Chapter Text
Out of the corner of his eye, Wei Wuxian sees his son’s ten month-old fingers plunge into the dark, sun warmed earth. There’s a delighted smile, complete with a loud squeal and three teeth sticking out through reddened gums. Then, in one quick, devious little motion, he’s pulled his hands back out again, fists of black dirt moving towards his mouth.
“Aiyah, A-Yuan!” Wei Wuxian grabs his hands before his son can eat any of it. There’s a slight pang on his right side as he bends forward. Carefully he pries the small fingers apart, brushes the dirt away and lets it fall on to the garden beneath them. “We don’t eat dirt. It’s very yucky.”
His son babbles back an indecipherable, “Ya-Ya.”
It had been a risky decision, bring A-Yuan out while he weeded the garden in the backyard. Lan Zhan had gone to work early in the morning and wasn’t expected back until much later, meaning that Wei Wuxian was in charge of their son. This was usually fine - Wei Wuxian and the world had a general distrust of each other, and nowadays he much preferred to play the dutiful housewife of the honorable Hanguang-jun. A-Yuan had only brought more joy and more purpose to both of their lives.
The garden, however, had suffered.
He’d been putting it off for months. A-Yuan had been born in early August, and though Lan Zhan’s brother and Wei Wuxian’s shijie had aided in the late summer harvest, there wasn’t any time for tilling to be done before the first frost of the season set in. Winter had settled in, bringing blizzards and four foot snowdrifts. By the time everything had melted and the ground thawed enough to punch a shovel into it, A-Yuan had taken to crawling around like an absolute maniac.
If he had started sooner, he wouldn’t have a child with a natural talent for sticking every non-edible object in his mouth to supervise. If he woke up with Lan Zhan, he might’ve been able to weed the garden long before A-Yuan awoke.
Wei Wuxian detests the cold almost as much as he does waking up at five in the morning, and so keeping his son from eating fistfuls of dirt is his cross to bear.
He points to a small green thing growing from the ground. The two leaves that have sprouted are bright, smooth, and waxy. Suddenly, he had an idea… The best way to keep a child from doing something that you didn’t want them doing was to distract them.
“A-Yuan,” he says in a dulcet tone, almost like what he’s about to suggest is a secret. “Do you want to help baba?”
“Ahhh!” Yuan screams in reply, hands hitting his chubby thighs.
“Okay! Pull that weed for baba. Just the green part - pull it as hard as you can!”
Yuan follows his directions in an uncoordinated fashion. He lunges towards the weed, tiny hand gripping the stem, and pulls with such ferocity that his face goes red with exertion. Wei Wuxian steadies him as the weed flies out of the ground, almost sending Yuan backwards. A spray of soil covers both of their laps, some spattering across Yuan’s face. There’s silence as Yuan processes what exactly happened, but when he discovers that the weed is no longer in the ground and is, in fact, in his sweaty fists, he lets out another ear-splitting screech of delight.
Wei Wuxian uses his hands to wipe the dirt away from Yuan’s face, swiping the pad of his thumb across his tongue to get a particularly stubborn spot. Despite the persistent pain in his side, he can’t help but feel a warm, fond smile stretch across his mouth.
“Do you like pulling weeds, A-Yuan? That’s good. You’re taking after me - which means you’re going to be very funny, and very handsome, and exceptionally good at growing things.”
It also means that he can have his son take on the bulk of weeding when he gets older, which bodes well for him. He’s not exactly old yet, but bending over garden beds for hours on end doesn’t exactly do wonders for his lower back. Besides, he’s pretty sure that’s why he and Lan Zhan had a child. Mostly for love, of course, but partially for menial labor as they age.
Yuan nods in response, throwing the weed to the side of him before starting to crawl towards another patch of growing green. Wei Wuxian watches him, feels his unwavering smile grow across his face. They haven’t planted anything yet, and he had taken a trowel to the thorny weeds already. Yuan can can pull what he likes in relative safety. Wei Wuxian can finish pulling the really big ones, working on gently getting the root systems out so they can’t come back.
For another twenty minutes, father and son work the garden, the warm mid-morning sun beating down upon them. Yuan is still just a baby, though, hardly out of his infant stages, so Wuxian eventually has to find a good stopping point, leans his shears and trowel against the chain link fence of their property, and scoops Yuan into his arms.
Immediately, Yuan starts to scream. He kicks against Wei Wuxian with all the strength his tiny chubby body possesses. Wei Wuxian tires to hoist Yuan higher, more near his ribs so that he son stops kicking him in the particularly tender spot on his right abdomen.
“Ah, ah, A-Yuan,” he sucks in a breath through his teeth, tries not to snap at his child. Lan Zhan would not want him to snap at their child. “Please don’t kick baba. It doesn’t feel very nice.”
He hasn’t felt very nice in days, actually, but try explaining that to a ten-month old who only has curious eyes for danger.
It takes the promise of a snack before nap time before Yuan stops crying and flaying around. Wei Wuxian carries him back inside the house and sets him in his high chair. He provides him with cheerios and yogurt drops, watches as Yuan smashes his palms down on the surface of the high chair with glee, sending the cereal flying. The yogurt drops stick to his hands, and he bites them away, which leaves his palms gooey with periwinkle residue. Wei Wuxian has to smile at this. He doesn’t even care that it’s going to cause him more trouble to clean up the spilled cheerios.
“Baba!” Yuan screeches in joy, smile wide, showing the three teeth he’s working so hard on growing. Wei Wuxian runs a hand across Yuan’s temple, grazing his fingers down past Yuan’s ear in a fond manner. He’s just now starting to grow a blackish type fuzz on his head after months of being bald. Shijie says this bodes well. The longer the baby is bald the thicker the hair they will have in life.
It’s nice to know that Yuan is blessed. Wei Wuxian sleeps easier at night knowing that his son is turning out to be everything that he had thought he never deserved in a child.
When he was carrying Yuan, Wei Wuxian had been terrified that Yuan would come out a crippled purple thing, all still and silent. He was terrified that although he had the opportunity to grow a child within him that he, his temperament and his sins, could never have anything as innocent and as perfect as a baby. There were many sleepless nights spent agonizing over the possibility that he and Lan Zhan would come home from the hospital, not with their child, but with a tiny urn full of ashes.
Yuan looks like somebody Wei Wuxian has no distinct memory of. With the exception of a defined cupid’s bow and light eyes, their son has the misfortune of possessing very little Lan features. He has to have taken after somebody on Wei Wuxian’s side of the family, but not he himself.
“Yes, my little radish?”
Yuan presses his palms towards We Wuxian’s face. The yogurt drops have melted into a near-liquid at this point, and it smashes against the side of his lips. When he pulls away, Wei Wuxian swipes the yogurt away with his thumb and licks it clean.
“Ah,” he smiles at his son. He might not look like Lan Zhan, but his insistence on generosity, on sharing food with those he cares about, that’s got Lan Zhan written all over it. “Thank you, A-Yuan.”
Smiling back, Yuan shoves what remaining cheerios are left on the tray and into his mouth. Just the simple task leaves Wei Wuxian reeling in awe, and, for a moment, the sight of his son is enough to let him forget about the pain he feels. Yuan is only ten months old and he’s learned far more than Wei Wuxian thinks he’s learned in an entire lifetime.
The few times that he goes out in public with his husband, Wei Wuxian is always bringing up their child: Lan Yuan, son of the honorable Hanguang-jun, who has mastered crawling within a few short months of life, and who is certainly going to give both his fathers a run for their money in looks, intelligence, and humility.
Lan Zhan always lowers Wei Wuxian’s phone that always has a rotating arsenal of photos of Yuan on his lockscreen. As a soft warning, he calls him by his birth name, “Wei Ying.”
“Well it’s true, Lan Zhan. You’re not going to be able to name another baby who possesses half the qualities of A-Yuan. Go on. Name one. Name one baby who is as talented as our son. He even knows what a cow and a sheep say.”
“According to most of our parenting books, so do other children his age.”
“If those people could only see our son, I’m pretty sure they’d realize that they made a mistake. No child is as wonderful as our son. Those books need to be rewritten!”
“Mm,” and then Lan Zhan bows to whomever Wei Wuxian has bullied into listening to him about Yuan, and he pulls him away towards another errand they have to run.
When Yuan finishes his food, Wei Wuxian attempts to wipe him clean with a wet paper towel. Yuan scrunches his face and tries to squirm away, which just makes it a little bit more difficult. “Aiyah, A-yuan. Just hold still for me. It’s really not that bad, and you’re the one who decided to wear your snack instead of eat it.”
In response, Yuan babbles something that Wei Wuxian cannot begin to understand, and he doesn’t do what he’s told, either. There’s frustration writhing around in Wei Wuxian’s gut now, combining and twisting itself with the coils of pain, making him a nauseous, shaking mess. He tries again to wipe away a yogurt stain from Yuan’s cheeks, but his son continues to evade the wet towel.
“Alright,” and he’s surprised at how soft his tone of voice his, because Wei Wuxian definitely wants to scream right now. “So we don’t clean you right now. That’s fine. Your A-die is going to give you a bath tonight anyway.”
“No!”
Pulling the tray away from the high chair, Wei Wuxian confirms, “No bath right now.”
He sets the paper towel and the tray on their kitchen counter. It’s better to get Yuan settled for a nap with how cranky he’s becoming, and that will give Wei Wuxian a good stretch of time to get the house somewhat clean.
Lan Zhan has always set the expectation that there are no expectations of Wei Wuxian. When they bowed together three times, when they were married, Lan Zhan had told Wei Wuxian that all he ever wanted of him was happiness. He just as easily could have gotten a job, joined a music club in the city to pass the time, but all Wei Wuxian really wanted to do was make sure Lan Zhan came home to a hot meal and a clean home. It was the least he could do, after all that had been done for him.
There had been years where he had traveled the world, seen its ugly and wicked underbelly, had added to what made the world so rotten. For three years, he had become what everyone had feared, done merciless things because he had deemed them correct and just. The more Wei Wuxian gave himself to the dark parts of his soul, the more he became someone unrecognizable.
Eventually, his family stopped speaking to him. Jiang Cheng had stopped by his seedy little studio apartment and told Wei Wuxian that he wasn’t to come by the house anymore, that he wasn’t to contact the family anymore, that Jiang Cheng didn’t want to know if Wei Wuxian was dying, covered in blood, in an alleyway anymore.
Even shijie… his beloved, perfect shijie… she only came around once with her brother near her wedding day. She had kissed Wei Wuxian’s cheeks, her lips cold and wet from the tears she was shedding, and given him soup, and departed so ethereally he thought he had dreamed the encounter.
Lan Zhan had visited him once, when Wei Wuxian had found himself in a small eastern Mongolian hovel, and had asked him to come back home with him. Wei Wuxian had laughed, and then he had yelled at him, and then he had collapsed into Lan Zhan’s arms and sobbed.
At that point he had forgotten himself. He had forgotten the reason he had started, and he forgot how to end it all. He couldn’t remember how to be soft, how to let someone help him when he needed help so very badly. Lan Zhan held him, surrounded by black mold and cigarette-smoke stained walls, told Wei Wuxian that if he just came back home with him, that Lan Zhan would take care of everything else.
Lan Zhan told him, “There is still good in the world, Wei Ying.”
He still doesn’t necessarily believe that to be true, but Lan Zhan had spent months trying to prove it, trying to coax Wei Wuxian out of his shell and somewhat back into society. The least he could do is think that Lan Zhan is the good in the world, that shijie is the good in the world.
Yuan is good, too. He’s just a baby who is tired from sitting in the sun and who doesn’t like cold washcloths. It’s past his naptime which only adds to his crankiness. Wei Wuxian picks him up out of his high chair, holding him tight in both arms. He’s always afraid he’s going to fuck something up - drop him, or accidentally smash him into a corner - and Yuan won’t be the same anymore.
“Baba,” says Yuan, and Wei Wuxian plants a kiss on his fuzzy head. Out of the corner of his eye he points to a picture of Lan Zhan that is hung in their hallway. They’ve been practicing memorizing pictures family members in some photo albums, but this is the first time Yuan has referenced one on his own. Wei Wuxian’s heart swells with pride. “Die-Die.”
“A-die’s at work right now. He’ll be home later tonight and you can play with him then.”
Ahhhhh!” Yuan is grasping towards the photo on the wall. Wei Wuxian can’t exactly blame him. The photo is from their university years, right toward the end of their second year before Wei Wuxian had disappeared. It’s a particularly flattering photo of Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan stands at full height in the photograph, slightly shadowed by the red maple trees that decorate his family home in autumn. He hugs a stack of books to his chest, gold lettering peeking through his fingers just enough to let Wei Wuxian know that was the semester Lan Zhan had taken Advanced Business Economics II.
He’s younger in the photo - less worn by the world - and he’s smiling, though hardly anyone besides Lan Xichen and Wei Wuxian can tell.
“I want him home too, A-Yuan. We both miss him a lot today, huh?”
“No nap! Die-die!”
“Oh, the nap is non-negotiable. You’ve been extremely cranky lately, and baba needs to clean the house.”
“No!” And Yuan starts to kick again, but Wei Wuxian is smart enough to hold him in a horizontal position. The motion still sends shockwaves down his body, but he grits his teeth and continues into the nursery. “No, no, no!”
“See? You’re cranky right now. Just sleep for thirty minutes, A-Yuan. I promise you’ll feel better when you wake up.”
“No, Baba, no!” Yuan immediately grabs the bars of his crib as Wei Wuxian sets him down inside. Though not big or coordinated enough yet to cause trouble, Wei Wuxian knows it’s only a matter of time before his son starts to figure out that, somebody, he’ll be able to climb out of the crib.
His hand reaches out to smooth over Yuan’s head once more and decides once more to provide a distraction from what is currently upsetting his son. “Do you want the noise machine on? Or do you want baba to read you a story?”
This manages to stop Yuan’s tantrum. Wei Wuxian watches as his eyes flicker to the small, white bookshelf with the children’s books they collected during the pregnancy. The tears stop washing down Yuan’s face, and a thumb goes into his mouth as his other hand points towards the books. He babbles something around his thumb.
Wei Wuxian picks out two books at random, hoping that if he goes slow enough and points out the pictures in a low, soothing tone, Yuan will fall asleep sooner rather than later. Then he grabs one of the thousands of pacifiers from a dresser drawer, goes over and replaces Yuan’s thumb with it.
When he sits in the rocking chair beside the crib and cracks open the book, Yuan starts to whine again. His light eyes are wet like river stones, and it’s enough for Wei Wuxian’s heart to nearly shatter into pieces. He sits up in the chair a little, more attentive than before.
Geez, this is one tired baby, he thinks to himself.
“What’s wrong, my little radish?”
The pacifier makes Yuan’s babbles unintelligible, but the motion he makes with his hands, the same grasping ones he made towards Lan Zhan’s photo, speak louder than any sentence could. Wei Wuxian sighs, smiles slightly as he sets the book down, steps towards the crib, and gathers Yuan in his arms.
“This better not be a ploy to get out of nap time.” Wei Wuxian settles back in the rocking chair and opens the first book, keeping his voice low and soothing. Yuan settles his head on Wei Wuxian’s chest, near his heart.
Very quickly he realizes that this is not a tactic Yuan is using to get out of napping. He’s inherited another trait from Lan Zhan, which is the need to be held as he falls asleep. One of Yuan’s hands grasps Wei Wuixan’s shirt, as if he’s worried that if he lets go then his father will disappear, and his wide, bright eyes travel from the pages of the book to Wei Wuxian’s face, taking in everything around him.
The world slows down for this short period of time, and if it wasn’t for the pain in his belly, Wei Wuxian would like to call it peaceful. There haven’t been many peaceful days in his life.
He wishes that the day he had been officially adopted by the Jiang family was peaceful. Shijie had tried to make sure it ran smoothly… she had ironed out all of the wrinkles in everyone’s clothes the night before, soothed Jiang Cheng when he realized that instead of getting puppies he was going to be getting a big brother. Wei Wuxian loves her for that.
Madam Yu had let her displeasure around adopting him fester like a wound, growing and infecting until, finally, on the steps of the courthouse she had smacked him on the back of the head because he had tripped on the marble steps.
To Jiang Fengmian, she seethed, “You’ve forced me to house a child that can’t even walk! Tripping up the courthouse stairs in front of everyone… he’ll bring nothing but trouble and disgrace.”
He wishes that he could say that his wedding day with Lan Zhan was peaceful, but Lan Quiren had made sure to let Wei Wuxian know exactly of what he thought of him marrying into the Lan family.
There were peaceful moments. He and his siblings lying in a boat as it drifted around the pond in their backyard, full of lotus seeds and sun-drunk. Lan Zhan leaving work early or going in late just to sit and have a long, proper meal with his husband. Working the garden with his shijie, popping fresh cherry tomatoes in his mouth.
Wei Wuxian wishes he wasn’t in so much pain right now. He’d like to add this moment to the list, reading to his little son, watching him try to keep those wide eyes of his open for just a couple seconds more. The book is about halfway through, being read at a snails pace so that he doesn’t excite Yuan again. In between sentences he takes a long pause, lets the words soak into air of the small nursery, lets himself rock back and forth with Yuan in his arms.
The grip Yuan has on his shirt is becoming more and more lax. By the end of the book, Yuan is fast asleep, hand relaxed against Wei Wuxian’s chest. Setting the book on the nearby dresser, Wei Wuxian is careful to not disturb Yuan as he stands up and sets him in his crib.
In all honesty there’s nothing that he wants more than to take Yuan into his bedroom and sleep in there. He’s exhausted and shivering with nausea poking at the edges of his stomach. Wei Wuxian sighs and departs from his son’s nursery.
Lan Zhan deserves a clean home and a warm meal when he comes home. It’s what Wei Wuxian owes to him. He messed up with the Jiang family; he wasn’t as thankful as he should have been, didn’t realize that his actions directly affected all of them, couldn’t grasp the concept of keeping his head down and his mouth shut.
Lan Zhan had, against his venerable uncle’s wishes, given Wei Wuxian a second chance at not just a home, but at a family. He had even offered up his family name, which Wei Wuxian had to turn down.
So he soldiers on into his bedroom, slips on a thick quilted robe he’s sure has been in the Lan family for generations, and makes his way into the living room.
Their home is a modest amalgamation of the two of them, full of soft, neutral patterned wallpaper that Lan Zhan favored with the industrial furniture Wei Wuxian preferred. It shouldn’t work - they shouldn’t work - but somehow it does, and somehow they do.
Because of the modest size, Wei Wuxian doesn’t have a lot to do. It’s become a necessity to clean every day if not for the sheer amount of toys that Yuan has collected since his birth. Every time someone comes over they feel the need to shower him with toys, and, frankly, it’s getting to be a little too much in Wei Wuxian’s opinion.
Seriously, he picks up two stuffed pigs that look achingly similar but Jiang Cheng and shijie insisted were different, how many stuffed animals does this baby need?
The answer is all of them. There had been a time where Yuan had turned seven or eight months and had been napping for a good long while, so Wei Wuxian had decided it had been a good time to declutter the toy bin. Even though he’d started late and Yuan woke up about thirty minutes later, Wei Wuxian had gotten to a point where he was at least able to close the lid on the toy box.
When he’d put Yuan down in the living room Wei Wuxian immediately knew that he had made a mistake. Somehow, Yuan had inherited one father’s love for sentimentality and the other father’s distinct sense to know when something was out of place. Once he had gone through his toy box and saw the damage his father had done…
Wei Wuxian had taken all of Yuan’s toys out of the bag and relinquished them over. Even then, the tears and the screams wouldn’t stop until Lan Zhan came home.
He hasn’t tried to pull a stunt like that again. Wei Wuxian doesn’t think his heart could ever take being the cause of extreme distress from Yuan. He was truly afraid that with how red Yuan’s face was getting that his son would pass out from screaming.
There’s now a second toy box, identical to the first, which is only a quarter full, and Lan Zhan agrees that the next time someone brings another stuffed pig in the house, he will take care of it before Yuan even sees it.
Right now he’s trying to put all the toys that Yuan threw out of his play pen back into it, but the pain in his side is steadily getting worse, peaking when he bends down and only abating ever so slightly when he stands at full height. He manages, out of sheer love that he has for his husband, to get them all into one place, and then he gives up on the idea of making the house look any better than it already is.
Lan Zhan will understand, he reassures himself, wrapping the robe tight around himself. He goes to check the thermostat because it has to be broken at this point - he’s still shivering like he’s caught in a blizzard with no coat.
It reads twenty-one degrees Celsius. There’s a desperate part of him, a wild animal gnawing at the ventricles of his heart, telling him to turn up the heat.
Lan Zhan will understand, he repeats to himself. As his hand reaches up to change the temperature, Wei Wuxian stops himself, bites the side of his pointer finger hard enough to deter him.
“I should check for fever…” His voice is soft in the hallway. Yuan’s room is a couple of feet away, and only twenty or so minutes have passed since he had fallen asleep. Quiet, Wei Wuxian goes to the master bathroom, which is all in tones of beige and blue and white. He places the thermometer under his tongue and sits on the edge of the toilet waiting for the results, just staring at himself in the large wall-sized mirror.
Wei Wuxian doesn’t know what Lan Zhan sees in him most of the time. He especially doesn’t know what Lan Zhan would see in him now. He’s flushed with a clear fever, dark eyes watery and squinting against the light. His long hair has settled into rat nests on the back of his neck, a conglomeration of the wind outside and his son’s proclivity to pull at it.
Underneath the robe he can feel his collarbone and his ribs. If he travelled down a little further he’d be able to grab the inside of his hip bone. Food has always been a sore spot for him, even if his shijie is the best cook on the planet, even if Lan Zhan spends a fortune on therapists specifically designed to help with eating disorders. The way he looks at it, there’s always a person around that needs the food more than he.
Jiang Cheng needs Wei Wuxian’s portion because he’s the younger brother, because he’s got a future ahead of him in the family business, because there’s the thinnest whispers of a smile on Madam Yu’s face when he relinquishes his food, and that makes his heart stop beating so fast in his chest.
Wen Qing and Wen Ning needed meals more often than Wei Wuxian did. Travelling the whole of Asia and part of Eastern Europe took a lot of physical and mental fortitude, and Wen Ning had apparently always been on the sick side as a child… Wei Wuxian could do without eating for a day or two to make sure his friends made it to the next safehouse.
Even now, when he knows they can afford enough food for all three of them, he’ll make sure that Lan Zhan and Lan Yuan have more than enough. Wei Wuxian is just the househusband… Lan Zhan works hard during the day, so his body needs sustenance. Lan Yuan is working on growing big and strong, so Wei Wuxian will always give him his portion of rice.
When the thermometer finally beeps after an arduous amount of time, he blinks in rapt disbelief as it reads back at him thirty eight. The screen is yellow, which means that while he is running a fever, medical attention is likely not needed.
Rummaging through the cabinets, Wei Wuxian decides to dry swallow four ibuprofen in lieu of turning on the heat in their home. His comfort hardly matters, it saves Lan Zhan some money, and the medicine should help with the shivers that plague his body.
He does, despite his tendencies to slough off food towards literally anybody around him, realize that he’s only eaten a little bit of a muffin today, just half of the top to show Yuan that it was yummy. It worked, his son ate the rest of the muffin and all of the scrambled egg, but Wei Wuxian hadn’t made something else for himself.
Eating might help with the fever, and Lan Zhan always admonishes him for taking pills on an empty stomach. Wei Wuxian wishes he felt hungry. It might be easier to make something substantial for lunch. Instead, he feels mildly nauseous, but he hopes that it’s just because he’s not had a meal in over eighteen hours.
Opening the fridge, Wei Wuxian takes out an apple and the container of butter, settling on spreading it across some bread. He doesn’t bother to cut the apple, just sinks his teeth into it. He eats half and then switches to the buttered bread, managing a small bite with a minuscule smear of butter.
Both have soured by the time they plummet into his stomach. Along with his abdominal pain, Wei Wuxian feels his belly cramp pitifully. His mouth fills with acidic saliva, and it’s all he can do to drop the bread and knife, which clatters onto their tile floor with reverberating echos.
It would be far better for him to vomit into the toilet, but as it stands all he can manage is a quarter turn towards their kitchen sink. As hot tears prick the corners of his eyes, Wei Wuxian grips the porcelain edge and gags. Once. Nothing comes up, and he feels like the veins in his neck are going to pop out. Twice. Saliva streams, sticky and long, sluice over his cracked lips. Thrice.
Undigested apple bits appear in the sink, whole and mocking, splattered with orange bile that bubbles and pops as it settles. Wei Wuxian has gained absolutely nothing from this. The bread has become wet, soaked through with his enough of his own insides that just looking at it makes him sick again.
Incredibly, the pain of his stomach contracting, forcing bile up his esophagus and throat, having to taste his own acrid insides, it draws pain away from his abdomen. Wei Wuxian feels his eyes bulge as he heaves forward again. This time he sees the circular ibuprofen pills. He doesn’t want to stare at them too long, but he trembles knowing that the medicine wasn’t given time to do anything for him.
When he is finished, he stands up straight and thoroughly cleans up his own sick. He bleaches the sink as well, lest it be known that he is anything other than perfect for his perfect Hanguang-jun.
***
When Lan Zhan arrives home, Wei Wuxian doesn’t need to look at the clock to know that it’s five fourty five on the dot. His husband has always been punctual, has always been on time. Never early, never late. Lan Zhan was consistent that way. He listens to how quiet Lan Zhan is as he unties his shoes and puts on house slippers, how he places keys so softly into their key bowl, how he puts his briefcase by the front door like a ghost.
He’s standing over the stove and has set up Yuan’s play pen in the kitchen. Tonight’s dinner wasn’t particularly intensive - he’d forgot to thaw out the chicken last night - but through trial and error, Wei Wuxian has found out that if he wants to make edible food, he shouldn’t leave the kitchen until it’s completely done. Too many times has he forgotten to flip a burger or move around sautéing vegetables.
Even if his husband says that burnt food is still a delicious meal, Wei Wuxian knows otherwise.
Strong arms, built like smooth, cool jade, wrap around his middle. A chin digs playfully into the crook of his neck, and a kiss is placed behind his ear, followed by a little nibble of his earlobe.
A shiver runs down Wei Wuxian’s spine, and he doesn’t think it’s from Lan Zhan’s attempt at sensuality. The pain in his middle has slowly increased throughout the day, and he’s pretty sure his fever has risen along with it.
“Did you have a good day at work, Lan Zhan?” He has long since trained himself to keep his tone light and playful. It’s been many years since his words have given away the agony he feels.
“Mm,” Lan Zhan replies, taking a languid inhale of Wei Wuxian’s scent, of the aromatics filling the kitchen. “Missed Wei Ying.”
Wei Wuxian stops stirring the fried rice in the pan, turns around so that he can properly hug Lan Zhan. He kisses him, once on the lips, once on the tip of his nose. “I missed you too, you old fuddyduddy.”
Lan Zhan’s eyes are soft, like far away lamplights on a rainy summer night, and a hand comes up to cup Wei Wuxian’s face, leaning in for another kiss. They exist together, in the moment of domesticity, with the rice cooking and their infant son babbling to himself. It’s a wonder Wei Wuxian ever managed to achieve this. As he was growing up he was sure he was doomed to die alone.
He really would have, too, if it wasn’t for Lan Zhan. The Wen siblings eventually went back home when they were granted diplomatic immunity. Wei Wuxian had been with them for so long and had delved so deep into their lifestyle, of being on the run, that he didn’t know how to go back home.
Jiang Cheng had told him there would be no home for him to return to, anyway, so there really wasn’t a point.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, pulling Wei Wuxian out of his reverie, “you’re warm.”
With one last kiss on the cheek, he turns around back to focus on the food. The motion sends a jolt of pain through his belly. “It’s just the residual heat from the stove.”
There is a final kiss pressed to the nape of his neck, and then Lan Zhan removes himself with a discontented sort of hum. Wei Wuxian listens as his husband goes to crouch near their son, and as soon as Lan Zhan starts a rudimentary conversation, his free hand kneads tenderly at his abdomen. He keeps doing this every couple of minutes now, begging for there not to be any noticeable change, and so far there hasn’t been. All this leads up to is white-hot pain writhing through his body.
Despite the alarming rise of discomfort throughout the afternoon and early evening, Wei Wuxian is quite happy. There might be a possibly he can wait until Lan Zhan is gone tomorrow and then text Wen Qing his symptoms.
She’d done well for herself, since coming back home. Recently she had started her second year of internal medicine residency at the university hospital, specializing in hematology. He’s pretty sure whatever is wrong with his is not because of his blood, but Wen Qing would sort him out anyway.
Biting his lip, he makes sure to properly flip the cubes of tofu to the sides that don’t seem to be getting nearly enough color. There are lots of colorful vegetables - orange and yellow peppers, emerald asparagus heads and stalks, dark, rubbery mushrooms that he’d thrown in there at the last minute.
If he had planned on eating, Wei Wuxian would have added some bright red chili peppers at the very end. Enough to make them start sweating, but not enough to make the food too hot. Lan Zhan didn’t do well with spice, and his son wasn’t even a year old yet.
“Wei Ying,” and when he looks over, he sees Lan Zhan holding up a stuffed rabbit. It has different textures on all four of its corduroy limbs, dressed in patchy overalls, and Yuan is pulling at its leg. “I can set the table.”
Wei Wuxian narrows his eyes. Damn it. He knows something is up.
“You’re too sweet to this husband, Lan-er-gege. Don’t concern yourself with that! You’ve had a long, hard day. Go change into something comfortable. A-Yuan and I can set the table.”
“A-Yuan is ten months old,” Lan Zhan points out. As if to prove his point, when they both look down at Lan Yuan, he has the foot of the stuffed rabbit in his mouth. Drool seeps into the brown fabric.
“And very good at setting tables! So talented, our son. I keep telling you, Lan Zhan, all those baby books you read should be rewritten to account for him.”
He sees Lan Zhan quirk an eyebrow, watches his Adam’s apple bob as he hums softly to himself. “Our son is talented - you should be thankful he doesn’t yet talk in complete sentences.”
A drip of sweat travels down the nape of Wei Wuxian’s neck, and he instinctively knows it’s not the fever breaking. Replying isn’t the wise choice here, but maybe it is the fever talking when he blurts out, “and why is that?”
“Because he would tell me what’s wrong with you.”
“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, you’re making mountain out of mole hills, I promise!” He sets the spatula down on the spoon rest, hurries over to Lan Zhan, and stands on his tip toes to give him a kiss in the middle of his forehead. “I’ve been out in the sun too much today, I think. My body isn’t used to it yet. I’ll drink lots of water tonight and be alright in the morning.”
Lowering himself back onto his heels sends a bolt of bright, agonizing pain up his belly. One hand reaches out and braces against the wall, hoping against all hope that he doesn’t collapse.
“Wei Ying!” He wouldn’t have been able to collapse anyway, because Lan Zhan’s hands are on both sides of his ribcage. Even through the robe, he can feel how strong Lan Zhan is, how he steadies Wei Wuxian with such cool, graceful elegance.
“It’s… I’m fine, Lan Zhan… I landed wrong is all. You know I have weak ankles.”
“You haven’t complained of your ankles before.”
“No?” Wei Wuxian sucks in a breath, finds the strength to pull away. “I’m sure I mentioned it a couple of time when I was pregnant.”
“You did not.”
“Well, that’s probably because you carried me everywhere for nine months!”
“Wei Ying was pregnant. It was unwise for you to exert yourself.”
Before he’s able to reply to that, a sour stench fills the room, and for once he knows it’s not his cooking. They both look down at Lan Yuan, who sits in his play pen, unaware of his baba’s pain or his a-die’s worry. A grin, spreading from ear to ear, is plastered onto his face.
Wei Wuxian sighs, runs a hand through his knotted, greasy hair. “Can you go change him? Dinner is almost ready.”
“Of course,” comes the dutiful response. He watches as A-Yuan is picked up by Lan Zhan, babbling all the while, only about a fourth of his words consistently meaning anything. Lan Zhan’s face is a vague mask of seriousness, brows set straight as he nods towards his son.
The two of them depart the kitchen, and Wei Wuxian turns back towards dinner. He pats his cheeks for a moment before pinching them, an old trick he used to do at university when Lan Zhan would look towards him in the middle of lecture.
Get it together, he thinks to himself, and makes sure the stir fry is well mixed before going to set the table.
Wei Wuxian has never been a very lucky person. His parents had died at a tender age of four, and he doesn’t remember them. All that remains of the mother and father that birthed him and nursed him and loved him was a blood red ribbon he has tucked away in their cedar chest in the closet. He wears other ribbons every day - the same color, same length - but the original one comes out only during special occasions, much like Lan Zhan’s own white forehead ribbon.
Most of the Jiang family was kind enough to him. Jiang Yanli always made sure that there was an extra portion of dinner for him after his schoolwork and chores were done. Jiang Fengmian had paid a small fortune for Wei Wuxian to attend the same university as Jiang Cheng. He really had wanted for nothing, except for lotus seeds and loquats, and he could steal those whenever he wanted.
The problem with his luck was that it always ran out. He’d been blessed with a kind adoptive family, but luck wasn’t on his side whenever Madam Yu was in the room. It wasn’t helpful in the days of agony and the scars that came with her whip after he’d shamed the heir to the Jiang family.
It didn’t even matter if Jiang Cheng stood in a corner and sobbed for his mother to stop, that it was all his fault, that Wei Wuxian was only trying to keep tempers from boiling over. Wei Wuxian had never been that lucky.
He wasn’t lucky at university, away from Madam Yu and her hawkish gaze. It was true that he had done exceptionally well in tests, often setting the curve for his classmates. It was also true that he had a tendency to debate the teachers, something that was poorly received.
Maybe it had been luck, then, when he’d befriended Wen Qing and Wen Ning during introduction week. Wei Wuxian had seen in them what he assumed Jiang Fengmian had seen all those years ago: a person, hungry and yearning to be something more than what the world had told them they were.
The Wens were even less lucky than he. Though they had enough to cover books and tuition, the siblings couldn’t scrape up enough for room and board. Even if they had, their family’s reputation of seedy back alley business dealings and assassination of other reputable business heads had cemented the university’s resolve not to let them stay there than for longer than classes ran.
Often, Wei Wuxian spent his pocket money on lunches for them, and he let them sleep in his bed and on his couch, and he took his pillow and blanket to sleep on balcony outside.
There were so many people in this world that needed help. Wei Wuxian would always do what he could, and he finally realised this resolve of his morals when Wen Qing had tried to explain to a teacher that despite her family name she and her brother were not her uncle and were subsequently expelled.
Wei Wuxian had gone with them, even when Lan Wangji had stood in front of his apartment in the rain, begging him not to leave, that he could find a way to fix everything within the rules and regulations.
He had laughed at him, at the rose colored glasses he refused to take off. “I have never been so lucky, Lan Zhan, and neither have they. This is the single-planked bridge that I will walk, and I will walk it alone.”
Luck… Luck might be listening to him now, though, because the pain in his side has significantly decreased since slamming his heels onto the floor. He can make small movements again with very little discomfort, can even reach for the plates on the first cabinet shelf without pulling a face.
The nausea is still present. He sets two places anyway, because he knows that Lan Zhan is going to say something about his eating habits if he doesn’t.
By the time Wei Wuxian has gotten Lan Yuan’s highchair positioned and the pan of hot food onto the table, Lan Zhan has returned with their son.
“Thank you,” Lan Zhan’s face is still built off of serious concern as he puts their son in his highchair. “However, I would have liked to help.”
Wei Wuxian spoons a steaming helping onto Lan Zhan’s plate, piling it high with all of his husband’s favorite vegetables. He makes a point to focus on not spilling anything rather than looking at Lan Zhan’s face. “You did by changing A-Yuan.”
“Wei Ying has done a lot today. I could have set the table.”
“I weeded and barely cleaned the house. What I’ve done can hardly be counted as ‘a lot’.”
“It was twenty eight degrees today. How long were you outside for? Did you bring plenty of water? Was Lan Yuan properly dressed?”
An easy smile floods over Wei Wuxian’s face. He puts a small serving onto his own plate, uses a knife to start cutting everything into a fine julienne for their son. Though still dependent on formula and baby food, he made it a point to serve whatever they were having to A-Yuan, having him touch and taste new things every day.
This worry, this condemnation that Wei Wuxian might not have thought everything through… this was Lan Zhan’s way of showing great concern for his family.
“Yes, Lan Zhan. He wore a cute bucket hat and everything.”
There’s the sounds of chopsticks being picked up, a beat of silence, and then, “Was it the one with the rabbits on it?”
“Of course.”
He now looks at Lan Zhan, the peerless Hanguang-Jun, and finds his heart fluttering like it did back when they were still schoolboys. Wei Wuxian doubts it’s all to do with the fever. Years later and his husband still makes him feel giddy and delighted, refreshed at the mere sight of him.
After Lan Zhan has eaten a couple bites of food, Wei Wuxian thinks enough time has passed to put the chopped up portion onto A-Yuan’s highchair. “Do you want baba or die-die to feed you, or do you want to feed yourself?”
“Me!” A-Yuan announces, legs kicking the chair with enough force to scoot the chair backwards. Lan Zhan’s hand is already grabbing the tray of the chair as he takes another bite, and so it doesn’t go anywhere in the end.
“Oh, you’re such a big boy tonight. Do you want to tell die-die how much fun you had pulling weeds?”
“Ahhhhhhh!” Joyful shrieks fill the room, and A-Yuan, like he had done earlier, smashes his flat palms down onto his dinner.
“He had a lot of fun,” Wei Wuxian fondly translates, petting the back of his son’s head with his palm. “Gardening might be his calling, you know.”
“Lan Yuan can be whatever he wants to be.”
“You’re just hoping he’s going to be the next guqin prodigy.”
Lan Zhan remains silent and takes another bite of his food, but he is unable to successfully hide the small, prideful upward twinge of his upper lip. Wei Wuxian himself snorts at that, and feels a small, but not insignificant twinge in his abdomen again.
Ah. There it was. So luck still wasn’t on his side, after all. He needs a distraction.
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, tell me about work.”
Lan Zhan sets his chopsticks to the left of him, making sure they are even in hight and width, the minute movement of his fingers sending Wei Wuxian into a dizzying array of adoration. He won’t eat while holding a conversation, and he won’t hold a conversation while eating.
“What would Wei Ying want to know?”
“Oh, whatever you want to tell me, I suppose. Any good water cooler gossip?”
“Our company policy explicitly prohibits gossip.” He’s turned toward A-Yuan now, helping him to focus on the hash of food before him. It’s becoming more and more apparent that Yuan has picked up Wei Wuxian’s pension for becoming distracted and inattentive. The cure of both of these things, for both of them, is a heaping dose of Lan Zhan’s unwavering iron focus.
“Right. How could I forget? You Lans and your three-thousand policy rules. It’s the same there as it was at our old university.” He lets his chin settle in his hand, the other reaching for the dinner. He pushes the stirfry around in the pot, listens to the vegetables and rice squelch together. None makes it onto his plate yet; his stomach is far too queasy to chance it. “Well, I guess you could tell me about whatever new risk you’re analyzing.”
Lan Zhan’s eyes stay pinned on A-Yuan, watching as he picks up a thin asparagus stalk and gnaws on it before spitting it out again. “Yucky, die-die!”
“A-Yuan needs to eat,” Lan Zhan explains, “or you won’t grow big and strong.”
“O’s!” Cries A-Yuan.
“Aiyah, you can’t have cheerios for every meal. Lan Zhan, can you go see what baby foods we have?”
“Mm,” he gets up and goes into the kitchen, opens up the cabinet where they keep most of their pantry items.
Wei Wuxian uses his pair of chopsticks to scoop up a bit of rice for Yuan to try. He gets the hatred for vegetables - especially fickle ones like asparagus - but Lan Zhan is right. Yuan needs to try to eat nutritious foods. He hopes that the rice picks up the flavor of the peppers and asparagus, but none of the texture.
“Open,” he says, a hand underneath the chopsticks to catch anything that falls.
Yuan’s mouth presses into a tight frown, lips draining from pink to white.
“Just a little bite. For baba. Please?”
“No!”
“Don’t you want to grow big and strong? How can you do that if you don’t eat what we make you? It’s just rice. You love rice.”
“Mmm!” As much as Wei Wuxian tries to press the soft grains of rice past his lips, A-Yuan squirms and twists his head away.
Then, with a creak of a chair, Lan Zhan sits down. His eyes are soft and warm, and he has never known such safety. In these eyes he is not judged, not admonished. In these eyes he is only loved. “Wei Ying. He is an infant. Have patience.”
“He’s been like this all day. He almost refused to eat the muffin I gave him. Smashed yogurt drops and cereal all over the tray during snack time. I don’t…” Wei Wuxian leans back in his chair, feels the stretch of familiar pain blossom across his stomach. His eyes search the popcorn patterned ceiling for answers he doesn’t know how to find. “I have no patience for our son left, Lan Zhan. Isn’t that awful?”
“It is not. You spend a lot of time caring for him, and I’m not home often enough to give you a break. It’s only natural that you feel this way. You still love him.”
“Well of course I still love him. I’d die for A-Yuan. He’s just a lot sometimes, you know? It was so much easier when he didn’t move much and only drank milk. Now he has aversions to textures and flavors.”
“So does everyone else. This is just a learning curve. You’ll get it, I know you will. Wei Ying is the smartest person I know.”
Slouching forward again, Wei Wuxian sees Lan Zhan pulling odd faces at their son, lifting his eyebrow or lip in a sort of souring snarl. A-Yuan delights in this, smiles and laughs and claps his hands. Lan Zhan slips a silicone spoon of pureed baby food into his mouth.
Most people incorrectly judge his husband, growing up as a stoic member of the Lan Clan, one of the Twin Jades of Gusu. The world has looked at Lan Zhan and deem him irrefutably icy. They see no warmth in his skin that stretches across his pallid bones, they see a smile that never reaches his gold eyes, and they hear a man whose words are as stiff as his posture.
What people never see is how his hands curl around Wei Wuxian’s in sleep, and how rare and lilting his laugh is, like a flower that blooms once every century. The world never sees how Lan Zhan bends over for the ones that he loves, but how he never breaks in the face of hardship and adversity.
Lan Zhan doesn’t gossip about his work, but Wei Wuxian knows that when he was pregnant every one was worried for their child. Though he’s a genius, it really didn’t take one for him to find out that they all were worried about Lan Zhan being emotionally equipped for a child.
It was a fallacy on their end, and neither Lan Zhan nor Wei Wuxian were particularly surprised.
If Lan Zhan is an attentive husband, he’s even a more doting father. Lan Yuan will never want for anything, and he’ll grow up secure in knowledge that both of this fathers love him.
Still, that doesn’t mean that Wei Wuxian won’t poke fun at him. He lightly taps Lan Zhan’s shoulder and says, “You’re making those faces again.”
“I am not,” he replies, eyebrows contracting together and expanding outwards. This has their son in red-faced hysterics, and Lan Zhan takes the opportunity to feed him another spoonful.
“Yes you are! It’s cute, though."
Lan Zhan peers his way, eyeing the clean plate in Wei Wuxian’s spot. Slyly, like he doesn’t know exactly how his words affect him, he says, “Do I need to feed you like I feed our son?”
At this, Wei Wuxian feels a deep heat rise up from the depths of his stomach. He puts the palms of his hands on his ruddy cheeks, shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut for a few seconds. “Aiyah, Lan Zhan! Such a mean husband! Do you know what you do to me when you say those things? You are going to be the death of me.”
“I will not.” He pushes another spoonful into Yuan’s mouth, his free hand collecting some mushrooms and tofu with chopsticks, and puts them near Wei Wuxian’s lips. “Eat.”
Wei Wuxian remembers how much the apple and bread burned on their way back up his throat. He doesn’t want to think about eating more food right now. Really, all he would like to do is lay in bed with his husband, their son sleeping in a bassinet at the end of their bed. He’d like to have the white noise machine going, because it has done wonders to keep the intrusive thoughts at bay. He’d like for his hair to be all silken and smooth, warmed by Lan Wangji’s hands as he presses a comb through it until no snags remain.
Still, his lips separate. His jaw loosens downward. Wei Wuxian cannot handle disappointment from anyone in his life, and especially if that person is Lan Zhan, his husband, his protector. Lan Zhan works so hard to keep the world away from Wei Wuxian. He builds floodgates of noncommittal answers when people ask him where his husband is. He reinforces Wei Wuxian’s safety, iron bars of hushed words spoken at night.
Wei Ying is good.
Wei Ying is kind.
Wei Ying is deserving.
Wei Ying has a family.
Wei Ying deserves a quiet life.
He accepts the bit of food Lan Zhan offers him, even though the meat of his tongue recoils downward, and it’s a battle just to swallow the soft, chewy mushroom and tofu. Lan Zhan works hard to make sure that the world knows that Wei Wuxian owes it nothing. The press often tries to squirm details about Wei Wuxian out of the Jiang family, and Lan Zhan has made it abundantly clear that if they cross that line there will be hell to pay.
The clicking sounds of a clock are the only noise around them, intermittently broken up by Lan Zhan humming a wordless order for either Lan Yuan or Wei Wuxian to open their mouths. Wei Wuxian wishes that he could savor his own cooking more. The stir-fry, ramshackled together as it was, tasted almost like something his shijie would make. It’s a shame that every bite he swallows his stomach cramps, pain spreading throughout his body like slow shockwaves.
Only about five mouthfuls have passed between his lips when Wei Wuxian knows, instinctively, that he’s going to vomit again. One hand pressed to his stomach and the other to his mouth, he stands up quick, which makes every internal organ feel like it’s being torn open. Somewhere he hears a chair clatter to the floor, and it has to be his own, because Lan Zhan is still sitting in his, curious worry painted in the slight contour of his face.
“Wei Ying? What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t respond, just bolts for the bathroom and kneels in front of the toilet. His heartbeat drums in his ears, he can feel it in his eyes and his cheeks. Just like earlier, Wei Ying starts dry heaving, his body pushing forward before rocking back, like a boat battered ceaselessly on stormy seas.
When his body finally expels the vomit, Wei Wuxian shuts his eyes tight against the carnage. This time everything burns a lot more, and he thinks that’s in part because his throat hadn’t had much time to heal. This time he isn’t able to focus on the act of throwing up itself, because when he does the pain of his belly is still there like an angry red nightmare.
Then, there’s two hands in his hair, one on either side behind his ears, gathering all of his greasy, sweaty locks and pulling them back.
“Lan-“ Wei Wuxian chokes out half of his husband’s name, dry heaving the rest of it into nonexistence.
“I am right here, Wei Ying.” His voice is calming like a river stream, like birdsong in a coal mine. “Let it out.”
Wei Wuxian retches into the toilet bowl, makes awful sounds that only reinforce to him that he is hardly little more than a disgusting creature. He wants to tell Lan Zhan this, that though he appreciates the help, he really doesn’t have to stay. He can go back to Lan Yuan. Their son is more beautiful than he could ever hope to be.
Fortunately there is little else that comes up, and once he knows the worst has passed far behind him, he taps the outside of Lan Zhan’s thigh, and he collapses in his arms, nestling the side of his face into Lan Zhan’s collarbone, trying to make himself as small as possible.
A lot of had been spent here, on the bathroom floor together, as Wei Wuxian battled the morning sickness of his first trimester with Lan Yuan. He’d joked many times that whoever coined the term ‘morning sickness’ ought to be subjected to a lengthy prison sentence, because he was sick all the time, not just morning.
Lan Zhan had tried pulpy ginger root and tea, coaxed Wei Wuxian to suck on mint leaves, had him try meditation and breathing exercises but nothing worked. Wen Qing had, through a divine intervention from Jiang Cheng, eventually written him a script for some wonderful anti-nausea medicine. It was only then, nearing the fourth month mark, that he could stomach smells and movement and, most importantly, food.
It was just… during those months, Wei Wuxian knew there was a purpose to all his misery and pain - and the nausea did go away sometimes. He wasn’t constantly miserable.
Right now, he takes deliberate, slow breathes through his nose. He feels his head pounding, his veins pulsing in the exact same rhythm. Rancid saliva sits in the depressed well of his tongue, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t trust himself to move. If he moves any more, he feels like something in his stomach is going to burst.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan whispers, lips moving against his sweaty scalp. “What’s wrong? What is this? Are you pregnant again?”
“No,” he manages, and he revels in the scent of sandalwood that is wholly Lan Zhan’s. He has been overly cautious when they have sex. “It isn’t that. It’s…” and he swallows down bile again. “It’s something else.”
“Okay. Let’s figure it out. Let’s call Wen Qing. She will-“
Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “It’s too late. I don’t want to bother her.”
“It will not be a bother. She is our family. She will want to help you.”
Acid boils in his stomach. He is so tired, and he should just agree because it is Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan has only ever had his best interests at heart. Lan Zhan is thinking rationally and logically, and if their positions were reversed Wei Wuixan would not hesitate to dial Wen Qing’s number and have her fix the problem.
Yet he feels his mouth form the words, “Lan Zhan…”
He feels Lan Zhan’s fingers - blissfully cold like the northern wind - hook underneath his hot chin, and has their gazes meet. “Let us help, Wei Ying. Let me help.”
Wei Wuxian is about to say yes. Really, truly, he is, but then he hears their son cry out, shrill and shrieking against the warmth of their home. Whatever spell that had him transfixed is broken, and he rolls out of Lan Wangji’s arms. The tile is cold on the back of his thighs, and he shivers, but manages a smile. “I’ll be okay. Go help Lan Yuan. We should not have left him alone for any amount of time. What kind of parents are we, Lan Zhan, if we are leaving our kid unattended?”
“We are good parents, Wei Ying.” Lan Zhan replies, and Wei Wuxian can see the twitch of his fingers. He knows that Lan Zhan wants to stay here, glued to his side until the pain has subsided and everything is golden and good again. “I will go to him. Please, take the time you need, and know that I will help you in whatever way I can.”
Then, he departs, and the second the bathroom door clicks softly into place, Wei Wuxian settles himself near the toilet and against the wall. Shivering, daring, he has his ghost-white hand move aside Lan Zhan’s robe and holds the hem of his shirt.
It’s alright, he tells himself. Lan Zhan will help me if there’s anything wrong.
Wei Wuxian pulls his shirt up past his navel and his world goes fuzzy on the edges. He smells something, like static electricity, as if lightning had just struck the tiles upon which he lays.
On the right side of his body, just above where the bladder sits, the skin is tight and bloated. It lacks any sort of redness but is unusually pallid in colour. Wei Wuxian does not dare to touch it - he knows that any sort of palpation would leave him writhing on the floor, screaming for his husband.
Lan Zhan might have been right about calling Wen Qing, but he feels like where he is right now is out of her field of expertise. Wen Qing is a genius, but her loyalties lie with maladies of the blood. Wei Wuxian figures his blood is fine, and so what would she be able to do other tell tell him to go to the nearest Emergency Department and get a further examination.
Whatever is wrong with him needs to be dealt with in a sterile clinic, with needles and bright lights and the strong scent of antiseptic. It needs to be dealt with away from his home and his child, away from all the safety and comforts he had built for himself these past few, fleeting years.
Wei Wuxian tries to grab the edge of the sink counter, meaning to hoist himself up into a standing position, but as soon as he gets his right foot balanced underneath him and starts to stand, a rippling, white-hot pain courses through his right lower body.
Falling back onto the floor, he lets out a yelp of pain on instinct. His hands shake, but whether from the pain of it all or his fever Wei Wuxian is unable to tell. His heart beats rabbit-quick in his ears, and the world has not lost that dream-like quality it retrained after lifting up his shirt.
After what seems like hours, Wei Wuxian hears Lan Zhan’s voice.
“Wei Ying?”
It takes most of his energy to turn his head towards their bathroom door. Lan Zhan stands there, Lan Yuan in his arms and dressed in his day clothes - dark teal overalls with a sandy sweater. What time is it? Are they… are they going somewhere? Does he need to get dressed?
Once more he grips the counter. His hands are clammy and don’t want to provide much stability, so he does little more than rock forward onto his heels before falling back again, but the pain once again has him crying out.
A-Yuan is babbling in the dry bathtub now. Lan Zhan is in his pinprick line of sight, but he doesn’t look right. His long, ink-black hair has bled out from his perfectly straight headband. There are creases between his scrunched nose. His eyes are clouded with worry. Wei Wuxian takes several breaths in quick succession, trying to fill his lungs with enough air to ask his husband what’s wrong?
“Wei Ying,” he says again, a large, unblemished hand coming up to cup his forehead, and then his jawline. “You’re burning up. You’re in pain. Tell me what is wrong.”
“I don’t…” Another not-deep enough breath, followed by a wheeze as he tries to curl in on himself. Everything is weird and wrong right now, but he knows the one thing he should never be around Lan Zhan is weak.
“Your heart? Lungs?” Lan Zhan begins to guess, and again Wei Wuxian feels river-cool fingers on his body. He leans into them when they press against his burning skin, even though he knows he does not deserve this kindness.
Is it kindness, still, then, when Lan Zhan correctly guesses stomach and whispers a touch against the right abdomen?
“Don’t!” Wei Wuxian yells, kicking out and writhing his body closer in upon itself. The rippling, nauseating pain is back again, though he figures it never really left. “Not… not there. Any where but there.”
Distantly he can hear a baby crying, and he thinks that it is his own child doing so, but there isn’t much he can do realistically except slump fully onto the ground. All he does is let himself float away, because being away from his bodily pain is the best thing for him.
“… Xiongzhang… Wei Ying… pain… Can you…? It is his stomach… Xiongzhang please hurry.”
Why is Lan Zhan calling his brother? He reaches for his husband, wanting to provide the comfort he knows he needs to give in this situation. That is why they married, because Wei Wuxian is the only one on this earth that can comfort Lan Zhan. Lan Xichen tries his best, and he understands most of Lan Zhan’s thoughts and methods if only for growing up in close quarters together. He bends to his brother’s feelings and wishes, but he fails to understand them in their unfamiliar intensity.
Something goes in between his lips - the tip is metal - and he thinks he should press down on it with his tongue. There is a hand holding his chin, softly stroking his jaw. “I do not want to… Xiongzhang… he is… our son… thirty eight point eight.”
The metal is pulled out from his mouth, and Lan Zhan sounds in such utter distress that Wei Wuxian finds it in himself to snake a hand out from his balled-up state. He finds Lan Zhan’s free hand and intertwines their fingers.
“We’re okay,” he says, because they are.
Lan Zhan’s hand pulls away, reaching out of Wei Wuxian’s field of vision to keep A-Yuan safe. He takes this time to close his eyes, to focus on his breaths to mitigate the nausea and the pain and the scent of static electricity he keeps smelling. Then he finds his consciousness slowly fading from him; a boat getting further and further away from the shore line.