

“Huh?”

“You said Jin Zixuan would like to see me at the wedding.”

“Yes.”

“What would you like?” 

Wei Ying thinks it’s obvious. There’s no one in the world she would like to have at the wedding more — maybe, she thinks in a silly, completely unserious way, she would like to bring Wen Qing’s cousin’s son, little a-Yuan, if only to keep her busy with having to entertain a toddler. She somehow doesn’t believe that bringing an actual child as her plus-one would be any more acceptable than bringing Lan Zhan. She doesn’t even know why bringing Lan Zhan feels like a controversial decision to herself. She hears the judgemental and cruel tones of Auntie Yu in her head, repeating people talk, Wei Ying, and your continued association has brought nothing but a stain to us. Her stomach churns.

“What I’d really like is a glass of wine,” she says, dropping her head back. She feels her ponytail graze her lower back where her cropped tank top has ridden up and it tickles, but she can’t bring herself to face forward where Lan Zhan must still be looking at her.

She doesn’t turn when she hears Lan Zhan put down the knife on the butcher’s block, nor when she hears Lan Zhan’s expensive fridge open. She does look when she hears Lan Zhan shuffle around in the second drawer that she keeps her corkscrew in, and oh it’s one of the nice bottles that Lan Zhan doesn’t drink but buys for her all the same. Uncorked, she’s going to have to drink the whole thing. The prospect isn’t as bad as it sounds. 

“I am sure that the wedding will have lots of wine,” Lan Zhan says. Her pour is heavy as she fills a cup for Wei Ying before sliding it over on the counter. The foil around the top of the wine bottle is frayed at the edges, still clinging on to the neck as Lan Zhan puts it on the counter behind her before returning to the island to finish chopping her vegetables. Wei Ying herself fiddles with the corkscrew, slowly winding it so that she can collect the cork in her hands.

“I would like you to be there, too,” Wei Ying says finally, before taking a sip of the wine. It’s a Sauvignon Blanc, crisp on her tongue and chilled just a bit more than it should be, but exactly the way that Wei Ying likes it. “At the wedding, I mean,” Wei Ying clarifies when Lan Zhan looks up at her with an eyebrow quirked slightly. 

“Mn?”

“Yeah. Come with me.” The save the dates haven’t even been sent yet, let alone the invitations, but Wei Ying doesn’t need to be able to see the future to know that there is no one else that she would want to bring. It’s always Lan Zhan for her.

“I will see that my schedule is free, once you are aware of the date.” 

“You’re the best, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, a dopey smile sliding over her mouth. She knows she looks silly, but there’s something in the shine of Lan Zhan’s eyes that tells her that the sentiment is shared, that she also feels some of the warmth that Wei Ying does in her heart.

She knocks back the remainder of the wine in her glass before dinner is served — rice with tofu and fried vegetables — and drinks another while they eat. Lan Zhan graciously doesn’t say anything about it, and she just watches with following eyes as Wei Ying pours herself another healthy glass of wine as they wash and dry their dishes before putting them away, a well-practiced conveyor of work so familiar that they almost dance with it.

“I promise I’ll be good,” Wei Ying says, holding her hands in a prayer. Lan Zhan looks at the two-thirds empty bottle of wine, then directly at her with a look of quasi-disbelief, and Wei Ying snorts out a little laugh. “Jiejie,” she whines, “aren’t I always good with you when I drink?” 

Lan Zhan contemplates for a moment before answering. “Not always,” she says. It sounds like she’s teasing, but her voice is steady and Wei Ying can’t help the fake little scandalised gasp she lets out. 

“Don’t you trust your Wei Ying?” Her voice is whiny, and she sticks her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout.

“Your past antics have given me no reason to.”

“Past antics?” 

“I’ve had to collect you on more than one occasion for your rowdiness with Nie Huaisang,” Lan Zhan says. She says it like she disapproves, but Wei Ying knows, remembers from the time that Lan Zhan had protected her in high school, that she cares, that she’d always take care of her. It was one of the little reassurances that she knew deep down but that they never spoke about out loud. 

Lan Zhan puts away the last bowl, dried and shined, in the overhead cabinet as Wei Ying sneaks up behind her, her glass of wine left on the counter. She’s going to have to pick it up so that Lan Zhan can do her usual routine of wiping down the counters and hanging up the dish towels, but she doesn’t do that yet.

Lan Zhan freezes as Wei Ying’s arms twine around her waist, her face pressed between Lan Zhan’s strong shoulders. She’s so well built, Wei Ying thinks, as she holds tight to Lan Zhan’s waist. She can feel the subtle shift of muscle, the warmth of her body through the thin fabric of her shirt. She’s not drunk, not yet, but the alcohol has made her bold enough to do what her heart wants. She gets on to her tip-toes, hooking her chin over Lan Zhan’s shoulder, and her heart beats so steadily in her chest that she’s sure that Lan Zhan can feel it in her back.

Wei Ying can imagine herself sliding her hands higher, cupping Lan Zhan’s massive boobs like she always wants to, has always wanted to. She can never tell if it’s envy, or desire, or some combination of the two. Her hands nearly shake with the effort not to make grabby motions like a hungry infant. She doesn’t think before she mumbles directly into Lan Zhan’s ear.

“Drink with me?” she asks lowly, her breath probably smelling sweet with the wine, and savoury with the veggies from dinner. 

“You want me to drink with you?” Lan Zhan asks. Her voice is steady, quiet and calm like nothing is out of the ordinary.

“Yeah, jiejie,” Wei Ying whines. She tucks her forehead into Lan Zhan’s neck and wonders if Lan Zhan can feel how warm she is from the press of her forehead. It makes Wei Ying a little shy, but she doesn’t move. 

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says, then, and takes a sip from Wei Ying’s still-full glass.

Lan Zhan’s alcohol tolerance, though positively terrible, is not as bad as it had once been. 

Wei Ying remembers the first time Lan Zhan had had a drink with her — not that is has been that long, in the grand scheme of things, but it’s been a few years since they’d reconnected in their second semester of university, and everything feels ages ago when Wei Ying still feels like she’s still running on borrowed time. 

It hadn’t been a grand affair, just a meeting with a couple of their friends — Wei Ying’s Nie Huaisang meeting with Lan Zhan’s Mianmian and creating a quartet of hijinks that Wei Ying is positive Lan Zhan hadn’t expected. It had been a fun night, and near the end of it Lan Zhan had taken a single shot of the expensive bottle service baijiu Nie Huaisang ordered. She had immediately face-planted into the table in front of them, drawing the ire and stares of the other patrons of the bar, the dirtiest of looks from the bartender, and something like jealousy in Wei Ying’s stomach when Mianmian was the one to scoop Lan Zhan back into a sitting position and give her a cup of water when, minutes later, she woke up, completely plastered.

It had been a fun night. Wei Ying remembers it fondly. 

Tonight, though, is ultimately quite different, now that Lan Zhan is able to at least hold some of her liquor before fully losing her mind. Wei Ying is warmly buzzed, a little loose and languid in her movements, and she uses it as an excuse to cling to Lan Zhan like a barnacle on the side of an old ship. She’s always clingier when she’s been drinking, and though Lan Zhan tolerates it when she’s the one to keep an eye on Wei Ying while sober, while she’s drunk she does more than tolerate it — Wei Ying would almost call it encouragement if she didn’t know any better. 

The air on Lan Zhan’s balcony is cool, but it’s not so bad that they need to go back inside, which Wei Ying is happy about. It gives Wei Ying an excuse to cling, though, an arm wrapped around Lan Zhan’s bicep and her head leaning on her shoulder. The fake stars stuck to the ceiling glow dully, the darkness of night deep enough that the phosphors no longer retain the charge from the day’s ultraviolet rays. She smiles at them, anyway, because Lan Zhan hasn’t taken them down yet, even though they don’t match the aesthetic of her flat in the slightest. Wei Ying likes to think of all the little marks she’s left on Lan Zhan’s life, little fingerprints, proof that she exists and Lan Zhan lets her exist around her. 

The last rays of light are long gone, but when Wei Ying turns her head to look at Lan Zhan she can see her in the distant glow of all the other high rises around. Wei Ying, if she’d been sober, might have insisted that Lan Zhan wear more than her joggers and a bralette outside (and, of course, if Lan Zhan was sober she would never), but Lan Zhan had complained about being hot and uncomfortable, and had stripped of her shirt there in the kitchen while still drinking wine from the same cup. 

Wei Ying still hasn’t been able to tear her eyes away.

It’s not that she wants to be a voyeuristic little creep, but she never really gets to see Lan Zhan like this. She’s not privy to the women’s locker room before and after Lan Zhan’s practice, and rarely does Lan Zhan change in front of her during their sleepovers. Wei Ying had wondered, at one point, if Lan Zhan did it as a courtesy, not wanting Wei Ying to be uncomfortable with the nudity of her lesbian best friend. She’s never asked, too scared to know the truth. 

Now, with just the two of them on the balcony, she can stare all she wants, because Lan Zhan is out of it, anyway. She, too, is looking up at the stars sellotaped to the underside of the balcony in the apartment above hers. 

The lights from the other buildings around cast a glow on Lan Zhan, making it easy for Wei Ying to make out all the details. She can see the triangular shadow her nose casts against her face, the dark shadow in the valley between her breasts, the smooth muscles of her abs. There’s admiration in her gaze, and a gratitude that the universe had granted her the chance to meet Lan Zhan again and again, to be able to convince her that she is worthy of another chance at friendship.

Beneath that, underneath the veneration and love, is something that Wei Ying hates to acknowledge. There’s a sick twist to her stomach, a hollow and possessive hunger that she feels whenever she gets to look at Lan Zhan and keep all these secret moments to herself. She wants to keep the moments in a box, locked away from anyone else — any of the other girls on the football team, or the tall, pretty girls who give Lan Zhan sidelong looks at bars, like they’re imagining her well-groomed hands taking them apart at the seams. It’s a jealous, sick thought. Wei Ying knows she has no claim other than being best friends. She can’t own someone, she can’t own Lan Zhan and force her eyes to never stray, for her to be Wei Ying’s and Wei Ying’s only, not to go out alone and be together forever. 

That’s not a healthy thought. And it sure as hell isn’t what friendship is, and she doesn’t feel like that with any of her other friends, with Wen Qing or Nie Huaisang. Her eyes drop down to Lan Zhan’s mostly-uncovered breasts again and feels some sort of pang in her stomach. Envy, she tries to reason with herself, even though she knows that the heat she feels is anything but.

She doesn’t want to acknowledge it. 

“Lan jiejie,” Wei Ying says, looking up again. Her breath catches in her throat when she sees that Lan Zhan is already looking at her. “Let's go to bed, jiejie.”

Getting into bed is an exercise in familiarity. 

Wei Ying’s limbs are uncoordinated as she slides into Lan Zhan’s bed, the alcohol running through her finally catching up to her. She knows in the morning she’s going to feel out of sorts, will need some sort of painkiller and loads of water, and she’s not going to want to get out of Lan Zhan’s bed. She can’t really care at the moment.

Lan Zhan slides in next to her, and her skin is still slightly cold from being outside, but she hasn’t made any moves to change, still hasn’t put a shirt on, and Wei Ying doesn’t know how to cope with the fact that Lan Zhan’s full, massive rack is pressed right against her own small boobs as they lay facing each other. 

“You don’t want to get dressed, jiejie?” Wei Ying asks, and her voice is whinier than she expected, but she can’t help it. She wriggles a bit on the bed, the heat between her legs disconcerting and something she shouldn’t be feeling because she’s laying platonically with her best friend and she shouldn’t want to —

“Too much work,” Lan Zhan says. Clearly the alcohol has yet to wear off. They’d had a lot of it, Wei Ying justifies. They’d cracked open something stronger, a baijiu Lan Zhan had bought ages ago while travelling back to see her uncle, and Wei Ying doesn’t know if she regrets it yet or not. Lan Zhan continues, “Time to go to sleep.” She doesn’t close her eyes.

Wei Ying knows it’s wrong, knows she shouldn’t, knows it’s crossing so many lines and going over so many boundaries, but it’s like her hands are out of control when she brings one up to trail along Lan Zhan’s side until she’s cupping one of her boobs. Through the thin cotton of her bralette, Wei Ying can feel that Lan Zhan’s nipple is mostly hard. She’s not sure if it’s from the cold or if she’s just one of those women who has hard nipples all the time. She doesn’t know if she should even have these thoughts about it. It feels somehow both taboo and exactly right, and she doesn’t have the mental capacity to unpack her thoughts, not when she feels entirely out of control of her body.

Lan Zhan lets out an inquiring little noise at Wei Ying’s move, but she doesn’t make her stop. Lan Zhan’s eyes aren’t closed yet, and Wei Ying can see the reflection of distant light in them, filtering in through the windows whose draperies weren’t closed before getting into bed. She’s staring at Wei Ying’s face, watching with rapt attention like she’s not sure what’s going to happen next, what Wei Ying is playing at. Wei Ying isn’t quite sure that she knows, either. She swipes her thumb, feeling the hardness of Lan Zhan’s nipple shift under her thumb, just because she can. It makes Lan Zhan suck in a breath, her eyes still locked on Wei Ying’s face. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. Her voice is deep, a little raspy and still slurred from the alcohol, like her tongue is too thick in her mouth. Wei Ying wants to look up, see what is happening in Lan Zhan’s eyes, but she’s too focused on the sensation of Lan Zhan’s perked up nipple under her thumb. She’s utterly enraptured by the way she can just barely make out the bump in the fabric under the dim, ambient light of the city around them. The moment feels simultaneously so small and so big, like the trajectory of the world will forever be changed, even if no one will ever notice it. 

The room is quiet between them for the most part. The heavy and deep little breaths that Lan Zhan is taking are buffeted by the sounds of cars far down below, where the city continues to live, unbeholden to the delicate and silent contract between the two of them. Wei Ying wonders, a little bit insanely, if this is doing anything for Lan Zhan the same way it’s doing something for herself. She doesn’t even want to think about what it’s doing for her, about the way that the heat is creeping up her neck and down her stomach. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, a few minutes later. The words come out wetly around the saliva she hadn’t noticed gathering under her tongue. She wonders if Lan Zhan can tell that something is up with her, if she can hear the desire in Wei Ying’s voice. Wei Ying isn’t even sure what the desire is until the words tumble out of her mouth, unbidden. “Can I stick my face in your tits?” 

“Wei Ying —”

“Please say yes,” Wei Ying whines, her eyes lifting to meet Lan Zhan’s gaze. Her eyes are so dark, even in the dim light of the night. She’s looking at Wei Ying like one of the criminals in the murder mystery documentaries Wei Ying likes to watch, her gaze steady and unwavering. It makes Wei Ying feel like prey, like Lan Zhan is an apex predator hunting her down and consume her whole.

“That’s what you want?” 

“Mhm,” Wei Ying hums in agreement. Her other hand, the one that had been laying between them immobile, cups Lan Zhan’s other breast. They’re heavy, even without the pressure of gravity as she holds them. The sensation is almost electric, and she feels her heart beating rapidly in her chest as Lan Zhan continues to just stare at her, not speaking another word. She wonders, if she were to press her hand to Lan Zhan’s sternum instead, if she would feel her best friend’s heart beating just as quickly. 

When she moves her other thumb, she notices that both of Lan Zhan’s nipples are hard. She swallows down the saliva that had gathered in her mouth again.

She doesn’t hesitate to stick her face in, a combination of pushing her own head down and using her hands to push Lan Zhan’s tits up until her face is buried on all sides in Lan Zhan’s ample bosom. Lan Zhan continues to be silent, saying absolutely nothing, but a hand comes up around Wei Ying, holding the back of her head tenderly, massaging against her scalp. The sensation feels so good that she can’t help but let out a moan, the sound muffled in Lan Zhan’s skin.

Lan Zhan freezes, then manoeuvres them around a little so that she can hold Wei Ying’s head with one hand and put the other on Wei Ying’s waist. In response to the move, Wei Ying opens her mouth a little, just enough to press the smallest of kisses against Lan Zhan’s tits, and feels more than hears the gasping breath Lan Zhan takes. When she swipes her thumbs against Lan Zhan’s nipples, she shifts suddenly, and Wei Ying realises with the suddenness of a truck hitting her what it is that she’s doing. 

She feels herself blushing from the roots of her hair down to the tips of her toes, and does her best to wriggle out of Lan Zhan’s grasp, except — Lan Zhan is too strong, and she can’t. 

“Lan Zhan —” Wei Ying starts to say before being unceremoniously cut off.

“Hush,” Lan Zhan says, her voice still so raspy, so something, spiced with a heat that Wei Ying has never heard, but that she finds herself wanting to hear more of. She continues, “Let’s sleep.”

Her grip loosens just enough for Wei Ying to be able to turn her head and get some air, but not enough so that she’s not effectively using Lan Zhan’s breasts as a pillow. Wei Ying would be lying if she said she didn’t like it a bit, this feeling of being babied.

She falls asleep quickly, and better than she has in a while. 

When Wei Ying wakes up, she’s alone in Lan Zhan’s bed. She tries not to feel any disappointment at it. She knows she shouldn’t. 

“Let’s say that you had a life altering experience but couldn’t tell anyone about it, how would you, erm, cope with that?” 

Wei Ying’s voice is teetering on the edge of slurring, the shots of baijiu she’d taken with Nie Huiasang before coming out to the tiny xiaochi stands that line the streets near his flat hitting her harder than she’d expected. 

It hasn’t been more than a few days since her sleepover at Lan Zhan’s house and the night hasn’t left her mind since. 

She had woken up alone, still in Lan Zhan’s bed, sweaty and sticky with the kind of perspiration that only comes from sharing a close space with someone else. She remembers, very clearly, falling asleep close to Lan Zhan — she can only wonder what position they were in when Lan Zhan had awoken. Lan Zhan had said nothing either, except to admit that she remembers very little after she’d had some wine post dish-washing, and then the rest of the night was completely gone once they’d broken out the baijiu.

Lan Zhan had gone through the glacial process of helping Wei Ying out of bed, pushing her into Lan Zhan’s fancy glass shower with her nice hair products, and when Wei Ying had finally emerged with a minor headache and a severe case of dehydration, breakfast had been ready. Lan Zhan still hadn’t asked anything about what had happened during the night, and Wei Ying didn’t volunteer the information, either. Lan Zhan hadn’t been any different, and Wei Ying had felt like her whole world had flipped on its axis.

In the following days, nothing has changed, either. She and Lan Zhan still meet up to study, to have lunch, to just sit together in silence. Lan Zhan has still packed her a healthy and satisfying lunch for the days she’s been working in the lab, and still listens whenever Wei Ying goes on a tangent about whatever topic of the day has caught her attention. Everything is normal, except that it isn’t because Wei Ying is noticing things she’s always catalogued away as just normal things about her best friend, but that seem so much more, now.

She got distracted just the day before when Lan Zhan had handed over a little bento box, and her hands were so big that Wei Ying had lost herself in her thoughts for well over a minute before Lan Zhan finally asked her if she was feeling alright.

Then there had been the way that she’d gotten distracted as Lan Zhan sat down next to her. She’d already been seated in their usual study nook, Lan Zhan always a little later to arrive because her class is in the adjacent building on the fourth storey and Lan Zhan always insists on taking the stairs when she can avoid the lift. Wei Ying had been distracted by her disloyal eyes and traitorous brain because she’d been unable to stop thinking about the swing of Lan Zhan’s breasts as she shuffled around her textbooks and laptop before sitting down.

Then there was the warm gaze, and small, barely-there smiles. She noticed the fond looks that follow every single one of Lan Zhan’s minute little eye rolls. Wei Ying has never thought anyone's ears are cute, or that their teeth are pretty, until all of a sudden she’s been unable to ignore the way that Lan Zhan makes her the happiest person whenever they’re together, and she can’t imagine ever feeling this way about any man. She’s never even had the urge to kiss a man but Lan Zhan’s lips are so pretty and her chapstick is so nice whenever she lets Wei Ying borrow it when her own is lost at the bottom of her bag —

“Wei Ying? Are you in there?” Nie Huaisang asks, breaking Wei Ying out of her Lan Zhan thoughts induced stupor. He’s got a fist raised like he was moments away from knocking on her head like a heavy, wooden door, but he lets it drop once Wei Ying whips her eyes around in acknowledgement of his voice. 

“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sincere at all. “I’m just a bit distracted tonight.” 

“Not enough sleep? Too many shots? Work-life-school balance off kilter?” Nie Huaisang asks, raising a skewer of meat like a shrug, punctuating his questions. He gets an evil little glint in his eyes that disappears as quickly as it arrived, one that Wei Ying recognises as his shit-disturbing look, and he continues, “Or is it that something happened with Lan Zhan?” 

Wei Ying must have a look on her face that gives her away immediately, because Nie Huaisang laughs a little meanly at the look on her face. He doesn’t say anything, though, just raises his eyebrows as he continues to eat. He gestures for her to get on with it, and she can’t tell whether he means for her to eat, to dispel some of the drunkenness that she’s feeling, or if he’s waiting for her to spill all her deepest secrets. Probably both, she thinks, knowing him. 

She takes it as a go-ahead to take a bite out of her own skewer, savouring the mild spiciness of the lamb. She doesn’t look at Nie Huaisang, whose eyes she can feel nearly boring holes into her head from the intensity of his gaze. She realises, perhaps a bit late, that she shouldn’t have even asked the question. She blames the alcohol, of course, because it’s easier to do that than to have to acknowledge something deep within her is fundamentally different than she’s believed for so long. 

She’s spent her whole life bouncing back, after all. Letting the water roll off like water off a duck’s back is practically in her DNA. She managed to continue walking forward, perhaps with fewer guarantees of safety, after being kicked out by Auntie Yu, when her whole life had been torn apart. She can do it again, now, as she realises that she is not who she had thought she was. 

“You know, I won’t tell anyone anything if you need to talk,” Nie Huaisang says, this time genuinely, not in the teasing tone he’d been using. Wei Ying can’t tell if it’s because he’s at the sentimental point of being drunk or if it’s because he really does care, but she appreciates it nonetheless. He’s a good friend, she thinks, and he has been since they’d met in their first year, in an elective course they’d taken together. He’d thought a course simply called ‘Stress’ would be about meditation and coping mechanisms, and Wei Ying had thought that was the funniest thing she’d heard in a long time. 

“I know,” she says after a moment. She sways a bit on the rickety, cheap stool she’s sitting on, enough to lean her body over to Nie Huaisang to rest her head on his shoulder. She feels sober and drunk all at once, like two beings in one. Her body feels heavy as she slumps against Nie Huaisang, and she can’t help but think of it all. 

She eats food Lan Zhan makes for her, and drinks coffees Lan Zhan buys for her. She holds their usual table every week because she wants nothing more than to spend her time with Lan Zhan, even if they’re doing benign, individual work for their classes. Her foster family gives her knowing looks whenever she mentions Lan Zhan, and the Wens give her some kind of pitying yet understanding looks whenever she spends the night out. 

“You’re allowed to still be discovering yourself,” Nie Huaisang says, like he’s reading her mind, and he holds out another skewer of shaokao out for her to grab. She bites at the meat disinterestedly, only taking the smallest of nibbles. She knows that Nie Huaisang is looking at her like there’s something wrong with her, and there is — there obviously is — but she doesn’t think he gets it. She doesn’t think that he thinks whatever is wrong with her is the same as what she believes is wrong with her.

She eats in silence and doesn’t even taste the meat as she chews through it. Her jaw moves uncomfortably where she’s still got her face pressed against the boniness of Nie Huaisang’s shoulder, but she almost likes the sensation a little bit, enjoys the unusual punishment of it. She struggles to swallow down the food, her throat barely letting anything through.

“Aren’t I too old for self-discovery?” Wei Ying asks finally, a few minutes later after she’s finished forcing herself to finish eating her skewer of meat. Nie Huaisang looks at her like he sees right through her, like she’s a book that he’s read a hundred times and doesn’t even need to look at to know the story. It makes her feel flayed apart and naked, raw and to be looked at and analysed. She doesn’t think she likes being on the receiving end of a look like this from anyone other than Lan Zhan.

“You’re hardly the first person to discover themselves ‘later in life’,” Nie Huaisang says with air quotes and an exaggerated eye roll. “Which you are not by the way,” he continues, “because that would also make me old, and I refuse to believe you would insult me in such a way.”

Wei Ying laughs a little at that, her heart still heavy but the words helping at least marginally. “I’ll come out to you when I’m ready,” she says, lifting her head so that she is looking directly at Nie Huaisang. There’s recognition in his eyes, her words immediately making him understand what it is that she’s going through, but he doesn’t pry.

“Do you want to get some shengjianbao and go back to my place to drink some more?” he asks instead, standing up from the stool he’d been sitting on. Wei Ying stands, too, getting up from her significantly wobblier stool, and smiles at him.

“Fuck yes,” she nearly groans, enthusiastically agreeing with him. He smiles back.

She thinks that, maybe, and in spite of her fears, that not everything has to change. She is still the same person inside, even if she’s realising things about herself that she didn’t know previously. She thinks that 

Wei Ying had learned young the cost of doing what she believed to be right.

It had started when she’d first moved in with the Jiangs. It wasn’t her fault, of course, being a small child picked up by a new guardian that she’d never met before. Uncle Jiang had been kind, of course, and though she’d been terrified of moving from the city she’d lived in up until that moment, the thought of having a family had been nice, after losing her parents. He’d told her she’d have a jiejie and a didi, and there had been nothing more than that that she could ever want. 

She hadn’t realised until the day after arriving that being excited was her first mistake.

Auntie Yu hadn’t been outwardly cruel at first. She’d been cold, looking at Wei Ying like she was see-through, a phantom moving through her house. It hadn’t been so bad, really, despite the fact that all of the childhood development books Wei Ying has read to help whenever babysitting a-Yuan have said that ignoring a child is just another form of abusive behaviour. She preferred to think it was better, then, when Auntie Yu had simply ignored her.

It had all changed one day, though, when she’d gotten better grades than Jiang Cheng in every single class, both the ones that they shared and the ones that they didn’t. She’d only been eleven, then, and it hadn’t been an excuse. She remembers, clearly, Auntie Yu telling her that girls and women are supposed to be smart, yes, but they need to hide it — men don’t like it when they’re overtly smart. She hadn’t seen the logic behind it, and when she’d said as much, Auntie Yu had looked at her like she was a fool — a new-age thinker, she’d said. Liberal, just like her free-travelling mother. Wei Ying had never quite understood why that was such a bad thing, except that Auntie Yu would take any opportunity to disparage her mother, directly or indirectly, and so it must have been something bad in her mind. 

Wei Ying didn’t take it to heart. She just hid the few pictures of her parents that she still had deeper in her drawers, a hidden little memory for only herself. Auntie Yu stopped looking at her like a phantom, and started seeing her as a nuisance.

The second time she was truly punished was the first time that Wei Ying had thought it was complete bullshit. It was, coincidentally, the first time that she fought back against Auntie Yu’s ridiculous notions of propriety and what was ‘acceptable femininity’ — her words. It had been when Wei Ying was fourteen, her first period somehow both totally normal and a total shock, in tandem. She’d been expecting it — she’d taken health classes, duh, and had asked Jiang Yanli about it out of her sheer curiosity as a later bloomer — but it had been treated as if she had done something of true dishonour, like she had brought shame to the Jiangs, to the Weis, to her ancestral line.

It had been the first time she was punished physically. 

It hadn’t been enough to wake up to her own blood, to feel the first cramps in her lower back and the tenderness in places she hadn’t known it before. It hadn’t been enough that she’d stripped her bed, stripped her clothes, had handed it all off to the maids — lucky that it had fallen on a day that the maids were working in-house — and hadn’t been enough that she had gone to Jiang Yanli, her trusted jiejie, to make sure that everything was as perfect as can be before Auntie Yu found out.

It hadn’t been enough.

The sheets stained a touch, her pyjamas now too childish for a burgeoning woman. It was uncouth to ask her sister and not her guardian for help because asking someone else meant that there was something to hide, and ‘what do you have to hide, Wei Ying’ was suddenly a question that was being thrown around. It was against everything Wei Ying had planned for.

She’d kneeled, that day, for the first time.

Of course, Auntie Yu had had her moment. Wei Ying always thought about the memory kindly. It wasn’t exactly as she had thought her mother might teach her, but she didn’t hate it. She learned the ins and outs of her body, in more detail than she’d learned in school. She’d learned to use protection when she would inevitably give up her virtue — once again, Auntie Yu’s words, with no basis to back them up — because she was now a woman, could carry children of her own. She herself was enough of a charity case, Auntie Yu had told her, and she didn’t need to bring in any more. 

And, of course, after a lesson that was simultaneously mortifying and the only time Wei Ying had felt any sort of solidarity with Auntie Yu, she’d been sentenced to a few hours of kneeling, for the crime of accidentally staining her sheets while asleep.

The staying-on-her knees itself wasn’t so bad. She had creative enough a soul to explain and justify to herself why kneeling in place didn’t quite bother her, but she had never really explored those thoughts. She’d gotten used to it easily, and had put those thoughts to rest as soon as they had awoken. It was not as if meditation was completely new to her if she was being honest to herself, and it was easier to ignore everything else going on in favour of just focusing on her breathing, steadying her body, and following through with whichever asinine punishment doled out to her. 

The kneeling became commonplace for her, among all the other punishments that weren’t physical. Phone taken away and told to kneel for an hour, locked in her room and told to kneel for the afternoon, no dinner and kneeling in the rock gardens in the western courtyard. She never quite liked it, but she understood it. She was unruly, undisciplined, problematic. It was for her own good. 

It was something that she had never grown out of, though she didn’t really tell anyone about it. Even when she’d left the Jiangs — gotten kicked out, she should say, really — she’d continued with the punishment. It was almost a comfort, she’d thought at one point when she was at her lowest point, in the first weeks of university when none of her adopted family was speaking to her, and the job that she’d lined up for the start of university had fallen through. Wen Qing had caught her kneeling in the bathroom, staring idly at the slightly grimy cabinet doors as the chill of the cold tiles radiated up her knees. 

Wen Qing hadn’t said anything at the time, just sighed and looked at Wei Ying like she knew, somehow, why Wei Ying was doing it. They’d never talked about it, but Wen Qing, and eventually Wen Ning, too, learned to gauge when she was having one of her tougher days. They learned, even if they couldn’t see it, when Wei Ying would kneel in her room for whatever reason, and were always there to comfort her.

The punishments stopped, for the most part, once Wei Ying got back on her feet and had sorted out the mess she’d made of her life. It was rare that she would punish herself anymore, and yet she felt compelled to do it now, a few days after drinking with Nie Huaisang, when he’d seen right through her and her conflicting emotions. 

She doesn’t mean for it to be a punishment, really. It starts as just a coincidence, really, that she finds herself kneeling on the floor in her bedroom. The fact that her mind had slipped into thoughts about Lan Zhan wasn’t unusual, but the thoughts — of Lan Zhan scantily clad and getting into bed, of the times Wei Ying had seen her with dripping wet hair after a game and had imagined what Lan Zhan looks like while she showers with her teammates, of how soft Lan Zhan’s breasts had been in her hands and under her lips. 

She worries the skin of her bottom lip between her teeth as she kneels, picks at the hangnail on one of her fingers, and thinks about the fact that she shouldn’t feel the way that she does. It’s cruel of her to put her burgeoning desires and confusions about her feelings on her best friend — the very best friend she had, in fact, all but begged to be friends with again. She can’t imagine a life without Lan Zhan, without her small smiles and fond looks and gentle caring. Wei Ying thinks she’d rather be confused about her feelings but keep Lan Zhan than to attempt to push Lan Zhan into feeling the same way and ruining everything.

Her knees are numb when she stands up again, and she must look something ghastly when she leaves her room. Wen Qing is there with a cup of tea, already steaming, and Wen Ning doesn’t even have to say anything to beckon her over to the couch to watch some drama with him on the old TV they’d pawned off of one of the Wen’s cousins. She slinks by, drinks her tea, and watches the screen with unfocused eyes.

Wei Ying doesn’t see Lan Zhan again until days later.

It’s not like she’s been ignoring her best friend, it just happens to be that she’s excessively busy in the days immediately following their midterms. She’s got term papers to finish (start, if she’s being honest), a lab report every fortnight plus a tutoring session every other fortnight, and enough reading to catch up on that she’s been neglecting for so long that she’s not sure she’d have enough hours in the day even if she forewent all sleep via magic potion (read: a deadly concoction of coffee brewed with an energy drink that Wen Qing might have her admitted into psychiatric care for even contemplating in a theoretical sense). She doesn’t do it on purpose to mildly ignore Lan Zhan, but if it is one of the small bonuses of being busy, well, she doesn’t mention that either. 

The worst part, though, is that she does miss Lan Zhan. How can she not, she thinks, when Lan Zhan is (through no fault of her own) a stabilising pillar in Wei Ying’s life. She has just gotten so used to the silent, unwavering presence beside her at any given time. Wei Ying sighs and sets her eyes back on her textbook, using a sticky tab to mark off an important bit of theory that she’ll need to refer back to later when she actually sets herself to writing on her old, clunky laptop back when she’s at her flat. Some of the passage is already highlighted irregularly, wonky and wobbly from the previous owner that she’d bought the textbook off of at the beginning of the semester, and she squints harder, trying to dissect what’s written. She can feel her eyes burning with the strain, and she wonders if maybe buying second-hand was a mistake. 

With the general cost of textbooks, though, she immediately goes back on that thought. 

She does wish, a little ridiculously, that everyone would keep their textbooks like Lan Zhan does, though, and the way she’s gently bullied Wei Ying into treating her own books. No highlighters, only the lightest of pencil marks when absolutely necessary, colour-coded tabs for different subjects and importance levels. Wei Ying remembers that Lan Zhan had been like that even in high school, her books always so neat and orderly. 

The only time she’d ever seen that Lan Zhan had written in a book was in their second year of university, one night when she’d been staying over at Lan Zhan’s flat after a pipe had burst in the flatshare she had with Wen Qing and Wen Ning and needed to be repaired over the course of three days. Wei Ying had been curious, and it was the first time she’d been alone in Lan Zhan’s home without her. She’d been too curious, had scoured Lan Zhan’s shelves to see what kinds of books she kept without her uncle’s potential influence. 

There’d been art books — a combination of the traditional ancient Chinese art prints that Wei Ying had seen at Lan Zhan’s uncle’s house, and also more modern works of a more international variety. There had been too many textbooks to count, some of them likely passed down from Lan Zhan’s older brother when he’d lease-transferred to her when she started university and he graduated. Notably, the only one that had ever been annotated personally, was a poetry book, the name and the author completely forgotten by Wei Ying, but the poem had been sweet. Something about yearning and longing, that had been underlined in Lan Zhan’s usual barely-there pencil marks, and then, almost aggressively, highlighted with a pale pink highlighter. 

She’d never seen the book again, Wei Ying noticed, after subtly trying to see it amongst the books on the shelves. She’s never asked about it, either. 

Sometimes Wei Ying feels like her obsession with Lan Zhan crosses the boundary of regular friendship. She knows, of course, that her friendship is more than just typical friends — they are the best of friends, one another’s soul sisters, understanding all the random nuances that make up each other’s characters.

Wei Ying had thought, once, when she’d been young and naive, that Jiang Cheng had been her true soul sibling. The two of them loved getting into trouble, taunting their shared professors in primary school, their birthdays so close together, Jiang Cheng’s father and her own best friends before her parents’ untimely deaths. It had seemed perfect, and yet age had shown over and over and over again that Wei Ying romanticised her own life, and her foster brother was never the person she’d thought he was. 

She’d thought once, too, that Jiang Yanli had been her person. Not in a romantic sense, of course, but just as someone that she could go to no matter what was happening in her life. It hadn’t been entirely wrong, of course. She could go to Jiang Yanli with so many things, no matter how banal or silly, and she’d get answers and advice. It hadn’t lasted, though, because Wei Ying was nothing if not a huge fuck-up who ruined all the trust in every one of her relationships. 

Wen Ning and Wen Qing were perfectly good to her too, of course, but though she would trust them with her life — and she had listed Wen Qing as her emergency contact with various different companies she’d worked with and organisations she’d volunteered in because of that trust — but after leaving the Jiangs’ home she’d never really recovered that familial sense that she so desperately craved. 

Lan Zhan, though, defied the odds, and continues to defy the odds to this day. Despite their brief and stunted friendship in preparatory school, and Wei Ying increasingly having trouble being emotionally vulnerable with her friends, she’s never had that problem with Lan Zhan.

She realises, now, that her friendship with Lan Zhan is anything but. Maybe it had been, at first, when Wei Ying had been simply enamoured with the idea of being Lan Zhan’s friend. When they’d met as teenagers, and she had wanted nothing more than to enervate the pretty and strict prefect that she’d met, she had been happy with any of the acknowledgement that Lan Zhan would give her. Now she realises that any attention from Lan Zhan is a gift, and though she can’t stop herself from teasing, she wants Lan Zhan to look at her with the same sense of admiration that Wei Ying always uses when she looks at Lan Zhan.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan’s voice says, breaking Wei Ying out of her cyclical thoughts. She hadn’t been getting anywhere with those thoughts, anyway. Wei Ying doesn’t say anything as Lan Zhan cooly slides into the seat beside her, not a hair out of place, already in her football jersey — and the sports bra that miraculously compresses Lan Zhan’s tits into pancakes, Wei Ying notices morosely — for the practice that she has shortly. 

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying exclaims, her joy overriding any thoughts she’d been in the midst of contemplating. She admits, “I was just thinking about you!”

“Mn?”

“Only good, I promise you,” Wei Ying says, her smile broad across her lips. She adds, “ As if I can think anything bad about you.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t make any face that indicates she might think more about what Wei Ying has just said. In fact, she doesn’t act like anything is out of the ordinary, and continues to settle herself into the chair next to Wei Ying without a word, without a hair out of place. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, the way it always is when she’s about to play football, almost the exact way that Wei Ying wears her own hair on a daily basis. She looks so pretty, so untouchable, in a way that makes Wei Ying feel a little giddy, because she does get to touch, she does get to be one of the few that Lan Zhan lets into her small circle. 

Sometimes Wei Ying feels like her love for Lan Zhan is a sun, burning hot inside her chest, making her heart into little more than warm embers. She wonders, sometimes, if the burning of her sun shines through her skin, if it makes her love and admiration as obvious as writing on walls. She doesn’t think it does — because if she was so obvious about her adoration and love, surely Lan Zhan would have called her out on her creepiness, already — but still she wonders. 

Wei Ying says nothing, still, waiting for the dreamlike haziness of the moment to pass. She doesn’t know why being around Lan Zhan today doesn’t feel real, except she really, completely does. It feels different to be around someone she’s recognising as no longer feeling platonically toward, and she’s consumed with the thought that she may never have felt platonically for Lan Zhan. The teasing in preparatory school, from calling her pretty and bothering her in the library, to now, as adults, wanting Lan Zhan focused on her at any and all possible moments, may be more than she had ever realised. Maybe, she thinks with a sick churn, teasing Lan Zhan about being a lesbian had been her fishing for some sort of confirmation that there was even the slightest chance that she might feel toward Wei Ying what Wei Ying felt toward her.

“I brought some food,” Lan Zhan says, a little bit later, after the silence has settled over them like a warm and familiar blanket. Wei Ying looks up at her, shocked that Lan Zhan is the one breaking the silence between them for once. Lan Zhan motions to the little bundle she’d pulled out of her gym bag — smelling nicer than Wei Ying’s not-a-gym-bag, somehow — and Wei Ying can’t help but stare. It’s not any different from the usual bundles of food Lan Zhan has prepared for her in the past, little glass containers neatly stacked and prepared with a combination of nutrient dense foods stored inside, all wrapped up in handkerchiefs that Wei Ying still doesn’t know the origins of. This one is pale blue, printed with little black and white bunnies all over the fabric. It makes Wei Ying’s heart palpitate. 

“You didn’t have to,” she says, barely above a whisper. Something she might have been able to pass as her library voice, except they’re not in the library, and she rarely bothers to try to be quiet. 

“I wanted to,” Lan Zhan says, so simply, so easily, like she doesn’t have to think over it, like it comes so naturally to her, taking care of Wei Ying. Maybe it does, which makes Wei Ying feel even more like —

The thing is, simply, that sometimes Lan Zhan says these things that make Wei Ying feel like her chest is going to cave in, like there is a weight to the words that will drown her or take her down in a way that she cannot conceive. She reaches towards the food Lan Zhan has prepared for her, resting her palm on the pretty knot at the top, holding the whole thing together. She knows that she can pull the ties of the knot and the whole thing will fall apart, and somehow that feels like a metaphor for her whole life, like Lan Zhan can pull her apart at the seams if she just pulled a little harder.

It’s always been like this, she thinks, because even before she ever realised that there is something deeper inside of her that makes her crave everything that there is to be had with Lan Zhan, Wei Ying had been weak to her best friend. At first she’d thought it was just something to do with being best friends because she’s never felt this way with anyone else — none of her friends make her feel like she’s bursting at the seams, like she has more to give than she could ever imagine. She thinks of Wen Qing and Wen Ning, and how her love for them has settled like siblings she didn’t even know she was a part of until she’d already integrated herself into the family. She thinks of Nie Huaisang who has been nothing but an absolute hoot and a half, always down for some hijinks, who she can confide in but has never really understood. She thinks of Mianmian, who she’d been introduced to through Lan Zhan, and had been jealous of for a short bit before realising how snarky and fun she is. She thinks of her foster siblings, Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng, who have been with her for almost as long as she can remember.

None of them hold a candle to the way that Lan Zhan makes her feel. The thought alone excites her as much as it scares her. 

Nothing any of them have ever done or said has had the kind of effect that Lan Zhan has had on her. None of the catastrophic impact of a tsunami hitting her over the head, the calamitous destruction of a volcanic eruption in her stomach, the destruction of a meteor hitting her chest. It is always so different with Lan Zhan, all the little things hitting her so much harder than anything anyone else could ever say or do to her. When she forgets it all, she still remembers Lan Zhan. 

The thought settles something in Wei Ying, the waves inside of her settling after a tumultuous storm, leaving nothing but peaceful waters. It’s a large and imposing something that sits in her stomach, making it hard to get air into her lungs, and she wonders for a minute if she’s forgotten how to breathe, or if she is drowning under the pressure she’s putting on herself. 

She doesn’t realise that her inner turmoil has become outwardly visible until Lan Zhan forcefully brings her to the present. She rests her hand above where Wei Ying’s still rests on the lunch that Lan Zhan had made for her. Her fingers slot into the spaces between Wei Ying’s like they’ve been manufactured to fit together like a child’s building blocks. Wei Ying realises, with breathtaking and sudden clarity, that the worst thing in the world might be Lan Zhan realising that Wei Ying feels so much more than she does.

It doesn’t stop Wei Ying’s voice from speaking before her mind can catch up to her lips. “You know I love you, don’t you?” she asks, and she can’t take it back. She nearly expects Lan Zhan to pull her hand back, as if she knows, she knows, and is disturbed by Wei Ying’s affections, because Lan Zhan is so perfect and why wouldn’t she be weirded out by her imperfect best friend’s feelings —

Except she doesn’t. She doesn’t move her hand, even when Wei Ying tries to move her own hand back closer to her. She tightens her hand, holding Wei Ying in place, the two of them holding onto the containers of food like they’re some sort of precious package. Wei Ying can’t bring herself to take her hand away, and raises her eyes to look at Lan Zhan.

For all the lack of talking they’d done that week, Lan Zhan’s eyes make up for it. 

Her eyes shine, like there are hundreds of words that she doesn’t have the voice to speak aloud, and Wei Ying, for once, understands the feeling. Whatever teasing words she’d felt bubbling up in her chest to get a rise out of Lan Zhan for cooking for her once again immediately die, and she can do nothing more than stare into Lan Zhan’s eyes. Her hand feels clammy, sweat soaking into the handkerchief under her palm, but Lan Zhan’s hand is steady, unshaking and totally dry. 

Wei Ying smiles — a shaky thing, delicate and tender, like her whole soul is written on the pull of her cheeks. Lan Zhan doesn’t smile back, but her eyes soften, the way they so often do around Wei Ying, and it’s enough. 

“I have to get to practice,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying doesn’t know if it’s been minutes or hours. When she glances at the clock on the wall behind her she can see that her shift at the lab is in twenty minutes, and she still has to walk to the pure and applied sciences building. She takes a shuddering breath when Lan Zhan’s hand pulls away, though she doesn’t say anything about it. 

“Thank you for lunch, Lan jiejie,” she says instead, and grabs the food to pack it into her own bag alongside her textbooks and notebooks. It distends her bag weirdly, bulging and strange, and the thought crosses her mind that she doesn’t mind being bent out of shape if it’s Lan Zhan’s doing. She flushes down her chest as she quickly walks away, throwing a smile over her shoulder as she does so. “I’ll wash these for you before I bring them back,” she lies, knowing that Lan Zhan will likely grab them from Wei Ying’s backpack tomorrow, and Wei Ying won’t have even bothered to pretend like she’d attempted cleaning them. She finishes, “Have a good practice!”

Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything, but she nods in acknowledgement. It’s good enough.

Later that night, when Wei Ying is stuffed full from the extra-late (who is she kidding, it was dinner) of Lan Zhan’s food, she thinks back at the interaction.

Lan Zhan hadn’t been any different. And she herself had been undeniably weird. 

She kneels, again, in the small, shared bathroom in her flat with the Wens that night. It adds an extra thirty minutes to her routine, and Wen Qing ends up knocking on the door and asking if she’s got some kind of indigestion which embarrasses her as much as it encourages her to finally get up.

She rationalises to herself that she just needs to be normal the next time. She can’t push her feelings on Lan Zhan. She needs to be the same as always. After all, Lan Zhan had been normal. Maybe, Wei Ying thinks to herself, Lan Zhan doesn’t even remember how weird Wei Ying had been about her tits. Or if she does remember, maybe she just thinks it’s something that straight girls do together. It seems plausible enough, really. 

Chapter Text

Spring continues to shift into summer with the familiar ease of a dance practiced ad infinitum. 

The nights remain just a touch too cold, something that hasn’t exactly been a problem for her recently as she’s been spending more and more time with Lan Zhan in her warm flat that has heating elements under the bathroom floor. Wei Ying knows that Lan Zhan will never admit to it — because it’s a luxury she was raised without and she tries to stick to her mostly ascetic lifestyle — but she keeps the floors heated much longer than she really needs to. Wei Ying thinks it’s cute, mostly because she knows that Lan Zhan is a human furnace and doesn’t actually need it.

She knows that she’s been a bit off recently — the last time that she’d spent actual time at the flat that she shares with Wen Ning and Wen Qing had all but confirmed that to her. She knows, in earnest, that she’s been feeling weird since she had gone out with Nie Huaisang weeks ago, before the weather had gotten better, before Wen Qing had caught her red-kneed from her own self-imposed punishment. She doesn’t think about the fact that Wen Qing has been too busy to ask her about it, and the baseline relief that she’s felt because of it.

She doesn’t really want to think of it, either, if she’s being honest, but she also doesn’t want to think about the family dinner she’s sitting at. She wonders, almost a little too self-awaredly, if she really is giving off such terrible energy.

Everyone — read: Jiang Yanli (expected), Jiang Cheng (unexpected), and even Jin Zixuan (unprecedented) — is giving her encouraging little looks with sympathetic eyes and commiserating smiles. She thinks, sullenly, that family dinner would be so much easier with Lan Zhan by her side, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? 

The conversation mostly keeps away from her as a topic. Wedding planning is in full force, which takes up most of the night, even if Jin Zixuan is conspicuously quiet. Wei Ying, though she doesn’t particularly care for him, has learned much about him over the years. Not only from Jiang Yanli, but also because Lan Zhan is friends with him, which is somewhat of a shock, but Lan Zhan is also the best person that she knows so she takes it into account and it raises Jin Zixuan’s scores in her books. 

She knows, from Lan Zhan’s honest telling and Jiang Yanli’s slightly more biased gushing, that Jin Zixuan is just shy. She knows, through one night of having a little bit too much wine at Jiang Yanli’s house after dinner together, that he’s also just kind of frightened of pissing off Auntie Yu with any of his opinions. Wei Ying can, unfortunately, understand his perspective on that. She’s been much nicer to him at these family dinners ever since. 

The conversation turns to Jiang Cheng and his business degree, how his internship at his father’s company is going, how he’s going to be able to focus on a career and finding a partner soon. It makes Wei Ying’s gut churn, because she knows that the next topic in line in herself, always kept for the end of the night just in case things turn sour, as they are often wont to do. She learned young that no matter what she does there will always be areas for improvement, and there will always be reasons to criticise her. She doesn’t let herself get her hopes up that tonight will be any different. 

She’s proven right after a short while.

The ‘Jiang Cheng’ portion of the night always goes relatively quickly, though Wei Ying is still undecided on the ultimate reason why. It might be because Auntie Yu has a soft spot for her only son, and gives him so much more leeway than she does to Jiang Yanli, and loads more than she ever gives to Wei Ying. She’s never been entirely sure, but Wei Ying remembers her childhood, of hearing degrading things about both herself and Jiang Cheng — insinuations that her mother was having an affair with Uncle Jiang and that’s why she was allowed to stay with them, that’s why she was treated so much better than Jiang Cheng, even though that was highly debatable at the very least. Wei Ying knows that Auntie Yu hated her mother even before her death — it doesn’t come as a shock to her anymore just how much that hatred has become hereditary as she’s grown older.

“You’ve been quiet today,” Auntie Yu says, finally rounding on her. She holds a scoop of red bean ice cream on her dessert spoon, and Wei Ying can already see it starting to melt. It’s a challenge, almost, as if she’s meant to answer before Auntie Yu will eat her spoonful, and it will be her fault should a mess be made.

She’s not sure if she’s supposed to apologise or explain herself; both options are viable, but it comes down to a hundred little variables inside of Auntie Yu’s head that she has no privy to, and therefore cannot parse for herself to get the right answer. “Sorry, Auntie Yu,” she says, “I’ve just been tired.”

“It’s because of that silly lab job you insist on keeping,” Auntie Yu retorts after swallowing down her spoonful of ice cream. Strikeout, Wei Ying thinks; she tried the apology plus explanation route and both were the wrong answer. Not shocking, but a little exhausting nonetheless. “If you’d quit working you’d have more time to study, and more time to sleep.” Wei Ying swallows down the creeping sense of dread, the frustration that she can’t remind Auntie Yu that she has to work because she has to pay rent, that she doesn’t have the luxury of her flat being paid for like Jiang Cheng does. 

“I like working at the lab,” she says instead, taking the safe route. It’s still not a good idea to argue back, but the only other option would be to capitulate, and next family dinner she’ll have to explain why she hasn’t quit yet, despite agreeing with Auntie Yu’s out-of-touch take. 

“You should get a job that pays well, not just because you like the work.”

“It pays well enough,” Wei Ying doesn’t hold back from saying. “I get by.”

“You get by because you live in a ghetto,” Auntie Yu dismisses her. “And the Lan girl feeds you like a charity project.”

Wei Ying has nothing to say to that. She thinks back on the amount of all the food that Lan Zhan prepared for her, out of the kindness of her own heart and through no obligation at all. It makes her flush. She’s never really felt any sort of guilt over Lan Zhan spoiling her — she learned long ago that it was one of Lan Zhan’s ways of showing that she cares, all the gift giving and taking care that she does — but it does make her feel uncomfortable when her family brings it up. Maybe because she wants to remind them all that Lan Zhan takes care of her better than they do or ever have. Maybe because it’s the same kind of spoiling and kindness that Jin Zixuan foists upon her sister. 

Maybe — though she doesn’t know if she will ever be able to admit it out loud — it’s because she wants the attention lauded on her by Lan Zhan to mean the same things it does for other people. She wants it to be because Lan Zhan loves her, not just because they’re best friends. 

“Lan Zhan is just nice like that,” Wei Ying says finally, quietly.

“Tell her to feed you more, then, if she’s so nice,” Auntie Yu says. “You’ll be gaping in the dress for a-Li’s wedding if you stay as skinny as you are.”

Wei Ying smiles uncomfortably and doesn’t make eye contact with anyone, especially not Jin Zixuan who is looking at her like he simultaneously understands what she’s feeling, and like he knows something more than he’s letting on.

The metro ride back to her flat is neither short nor long. 

The restaurant that they’d gone to isn’t too far from her flat, and she only has to change lines once, luckily. She’s used to having an hour at least of transit, and she always cuts it so close to closing time on her metro line. She’s halfway convinced that Auntie Yu does it on purpose, but she doesn’t ever really think that much of it. She’s come to even like her time on the metro, if she’s being honest. She’ll put one of her textbooks in her bag to catch up on reading usually, and sometimes just spends her time scrolling through Weibo and listening to music.

Tonight, though, she’s not sure what compels her to do it, but she’s dialing Lan Zhan’s number and holding her phone up to her ear before she can stop herself. She feels the little bunny charm that she’s attached to the case bumping against her jaw gently, and she can’t bring herself to think of anything more, really, just that she wants to hear Lan Zhan’s voice. 

“Wei Ying?” Lan Zhan answers after a few rings. It’s close enough to nine that Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan must be going through her nighttime routine — early to bed and early to rise even on weekends, Wei Ying thinks endearingly — so it doesn’t come as a surprise that Lan Zhan doesn’t answer on the first ring.

What does shock her, though, is the sounds of another person talking in the background.

She wants to hang up almost immediately, and it’s only her frozen state that impedes her from lowering the phone from her ear to end the call. “You have people over?” Wei Ying says, her tone of voice confusing even to herself. 

“Last minute team meeting,” Lan Zhan explains quietly. There’s a shuffling around like she’s standing, getting up from her football teammates to take the call somewhere quieter. Wei Ying knows that Lan Zhan doesn’t like other people in her flat, so she must be out, and here Wei Ying is ruining a night out for her. 

“No, no,” Wei Ying says automatically. “You don’t have to worry about me! I didn’t realise that you had a, uh, thing with your team, we can talk another time; it isn’t like this was all that important, anyway —”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan repeats. “You don’t usually call me. I want to talk to you.”

“Oh.”

“Is that your girlfriend,” Wei Ying hears a voice say, tinny and small from Lan Zhan’s end of the call. Girlfriend is said almost like a pejorative, teasing and a little mean, and it makes Wei Ying’s heart nearly stop in her chest. She can imagine the devastatingly mean look in Lan Zhan’s eyes at that, and hears the same girl guffaw in the background, saying, “we’ll wait before we continue talking strats.” 

It makes Wei Ying want to close in on herself, to bundle up and hide away from the prying eyes of the world the way she had when she was just a little girl, tucked away in the far corners of the orphanage that had taken her in before the Jiangs had gotten their hands on her. She feels small in a way that she hasn’t in a very long time. 

“How was it?” Lan Zhan asks, when the noise of her teammates is gone, cut off behind whatever door Lan Zhan has closed behind her. 

Wei Ying’s heart squeezes a bit painfully. Of course Lan Zhan knows just the question to ask. She knows Wei Ying’s schedule better than anyone else, knows that she’s been with her family tonight and that these evenings are never easy for her, no matter how many times she sits through the torment of her monthly family get-togethers.

She shrugs even though she knows Lan Zhan can’t see her, and responds in a small, almost petulant voice. “It could have been worse.” 

Lan Zhan hums, a little mn, and says nothing else. She knows just how to make enough encouraging noise to get Wei Ying to continue speaking.

“It could have gone better,” Wei Ying says. When she looks out the window of the metro, the city lights fly by her in a rainbow of colour. She sees her own reflection in the glass, and wonders when she got so weak to sentiment. “Jin Zixuan was nice for once,” she says.

“Was he nice or just quiet as usual?”

“Quiet.” Wei Ying pauses. “How do you know that he doesn’t usually talk? Do you and Jin Zixuan talk about my family dinners when you do your little outings together?”

“He mentions them on occasion.” 

“What does he say? It’s not gossip if you tell me about myself, it’s not against your uncle’s rules.” Wei Ying is way too curious, her voice a little louder than is acceptable on the metro and garnering a few looks from other nighttime travellers. 

“He has mentioned that Madam Yu is rather unkind toward me when she speaks of me to you.” 

“Oh,” Wei Ying says again, at risk of sounding like a broken record. She’s never really thought of it before, but it stands to make sense that Lan Zhan is aware that Auntie Yu is awful about her. “I hate that she’s like that about you.”

“It is of no matter,” Lan Zhan says, and it doesn’t even sound fake and dismissive the way that it might from someone else. She really doesn't care, she never has, because she simply doesn’t give a damn about the opinion of someone who so easily threw Wei Ying away. Wei Ying only knows this because of the one time Lan Zhan did get frustrated, when Wei Ying had been complaining about Auntie Yu’s critical attitude. She’d told Wei Ying in no uncertain terms that she shouldn’t care about the opinion of someone who was still so bitter over the friendly affection her husband had once had for a dead woman that she would be abusive to that woman’s child. It sticks with Wei Ying, even now, even though she still wants some of that approval for herself. 

“Of course it matters,” Wei Ying says finally. “I love you, of course it matters when she’s not nice about you.”

Lan Zhan breathes on the other side of the line, and Wei Ying tries not to cringe at her own words. It’s a difficult feat, but she manages it. “You’re my best friend,” she adds, as if to lighten the blow of a love confession, as if spinning it as a platonic set of words erases the confession from it.

They sit in silence for a few moments, only the sound of the metro whizzing on its tracks to keep Wei Ying in her mind, a reminder that she is still a real person who lives and breathes. “I’ll text you when I get home, okay?” 

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. “Please be safe.”

“I promise. Have a good evening with your team,” Wei Ying adds. 

“I will do my best.” There’s an almost audible smile in Lan Zhan’s voice, and Wei Ying wants to bottle it up and keep it, a reminder of a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. 

When the phone call hangs up, she neither listens to music, nor pulls out a textbook for reading. She just sits in the moment, existing for just a while longer. 

The football field is well lit, even without the powerful overhead floodlights turned on. Wei Ying thinks it’s one of those small blessings of the summer finally arriving — the days are longer, and she’s able to watch with rapt eyes as figures dart across the field without having to strain her eyes.

Lan Zhan is easiest to spot, of course, with her tied back hair, miraculously clean cleats beating against the ground, and her jersey hugging tightly to her strong shoulders. Typically Wei Ying would be much closer to the field, her desire to see Lan Zhan in action and desire to be embroiled in the passion of the crowd trumping any lack of real care about the game itself. Today, through no fault of her own and more to do with the fact that she’d been slowed down when Nie Huaisang had insisted they get beers before the game, means that she’s more in the middle of the stands, watching from a greater distance than usual. 

She doesn’t lie to herself with platitudes that she would have been more interested in the game if she hadn’t had a few drinks already, and she doesn’t try to delude herself into thinking that she’s not being dramatic when she runs down onto the field after Lan Zhan’s team scores the winning goal to celebrate with her best friend. 

She doesn’t see the eye roll that Nie Huaisang pulls off when she launches herself into Lan Zhan’s arm, but she does see him wave his hands as a goodbye before walking off with some other friends he must have planned to meet up with. He’s not a fool, Wei Ying knows, and he’s well aware that she won’t be spending time with him after one of Lan Zhan’s games. 

“You were so impressive, jiejie,” she says, wiping Nie Huaisang from her mind temporarily as she gazes up at Lan Zhan. Their height difference isn’t so great that she’s always aware of it, but like this, clinging to her best friend, it’s made all the more apparent. She feels small, and the courage she’d been working up to confess to Lan Zhan shrivels in her chest until it no longer exists. The loose and limber feeling she’d had while chatting with Nie Huaisang is completely gone, and instead she just stares.

“You’ve been drinking,” is what Lan Zhan says, her hands settling in the dip of Wei Ying’s waist. Wei Ying tries not to preen with the attention.

“Only a few beers with Huaisang,” she says. It takes every sense of self-control not to bat her eyelashes at Lan Zhan coquettishly. She doesn’t even know why she wants to. “You should have one, too,” Wei Ying adds.

“At home,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying gapes at her, dumbfounded. Lan Zhan rarely agrees to drink with her, much less at such a frequency. She has half a mind to ask Lan Zhan what her deal is, but loses the train of thought when Lan Zhan’s fingers tighten where she’s still holding. “You’ll come home with me?” 

Always, Wei Ying wants to say. She reins in the urge, smiles a big, toothy grin at Lan Zhan, and says, “Of course!”

The cool thing about Lan Zhan’s flat is that it’s so close to their university’s football stadium and gym facilities that they don’t even have to take the metro back.

The walk is only a few minutes, and she spends the whole time talking. Lan Zhan is still close to her, warm enough from the still-sweaty uniform she’s wearing to give off even greater human-furnace vibes than usual. Somehow, even with a messy uniform and a sweaty hairline, she still looks beautiful and put together. She carries her cleats in her gym bag, slung over her shoulder with the clothes she must have worn on her way over to the game. Wei Ying is used to it by now — Lan Zhan doesn’t like to put on the same clothes she’d already worn, and also hates showering in the shared facilities when avoidable. She knows Lan Zhan will just shower when they get home. To Lan Zhan’s home. 

It shocks Wei Ying to her very core when Lan Zhan stops them on their walk back to her flat at one of the small, roadside food carts to buy Wei Ying the shaokao that she loves, and a beer for herself. Wei Ying thinks she must be losing her mind just based on the fact that Lan Zhan is drinking? Without being prompted to follow through on her statement from out on the field? Wei Ying wasn’t the type to believe in miracles, but obviously she’d been wrong in the past. She very nearly drops her skewer to the ground in amazement, but manages to haphazardly catch it against her chest, making a mess of herself in doing so. Lan Zhan says nothing, but looks at her indulgently. 

Lan Zhan is loose and a little sloppy by the time they make it back to her flat, though not enough so that she doesn’t immediately set to emptying out her gym bag. Her clothes go in the hamper, the bag itself sequestered away from her other bags so that the smells wouldn’t transfer. She looks at Wei Ying, a warm and indistinguishable look on her face, and says, “I will shower.”

“Can I join you?” 

The silence between them is overwhelming, an overcast sky above someone without an umbrella. Wei Ying wants to take the words back the moment she asks them, but the syllables have already escaped her, and they float between them, lingering like fog.

“Yes.”

The silence following Lan Zhan’s answer is even wilder, somehow sounding so final but so much like the start of something new and fragile. Lan Zhan gives her one last look before going off to her bathroom, not looking back to see if Wei Ying is following because it’s like she knows that she’ll never have to, because Wei Ying always follows her. 

It’s strange being inside of Lan Zhan’s bathroom with her when she knows that it’s more so than just brushing their teeth. Even that is still a somewhat sacred ritual for Lan Zhan — with every sleepover they have, Wei Ying always stands in the doorway and chatters away while watching Lan Zhan go through her skincare routine and brushing her teeth and then they switch, Lan Zhan hovering mostly silently. They never enter the bathroom together, never brush their teeth simultaneously. 

It feels almost liminal when Wei Ying steps in and Lan Zhan shuts the door behind them. The ceiling humidity vent is switched on, and Lan Zhan is stepping out of her shorts and socks, leaving them in a heap on the floor that somehow manages to look artfully placed. Wei Ying tries her best not to stare as she sheds her own clothes, but her eyes can’t help but be drawn to the paleness of Lan Zhan’s legs, the light colour of her sports briefs. She forcefully averts her eyes when Lan Zhan’s jersey comes off, and she doesn’t look even when she sees Lan Zhan’s sports bra fall to the floor, either.

The shower is turned on and Lan Zhan steps in before Wei Ying finally shucks off her own shirt and the padded bra she’d been wearing. She tries not to act weird — they’ve showered together, before, back when they’d been in preparatory school together, granted, for their physical education classes, but it counts nonetheless, right?

Lan Zhan’s shower is perfect, Wei Ying thinks when she steps in. The monsoon showerhead manages to keep them both under the warm spray of water, and she keeps her eyes on Lan Zhan’s face as much as she can, watching the way that Lan Zhan tilts her head up to feel the droplets on her skin as she slicks back her hair. She’s unbelievably beautiful, Wei Ying thinks, and she feels herself flush at the thought. She’s allowed, she thinks, to call her best friend beautiful, even if it is only in her head. 

She feels her eyes slipping down Lan Zhan’s form like she doesn’t control them — skimming over her clavicles, the swell of her breasts, her toned abs and the thatch of dark hair there, lower yet. She doesn’t let herself look that far. 

She reaches out before she can stop herself, her hand coming up to rest just under the curve of Lan Zhan’s boobs. Under her fingertips she feels the indents in Lan Zhan’s skin from where her sports bra had dug into her skin, and Lan Zhan looks at her. The look in her eyes is intense, her pupils so big from the alcohol she’d had, and she doesn’t stop, bringing her own hand up to hold Wei Ying’s in place on her skin.

Neither of them move, and despite the warmth of the water, Wei Ying can feel her nipples beginning to pebble up, hardening not from any sense of chiliness, but from a low-simmering arousal that she feels warming the blood in her veins. Lan Zhan’s nipples, she notices, are hard, too. A memory of her flicking her thumb over them flashes through her mind, and she wants to know what it feels like without the fabric barrier blocking her way.

“I will wash your hair,” Lan Zhan mumbles out, her eyes slightly lidded, still not moving.

“What?”

“Your hair,” Lan Zhan says, “I will wash it.”

“Oh.”

“Turn.”

Lan Zhan lets go of her hand, and Wei Ying turns. 

She lets out a sigh when she feels Lan Zhan’s hands in her hair, massaging through the thick roots. The shampoo she uses smells so much like her, not feminine, but not quite as masculine as some scents. It smells as comforting as always, and it takes Wei Ying’s entire willpower not to lean back against Lan Zhan’s chest and fall asleep standing up. She shouldn’t even be tired this early in the night, but it feels so good that she can’t help it.

They switch off after a few minutes, after Lan Zhan has conditioned and combed through her hair. Lan Zhan’s hair is just as thick, and just as long as her own, so she can only imagine how gross and sticky Lan Zhan’s scalp has felt with the sweat still clinging to her skin. She washes Lan Zhan’s hair with gentle enthusiasm, taking care to massage in the shampoo, then saturates it with conditioner. The whole time she tries to keep her thoughts from straying too far into inappropriate territory, even with Lan Zhan’s unabashed, alcohol-induced little sighs of pleasure. 

She thinks, in a way that is decidedly not as heterosexual as she’d thought she was, that she could probably slide her fingers down Lan Zhan’s body and touch her between her legs, feel the wetness there, make her sigh from a different pleasure. She wonders how Lan Zhan’s breath would hitch if she were to use her thumb to swipe over Lan Zhan’s clit instead —

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, breaking her out of her reverie. “Do you want me to wash your back?”

“Erm,” she hesitates. 

“Lift,” Lan Zhan orders anyway, tapping Wei Ying’s arm with one of her long fingers. 

She lifts her arms away from her sides anyway because she knows Lan Zhan always wants the best for her. She feels a washcloth along the length of her spine, then over her shoulder blades and flanks. She nearly jumps out of her skin when she feels the cloth graze the side of her boob — small though it may be.

“Let me get you now?” Wei Ying says, turning quick enough that she manages to see the way that Lan Zhan had been looking right down, directly where her butt had been moments before, and where Lan Zhan must now be looking at her —

“Mn,” Lan Zhan says and turns. She sways a little, and Wei Ying realises she must still be feeling the effects of the beer rather heavily. It doesn’t stop her from pulling her hair over her shoulder, leaving the broad expanse of her skin available to Wei Ying’s eyes and hands. 

Wei Ying doesn’t mention the shared washcloth, something that she is almost one-hundred per cent sure that Lan Zhan would strongly disapprove of if she was thinking clearly. She isn’t, though, and Wei Ying is not about to hop out of the shower to get a new cloth for nothing. 

She washes Lan Zhan’s back with the same gentle enthusiasm that she’d washed her hair, swiping over the skin available to her. Lan Zhan holds still, letting Wei Ying work all the while, and not mentioning when Wei Ying dips lower than Lan Zhan had, over her back dimples, silent as Wei Ying wipes her flanks and brushes against the swell of her breasts. 

“Turn,” Wei Ying asks, and Lan Zhan does. 

Her face is blank, as impassive as ever, but Wei Ying can see the redness of her ears, the way she gets when she’s embarrassed. Below her clavicles too, she’s slightly pink, though Wei Ying is unsure if it’s from the heat of the water or if her chest flushes when she’s shy, too. It’s endearing either way, and she doesn’t hold back from moving her soapy hands and the cloth over Lan Zhan’s chest, cupping her boobs and just staring. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says. Her voice sounds deep, interesting, so much and Wei Ying doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Lan Zhan.”

“We should get out. We’re getting wrinkly.” 

“Oh. Yeah, of course. We should do that now, actually. We’ll become raisins. Except, more hydrated, I guess?” 

“Wei Ying.”

“Hm?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t answer, but she does turn the shower off. The last few drops clinging to the showerhead drip cooly on Wei Ying while Lan Zhan steps out to grab towels, and she does her best not to shiver as Lan Zhan wraps herself up, then holds open a towel for Wei Ying to step into. It feels almost too intimate for Wei Ying when Lan Zhan pats her dry before wrapping the towel around her, and she struggles not to shiver from the closeness. 

They get dressed in two different rooms. 

Lan Zhan takes her bedroom, not having brought her change of clothes into the bathroom with them — she never does, something about the humidity of the room stickying up her clothes before she even wears them. Wei Ying dresses in the bathroom, and tries not to panic the entire time. Did she spend too much time looking or, even worse, too much time touching? Did Lan Zhan notice something was off, something different about the way that she was touching her tonight? Enough so to make note of it, cut their shared shower short?

Lan Zhan is already in bed, slipped under the thin sheets she uses as the weather gradually warms. Wei Ying can see the pattern of bunnies and carrots on her pyjamas, and immediately feels a little ashamed of her own nighttime attire — consisting of an old, well loved tank top that used to be Lan Zhan’s and a comfy cotton thong. She knows better now, after having shared a bed with Lan Zhan multiple times, to wear anything to keep warm. Lan Zhan, even from across the bed when they don’t cuddle, generates enough warmth to keep her on the verge of sweating all through the night. 

Lan Zhan looks at her bare legs, the curve of her thighs under the hem of her shirt. Wei Ying wonders, a little, what Lan Zhan is thinking. It must not be much, because she nods to Wei Ying, pulling back the white bedsheet to corral her into bed with a slight nod. Her eyes are a little unfocused still, and Wei Ying imagines that she hasn’t metabolised all of the alcohol from the beer, even if she doesn’t seem so out of it anymore. 

When she slips into the bed, face-to-face with Lan Zhan, they’re so close, skin-to-skin, and she can imagine being able to just bump their faces a little closer together. It would be so easy, she thinks, to sink into a kiss with Lan Zhan, sleepy and tender and just enough to say goodnight.

She also knows, with a clarity that is all too pressing and painful in her chest, that she can’t afford to jeopardise her friendship with Lan Zhan. The looming threat of losing her is the only fear that is greater than her desire for more, to tell Lan Zhan how she feels. The frightening possibility that Lan Zhan is just a good person and cares for her as a best friend and nothing more is terrifying to her. She’s taken risks in the past, she hasn’t always had the best impulse control, but she is aware that this is something that she can’t do. 

Their breath comingles between them, shared carbon dioxide from their lungs so hot on her lips, and she’s faced with how much it all is. Lan Zhan’s hand is on her waist, holding her close, and she didn’t even notice it being placed there from how lost in her thoughts she’s been. She thinks that maybe this is what best friends do. She’s never had a best friend, and to her knowledge Lan Zhan hasn’t either, so maybe they’re just learning together. She thinks that as long as she has this, then there doesn’t need to be more. She’s happy. 

Lan Zhan’s hand slides higher on her flank, holding her tenderly alongside her ribs, slotting so perfectly into place. It’s still so dim, so dark, and she can only see some distant light reflected in Lan Zhan’s eyes.

Their lips meet before she can stop herself.

It’s not as though the distance between them was so great that she needed to make an effort, but it still shocks her a bit how easy and natural it feels to kiss Lan Zhan. The heat of their mouths is so intense, and though it’s her first kiss, she feels like it’s so familiar to kiss Lan Zhan this way, like she’s been doing it her whole life. It feels as natural as breathing, so good and easy. Lan Zhan kisses her back just as intensely, her fingers almost trembling against her side. 

She wants to say something, wants to ask what it is that they are doing, but she doesn’t. For once, Wei Ying stays quiet, and she just enjoys the moment, her desires far transcending any need for verbal communication. 

Lan Zhan’s lips are soft, not nearly as chapped as her own, and so warm. Wei Ying hesitates for just a flicker of a second before reaching out to touch, too. Her hand touches Lan Zhan’s cheek, her fingers brushing so gently against the soft skin of her face. Lan Zhan lets shivers minutely, and Wei Ying can’t help the little noise she makes at the feeling, and she dives right in.

Lan Zhan kisses her harder, a fire igniting in her, hungry like a beast when Wei Ying continues to make small noises in her throat. Wei Ying’s heart races and she presses herself closer to Lan Zhan, feeling the radiating heat of her best friend’s whole body seeping underneath her skin. Her hand moves from Lan Zhan’s face, down her neck and over to tangle in the soft, damp hair by the nape of Lan Zhan’s neck. Lan Zhan responds in kind, opening her mouth to touch her tongue to Wei Ying’s lips before forcing her to open up. It’s strange, a little, but Wei Ying likes the way that Lan Zhan’s tongue flicks against her lip and skims over her teeth.

Lan Zhan shifts a little, her hips moving, shoving a thigh between Wei Ying’s own and she realises abruptly just how good it feels. She hadn’t noticed herself growing wet, but now that she’s aware of it, she can’t think of anything else other than the hot dampness now pressed against Lan Zhan’s smooth thigh. She hadn’t even noticed that Lan Zhan’s pyjamas were shorts, but not that she has noticed, now that she knows that her hold, cotton thong is the only thing separating her from rubbing her bare, wet pussy against her best friend is overwhelming.

“Lan Zhan,” she gasps, not even sure what she wants to say, but she can’t help herself. Like a broken dam, the words come spilling out of her. “Lan Zhan, jiejie, please,” she whispers, groans, and her hips start to move of their own volition. It’s just enough friction to keep her on the edge, not enough pressure and nothing inside of her the way that she likes, but it still feels so good, so much better than anything she’s ever done to herself. 

The hand Lan Zhan had on her ribs moves down, slides over her hip until she’s cupping Wei Ying’s ass in one big hand, guiding her how to move her hips. She gasps at the feeling, her breath hitching as the rhythm sends too many sensations to make sense of flooding through her. The world around her fades until she’s just the feeling of her wet cunt against Lan Zhan’s leg, Lan Zhan’s hand on her ass, and Lan Zhan’s lips sliding lower, over her neck, biting and kissing along the thin skin of her throat. 

She feels Lan Zhan’s hips moving, too, and is suddenly overcome with the fact that Lan Zhan likes this, is wet under her pyjamas, too. She’s struck again with the thought of running her fingers through the slick folds of Lan Zhan’s pussy, thumbing over her clit to feel Lan Zhan shake apart for her, and she wants, wants, wants — more than she ever has in her life. She wants to lift up Lan Zhan’s shirt and sink her teeth into one of her massive tits and she realises that she can, that Lan Zhan will let her. 

When she pushes up Lan Zhan’s shirt, her tits are right there, and even though Wei Ying had just been ogling her in their shared shower, it’s still quite something. Lan Zhan stops licking and kissing her neck long enough to level Wei Ying with a look that is indecipherable in the darkness, and Wei Ying sinks her teeth into the flesh of Lan Zhan’s boob. Lan Zhan gasps and it sounds so loud in the silence of the room. 

Wei Ying’s hips speed up from the sound, grinding against Lan Zhan’s leg like she can’t help herself, like she’s being compelled beyond her will to take, take, take until she can’t anymore. 

Her orgasm catches her almost entirely by surprise, flooding her body and drowning her in the feeling. She feels the way that Lan Zhan holds her tightly as she trembles, and then Lan Zhan’s mouth is back on hers for a minute, while she grinds herself against Wei Ying’s thigh. Lan Zhan comes moments later with a gasp, her hands shaking as she still grasps tightly to Wei Ying. 

It takes a moment for them to both catch their breath, and the realisation of what has just transpired between them hits Wei Ying like a truck. She feels stuck dumb, completely shocked at what they’ve just done, what it means, what they’ll have to say. She doesn’t even know where to begin with anything, and how she’ll explain herself to Lan Zhan.

Her thoughts are cut off abruptly by Lan Zhan’s voice. “Wei Ying,” she says. She looks somewhat serious, though it’s still too dark to be able to tell, and after everything that just happened, it’s even more difficult. “Sleep.”

Wei Ying nods, almost diplomatic in her reticence to speak. It doesn’t seem to matter, not when Lan Zhan pulls her close, tucks her against her side, and rests her cheek on Wei Ying’s head. 

“Sleep,” Wei Ying agrees, her fingers tightening on Lan Zhan’s shirt.

Lan Zhan sighs, sleepy and heavy. It would have been a shocking sound if Wei Ying hadn’t just spent the last few minutes listening to Lan Zhan’s breathing get gradually heavier until she’d come grinding against Wei Ying’s leg. Wei Ying smiles a little, though, because it’s perfect. She loves this feeling.

Sleep catches her quickly, and peacefully.

Wei Ying wakes early, as the sun is beginning to rise, with Lan Zhan still holding her.

It’s odd. She’s never woken up at the same time as Lan Zhan before, and has even slept through being jostled by her getting out of bed at the crack of dawn in the past when they’ve shared a bed before. She’s not sure what’s different this time other than, well, everything.

Lan Zhan, ever so perceptive, realises that she’s awake almost right away. “Wei Ying,” she says, quiet and with her lips still so close to Wei Ying’s forehead that she can feel her lips form the sounds. 

“Good morning,” Wei Ying says with a small stretch. She can’t exactly stretch all that much, but she takes what she can get. 

“You can go back to sleep, if you would like.”

“And miss out on being awake with you? Absolutely not,” Wei Ying smiles, and the impact of her words is slightly diminished from the heavy yawn she lets out. She hears Lan Zhan huff out a little breath of amusement. She turns, looking at Lan Zhan’s soft, pretty face in the beams of sunrise sunlight, and she can’t help but smile. “Lan Zhan, I have something to tell you.” 

“Hm?” 

“Lan Zhan, thank you,” she says. “I —”

Her words are abruptly cut off as Lan Zhan backs away from the hold they’re still loosely engaged in. Lan Zhan looks somehow entirely neutral like she usually does, and horrified at the same time. It makes Wei Ying’s stomach drop, her heart rising in her throat like she’s on the verge of vomiting. 

She realises, with sudden and terrifying clarity, that Lan Zhan must remember everything that had happened between them — something she desperately wanted and had anticipated since Lan Zhan was barely even tipsy by the time they had gone to bed. Except the part she’d hoped for, of Lan Zhan returning her affections and wanting to be together, is entirely falling apart. Lan Zhan was supposed to look at her and have the same intense love reflect back at Wei Ying in her eyes. It was never supposed to be like this. 

Wei Ying feels like a mess, like she’s a complete fool. Of course good, gracious Lan Zhan wouldn’t want any of that, even if she is a lesbian. Wei Ying knows she’s taken complete advantage of Lan Zhan and last night’s lack of inhibitions. She’d lead Lan Zhan exactly where she wanted, manipulated her into doing her bidding, and now has to live with the guilt of her actions. The worst is that she doesn’t even know where to begin explaining herself to Lan Zhan. She doesn’t know if she can. 

Lan Zhan is already slipping out of bed when Wei Ying realises that she’s trembling, her hands shaking as she holds onto the white bedsheet they’d slept under. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, looking at her, noticing the way that she’s shaking. Her hand reaches out like she’s about to touch Wei Ying, and she can’t imagine anything she wants both more and less in the entire world. 

“Ah, don’t worry about me, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, pulling the sheet up over herself even more, and tucking her hands underneath it so that Lan Zhan won’t be able to see her shakiness. She hopes, though she doesn’t believe she’s doing a good job of masking it, that Lan Zhan can’t see just how upset she is.

Wei Ying looks at Lan Zhan, sees the worry and stress in her eyes, and makes a split second decision. She can fix this — even if Lan Zhan doesn’t like her the way that she likes Lan Zhan, that doesn’t mean that everything needs to be ruined. She can — she can fix things. 

“Aha, Lan Zhan, I think we both probably drank too much last night,” she says, praying that the words come out convincingly. She doesn’t mention that Lan Zhan had only one — admittedly strong — beer, and she herself had only drank at the football game while Lan Zhan played. Neither of them were nearly as drunk as she’s pretending they were by the time they’d tumbled their way into bed. 

“You don’t have to worry, though,” Wei Ying continues, trying to make the way she’s refusing to look at Lan Zhan seem casual. “It’s pretty standard stuff, you know, for girls to be like this with their friends sometimes.” 

“Standard?” Lan Zhan asks. “Don’t worry?” 

“I’m sorry,” Wei Ying says, voice sombre. She looks up at Lan Zhan and sees an expression for only a fraction of a second, like Lan Zhan is utterly devastated, before her eyes gloss over with the same cold and flat affect she wears around people she finds particularly obstinate. 

She thinks that Lan Zhan will need time. That Lan Zhan is obviously coping with what has happened, if the way she’s moving across the room, distancing herself, is any indication. 

It’s nothing that Wei Ying can’t live without. 

It will hurt a bit, sure, but she’s sure that she’ll be all right. She has to be. Her friendship with Lan Zhan is worth more than a little heartbreak, she knows that. It’s her first time really feeling this kind of loss, though — she knows how to cope with losing a home, losing a family, losing a friend. But she doesn’t know how to cope with losing Lan Zhan, and she isn’t keen on learning. She thinks, a little (read: a lot) self-pityingly, that it’s too bad that the kind of nice that Lan Zhan is towards her isn’t the kind of nice that she wants. 

Wei Ying doesn’t linger at Lan Zhan’s flat. 

She’d known already that Lan Zhan has plans with her brother later in the day, and later in the day for Lan Zhan really means the time of morning that Wei Ying usually begins to get a move on with her day instead of just lazing around in her bed. 

She is, on one hand, grateful that she doesn’t have to think of an excuse not to be in Lan Zhan’s presence, because she doesn’t really want to, honestly. She still wants to be around her because the only person that ever makes her feel truly better is her best friend, and even now when she’s hurting because of her own stupidity towards Lan Zhan, she knows no one else will be able to console her. 

It ends up working out that Lan Zhan walks her out of her building, and hops on the metro in the opposite direction. 

She looks so much more put together than Wei Ying does — Wei Ying who had only scrambled her way into a pair of soft and worn old joggers, and a black t-shirt whose neck-hole was becoming so loose it was more of an off-the-shoulder look now. Lan Zhan, even with whatever mess might be going on in her mind after last night’s transgressions, still manages to dress smartly in fresh clothes, somehow looking so normal, like nothing is wrong. It makes Wei Ying a little envious. 

She doesn’t even hug Lan Zhan when they depart. She’s not sure if Lan Zhan would want it, and she doesn’t understand the look that Lan Zhan gives her when she doesn’t act as she usually does. She doesn’t even come up with an excuse for herself, just smiles a little awkwardly before walking off. 

If she is honest with herself, she has to admit that she lets a few tears shed once Lan Zhan is gone. She knows, ultimately, that there are too many things that have gone wrong since the night before — even before the night before — and then, before the two of them had gotten drunk, before she had done everything that Lan Zhan clearly did not want. 

Wei Ying thinks that maybe, through it all, she’s never really known love, not since her parents passed. She thinks that maybe she’s gotten it all tangled up, every single possible wire crossed. The way that she feels for Lan Zhan — the way that Lan Zhan looks at her — are nothing more than pomp and circumstance. It might be nothing more than it already is. She wants to ask herself why it is the way that it is as much as she wants to ignore it all.

“What the hell is your problem?” Wen Qing asks. She’s distracted, circumstantially, with whatever concoction she’s scrubbing out of Wen Ning’s bullet blender. Wei Ying doesn’t ask, nor does she complain — the little time that Wen Qing has off of her internship is enough of a gift in and of itself that she makes do with what she can get her claws on.

She wants to tell Wen Qing to go fuck herself. She settles on, “I have no problem; damn. I can’t come home from Lan Zhan’s without you having a whole moment?”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Wen Qing says, and Wei Ying notices her eye roll from a distance. “Something is obviously going on.”

“Nothing,” Wei Ying refutes.

“You know, once, I had a cousin who refused to mention to his family what was wrong with him,” Wen Qing says. She continues scrubbing the dishes that have been left to soak for more than a few days too long, the food-scum rendered soft and easy to wash away. She makes eye contact with Wei Ying as she says, “I think, in the end, he was the cousin who died of ‘mysterious circumstances'.” She looks pointedly. 

“Which cousin?” Wei Ying asks pointedly, not even bothering to pretend like there was a part of Wen Qing’s sentence that interested her. 

“Does it matter?”

“I think it does.”

“Wei Ying,” Wen Qing stops scrubbing and turns to face her with a serious look in her eyes. It’s the same look she has leveled at Wei Ying before, when they were younger and Wei Ying had needed help that she so earnestly tried to do her best to earn. Wen Qing had had to sit her down and remind her that she is allowed to need things, and she didn’t have to repay every debt. Wei Ying still struggles with believing that. 

“I’m just being dramatic,” Wei Ying says, trying to diffuse the tension. She doesn’t think she can do much else. 

“You’re always dramatic.”

Wei Ying waits for a few minutes, the silence between them growing bigger and harder to manoeuvre around, before she finally caves under Wen Qing’s older-sister stare. “I think I’m not very successful at life,” she says. She says it like it’s a fact — the sky is blue, the ocean is salty, she’s in love with her best friend, and she doesn’t do a good job with life, sometimes. 

Wen Qing just looks at her, not with any pity in her eyes, but just looks.

“I think I was made to be an example of what not to do,” Wei Ying continues, and she wants so badly to walk off because she hates being vulnerable, hates letting down her guard so that she can ask for the help that she needs. 

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Wen Qing says. Neither of them move, still standing at opposite sides of the kitchen. Wen Qing still has her rubber gloves on, and Wei Ying would lean against the wooden doorframe to seem more casual if she had any energy left to care. Like she knows what Wei Ying’s dilemma is without even having to ask, she states, “You’re allowed to want to be genuinely loved. You don’t have to punish yourself for it.”

Wei Ying can’t help but wonder just how much Wen Qing knows. She’s tempted to ask, to probe deeper into just how much Wen Qing knows, find out how much she’s let her guard slip. She doesn’t, though, she just continues to look at Wen Qing. When she nods, Wen Qing nods back, and then goes back to cleaning off the dishes that remain to be washed in the sink.

When Wei Ying steps into her room, her chest feels somehow lighter and ten tonnes heavier.

She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and sinks to the floor, her knees hitting the ground with the force of her entire weight. She feels entirely off, her balance shaken and everything that she’d thought about herself totally out of the window.

She thinks, a little ironically, of the breathing exercises that Lan Zhan once showed her when she’d been panicking over something silly ages ago. She doesn’t even remember what it was that had rankled her, but she remembers so clearly the way that Lan Zhan had sat with her, her silence such a welcome presence, while she’d taught Wei Ying how to breathe through it. 

Except that the thought of Lan Zhan breathing makes her think of the way Lan Zhan had breathed last night. It makes her think of the heavy, clipped breaths right into her ear, against her neck, hot and a little wet and so good that it sends a pang of sad arousal through her with just the thought. She feels her cheeks heating up, and feels immediately embarrassed about the whole thing, but it doesn’t take long for the horror of reality to catch up with her.

A single tear falls down her cheek from beneath the pressure she’s still putting on her eyes, and she doesn’t stop the floodgates from opening. 

When Wei Ying wakes up in the morning, it’s with eyes that are sore, dry, and a little crusty. 

She looks at her phone first thing — a habit that Lan Zhan has repeatedly admonished her for but has not yet broken her out of. She notices first that there are no messages from Lan Zhan — not shocking, but nonetheless disappointing — and then notices that there is a message from her sister. 

8h35 - Jiang Yanli

Yingying !! If you have nothing tonight would you like to come for dinner? Just us, maybe Jiang Cheng if he can make it. Soup is on the menu !! Love you.

 

She can think of nothing that she needs more than some time with her sister. Yanli, despite the fact that she’s never once pried into Wei Ying’s emotional turmoil, always seems to know when she needs something a little extra. She has always been a fortress, a safe refuge, someone Wei Ying has been able to go to when she’s had no one else to turn to. Sometimes, when Wei Ying thinks about the time she’d been kicked out of the Jiangs’ home when she was a teenager, she thinks that maybe she could have gone to Jiang Yanli if she hadn’t been so scared. 

She knows now that her sister is not the type to be all bark and no bite. She wonders how different things might have gone if she hadn’t relied on Wen Qing and Wen Ning. She doesn’t regret any of it — the Wens have become another family, all the way up to Wen popo and fourth uncle, and little a-Yuan, her favourite little boy — but she wonders, still. She fully ignores the feeling that she’s gone back on a promise whenever she thinks on the possibilities, if only for the fact that she can’t imagine her life without her two families, and she would change nothing of it.

She immediately sends off a response affirming her attendance.

10h19 - Wei Ying

of course jiejie i wouldnt miss it for the world !!!!!!! i cant wait to see you xx

She smiles the ghost of a smile when she hits send. She needs it, she thinks. 

After the mild heart-to-heart with Wen Qing, she needs one with Yanli-jie to balance her out. It’s simply what the universe commands. She has no say in the will of the world, as much as she wishes she did.

She resists the urge to message Lan Zhan with her random bullshit. She wants to, which is the crux problem, but she has no reason to. She wonders for a brief moment if this is always what it’s like: her sending her opinions and critiques about news articles and the occasional niche online drama that Lan Zhan doesn’t care about but still pays attention to just for Wei Ying. 

She thinks about it for a moment — at this moment, well into the meat of the day, Lan Zhan is surely awake. She’d answer, as she always does — if only because Wei Ying asks it. Maybe not immediately, maybe a little later in the day when she’s in between the tasks that she sets for herself during the day, but she would reply. She always does, reliably so, the same way that the moon will always wax and wane, and the tides will ebb and flow. She thinks maybe Lan Zhan will want a break from her. She can’t imagine a day that she doesn’t want to spend with Lan Zhan, but maybe that’s a part of the problem. 

She goes about her day instead, and focuses on everything but the aching need in her chest that feels like it could only be filled by Lan Zhan.

Dinner comes faster than Wei Ying would have expected, and with a twist that makes her stomach churn heavily. 

The metro ride over had been relaxing in a dissociative kind of way where she’d spent her time thinking over and replaying every breath Lan Zhan had taken when they’d — she doesn’t even know what to call it. Is it sex if neither of you properly undress? She’s not even sure, because she’s never — and she’s always wanted to wait for the right person — she’s not even sure who she can ask because Lan Zhan is the only person she thinks she can ask, it’s not like Yanli-jie will be able to console her on the intricacies of losing your virginity as a lesbian.

And that’s what it is, isn’t it, Wei Ying thinks. 

The longing stares, the wanting no one else but Lan Zhan, the fantasies and daydreams about living out in the countryside together with Lan Zhan to darn her socks at night after a day of toiling out on the fields. Wei Ying has always been a city girl — she’s never even really been out in the countryside, but she can’t help the desires she has in her heart. She knows, deep down, the way that she wants everything with Lan Zhan isn’t like how other girls are with their friends. 

She’s terrified of what that means.

She thinks of what changes this all means for her the entire walk up to Jiang Yanli’s flat, distracting her enough to not even notice the telltale kitten heels side-by-side with flat, fur-lined loafers that indicate that Yanli-jie isn’t alone in her flat. She only realises when she opens the door and Auntie Yu looks right at her with a sneer. 

“You’ve lost even more weight,” she says unkindly, before scuttling back into the kitchen, surely to harangue Jiang Yanli with her ever-present commentary and critiques. It makes Wei Ying wince a little bit. She remembers the way that Auntie Yu would hover over her, her running commentary pulling from a non-stop well of shame, while Wei Ying would do literally anything in her adolescence. She doesn’t miss it. 

Jiang Cheng is sitting on the couch with Uncle Jiang when she looks in the drawing room. She nods to the two of them, sitting with their little cups of tea, and immediately makes her way to the kitchen. She knows better than to linger, even if she does think that she can corner Jiang Cheng for some answers. She tries not to be upset about the fact that the relaxing dinner with her sister that she’d been anticipating has been replaced with a high-tension random encounter with her foster family, but it’s hard to let go of the feelings after everything. She thinks it might be easier to cope if she could text Lan Zhan about it, but she doesn’t.

“If you’d gotten here earlier, you could have helped with the preparations,” Auntie Yu says when Wei Ying steps into the kitchen. She sees Jin Zixuan grabbing a few things to set the dining table with, and he just nods his acknowledgement at her. Yanli, when she looks up from the pot of soup she’s stirring, smiles placatingly, and her eyes tell Wei Ying that she has an explanation that she’ll have to get later.

“A-Ying is right on time,” Jiang Yanli says sweetly. “I didn’t get a chance to mention you and father stopped by while I was preparing things.”

Auntie Yu just huffs as a response. “At least help Zixuan with setting the table, then,” she says. She doesn’t even look at Wei Ying.

Chapter Text

Wei Ying can’t tell if dinner is truly a livelier affair, or if it’s just because they’re not all in public that Auntie Yu doesn’t have to mince her words that makes it seem so.

The topics are varied, though all circling back to Auntie Yu’s indelible ability to pass judgements on any and every subject. They talk about Jiang Cheng’s soon-to-start internship at Uncle Jiang’s company (Auntie Yu judges this one by saying that Jiang Cheng should have started an internship while going to school, the way many of his peers have — it didn’t make her any happier to hear from her husband that Jiang Cheng needed to focus on his studies and couldn’t handle the part-time work on top of that). They talk about Uncle Jiang’s newest hobby of playing badminton, wherein Auntie Yu mentions that he should take up something either more classic like weiqi or chess, or that appeals to the shareholders, like cigars since he smokes anyway and isn't about to stop any time soon. 

Jiang Yanli’s wedding (because she doesn’t even bother mentioning that it’s also Jin Zixuan’s wedding, a fact that he doesn't seem to envy if his quiet, supportive smiles are anything to go by) takes up the majority of the discussion. Wei Ying zones out for a lot of it, feeling completely on the moon with her thoughts. She thinks about the fact that Yanli-jie had told her about her plus-one and immediately knew that she would bring Lan Zhan. She hadn’t even bothered to ask Wei Ying if she’s been seeing anyone — in fact, Wei Ying realises, it’s been many, many moons since she’d last had to answer that question. The only person who ever seems to still bother asking is —

“She’s not even respectful enough to bother answering the question,” Auntie Yu admonishes. She doesn’t have to hide her scowl, the disappointment that makes her thin, pencil-sharp eyebrows knit together on her face. 

“She was just —”

“Don’t bother making excuses for her, a-Li,” Auntie Yu says, cutting off her daughter’s words. “Let her speak for herself.”

“Sorry, Auntie Yu,” Wei Ying apologises. “I didn’t hear the question.” 

“Evidently.” The roll of her eyes is exaggerated and dramatic, and she takes a sip of the deep, burgundy red wine in her glass before speaking again. 

Ah, and so it begins, Wei Ying thinks. Her worth as a lightning rod for the worst of Auntie Yu’s anger has always been something of her greatest weapon to wield, but also her greatest weakness. She’s always been able to laser point Auntie Yu’s ire and direct it against herself when she’s needed to give her foster siblings an out of whatever verbal ass-whooping they’d been in for. She’s also been able to redirect that ire onto herself the moment anything good is happening, or when she’s having a bad day, ensuring that she never quite feels part of the family. 

She’s always been a splinter under Auntie Yu’s thumb, always a thorn in her side. She hates that she’s so used to it, now. 

“Mother was just asking about who you will be bringing to the wedding, since Zixuan told me he is planning on inviting Lan Zhan and her brother with their own invitations.”

Oh. She didn’t know that; Lan Zhan had never told her. She doesn’t even know if Lan Zhan knows, but she probably does. It hadn’t come up recently, though.

She turns to Jin Zixuan, surprisingly, and addresses him directly, first. She knows that it’ll irritate Auntie Yu, but suddenly she has a feeling like she doesn’t really care about that all that much. “I’m glad you’re inviting them,” she says to him. Her smile isn’t exactly what she would call friendly, but it’s not disingenuous either. “Make sure we’re at the same table, will you?” 

“You think you won’t be seated at the family table?” Auntie Yu cuts in.

“Am I?” 

“Of course you are,” Jiang Yanli says.

“That stands to be seen,” Auntie Yu says at the same time, before giving a sharp glare at her daughter. Yikes. Not a look that Wei Ying likes to see, especially not directed at her jiejie. 

“Well, when you figure it out, at least try to put us close together,” Wei Ying shrugs, and then she grabs a piece of Hunan-style beef to eat.

“How will your date feel about that?” Auntie Yu asks. Her eyes are still sharp, her words a little cutting. She knows deep down, Wei Ying knows, that there is no date, no plus-one. The whole family knows she has no prospects. They all assume it’s because of Lan Zhan — and Wei Ying realises that they’re right. She might have thought they were right for other reasons before, because who can compete with how amazing and fantastic her best friend is? 

She realises now, though, that it’s because she’s actually kind of in love with Lan Zhan.

She’s always been a provocateur — a firebrand and troublemaker, instigating the worst possible reactions from her entire family. She doesn’t see why she should stop now, not when she’s so emotionally exhausted about all of the bullshit recently. She doesn’t even care anymore. 

She swallows before she speaks, because she’s not ready to get into that much shit. “I have no date.” 

Jiang Cheng barely disguises a snort, and she holds herself back from asking who his date is, full-well knowing that not a single woman at their university can stand to be in his presence for longer than a group project takes to complete. It won’t do her any favours to upset Jiang Cheng, as well — nothing is worse than when he and Auntie Yu are both mad for the same, or similar enough, reasons.

Auntie Yu waits a moment before speaking again. “You’re going to ruin any prospects you have for yourself by spending time with that girl,” she says, her tone derisive. “You already don’t have many to begin with.” 

“My prospects are just fine,” Wei Ying says, not caring how bald-faced the lie is. She thinks the only real prospect she’s ever had has been Lan Zhan, and she’s not even sure how much of a prospect that has ever really been. She adamantly refuses to get flushed to the gills thinking about what had transpired between her and Lan Zhan, not while she’s in front of her family, but she does let some of her undue courage run through her. 

“I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, nor who I spend my time with,” Wei Ying continues, incensed and heated because who is Auntie Yu to insinuate anything about Lan Zhan in front of her? 

“That much is obvious,” Auntie Yu says. Her chopsticks are on the table, and she has a fiery, fierce look on her face that makes Wei Ying want to fight back so badly, to lay it all out on the table and walk away from the wreckage she’ll leave behind. “We can tell which side your bread is buttered on.”

Wei Ying feels her breath catch in her throat. She looks around the table quickly — Jiang Cheng is doing his best impression of a wax statue, sitting silent and looking unseeingly at the table in front of him. Yanli-jie is looking uncomfortable, like she doesn’t know how to cut in and fix things, and Jin Zixuan’s got a hand on her lower back as if to stabilise her, comfort her in the face of the argument going on. Worst of all is Uncle Jiang, who looks on as placatingly and stiffly as he always does when he can’t be bothered to stick up for his foster daughter. 

“I don’t know what the fuck that means,” she says, her lack of filter startling Jiang Cheng enough to raise his eyes and stare right at her. She doesn’t hold his gaze. She turns back to Auntie Yu, looks her dead in the eyes as she stands, and says, “I don’t care either. Just for the record since I’m being honest today: I’m gay — and I’m going home.”

She pushes away from the table before anyone can react, while her words sink into their brains and they come to terms with what she’s just said. She barely gets her trainers on as she leaves her Yanli-jie’s flat, the laces loose around the tops of her feet since she’d only haphazardly tucked them into her shoes before stepping into them.

Her heart races as she leaves the building, pushing her way out of the nice, glass doors with a force that is unnecessarily strong-willed. The adrenaline pulsing through her has her unable to care, even as she knows that she’s being rude and pushing her way through the throngs of people out on the street, and in the metro.

It’s only when she gets on the metro train, crowded enough not to get a seat, but not so much that it’s cramped, that her heart slows a little bit. She didn’t notice her hands shaking until now, nor did she notice the vibrating of her phone in her pocket. 

When she pulls it out, she sees a plethora of already missed calls and messages.

2 missed calls - Jiang Yanli

1 missed call - Jiang Cheng

19h53 - Jiang Yanli

A-Ying, I wish I had told you beforehand of the change of plans. My parents just showed up, I should have told you. I’m so sorry for what my mother said, and I hate that you walked out. Can you answer my calls please? 

19h55 - Jiang Yanli

No one is mad at you about what you told us. You were brave to say something ♥

20h01 - Jiang Yanli

Please just let me know that you’re safe? I love you ♥

Wei Ying’s hands are still shaking too much to write anything, and her breath is too shaky to feel confident enough to be able to take a call, not even to account for the noise of the metro. She knows that Jiang Yanli will wait for an answer at least for a few days — at least, she had when Wei Ying had left the Jiang’s home after being kicked out. 

She checks the three messages from Jiang Cheng, too.

19h51 - Jiang Cheng

are you happy with yourself? you ruined dinner and my mother is up in arms. way to fucking go, dumbass

19h59 - Jiang Cheng

let me know when youre ok though I guess

19h59 - Jiang Cheng

i fucking called it about lan zhan too

She pockets her phone again and tries not to let herself think about the messages. She employs the deep breathing exercises that Lan Zhan has shown her in the past to calm down. She remembers the first time Lan Zhan had helped her breathe through a crisis — once, when they’d been carrying their takeaway back to Lan Zhan’s flat and a dog that had run off-lead away from its owner had chased them down and sent Wei Ying into a panicked spiral, her appetite gone and her wits gone with it.

Lan Zhan had held her hand, then, and guided her to breathe, inhaling and exhaling deeply until her heart rate had lowered to something more normal and manageable. She’s never forgotten it since. 

She realises with a start — Lan Zhan! She has a game tonight, Wei Ying remembers. She knows it’s been barely any time since she’s last seen Lan Zhan, and it’s not like she’s never missed one of her games before for whatever prior engagements in life she’s had. Right now though, with all of the excitement of the night coursing through her, she can’t think of anything better than marching down to the school field where she’s playing, and just say something. Anything. 

She does have to switch lines at hub stations twice to course correct to get to the stadium instead of going back to her flat with the Wens. She feels a little insane, if she’s being honest, just based on the number of times she’s pulled out her phone already, checking and re-checking the time every few minutes as if it will make anything go faster. She’s never been punctual in her life, and she thinks she understands now a little bit why it always annoys the people around her — if the anxiety of trying to get somewhere in a timely manner is always this bad for the average person, she doesn’t envy them.

She ends up putting her phone on ‘do not disturb’. She can’t handle the calls and messages already, and she doesn’t want to run the risk of accidentally answering in the midst of her frantic energy. She thinks of maybe warning Wen Qing and Wen Ning that she’s either not coming home at all, or that when she does come home she will have drowned her sorrows in copious amounts of baijiu, but she doesn’t go through with it. She doesn’t want to have to explain herself quite yet, and she doesn’t want to lose her steam.

Wei Ying barely squeezes into the stadium at the tail end of the first period. She knows she’s not going to get seats of any kind, not with how many people are already present, but that’s not what she’s here for anyway. 

She manages to get all the way to the off-field where she can see Lan Zhan in her clean cleats and nice, miraculously unstained socks, through sheer force of will and determination. She’s wearing her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and the lack of obstruction makes it easy for Wei Ying to see the way that Lan Zhan’s eyes aren’t as focused as usual, a sadness and heaviness to her gaze that breaks Wei Ying’s heart as much as it makes it beat faster.

Surely, she thinks, Lan Zhan would not be so sad if she didn’t feel the same way? 

There’s only one way to find out. 

The huddle the team is having ends quickly, and they’re so used to seeing Wei Ying during their short halftime breaks that they don’t even say anything when she pushes herself over the barrier separating the stands from the players. 

Lan Zhan’s head whips over to look at her, like a sixth sense, when Wei Ying’s feet touch the ground close to her. She’s hasty to meet Wei Ying halfway, her eyebrows coming together just slightly in confusion and worry.

“Wei Ying,” she says. It comes out as much of a statement as it does a question.

“Lan Zhan, I have something to tell you and it’s urgent,” Wei Ying rushes to say. She can’t even be bothered to regulate the volume of her voice, nor does she care much who hears her. She can see over her shoulder that some of Lan Zhan’s teammates are sending covert glances in their direction, nosiness outweighing their desire to relax during their down time. 

Lan Zhan says nothing, just continues to stare. Wei Ying approaches, and she raises a hand like she’s going to touch Lan Zhan, but lets it hover for a moment before dropping back down.

“It can’t wait, I have to tell you,” Wei Ying continues.

Lan Zhan still says nothing, but the look in her eyes says it all — that she’s listening, that she wants to know what Wei Ying has to say. There’s an anxious energy to her, radiating off of her, like she’s also swaying, lost at sea, just like Wei Ying has been. 

“Lan Zhan! I genuinely wanted to sleep with you!”

Though they’re in a stadium with too-many-to-count people all having their own conversations, with top-hits pop music playing from the sound system to keep people entertained, Wei Ying swears she can hear the hitch in Lan Zhan’s breath. She sees, over where they still stand, that the girls on Lan Zhan’s team are pink in the face and slackjawed, doing their best to pretend like they’re busy so that they don’t have to listen in anymore. 

Lan Zhan, who is usually so precise and succinct in her speech, is rendered completely speechless. “You…” she trails off, and her eyes are glazed like she’s seeing right through Wei Ying. 

“Lan Zhan, I need you to look at me,” Wei Ying says, and her courage upticks enough that she reaches out to grab Lan Zhan by her forearm. It’s enough to shock Lan Zhan into looking at her. “You’re wonderful,” she says, “and you’re my best friend. I like you. As in, like, I fancy you. I never want to leave you alone, and I miss you when you’re not with me. I want to spend every day with you.” 

She feels like she’s out of breath when she finally manages to get all the words out. She knows it’s not been worded perfectly, and that it’s all come out in a jumble, but it obviously is enough for Lan Zhan to pull her into a hug, crushing their bodies together. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says quietly, the words breathed directly into her ear. “I like you. I fancy you. I —” she says no more, just holds Wei Ying tighter, like she might turn into sand and blow away if she doesn’t. Wei Ying feels one of Lan Zhan’s hands come up to cup the back of her head, and she feels a suspicious, warm drop land on her neck and slide down the back of her shirt, but she says nothing. She clings just as tightly. 

Halftime, as it were, does not bend to the whims of Wei Ying and Lan Zhan. Just because Wei Ying wants to spend the rest of the night being held in Lan Zhan’s arms — and maybe the rest of the week, maybe even the year or eternity? She’ll check her schedule — does not mean that time is on her side. Lan Zhan’s coach calls her away sooner rather than later, though the look on her face says that she’d seriously rather not be parted from Wei Ying.

It makes Wei Ying laugh a little — a mix of giddiness and excitement coursing through her — and she smiles at Lan Zhan while she goes back to the field. Wei Ying feels a little guilty that Lan Zhan wasn’t able to drink some water or sports drink during her break, but she can’t feel that bad about it.

She sits in the stands, though not in a great spot because of her late arrival, and she can barely see the field properly, but she doesn’t really care about that at all. She’s already floating on cloud nine, so caught in a daze with the emotional whiplash she’s going through. She can’t even remember the anxiety and stress she’d felt when arguing with Auntie Yu from how strong her current euphoria is. She knows, if only from the enthusiastic narration of the people around her commentation, that Lan Zhan is doing spectacularly on the field. It makes her smile something wicked, her lips pulled thin across her teeth from her unbounded joy. 

She pulls out her phone finally to send the Wens a message in their group chat. 

20h42 - Wei Ying

won’t be home 2nite going to lz’s 

20h42 - Wei Ying

it was a fuck up or get fucked sitch and i pulled thru 

20h44 - Wen Ning

??? Unsure what that means

20h50 - Wen Qing

Good to hear you made up with Lan Zhan. Use protection.

20h51 - Wen Ning

oh nvm I get it now

Wei Ying snorts and puts her phone back into her pocket. She — restlessly — wants to play with the charm, if only to distract herself from the way that she’s so unable to think of anything other than Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan. Even the excitement of the football game down below combined with the energy of the crowd around her isn’t enough to get her mind off of all of the different ways the night might end. 

She imagines that it will end well — how could it not? She’d confessed, however erratically, and Lan Zhan had expressed the same things back to her. She’d come out — unceremoniously and all at once — to her family in a way that would be impossible to take back, not that she would ever want to. There isn’t a world in which she doesn’t see herself coming to this same conclusion in one way or another — she’s always been obsessed with Lan Zhan, and she always wants her in every way.

An hour later, when the second period of the game has concluded and the home team declared winners (Wei Ying will attribute the entire win to Lan Zhan’s strategic footwork, wrestling the ball away from the away team right when they’d had the chance to score a tie-goal), she waits for Lan Zhan. 

She doesn’t go down to the locker room like she has in the past, and she doesn’t exactly leave with the throng of students pouring out of the exits of the stadium either. She takes her time, a little leisurely, if only because she doesn’t feel like she has to chase anymore. She doesn't have to run, to make sure that she’s the only one that Lan Zhan sees. She doesn’t have to feel like she’s fighting to keep Lan Zhan’s eyes on her. Lan Zhan sees her, Lan Zhan wants her — she doesn’t need to rush anymore.

It’s right when she’s finally been washed to the exit doors by the waves of game-goers exiting that she spots Lan Zhan over the crowd. 

If it’s not her height, then it would be her somehow still pristine blue-and-white jersey and shorts, and if it’s not that then it’s surely the crowd of students around her, clamouring for her attention as they shout their praises for her talents. 

Lan Zhan nods politely, her eyes taking on that soft, caring look that she only gets when she’s talking to children, or the young, new students who are still looking for someone to idolise as they come into adulthood. It makes Wei Ying’s stomach clench in a pleasant way, her love and adoration making a physical presence in her body. She can’t help but smile widely again, her cheeks almost hurting from the elation. 

“I never thought you could like me,” Wei Ying says, holding tightly to Lan Zhan’s hands when they finally manage to get outside, finally. It’s loud, still, with the crowds of people surrounding them, raucous after a good game. It doesn’t bother Wei Ying, and she’s not ashamed of the intimacy. She wants people to know that only Lan Zhan is good enough for her, is the only person she’s ever wanted, the only woman she’s ever loved. 

When Lan Zhan makes a dissenting noise, disagreeing with her (however minutely the disagreement may be), Wei Ying continues speaking. “It’s like how wind chimes are fucking annoying because of how erratic they are, right? I always thought it was too much, like I was saying so much, like it was all just overwhelming.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan croons. It’s quiet in the dull noise of the city around them, but Wei Ying feels like she’s never heard anything louder in her life. “Wei Ying, I love listening to you. It is never too much. It will never be enough.” 

Wei Ying doesn’t know what to say to that. She lets instinct take over, throwing her arms around Lan Zhan’s neck, hooking her elbows to be able to bring Lan Zhan down toward her until they meet in the middle, in the middle of the sidewalk, for a kiss. 

For their first official kiss, not hidden in the dark of night like a shameful secret, it’s pretty good. Wei Ying has no experience, her past boasting when out partying with Nie Huaisang a complete sham, but it’s still perfect despite that.

She doesn’t move her arms, perfectly content to cling to Lan Zhan like the star in some drama show. Lan Zhan’s hands skim her ticklish sides until she’s holding the swell of Wei Ying’s hips, and it’s just too much. Wei Ying can’t help but think about the night they’d spent together, rubbing off on each other, finally taking a bite of Lan Zhan’s tits (unfortunately flattened in her sports bra for the moment, Wei Ying mourns) — and she can’t think of anything else. It’s all that’s consumed her mind since it happened, and it continues to be so.

“Take me home,” she commands against Lan Zhan’s lips, her voice a low, harsh drawl she’s not familiar with. She wonders if this is her sex voice making itself present for the first time, and she’s embarrassed by that thought alone. Lan Zhan, though, doesn’t seem shy about any of it at all. For a fleeting moment, Wei Ying feels a burst of jealousy, and she wants to know who, if applicable, has been on the receiving end of Lan Zhan’s arousal and desperation. 

It takes her a moment to remember that Lan Zhan has never expressed an interest in another living soul for her to feel a little more secure, a little less unsure in her virginity. Lan Zhan has always had a quiet, assured confidence to her. Wei Ying thinks that this must be no different, then. 

The way back to Lan Zhan’s cute little flat, back to her home, where she wants to have Wei Ying is nothing less than a test of patience.

It’s not a far distance by any means, and they’ve walked it a hundred times at least. Usually the walk in interspersed with Wei Ying pulling Lan Zhan aside to one of the many food carts, opining about the quality of the meats and fried doughs like she has any authority on any of it. She’d pull Lan Zhan along, teasing her about the beers and liquors poured generously by older men and women who would try their best to entice them into purchasing. More often than not, Lan Zhan would cave, if only to be able to give Wei Ying a nice treat. She’d always play it off, joking that looking and craving doesn’t mean needing, but Lan Zhan has carried coins and cash to pay them since the first time she’d had to decline getting Wei Ying something because she only had her card.

It hadn’t ever happened again.

Now, though, Wei Ying moves past the street vendors like she can’t even see them.

A few of the usuals call out to them, waiving politely as if to entice her, but her mind is one-tracked when she really needs it to be, and there is nothing in this world that will prevent her from getting Lan Zhan home — not even her favourite beer, nor the mantou that she always pairs with pulled pork that make her mouth water from desire. 

Lan Zhan, too, moves with the same urgency, her ears pink with excitement, and her eyes locked dead ahead as she moves with determination through the people crowding the streets.

It doesn’t take them long to get home, not with the way the two of them share the same one-track mindedness. The energy thrums between them, almost palpable, and definitely enough for the older couple that stands in the lift with them to notice. They avoid making eye contact after Wei Ying smiles at them with a slightly awkward smile, and Lan Zhan’s fingers tighten where their hands are still clasped together. She doesn’t even bother to try charming them, or saying something cheeky and fun like she usually does when caught in the lift with other people. Frankly, she doesn’t think that she has the capacity to form full words, even if she wanted to. 

Lan Zhan doesn’t fumble with her keys as she unlocks the door, but she takes longer than she usually does, like she needs to expend more focus on her movements. Wei Ying takes the moment to sweep her eyes over Lan Zhan’s form — tall, muscular, and just so, so pretty. She can’t believe there was ever a moment in her life that she didn’t realise how much she wants Lan Zhan. She thinks even in their preparatory school days she wanted her, and just didn’t know how to externalise that desire. 

When Lan Zhan does push open the door, it’s with a little more force than usual, too. Wei Ying wants to ask what’s next — will Lan Zhan shower, and they’ll settle in for a movie and some snacks before she literally can’t keep her eyes open anymore? Will they talk about Wei Ying’s confession, and Lan Zhan’s in return? She doesn’t know, and the confidence she’d felt at Lan Zhan’s game isn’t as strong now as it had been then.

She doesn’t even get the chance to ask, barely even has the chance to unlace the ties on her shoes before Lan Zhan is grabbing her by the hip with one hand and by the chin with the other, tilting her at the perfect angle for Lan Zhan to lean in and kiss her. 

It’s everything all at once, this knowledge that they’re kissing because they both want it. She doesn’t have the anxiety that Lan Zhan doesn’t want her back, that she’s only doing it because Wei Ying wants it and she’s too nice to say no. Wei Ying doesn’t even know how she could ever have believed that, not now with the way that Lan Zhan is so demanding, pulling at her body like she can’t get enough of Wei Ying, like she wants to kiss her until they merge into one. 

Lan Zhan’s lips move like she’s on a mission, her tongue slipping between them to lick against Wei Ying’s and make her weak in the knees as she’s shoved back against the front door of Lan Zhan’s flat. She goes willingly, wanting to take everything that Lan Zhan can give her. 

Lan Zhan pins her against the door, and she lets her knees go weak. She scrambles her hands up Lan Zhan’s back and pulls out the tie holding her hair in place. The strands are soft and somehow, despite the time Lan Zhan had spent running around on a field, aren’t at all gross from her sweat. 

Like the lack of a hair tie has released some inhibitions that had been holding Lan Zhan back, she goes feral, biting at Wei Ying’s lips and pulling at her shirt like she’s completely out of control.

“Lan Zhan —” Wei Ying gasps as the bites move from her lips down her jaw and neck. Lan Zhan sucks, biting into her like she wants to stake a claim. “Lan Zhan, are you a dog?” 

Lan Zhan ignores the question and brings her hands up underneath Wei Ying’s shirt, skimming over her stomach as she leans back a little, as if to admire the saliva and bite marks surely dotted along her skin. For a moment in time, it is as if the world has frozen in time, and the only thing that Wei Ying can do is take it, take the kisses, the touches, the rough treatment of Lan Zhan’s lips and teeth against her skin. She takes it all with ease, like she’s made for this, just like she’s wanted to for so long.

Wei Ying is dazed for the entire time that Lan Zhan kisses her — continues to be dazed for the whole ordeal of peeling her off the door she’s been pressed into to take her into Lan Zhan’s bedroom, until she’s so drunk on euphoria that she can’t even think straight, and she doesn’t at all intend the pun.

She’s deposited on Lan Zhan’s bed — the very bed the two of them had been in when she’d, perhaps ill-advisedly but unregretfully, rubbed one out on Lan Zhan’s skin. Lan Zhan kneels at her feet, her hands running over her legs gently, with the same delicate way someone might move a canvas full of wet paint, or a cup with water nearly brimming over. Her hand encircles Wei Ying’s ankle, thumb on the instep of her foot, and she kneels on the floor, slowly stroking where her socks end and the expanse of her flesh begins.

When Wei Ying looks down, she sees that Lan Zhan’s eyes are half-mast, like she’s caught between praying and wanting to watch every motion of Wei Ying’s body, unhappy to miss a thing. Wei Ying can’t help but think that she’s never been touched like this before, never been revered so intimately and with such passion.

In the past, when she’d been to nicer shoe shops with the Jiangs, she’d had the experience of shopkeepers fitting her, sliding shoes onto her feet like Cinderella. This is so much more, so much better, when Lan Zhan presses kisses to the gentle bones at her disposal. 

Lan Zhan moves with determination, standing before she unbuttons Wei Ying’s trousers and slides them down her legs until they pool by her feet and she has to kick them off. She raises an eyebrow at Wei Ying’s thong — an American Hallowe’en themed pair, with a white bat sitting right on the front of the otherwise black fabric — but she doesn’t comment. Wei Ying imagines that she’s used to seeing Wei Ying in such things, at least to a certain extent, from their many sleepovers. It feels different this time though. It’s not shocking to her in the least that this time feels like more, because it is more, it’s everything.

She manages to kick off her trousers before Lan Zhan is on top of her again, pressing herself between Wei Ying’s thighs like she’s never going to leave. It feels so natural, the spread of her legs second nature. 

“Lan jiejie,” she whines, and wiggles a bit beneath Lan Zhan to get some kind of friction that she doesn’t even know how to name.

Lan Zhan’s hands manage to grab both of Wei Ying’s, before she transfers Wei Ying’s wrists into just one of her big hands. She pins Wei Ying above the head even as Wei Ying struggles half-heartedly, wriggling only slightly more intensely. Wei Ying can’t help her stream of thoughts — just simply yes, yes, yes — from running through her head, an engine going full steam ahead, though she keeps it to herself. She doesn’t need Lan Zhan knowing just how easy she is for it, not quite yet. 

She lets out a small noise of surprise, a little squeak, when Lan Zhan flips her onto her stomach, the bones in her wrists grinding together unpleasantly, like a sting from the inside. Something about it feels searing, white hot, like she’s so high strung she’ll never come down from the heat that Lan Zhan is giving her. Lan Zhan leans over her back, their bodies pressed together from shoulders to hips, the backs of her thighs pressed to the fronts of Lan Zhan’s. 

Her voice is low in Wei Ying’s ear when she whispers, “It’s like you’re not even trying.” 

It sounds genuine enough, so husky and warm that Wei Ying can tell that it’s not only to tease her, but it’s because Lan Zhan wants this equally as much as she herself does. It makes a moan escape from Wei Ying’s throat before she can exert any self control to contain it. It sounds high and helpless, and she wants so badly for Lan Zhan to speak to her in that tone again, use her sex-voice to say dirty things that can almost be taken innocuously had they been said in any other way.

She thinks she hears Lan Zhan’s breathing pick up at her noises, faster and heavier. She wants to hear Lan Zhan’s breath get even more frenzied, wants to have her face shoved into the down-filled duvet so that she’s forced to breathe through the obstruction as Lan Zhan makes her take whatever she wants to give. 

She doesn’t have to want for long, because it takes only a moment before Lan Zhan is doing just that — she lets go of Wei Ying’s wrists and trails her hand down her spine before grabbing her hips, hoisting her into the perfect position with her face down and her ass up. Wei Ying can only imagine what she looks like — wanton and wet, her hair a mess and her thong soaked through enough that Lan Zhan can probably see the shiny slick reflecting the light.

“Lan jiejie,” Wei Ying whines, burying her face in the duvet, and clenching her freed fists in the fabric. She can feel her pussy clenching, knowing that Lan Zhan is looking at her so intimately even though there’s still some semblance of imagination left to them because she’s still so covered. She realises, with distinct disapproval even though she’s not even looking at Lan Zhan, that she’s the only one partially undressed. Lan Zhan, other than the trainers she’d left on the shoe rack at her door, is still wearing all of the clothes she’d worn as they’d walked home.

“Shut up,” Lan Zhan says, and her hands move from Wei Ying’s waist to her ass, pulling apart her cheeks with her thumbs so close to the lips of Wei Ying’s pussy that she feels her entire body trembling with need. Wei Ying doesn’t get to protest Lan Zhan’s rudeness before she feels Lan Zhan’s mouth — hot and intense and everywhere — on her cunt through the fabric of her thong. Lan Zhan didn’t even need to order her around, because she’s already unable to speak human words, reduced down to the whining and whimpering of an injured animal.

The sudden pleasure of Lan Zhan’s mouth, the suction once Lan Zhan finds her clit through her thong, is so much, so overwhelming it’s almost frightening. She feels like she’s on the precipice of something big, like she’s about to fall off a cliff and into the great unknown. She feels gluttonous, though — she likes it enough that she wants more.

She can’t help the little noises falling from her open mouth when she finally realises that she needs to breathe to survive and keep feeling the pleasure of Lan Zhan’s tongue tracing little circles around her clit through the fabric. She digs her fingers even more tightly into the duvet beneath her, lets a line of drool slip from the corner of her mouth as she does her best, most valiant attempt to grind her pussy back against Lan Zhan’s mouth. She thinks, with a sudden clarity, that she can have this as much as she wants, as much as Lan Zhan will let her.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, you need to — Lan jie, I’m gonna —” she stammers, her hips stuttering from the pleasure. “Wait, jiejie —”

She’d meant it as a plea for control, for Lan Zhan to let up the pressure and let her calm down a moment. Lan Zhan seems to take it as more of a challenge, though, the opposite effect of what Wei Ying has intended. 

Lan Zhan lets out a sound so deep and guttural that it sounds like nearly a growl, and her fingers tighten on Wei Ying’s flesh until she’s spilling out on either side of the fabric of her thong. It feels obscene, more so than if Lan Zhan had just undressed her, but she loves the feeling. She loves knowing that she’s made Lan Zhan lose her composure this way. 

She comes with a borderline wail, her whole body trembling in a way that she never has before when she’s touched herself on her own. She’s a little embarrassed by it, but the feeling is short-lived. Lan Zhan shoves her fully prone before flipping her onto her back. She doesn’t even have a chance to admire the way that Lan Zhan’s lips and chin shine with wetness before Lan Zhan’s mouth is on her, kissing her deeply, tongue in her mouth like she’s an oasis that Lan Zhan needs to drink from. There’s something about tasting herself in Lan Zhan’s mouth that makes her just feel hotter. 

She fists her hands in the hem of Lan Zhan’s jersey, the fabric soft against her fingers, and she tries to lift it, gets her hands underneath. “Take it off, Lan Zhan,” she pants, the words mumbled against Lan Zhan’s lips. “Wanna see you.” 

Lan Zhan kisses her deeply one more time before pulling back, kneeling between Wei Ying’s spread thighs. She makes eye contact with Wei Ying as she strips the jersey off quickly, throwing it to the wayside haphazardly, with not a care in the world for where it lands. She must see the sad look in Wei Ying’s eyes, like she wants more, and so Lan Zhan acquiesces. It takes a little more effort to take off her sports bra, and it would impress Wei Ying just how much the fabric was able to flatten down Lan Zhan’s tits if she wasn’t so immediately desperate to get her hands on Lan Zhan’s skin.

She reaches a hand up, thumb playing with Lan Zhan’s perked up nipple, while Lan Zhan leans down to kiss her. 

It’s perfect, and she loves it so much. She can’t help bringing her other hand up, using both to squeeze Lan Zhan’s boobs. She thinks she can spend the rest of her life playing like this and never tire of it. Lan Zhan makes little hums of pleasure when Wei Ying flicks her thumbs just right, when she pinches with the perfect pressure. Lan Zhan runs her teeth along Wei Ying’s neck, leaving love bites as she goes. 

Lan Zhan’s hands come up and pull off her shirt too, her eyes looking over the cups of Wei Ying’s bra in appreciation. She knows she’s nowhere near as endowed as Lan Zhan is, something that used to be a bit of a point of insecurity for her, but Lan Zhan’s appreciative gaze makes her feel like the most beautiful person in the world. To Lan Zhan, she probably is. She’s not sure why she’s never noticed it before. When Lan Zhan pulls off her bra, too, and her hand cups Wei Ying’s tit reverently, her lips suctioning to her nipple like there’s nowhere else she’d rather be, Wei Ying thinks she might actually have the best tits in the world, if Lan Zhan likes them this much. 

She’s not sure how long they stay like that, pressed into the bed with their legs tangled and their hands grabbing each other's tits, making out and groping like teenagers. She’s too out of her mind, zoned out from taking in and cataloguing all the heavy breaths and little, muffled noises Lan Zhan makes against her, to bother thinking of the passage of time. 

It’s not until Lan Zhan shifts, one of her legs coming to press high between Wei Ying’s thighs so that she’s pressing against Wei Ying’s pussy and can press herself against Wei Ying’s thigh, that she realises just how close she is again. Close from hardly anything, from a little bit of kissing and feeling Lan Zhan’s bare skin against her own. 

“Lan Zhan,” she says, jerking her hips against Lan Zhan’s thigh. She can feel her thong, still stretched from Lan Zhan’s prior ministrations, up against her clit in a way that makes her feel live-wire sensitive. “Jiejie, I’m gonna —”

“Again?” Lan Zhan asks. It’s teasing, a little cruel, and she presses herself down harder against Wei Ying’s thigh. She can feel the warm wetness of Lan Zhan’s cunt even through the shorts she’s still wearing, and she wonders just how much she’s dripping. She thinks she’d like it if Lan Zhan would force her onto her back like she is just to ride her face, dripping over Wei Ying’s tongue. 

The thought brings her even closer to the edge, and she grabs at Lan Zhan’s skin like she’s desperate, though she’s not sure for what. Maybe mercy, maybe for more. 

Lan Zhan knows it, too. 

She knows that Wei Ying needs it, is about to come undone just from touching above the waist. Lan Zhan must know just how easy she is for it, how she doesn’t even need her pussy played with to be Lan Zhan’s bitch.

“I’m close, too,” Lan Zhan says into her ear, quiet and just so — so. Wei Ying knows it’s the voice she would have used the last time Wei Ying made her come if speaking was something they’d been doing that night. She doesn’t dwell on it — they’re speaking now, and she’s not going to waste this opportunity. 

Lan Zhan is aggressive with it, pressing her hips down into Wei Ying’s body with repetitive, fluid motions. Wei Ying does her best to copy her, and it proves to be way too much, gets her off so quickly, that she nearly misses that groan that Lan Zhan lets out into her ear as she shakes apart with her own orgasm. It’s perfect, and it’s so good, and she wants nothing more than to stay in bed with Lan Zhan and make her best friend — girlfriend? — come for her over and over again. 

She doesn’t know when it’s supposed to end — she’s never had sex before, and the little bit of porn that she has seen or read has had men, and always finished when they did. The way that Lan Zhan is looking at her, though, makes her think they’re far from finished. The thought of continuing, of being far from done, makes her heart race with anticipation. 

Lan Zhan has the same idea, it seems, when she pulls away from Wei Ying to look over her body, gazing appreciatively at her nearly-nude form strewn over the bed. Wei Ying wants to shy away a bit, the intensity of it so much but so good, making her gush with more heat between her legs. “Jiejie,” she whines, not quite moving. “You need to undress too, you’re still wearing your shorts.” 

Lan Zhan does, miraculously, and Wei Ying admires the long lines of her legs, the pale skin of her thighs revealed to her. Her panties are a pale blue, soaked a darker shade along the whole gusset where Lan Zhan has soaked through the fabric. Wei Ying wants, wants to dip her fingers beneath the fabric and feel it all for herself, wants to suck the slickness clean so that she can taste Lan Zhan on her tongue.

“Have you gotten a good enough look, Lan jiejie?”

“I can’t appreciate having you in my bed?” Lan Zhan asks as she gives her a look that she can’t quite parse as she climbs back on the bed between Wei Ying’s spread legs. Lan Zhan forces her hands above her head with a quiet command of, “stay,” and then does as she pleases. She presses kisses down Wei Ying’s neck, sucks at one of her breasts, bites against her nipple. She dips a tongue into Wei Ying’s navel, making her giggle and squirm, and then she’s on her stomach, her face eye-level with Wei Ying’s pussy again, and she’s using her thumb to oscillate over her clit with a steady pace.

“Lan Zhan, jiejie, you have to give me more,” Wei Ying whines. She’s already so close again, so desperate for it, but the repetitive motions aren’t enough to get her there, not enough to bring her over the edge. She wants Lan Zhan to put her fingers inside her, wants Lan Zhan to feel how tight she’ll be on her fingers. 

Lan Zhan hums and moves in closer, presses kisses to her inner thighs, to the parts of her lips that are no longer covered by the cotton of her thong. She feels her heart hammering in her chest as Lan Zhan breathes deeply, like she enjoys the smell of Wei Ying’s arousal, and she needs it so much that feels her cunt pulse with it.

“Please,” she asks again, her voice cracking. 

“So wet,” Lan Zhan says, mouthing over the slick mess Wei Ying has made of her thong while her thumb still continues swaying to and fro over her swollen clit. Lan Zhan licks a stripe up the fabric, “So easy.” 

“Not easy,” Wei Ying refutes, though she has to look away from where she’s been watching Lan Zhan because the look that she gets in return is nothing less than disbelief. 

“No?” Lan Zhan retorts. Wei Ying’s answer dies on her lips as Lan Zhan’s hands come and grab at the waistband of her thong where it rests against her hip. She doesn’t even realise what’s happening until it’s much too late, until Lan Zhan has already used brute force to rip apart the fabric until she can push it aside, the tattered remains of her thong caught around one leg while Lan Zhan leans back in to press her tongue to Wei Ying’s bare clit. She doesn’t even have the mind to complain about Lan Zhan ripping her thong apart, leaving her one pair of panties less. 

It’s so much so suddenly, and she sucks in the deepest breath, her whole body jerking against Lan Zhan’s tongue as she begins to lick and suck like a woman starved. Wei Ying convulses with the pleasure being wrought on her body, and it takes all of her self control to keep from curling up into a ball, wanting to get away from the direct pleasure and also luxuriate in it. 

She finally can’t hold herself still, the hands that she’d been diligently keeping above her head coming down, one to grab her own boob as if to self-soothe, and the other is simply through instinct, grabbing at the back of Lan Zhan’s head to tangle in her hair. She doesn’t know what to do other than to throw her head back and moan.

“Lan jiejie is so good at this,” Wei Ying says, lifting her head off the pillow just enough to be able to look down at Lan Zhan. It’s the most erotic thing she’s ever seen — Lan Zhan with her face wet, her eyes hooded and dark from her dilated pupils, one thumb holding back the hood while the tip of her tongue flicks against Wei Ying’s clit. Wei Ying wants to immortalise the image in her mind. She asks, “how many times have you fantasised about doing this?” 

“Every time.” 

“Hm?”

Lan Zhan flicks her tongue cruelly again, her eyes betraying just how much she likes to watch Wei Ying whole-body jerk at the feeling. “I always think about this,” she says, her voice so close, her words a burst of hot air against Wei Ying’s throbbing pussy. She brings her hand up between Wei Ying’s legs and slides two fingers inside of her like it’s nothing, like it’s not the first time that Wei Ying is being penetrated by someone other than herself. “I always think about giving you — what you need.” 

“Oh,” Wei Ying says, more than a little breathless, her lungs devoid of air. Lan Zhan’s mouth comes back to suck on her clit, the other hand pumping inside of her with a steady, sensual rhythm that makes her feel so unbelievable, like she’s on the brink and just needs one last push to come for Lan Zhan again.

Her thoughts stray for a moment, thinking of Lan Zhan’s words — that she fantasises about this, that she’s daydreamt about getting her mouth on Wei Ying’s pussy. She must think about it often enough to know exactly what she wants to do to Wei Ying, she must get off on the idea. It’s enough to send Wei Ying into a heated spiral, wanting Lan Zhan to live out every fantasy she’s ever had on her body. 

She comes once Lan Zhan crooks her fingers just right, a come-hither motion against her walls. She can’t hear it over her own loud keening, but she feels the way that Lan Zhan groans against her. Once her body stops shaking, Lan Zhan’s fingers move again, the pace even more frantic inside of her, so slick and wet that she barely even notices Lan Zhan pushing a third finger in until she feels the slight sting of being stretched out.

“Mercy, Lan Zhan, mercy,” she begs, her legs twitching from the sensitivity, her hips contorting to get away from Lan Zhan’s mouth. “You have to have mercy on me.” 

“You’re not done,” Lan Zhan says simply, looking her dead in the eyes and nodding succinctly once before diving back in.

Her mouth moves from Wei Ying’s over-sensitive and swollen clit to her entrance, licking around where her own fingers are holding Wei Ying open. She’s wettest here, and she sees Lan Zhan lick a line of slickness from dripping down her wrist when she takes her fingers out. Wei Ying wails, both terribly turned on and embarrassed about it, but Lan Zhan ignores her in favour of licking her tongue inside of Wei Ying’s pussy, feeling the clenching around her tongue. 

It’s different, the pleasure shallower but no less intense, and when Lan Zhan’s thumb comes to flick over her sore, overworked clit she comes once more, her cunt pulsing rhythmically on Lan Zhan’s tongue. She feels out of her mind, delirious, not knowing that she’s able to come this many times in a row. She feels reborn, a new person, like she’s going to have a post-sex glow for the rest of her life. 

Lan Zhan finally moves from between her legs, but she’s still too shaky, still too overwrought with pleasure that she can’t move her jelly-legs. She can’t close them, and feels the slightly cool breeze when Lan Zhan leans up her body to kiss her again. She thinks, a little insanely, that Lan Zhan must have crazy mouth stamina if she can stand to play with Wei Ying’s tongue still after going down on her for so long. She doesn’t complain about it.

She does, however, complain when she feels Lan Zhan’s panty-covered pussy against her leg. “Take them off, jiejie, I can’t believe you’re still dressed.”

“Dressed?” Lan Zhan asks, voice low, eyes motioning to their uncovered bodies.

“Yes, dressed,” Wei Ying says. She brings a hand to Lan Zhan’s hip and starts to ineffectively shove the fabric down, making no strides in achieving her goal “Want to see you, want to feel you,” she adds, and feels no shame about it. She wants her hands and mouth on Lan Zhan’s cunt just as much as Lan Zhan has wanted hers. 

Lan Zhan only moves a little to the side, holding her weight on her forearm so that she can shuffle her panties off and throw them to the side. Wei Ying doesn’t get a great look, but she can see the shiny slickness clinging to the hair between Lan Zhan’s legs, and feels it once Lan Zhan rolls her hips down against Wei Ying’s thigh. 

She breathes heavily into Wei Ying’s ear, fractured and shaky as she presses her cunt against Wei Ying over and over, grinding down on her just like they had before. It’s good, and she loves being held down underneath Lan Zhan to be used like a toy, but she wants to taste, to feel. 

Wei Ying breathes heavily, too, her panting almost matching Lan Zhan’s as if the pleasure is her own. Lan Zhan makes a litany of little noises, gasps and pants and barely-there groans as she fucks Wei Ying’s thigh with sinful, gracious movements. Wei Ying wonders what it would be like if Lan Zhan were to fuck her like this for real, if she were to wear a strap-on like Wei Ying has seen in the only porn she’d ever seen with two women. It had seemed so fake, so unsexy, so unsensual that she’d been convinced she didn’t like women at all. Now, though, she thinks there’s nothing she wants more than to be held down and forced to take it while Lan Zhan fucks her with a thick strap.

There was no eroticism in the things she’d read and watched before. She knows what it means, now, to have something erotic and genuinely sexy. Lan Zhan’s gasping little breaths are the most titillating thing she’s ever heard or will ever hear. 

Lan Zhan’s thrusts devolve quickly, the rhythm stuttering as she chases her pleasure against Wei Ying’s body. She comes when Wei Ying reaches over to caress her hips and thighs, grasping her by the ass to help with the pressure. She comes with a shuddering gasp, a heated bite against Wei Ying’s neck, and a tremble up and down her spine. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whispers against Lan Zhan’s ear. “Can I — Can you…”

“Mn?” 

“I want to eat you out,” she gasps out quickly. “I want you to sit on my face.” 

She feels Lan Zhan’s grip on her tighten a little bit, hears the shocked breath Lan Zhan lets out like she’s surprised that Wei Ying wants it, but she moves nonetheless. She presses one last kiss to Wei Ying’s lips before manoeuvring herself to straddle Wei Ying’s clavicle, with Wei Ying’s arms wound around her thighs. Like this, she can see Lan Zhan’s pussy so close to her face, so close to where she wants it on her mouth.

She grips Lan Zhan’s thighs, pulls her forward weakly until Lan Zhan gets the memo and moves up a little, spreads her knees a little more, so that she can hold herself up right above Wei Ying’s mouth. It would take no effort for her to lean up, swipe her tongue against Lan Zhan’s wet cunt and feel it drip down her throat.

Lan Zhan lowers herself down with devastating and painstakingly slow movements, like she’s afraid of Wei Ying drowning or being suffocated. Wei Ying jerks her hands where they’re resting against Lan Zhan’s thighs, brings her down quicker, and immediately starts moving her tongue against Lan Zhan’s clit. 

She’s never done this, has never been so close to another woman before, but it just feels so right. Lan Zhan tastes clean and a little sour, and even though she’s sweaty both from her football game and the way she’s been fucking Wei Ying, she still somehow smells so good. It makes Wei Ying moan against her cunt, the feelings overwhelming her. She has no doubt that if she wasn’t still so sensitive she’d be able to get off to licking Lan Zhan’s pussy like this. 

She eats Lan Zhan out with the same curiosity and enthusiasm that she brings to all of her endeavours in life. She catalogues each way that her tongue moves, which ones make Lan Zhan’s thighs tremble and her hips jerk, what makes her press her wet pussy harsher against Wei Ying’s mouth like she wants to force herself on Wei Ying, like she wants more, wants it all.

Wei Ying doesn’t close her eyes, watches with a rapt gaze as one of Lan Zhan’s hands cups her own breast, tugging on her own nipple absentmindedly. The other smoothes back Wei Ying’s fringe, keeping her eyes clear and observant for the show — keeping her head in place as Lan Zhan’s hips begin to move of their own accord with smooth grinding motions. She rubs her wet cunt over Wei Ying’s tongue, smearing her wetness all over Wei Ying’s chin and shuddering with gasping little breaths when Wei Ying’s nose bumps against her swollen clit.

Wei Ying doesn’t introduce her fingers into the mix — she’s not sure that Lan Zhan would like it, frankly, and she’s more interested in just holding Lan Zhan’s thighs and hips to feel her jerky motions under her hands. It makes her feel powerful, even if she’s being used for Lan Zhan’s pleasure, just to know that she is the reason why Lan Zhan feels so good. She can’t wait to learn all the ways that she can make Lan Zhan feel good — she can’t wait to get on her knees, with her face under Lan Zhan’s skirt to lick up her cunt until Lan Zhan comes where she stands.

Almost like Lan Zhan can read her mind, she shakes apart with her orgasm, letting out a low sound and pressing herself hard enough against Wei Ying’s mouth that it almost begins to hurt. Almost. 

She doesn’t move for a second, and Wei Ying presses sweet kisses against Lan Zhan’s thighs, the lips of her pussy, her swollen clit until Lan Zhan jerks away from the sensitivity. She doesn’t move right away — spends some time gazing down at Wei Ying still between her thighs and smiling dopily from the pleasure, but she does move sooner rather than later. 

She presses a kiss to Wei Ying’s mouth, and there’s something filthy and so dirty about it all that makes Wei Ying’s whole face and chest burn with something akin to embarrassment except not exactly. Lan Zhan is her best friend, her closest confidant, and there’s no reason for her to feel embarrassed as Lan Zhan lays down next to her, pulling her on her side so that they’re face to face. 

“Hey,” Wei Ying says, breaking the silence after she realises that Lan Zhan isn’t going to be the one to do it.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says.

“I wasn’t kidding, you know,” Wei Ying says quietly. Now, without the undercurrent of lust and desperation influencing her every move, she can think a little bit more clearly. She can hear the humming of traffic far below, and the lights of the city are still so bright through the window. Lan Zhan glows something ethereal, and it makes Wei Ying’s stomach and heart do backflips. She can have it all, she realises. 

“Nor was I,” Lan Zhan confirms.

“I came out to my family. I’m in love with you. I think I might always have been.” 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan hums quietly. She doesn’t close her eyes, but she tucks a strand of hair behind Wei Ying’s ear and presses their foreheads together. “I have loved you for a very long time.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” Lan Zhan closes her eyes and breathes through her nose. “A long time indeed.”

Wei Ying kisses her. “Let's go to sleep, jiejie?” 

“We have not brushed our teeth.”

“We can brush them twice in the morning.” Wei Ying yawns and tucks her face into the crook of Lan Zhan’s neck. She hears the huff of laughter that Lan Zhan lets out and smiles.

She falls asleep with a lighter heart than she has in many years. 

Wei Ying wakes up the next morning completely naked and way too warm for it.

Lan Zhan is already awake, looking down at her with something dark in her eyes, and it takes Wei Ying only a moment to fully realise that Lan Zhan’s hand is between her legs, tracking through the slickness already smeared on her thighs. 

“Good morning to you, too,” Wei Ying says. She sounds sleepy, still, like her voice isn’t quite ready to be used yet. It’s worth it for the way that Lan Zhan smiles at her, a small little thing that makes Wei Ying feel like a superstar. “What time is it?” 

“Late enough in the morning for you,” Lan Zhan says. Her fingers trail up Wei Ying’s pussy, circling around her clit a few times until Wei Ying’s legs twitch without any permission. She feels like a bell, shuddering from Lan Zhan’s ministrations on her body.

“Yeah, yeah, fuck,” she says. She can’t help the way her legs fall open, can’t help the way she cants her hips up into Lan Zhan’s hand, wanting more than just a teasing touch on her clit. She’s not sure when she’d become so desperate, but she likes it. For Lan Zhan, she’ll assume her new state of being with honour. She curls into Lan Zhan’s side helplessly before asking, “Do you feel what you do to me, jiejie? You have to take responsibility.”

Lan Zhan sinks two fingers into her cunt when she hums in ascent. “Mn,” she hums, lips pressed to Wei Ying’s forehead. “I shall.”

“You’re going to be doing all my laundry.”

“Laundry?” 

“I’ll never not be wet around you again,” Wei Ying says. She gasps when Lan Zhan’s thumb comes to flick across her clit, the two fingers she has inside buried deep to feel the clench of her walls. “You’re going to ruin all my panties.”

“I will take responsibility,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying doesn’t see her smile before being kissed within an inch of her life. 

They don’t leave bed for another two hours after, and Wei Ying hardly complains.

(She does complain a little that she has to go home commando, the only thong she’d had in tatters at the foot of Lan Zhan’s bed. She looks rather smug about it, and Wei Ying does feel kind of sexy and naughty when she borrows Lan Zhan’s lounge trousers to go home in when they have to depart — Wei Ying to go home, and Lan Zhan to lunch with her brother.) 

Wei Ying walks into her flat when Wen Qing and Wen Ning are sitting down for lunch. Her stomach gurgles with hunger, and Wen Qing fixes her with a judgemental glare before rolling her eyes and saying, “I made enough for you. Go do whatever you need to do before coming to eat.”

Wei Ying sits down at the table ten minutes later, face washed and teeth brushed.

“So?” Wen Qing asks, looking at Wei Ying with a calculated stare. Wen Ning tries to look like he’s anywhere else, pretends he’s not listening to their conversation at all.

Wei Ying shrugs. “There’s not much.”

“That’s all I get? After the disaster you’ve been recently?" 

“I’m always a disaster, aren’t I?” Wei Ying asks, trying to throw her off her scent. “What’s new this time around about it?” 

Wen Qing rolls her eyes and eats. She continues to give Wei Ying looks that say that she knows she’s going to get the information she needs out of Wei Ying, whether it be sooner or later. Wen Ning gives her a thumbs up and a small smile, and she can’t help but beam back at him.

Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan have the wedding of a lifetime. 

Wei Ying enjoys herself thoroughly, even though she has to deal with the disapproving glares of Auntie Yu throughout the night, and the angry looks from Jiang Cheng the rest of the time. She’s lucky that both aren’t too hateful enough to ruin her Yanli-jie’s big day, especially not when there’s so many nosy people prying around for information when they check the seating plan and see that Wei Ying is not seated with the main family. 

Wei Ying, for all that she might hurt a little on the inside for still not being enough, can’t bring herself to care, actually. Jiang Yanli is happy, glowing, and radiant in her wedding gown, and Jin Zixuan looks at her like the princess that she is. 

Lan Zhan sits next to her, indulging her with neverending little hors d’oeuvres, and refills of her wine during the main meal. She even indulges Wei Ying when she wants to dance after eating, the two of them drifting along, dancing like no one can see them. For once, Wei Ying doesn’t care who can see her — the only person in the room who matters is her Lan Zhan, and she has her full attention. 

Wei Ying giggles and tucks herself closer to Lan Zhan after a particularly showy spin. She looks up at Lan Zhan and asks, “aren’t you tired of holding me, jiejie? Isn’t it too much?” 

“Never,” Lan Zhan says, her voice serious and her eyes intense. “You are not difficult to hold,” she adds with the smallest of smiles that she reserves exclusively for Wei Ying. 

Wei Ying whines and smiles, trying to hide her face from the earnest confession. She’s still not used to the tender and romantic things that Lan Zhan says to her, even after months of hearing it. She can’t stop herself from kissing Lan Zhan, from smiling the biggest smile.

From then on, she never stops smiling.