Chapter Text
It’s been ten years since Wei Ying walked out of his life—that’s ten years gone, thrown out the window like nothing happened, like their shared wealth of experience meant nothing, was ultimately meaningless. Ten years without a word, without so much as a pathetic goddamned text, and now he’s back.
He’s been back, really, for a while now. Wormed his way back into Jiang Cheng’s life; more of an accident than anything, really, considering that he only inserted himself into Jiang Cheng’s life by virtue of his determination to weasel his way into Lan Zhan’s life. Go figure.
But that’s all part of it, of rebuilding a relationship: showing up again and again until the myriad emotions plaguing them become just as meaningless as what came before.
There’s a lot of that, when you get down to it; there’s so much to consider, so many moving pieces and lost fragments of memory to contend with. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the maelstrom of shit that comes with that, with the baggage of ignoring, repressing, moving on—but sometimes, all of the big things don’t matter. Sometimes, it all comes down to one, tiny, infinitesimal thing.
In this case, it all comes down to the cabinets.
“You can’t keep letting him do that,” Jiang Cheng grunts, having left his room to yet again find Wei Ying kneeling on their faux-granite countertop, his shredded black Vans a bold charcoal smear against the white-wood cabinets. He’s sorting through the glasses on the top shelf, face hidden behind the cabinet door, so it’s only natural, really, the way Jiang Cheng finds himself staring at the way his shoulder-blades shift beneath his faded red henley.
On the other side of the kitchen, Lan Zhan grunts noncommittally, watching Wei Ying fondly, a carton of orange juice waiting by his hip. Given that Jiang Cheng’s never seen him drink it, he’s pretty sure that Lan Zhan only buys the stuff to make sure Wei Ying doesn’t get scurvy. So much for being the responsible one. Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes.
“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Jiang Cheng grumbles while Wei Ying selects a glass and octopuses his way back to solid ground. “You’re gonna break something one of these days.” He conveniently doesn’t specify what kind of something he means—plausible deniability and all that; nobody can ever accuse him of being sloppy with his feelings.
“You love me,” Wei Ying chirps, snagging the juice from Lan Zhan.
“You’ve got no proof.”
Wei Ying grins at him; Lan Zhan just glares.
At least—Jiang Cheng’s pretty sure he’s glaring. It’s the same look that Lan Zhan sends his way when Jiang Cheng drinks the rest of the orange juice straight from the carton, or when he walks back to his room wrapped in just a towel, or when Lan Zhan finds him working out in the living room at five in the morning with his headphones blaring just loud enough that he doesn’t notice Lan Zhan leaving his room.
Sometimes, Jiang Cheng wonders if maybe, just maybe, that ‘glare’ isn’t a glare at all; he wonders if there’s something else going on, something hungry—and then he stops deluding himself and accepts the facts for what they are. Lan Zhan glares at him; he has no reason to think otherwise, not when everyone knows Lan Zhan’s absolutely besotted with Wei Ying; not when everyone knows that Jiang Cheng could never hope to compare, to live up to whatever it is that Lan Zhan sees in the hyperactive bastard, even if he wanted to.
And he doesn’t. Want to, that is. That’d be ridiculous, and it’s not like Jiang Cheng’s so desperate to get laid that he’s thirsting after his roommate of six years.
Lan Zhan’s tell-tale glare bores into Jiang Cheng as he reaches for a glass, stretching just enough that his tank—the one that shrunk a full size in the wash—pulls away from the waist of his gym shorts, revealing a solid inch of skin. There’s no telling what Lan Zhan’s problem is, so Jiang Cheng ignores him and that uncanny heat in his usually frigid eyes.
Jiang Cheng continues to not think about it for the rest of the day, and quite successfully at that. At least, that’s the case up until Jiang Cheng finds himself lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling and begging his brain to just shut the hell up already—and of course it doesn’t, why would it do something fucking useful when he’s got an eight a.m.? It doesn’t shut up, or think about anything useful, and instead, Jiang Cheng finds himself thinking about the way that Lan Zhan looks at him.
You get it, right? It all comes back to the cabinets. It’s not just about them, though.
It’s also about the beds.
— — —
At two a.m., Jiang Cheng accepts defeat and makes his way to the kitchen, presumably for water or just, like, a change of scenery—he doesn’t have a plan, really, given that it’s two in the goddamn morning and Jiang Cheng can’t sleep and he’d sooner kill a man than admit that he’s having—you know. Like. Feelings.
It’s two a.m., so it takes him a second to process that something seems… off, about the apartment, even if he can’t quite put a finger on what it is, exactly. Blame the sleep deprivation for how long it takes him to actually fully notice the soft glow from the kitchen and the tiny, near-silent shuffling of condiments against plastic.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
But still. He keeps walking. Takes one step after another, closer to the kitchen, to the strange sounds that he knows isn’t Lan Zhan, and nobody else is supposed to be here, even though his heart is racing and he can’t breathe right, and it’s—it’s not rational. He’ll realize that later, but right now—right now, he has to know.
Has to know that he did something, in case there’s been another break-in, another home invaded, another part of his life gone forever.
Reason won’t kick in until later, reserved for the humiliation highlight reel that follows him into the dead of night, and by then, anger will have absorbed the flood of grief and desperation welling up inside of him right now.
Because there’s an invader in the kitchen—there is—but. It’s just Wei Ying.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Ah, Jiang Cheng!” Wei Ying laughs awkwardly and spins around. The fridge lights him up from behind like this, accentuates the lines of his face and the hollows of his eyes. Paired with Wei Ying’s baggy sweatpants and skimpy tank top, the yellow light from the fridge makes him look gaunt and sallow.
Jiang Cheng’s throat is so tight.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Wei Ying says, far too cheerful for someone who’d left the apartment hours ago, long before either Lan Zhan or Jiang Cheng had gone to bed. Shit—Jiang Cheng hadn’t even heard him come back in.
“Fuck’s wrong with you?” he snaps, because what the hell else is he supposed to so? And also, he can and he will judge Wei Ying for sorting through other peoples’ fridges in the dead of night, unprompted and uninvited.
(He’s always invited; that’s not the point.)
(Wei Ying got a key of his own after he spent months wheedling his way into Lan Zhan’s life—and subsequently, back into Jiang Cheng’s—until he was spending so much time at their apartment that he'd basically already moved in. Lan Zhan is soft; Jiang Cheng insists he’s encouraging bad behavior. Wei Ying still has a key to their place.)
“Shitting hell,” Jiang Cheng says, slamming the tap open with the utmost disdain, snagging a cup from the drying rack, “it’s too early for this.”
With that, he goes back to bed. A few minutes later, Wei Ying follows suit. Literally.
“Shove over,” Wei Ying grouses, burrowing a bony elbow into Jiang Cheng’s back.
Jiang Cheng shifts with a grunt, letting Wei Ying invade his space and cuddle up to him. Does a little more than that—wraps an arm around Wei Ying, to pull him closer, so Jiang Cheng can feel the rise and fall of Wei Ying’s chest as he breathes.
For all that it keeps happening, they don’t talk about—about this, whatever the hell this even is. Jiang Cheng’s pretty sure that whatever it is, it’s not quite platonic—not with the way Wei Ying curls into him, or mouths lazily at Jiang Cheng’s neck on mornings when they wake up still in the same bed. He’s pretty sure, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to ask about it, let alone how to say, “It’s okay if you want to stay; I want you here, too.”
Sometimes, Jiang Cheng wakes up after nights like these with Wei Ying still splayed out beside him. More often, however, he wakes up like he does the following morning, to an empty bed and the rumpled sheets of two people sleeping together and absolutely nothing else to indicate that Wei Ying was there just a few hours ago.
(When he peels himself out of bed, he peeks through Lan Zhan’s cracked open door and finds exactly what he expects: Lan Zhan, reading, and Wei Ying, curled into his chest, mouth parted slightly, soft against the cool cotton of Lan Zhan’s shirt.
This, too, is normal. Jiang Cheng tries not to think about it.
Really, he does.)
— — —
All these little things—they add up. Each time Jiang Cheng falls asleep with Wei Ying and wakes up alone, Jiang Cheng finds himself in possession of another baffling piece of this strange, unknown puzzle. And Lan Zhan’s glares—well. It’s not like there’s much to think about there; they moved in together because it wasn’t like they had a friendship to ruin; there’s nothing there, nothing grown strong and healthy between them, not even with six years living together.
They snark at each other, get along well enough most of the time that it doesn’t matter, but Jiang Cheng’s on edge. Keeps thinking about what it must mean, for Wei Ying to keep switching between their beds; wonders what it means, exactly, that Wei Ying chooses to wake up with Lan Zhan more often than not.
It’s not reasonable when, a week later, Lan Zhan glares while Jiang Cheng grabs something from the top shelf of a cabinet, and Jiang Cheng fucking snaps.
“What?”
Lan Zhan blinks at him, the heat of a moment ago fading fast, and somehow that pisses Jiang Cheng off even more—enough for him to slam the glass on the counter and jab a finger into Lan Zhan’s chest. Enough for him to demand, “What the fuck’s your deal? Seriously—if you’re gonna get so fucking judgmental about how I grab a goddamn cup, then at least get the balls to say it to my fucking face!”
Lan Zhan’s eyes get wider and wetter and wildly confused with each word; his stupidly nice lips part, just for a second, like maybe he’s gonna say something—like maybe he’s going to do exactly what Jiang Cheng said, but—shit. Fuck—balls.
Jiang Cheng didn’t mean to look.
There’s not even a chance to get mad at himself for it, not when Lan Zhan’s eyes go flinty and hard, when his hand wraps around the back of Jiang Cheng’s head in the blink of an eye—
—not when Lan Zhan’s kissing him about it.
It’s a hell of a kiss. More of an oral assault, really, given the way Lan Zhan’s fuck-off big hands dig into the soft skin of Jiang Cheng’s neck, not to mention the sheer amount of force of his lips against Jiang Cheng’s, so much, so fast that their teeth clack and Jiang Cheng’s eyes go wide and then he—he softens. Doesn’t mean to, but it’s not a choice, the way he falls into Lan Zhan, letting him take the lead.
It’s almost good, like this.
Maybe they’d make it past almost if it took them longer to come to their senses.
But it doesn’t, and as it stands—just when Jiang Cheng’s eyes slip closed, his stomach jolts, his chest constricts, and that’s all it takes before they’re jolting away from each other.
A tense nothing lingers between them.
Then Jiang Cheng heaves as his lungs demand he fill them with air, and Lan Zhan gets stiffer than he’s ever fucking seen, and that’s it—Lan Zhan clears his throat and leaves. A moment later, his door clicks shut, then locks.
Alone in the kitchen, Jiang Cheng glares at the countertop, as if daring it to talk shit. Being a counter, it makes no such promises, and Jiang Cheng scoffs—whether at himself or at the counter is unclear—and ignores the harsh zing in his kiss-plump lips.
If he pretends nothing happened, then he doesn’t have to confront the way all his assumptions have been upturned.
— — —
They don’t talk about it.
They keep not talking about it with such force that the ‘not talking about it’ becomes a new entity living in the corners of the apartment, one they refuse to acknowledge when one of them looks for a moment too long, or a hand lingers at the small of a back, and especially not when they touch themselves, the harsh sounds of pleasure ripping through the thin walls of the apartment, impossible to disguise or ignore—it doesn’t matter what they hear, because they don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about it, and so Jiang Cheng never asks why his name falls off Lan Zhan’s lips just as often as Wei Ying’s.
He doesn’t ask.
(He wants to.)
After all, it doesn’t take long before they’re pros at this whole “not talking about it” thing.
— — —
The weeks pass without incident. Wei Ying watches them curiously, but he says fuck all about it. Just lets them work through their shit on their own, because that’s always worked for them in the past. Jiang Cheng ignores Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan glares at him, and they don’t talk about it.
Lan Zhan goes to bed and Wei Ying slips through the door behind him, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t think about it.
Hours later, Jiang Cheng wakes as a warm body unceremoniously wriggles its way beneath the covers. Grunting, Jiang Cheng rolls over and wraps the body in his arms, slots his legs between its thighs, and ignores the way it briefly freezes before laughing awkwardly.
“Go back to sleep,” Wei Ying says, reaching behind him to pat Jiang Cheng’s flank. In response, Jiang Cheng buries his face into Wei Ying’s shoulder. Bites the soft skin there. But just barely—it hardly even qualifies as a bite, really.
Regardless, Wei Ying sucks in a sharp breath.
“Stop waking me up.”
“Wouldn’t have to,” Wei Ying grumbles, like he’s not about to drop a fucking bomb down Jiang Cheng’s throat, “if you’d just sleep in the same bed already.”
And with that, Wei Ying manhandles Jiang Cheng into a more comfortable position, hands fisted in his shirt. It only takes him a few minutes to fall asleep.
Sleep doesn’t find Jiang Cheng for a long, long time.