Archive of Our Own ^beta

A/N: This fic was written as part of the WangXian Gotcha against ICE event, based on a prompt from Pokerdot.  I hope you enjoy it!!  Unsurprisingly, this story got away from me and ended up being 12k words long. I... am evidently not physically capable of writing short stories LOL.

Emergency beta'd by Epistemology... thank you so much!!! 

Lan Wangji leaned back on the seat where he was straddling his motorcycle, forcing his normally rigid posture to curve into a facsimile of casualness as he pretended to read on his phone. In reality, he was using the camera to scan the street, looking for the man he had been trying to track down for nearly two months. 

Normally, he didn’t have so much trouble finding someone, no matter how hard they were trying to stay hidden.

It had been… frustrating.

Especially since his current job was supposed to have been an easy one: A simple favor for an old college acquaintance to help locate his wife’s estranged little brother. Normally, he wouldn’t have bothered with a job like that. Most of the people Lan Wangji was hired to find were heavy hitters, with a lot of money or a lot of political capital on the line.

Not some irresponsible college kid who went radio silent after some sort of family argument. 

The Jiang had money, but evidently the mother had made sure that the guy hadn’t left with any since he wasn’t blood related to them. Wei Wuxian had been taken in as a ward of the Jiang but never adopted. Midway through college, he’d been kicked out of the family, and seemed to have left willingly enough.

The details beyond that had been vague, but Lan Wangji hadn’t pressed for more, since it didn’t seem like an interesting case and he hadn’t expected it to take more than a day or two to locate him.

Yet somehow, the man had evaded Lan Wangji’s meticulous search for weeks. 

His latest set of data had led Lan Wangji to Yiling, a poor town in the western central part of China. It was small, relative to the larger cities along the coast, but still bustling with people, especially on the streets where the food vendors had their shops and stalls all lined up.

This was where he had set himself up to watch and wait to see if his usually-foolproof algorithms for scanning information to track people down would finally lead him to the strangely elusive young man. 

The smell of garlic and spicy meat wafted over from one of the food stalls near to where Lan Wangji hid in plain sight, sitting his motorcycle parked amidst a group of other food delivery drivers. 

It was a tactic he’d honed early on, when he was just starting out in his new life after being disowned by his uncle. He wasn’t vain, but he had quickly learned that both his height and looks tended to get him noticed, which was not ideal in his current line of work. 

Posing as one of the many delivery drivers solved that. Sitting on the motorcycle disguised his height, and the helmet concealed most of his face. People walked past him without ever glancing at him twice as he blended in seamlessly with his surroundings.

Being able to trace people who wanted to stay hidden was not the career he envisioned for himself when he was younger and being groomed by his uncle to work in the family business. Coming from a wealthy family, he had grown up with all the privileges of the best clothes and the best education, living in an enormous villa in the richest part of Gusu. 

He had spent the first twenty-four years of his life following his uncle’s orders in everything. 

He studied traditional martial arts to learn discipline and focus. He played traditional Chinese music on the guqin, playing in recitals as demanded by his uncle to show the family’s commitment to their heritage and culture. He was trained in classical calligraphy for the same reasons. He had excelled in all of his studies and gotten into the top universities where he had majored in finance, just as his uncle had instructed him to.

Upon graduation, he had seamlessly stepped into the family business, working in the finance department while his brother worked in the legal department as they both began their journey to eventually take over when their uncle retired. 

In those twenty-four years, Lan Wangji had arguably not made a single decision for himself, even down to the books he read or food he ate.

Up until that point, pleasing his uncle had been the foremost criteria for Lan Wangji’s actions. But his uncle had made the one demand of him that he could not simply concede to.

Lan Wangji brushed away the unpleasant memory. It didn’t matter anymore, other than the fact that the training he’d received to scan financial data and purchasing patterns had proven useful in his new career. His uncle might have expected him to come crawling back and bend to his will, but - instead - he’d carved out a way of making a living for himself that had the dual benefit of being incredibly lucrative and something that his uncle would absolutely loathe.

His past life of exclusively wearing high-end, custom tailored suits and being driven around in luxury cars was about as far as Lan Wangji as one could get from where he currently was: sitting on a cheap delivery motorcycle wearing mass-market, casual clothing in the seedier side of one of China’s poorest cities. 

Yiling was loud, dirty, and chaotic.

Lan Wangji didn’t mind. In fact, he found it mildly amusing to think about how horrified his uncle would be to see him in such a place.

His reverie was cut off when a man matching the photos he had been given entered the field of view of his camera. He drew on his years of self discipline to not shift or show any reaction that would give away his surveillance to the man who had eluded his search.

Wei Wuxian.

The man was in his mid-twenties wearing a worn-thin red T-shirt and skin tight, ripped black jeans that made Lan Wangji remember why he had been kicked out of his family in the first place. 

And why it had been worth it.

Lan Wangji had known that he was a few years older than Wei Wuxian from the information he received from Jin Zixuan, but—due to the pictures being somewhat outdated and Jiang Yanli‘s description of him—Wei Wuxian had seemed much younger in Lan Wangji’s mind. She had told Lan Wangji stories of Wei Wuxian caring for a baby bird with a damaged wing, getting in trouble at school, not for being a troublemaker, but for stepping in to get between a classmate and a bully, never thinking about the consequences to himself and just wanting to do the right thing.

(Jin Zixuan had given his wife a somewhat embarrassed look when Jiang Yanli had talked about the bullying, and Lan Wangji had not asked but—given what he’d heard from Luo Qingyang about what Jin Zixuan had been like in his youth—he had a pretty good idea of the story behind that look.)

Lan Wangji had not considered how different someone looked as a teenager than they did at twenty-four.

Wei Wuxian was talking animatedly to another man who looked to be about the same age who was dressed all in black and wearing a black trenchcoat. Lan Wangji noticed that he was not the only one watching him. Wei Wuxian had an energy about him that drew attention, almost as much as the man’s looks did.

He supposed he shouldn’t have relied on the description provided by an older sister to do justice to just how attractive he was, but he quickly pushed that thought aside as he watched the pair walk towards the high-end coffee shop that had been one of the data points that had led Lan Wangji to know where to wait.  

Wei Wuxian was currently going by the name Mo Xuanyu, and had been remarkably skilled at jumping from his old identity to his new one with almost no trace connecting the two. That was not a skill that a random biochemistry major should possess.

Lan Wangji began typing out a note to his partner, Luo Qingyang, to let her know that they’d finally found their quarry.

“Wen Ning! You don’t need to tell your sister that I stopped to get more coffee, okay? I just don’t know how she expects me to be able to finish a project if I don’t have any fuel to keep me going!”

Lan Wangji froze at the name, his thumbs hovering above the screen on his phone. 

Wei Wuxian being involved with one of the members of the Wen family changed everything. And was definitely not something he’d been told when he accepted the contract to find him. 

He wondered if Jin Zixuan had lied to him, or if his former classmate didn’t know.

When Lan Wangji had first accepted the request from Jin Zixuan, he had thought it was slightly odd but had written it off to simply the wealthy man appeasing his pregnant wife, who was likely worrying for no reason. 

Seeing Wei Wuxian in the presence of one of the missing informants in one of the largest corporate scandals in decades made Lan Wangji radically recalculate that assumption. It was no secret that the Jin and the Wen had been engaging in unethical business practices, both separately and together for years. 

Society had turned a blind eye to it until leaked videos and financial records showing forced labor and large-scale bribery hit the news. No one seemed to know where the leaks had come from, but people were going missing from both the Wen and Jin factories and research facilities. It was unclear if they had been killed or gone into hiding, but Wen Ning and his sister, Wen Qing, were two names that had been closely tied to the most damaging of the leaks.

They’d both been missing for two years, one year longer than Wei Wuxian himself had been.

Was Wei Wuxian involved?

The young man in black—Wen Ning, Lan Wangji corrected, taking a photo of him to verify his identity later—gave Wei Wuxian a fond but weary smile.

“Jie just wants you to take care of your health. This much coffee really isn’t good for you,” he said, though he continued to follow Wei Wuxian towards the coffee shop.

“I don’t know why she doesn’t believe me when I explain that my body is medically unique and runs solely on caffeine,” Wei Wuxian said with a crooked grin as they disappeared into the coffee shop.

Lan Wangji looked down at the picture he had taken of Wei Wuxian on his phone. He would need to send it to his client as proof that he had found him. Under normal circumstances, he would have sent it immediately.

But nothing involving the Jin and Wen scandal qualified a ‘normal circumstance’, so he refrained from sending it until he’d had more time to consider his next steps. If Jin Zixuan had used him to help his father hunt down and eliminate potential witnesses against him, he would find out just how much dirt Lan Wangji could dig up on the Jin with very little effort.

Lan Wangji was nowhere near as nice or forgiving as his elder brother was.

As he watched them enter the coffee shop, his gaze slid down to where the snug black jeans hugged the curve of Wei Wuxian’s ass. Apparently, the man spent all of his disposable income on expensive, high-end coffee, since the denim of his pants were worn so thin that a tear had formed just where the curve of his ass met his upper thigh.

Lan Wangji shifted on the seat of his motorcycle, letting his legs fall slightly wider apart. reminded again of the exact reason that marrying a woman was the one thing he hadn’t been able to do for his family. But the attractiveness of the man aside, what was he doing all the way in Yiling with one of the missing witnesses against the Wen family?

He texted the two photos he’d taken to his business partner, Luo Qingyang, along with a simple message.

I found him. Verify that the person he is with is Wen Ning, from Qishan. Do not inform Jin Zixuan.

There was no hesitation before her reply came back with a thumbs up, as expected. She had been friends with Jin Zixuan back in school, but it hadn’t saved her from getting fired from Jin Corporation when her friend’s father had sexually harassed her and she’d had the temerity to file a complaint about it.

Jin Guangshan had used his influence to have her blackballed from the industry.

Jin Zixuan had been upset about it, but he hadn’t been able to stop it from happening. Lan Wangji had been in the process of trying to get her an interview at Lan Enterprises just around the time that his uncle began talking about arranging a marriage for him. Luo Qingyang had been wise and wary enough to tell him that he should make sure he had his money in a separate account outside of the bank his uncle used before he turned his uncle down completely.

Lan Wangji had thought she was being paranoid, but he respected her enough to listen.

It was a good thing he had, or his expulsion from the family would have been much more problematic. It wouldn’t have changed his response, but it would have meant that dressing in cheap clothing and delivering food would have been his actual career rather than his disguise.

He looked up as Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning walked out of the Captain George coffee shop, Wei Wuxian carrying two large coffees with him. Based on their conversation, it sounded like both were for himself, though he was trying to finish one before they got back to where they had come from.

Lan Wangji waited until they were almost a block away before starting his motorcycle and following them. 

The traffic meant that he didn’t need to try very hard to not overtake them. He hadn’t been able to find out where Wei Wuxian was living or working, only that he was making purchases in the area. The implications of that made him even warier about what his association with the Wen were.

He followed them for four blocks before watching them disappear into one of the more run-down apartment buildings in the area. He memorized the address, then drove to the hotel to call Luo Qingyang where their conversation could not be overheard.

The hotel Lan Wangji was staying in was very expensive. Even in the poorest parts of China, there were wealthy businessmen or government officials who needed accommodations. Jin Zixuan was giving him basically a blank check for his expenses, so Lan Wangji was not concerned about the bill.

“You know Jin Zixuan better than I do,” Lan Wangji said once he was in his room and away from prying ears. 

He had Luo Qingyang on speakerphone while he stripped out of the uncomfortable clothes he had worn to blend in with his surroundings. 

“Do you believe he is lying about his knowledge of the situation?” Lan Wangji continued.

There was a brief pause while Luo Qingyan considered his question. 

It was one of the things that Lan Wangji liked about her. She was loyal, but she still had principles and a mind of her own. She would not defend someone who was in the wrong just because they were her friend. It was something they both shared, and had both paid the price for.

“No,” she said finally. “I know his father is an absolutely abysmal human being, and Zixuan has never been able to stand up to him. But not standing up to him is different than actively helping his father hunt someone down.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said noncommittally.

While he understood her point, he also had come to understand that the large number of people who were complacent about bad things happening around them often caused more damage than the people who were doing the bad things in the first place. The scale of the scandal that had come to light about both the Jin and the Wen families’ business empires neck deep in forced labor and massive bribes of medical facilities required a degree of complicitness that didn’t come down to just one or two bad apples.

But—from what Lan Wangji had initially been told about his current case—it should not have had anything to do with Wei Wuxian. Yet, somehow, Lan Wangji had tracked him down and found him living with at least one of the sources of the massive leak that had brought the scandal to light.

“I don’t think Zixuan knows,” Luo Qingyan explained. “Whatever the situation is, I think that it’s more likely that his father is playing him than that Zixuan is playing us. Jiang Yanli views Wei Wuxian as one of her little brothers. She’s been searching for him for years and hasn’t been very quiet about it. Zixuan knows that if he did anything to hurt Wei Wuxian, it would be problematic for his marriage. With the child on the way, that’s not something he would risk.” 

“Mm,” Lan Wangji said, in agreement this time.

He recalled that the relationship between the Jin heir and the Jiang daughter had not started smoothly, but eventually they had seemed quite taken with each other.

“It never really made any sense that Jin Guangshan was still trying to find Wei Wuxian to pay him back for punching his son so many years ago,” Luo Qingyang continued, thoughtfully. “I think he used that as a pretense to see if Zixuan knew where Wei Wuxian was without coming out and asking him. The timing is suspicious. The trials have started, and both Jin Guangshan and Wen Ruohan have been firm in stating that all of the evidence has been fabricated and demanding access to the witnesses that the state has said it has.”

Lan Wangji agreed. It made sense if Jin Guangshan wanted to see if Jiang Yanli knew where her little brother was. It would be a simple matter to follow her when she raced off to check on him if she thought Jin Guangshan might be harassing him about the old, schooldays’ fight. 

In retrospect, that should have been his first clue that something was not as it seemed. Jiang Yanli talked about her younger brother as a mischievous, idealistic young man with a genius mind whose head was often in the clouds. She had been terrified for him when her parents had cut him off, but he had at least still been in college on a scholarship, and while his life would have definitely been harder, it had at least been safe.

He had disappeared shortly after graduation.

He’d called Jiang Yanli and told her not to worry, then vanished into thin air for three years. The level of intentionality of how well hidden Wei Wuxian had been did not line up with the innocent, academic boy that Jiang Yanli had described.

The skill with which Wei Wuxian’s identity and whereabouts had been concealed was not something that was accomplished by accident. Were the Wen helping to hide him? If so, why?

“We need more information,” Lan Wangji said.

“I’ll start digging. I’m guessing you want to hold off on telling Zixuan that you found his brother-in-law, or about the Wen development until we know what’s up,” Luo Qingyang said, reading him correctly as she almost always did.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji confirmed. 

He did not believe in coincidences. 

He would spend the next week following Wei Wuxian while Luo Qingyang searched for any clues of how Wei Wuxian had ended up in Yiling with at least one of the missing Wens that everyone had been searching for.

After the call, Lan Wangji showered and readied himself for bed. The luxurious silk of the hotel sheets and his pajamas were a sharp contrast to the way he dressed when he left the privacy of his room, but it was a welcome change. 

He did not miss the gaudy ballrooms, trips to private islands, or fancy office spaces from his old life. But he was glad that he had enough money to be able to indulge in the quality of food he enjoyed and the texture of the fabrics he preferred, thanks to Luo Qingyang’s well timed and hard-earned advice. 

Having made himself comfortable, he went over what he knew about the case and what he had just learned. Had Wei Ying just been at the wrong place at the wrong time, or was something else going on?

After several days of observing Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji had learned many things about the group of Wen who were living as the man’s neighbors, but was no closer to understanding how he had come to live amongst them, or why Jin Guangshan was looking for him.

It was unclear what Wei Wuxian did for a living, except for helping everyone else in the falling-down apartment building that they occupied.

Somehow, nearly fifty members of the Wen family—some close and some distant relatives of Wen Ruohan himself—were all living in a dilapidated building so run down that it had been nicknamed as The Burial Mounds by the locals. He had photographed each of them to have Luo Qingyang determine their identities, and almost all of them lined up with various people that had gone missing just before or shortly after the scandal broke.

The only two who didn’t were Wei Wuxian, and a small child that didn’t look like he was more than three.

The others were related by blood, even if distantly. But how did Wei Wuxian fit in? 

Observing him for almost a week while he waited for news from Luo QingYang on her research hadn’t clarified anything.

Wei Wuxian carried the groceries for an elderly woman that everyone called Wen Popo, and who Luo Qingyang had identified as the aunt of Wen Ruohan. There was an older man that Wei Wuxian helped cart his bottles of potentially illegal liquor to the stall where he sold them. There was a child that Wei Wuxian would take outside and play with and tell outlandish stories to. 

Wei Wuxian appeared to do handyman jobs around the building (one particularly notable time included him fixing a loose step on the apartment complex, where he had removed his shirt as he worked on the repair in the hot, midday sun). 

He didn’t appear to have any sort of schedule or actual job, but spent his days doing random chores and errands, in constant motion but with no clear pattern to it.

Disorganized, Lan Wangji thought automatically.

He, himself, had been trained to have ruthless organization and structure in his life. It was one of the pieces of his uncle‘s legacy that Lan Wangji suspected he would never be rid of, but he often found it useful. 

Almost everything he saw lined up with the idealistic, lighthearted younger brother that Jiang Yanli described. But that type of person wasn’t someone who would have their identity erased and be the target of Jin Guangshan’s focus in the middle of a trial that could bring down his enterprise.

But there had been one moment that had seemed to not quite fit with the ‘sweet younger brother’ persona that Jiang Yanli had described.

The Burial Mounds was located in arguably the worst part of town. It was something that Lan Wangji had been concerned with, given how worried Jiang Yanli had seemed to be about her brother’s ability to keep himself safe or not be taken advantage of or recognize a dangerous situation.

Few people ventured out after dark in that part of Yiling if they could help it. In fact, he’d heard rumors that that particular small section of Yiling was known to be controlled by someone called the Yiling Patriarch. He had driven the other gangs out of his territory. Lan Wangji had not learned exactly what sort of power it was that he wielded it over them, but it appeared to be some sort of combination of information he had on them that he could turn over to the authorities, aid he had provided them in getting out of tight situations, especially for their family members, and his ruthlessness in a fight. 

So the area was viewed to be dangerous, but not everyone had the luxury of staying inside at night.

One of the women from the Burial Mounds worked the night shift in a nearby medical clinic. The bus stop wasn’t particularly close and on the third day of Lan Wangji’s surveillance of the community, he saw a group of questionable men with too much alcohol and not enough morality in them approach her. 

Lan Wangji had been about to intervene when Wei Wuxian suddenly appeared out of the shadows. Lan Wangji had not been expecting him to be out and had not even seen him coming.

Wei Wuxian didn’t actually do anything. He just greeted the men and smiled at them asking if perhaps they were lost. But there had been something in the tone of his voice… Something about his smile…

The men had immediately left, not quite running, but definitely moving faster than walking.

The young woman had only shaken her head and laughed, and Wei Wuxian had just shrugged and turned and walked her back to the apartment building.

Wei Wuxian had not issued any specific threat or really done anything at all, but there was something about his easy confidence and lack of fear when confronting the men, as well as the way that the men responded to him that pricked Lan Wangji's instincts. 

It was possible that this was just the ‘oblivious to danger’ characteristic that Jiang Yanli had talked about. If that were true, then he definitely understood her worry. Wei Wuxian was swimming in very dangerous waters. 

Standing up to high school bullies or even a few low-level thugs was nothing like going up against the full strength of Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan.

The more Lan Wangji watched him, the less annoyed he felt about taking the job. Jiang Yanli was right. Someone needed to be looking out for the man. Lan Wangji found that he did not mind being the one to do so.

While Lan Wangji had been staking out the Burial Mounds, Luo Qingyang had been digging to find any connections between Wei Wuxian to the Wen prior to the Burial Mounds. The threads she had found had been weak, but there had at least been some.

Wei Wuxian had taken a class with Wen Ning‘s sister back in college. He had also been arrested in a bar fight for punching Wen Chao shortly after he had been estranged from the Jiang. The police records of the incident were not in the system anymore, even with Luo Qingyang’s less-than-legal abilities, which meant they had been deleted permanently by someone with considerable skill or influence. 

That would only have happened if the true account of what had gone down was unfavorable to Wen Ruohan‘s son, as it had been made clear that the Jiang were not interested in protecting Wei Wuxian from any potential fallout. 

Three months after the bar fight, Wei Wuxian had vanished without a trace. Six months after that, the first wave of news had broken about potential leaks in Wen Corporation’s business practices. Those had been quickly hushed up, but within a year, another batch had been released, this time to a much broader set of new sources and government officials, and a large group of Wen had vanished. 

The later batch of materials had included videos, emails, and bank records that were much harder to refute. Everyone wondered who had gathered so much information and leaked it.

There had been a massive amount of money used to try to hush it up between two business moguls, Jin Guangshan and Wen Ruohan, but despite their best efforts, the investigation had continued, due in part to public pressure. 

The stocks of both corporations had taken a major hit, as had the reputations of the men in question. 

There had been a campaign mounted by Wen Ruohan’s PR team to claim that false information had been leaked by members of Wen Ruohan's extended family in an unsuccessful attempt to try to take the company over and oust Wen Ruohan as CEO. 

From what Lan Wangji could tell, that version of events was only supported by random social media posts and news articles from reporters and influencers known to be in Wen Ruohan’s pocket, without a single fact to support it. And there had been a wave of social media activity in the opposite direction to counter it, but it was unclear who was behind it or where the money to fund it was coming from.

Lan Wangji decided it was time to find out what Jin Zixuan really knew about the situation.

They decided to call him on video rather than just audio. Luo Qingyang had known Jin Zixuan since they were children and she said she had a pretty good handle on his ‘lying face’. Lan Wangji wanted to make sure that they weren’t tracking down a witness to hand over to someone who was determined to keep him from testifying. 

Jin Zixuan was on the screen, his wife standing beside him.

“Have you found a-Xian?” Jiang Yanli asked anxiously, her face showing nothing but hope and worry. “Can… is he all right? Can I talk to him?”

Jin Zixuan knew Lan Wangji and Luo Qingyang well enough to pick up on the fact that something was not right.

“You didn’t mention where you found him,” Jin Zixuan said, the statement clearly a question.

“Did your father ask you to reach out to me and engage my services on this matter?” Lan Wangji countered directly. 

There was no trace of friendliness in his voice.

Jiang Yanli looked surprised and turned to look at her husband. Jin Zixuan grimaced.

“Of course not. You know that Father does not approve of my interactions with MianMian,” Jin Zixuan replied, then paused as he thought through the implications of Lan Wangji asking the question. “Why? What did you find out?”

Lan Wangji did not have a reputation for overreacting. Jin Zixuan clearly understood that if he was being cagey about Wei Wuxian’s location, there was likely a reason.

He exchanged a glance with Luo Qingyang, who nodded

“What do you know about your father‘s involvement with the search for the missing Wen informants?” Luo Qingyang asked.

Lan Wangji did not need Luo Qingyang to translate the look of confusion, then horror, then anger that spread across Jin Zixuan’s face. He felt some of the tension he’d been having release at the knowledge that Jin Zixuan had not deceived them in his request.

They ended up telling him everything except for Wei Wuxian’s current location. Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli both understood the need for secrecy, even if Jiang Yanli looked upset at not being able to see her little brother.

She was very concerned to hear about the general conditions that he was living in. They did not specify which city it was, but most cities had parts of town that were decidedly less safe than others.

“A-Xian is too trusting,” she said, twisting her slim hands in worry. “He’ll help anyone who asks. If my father-in-law thinks he’s involved in the company scandal, it won’t be safe for a-Xian to come back. He’s hidden for now, but what if they find him? And you said there’are also gangs where he lives. A-Xian could get hurt!”

She started to cry, and Jin Zixuan shot Lan Wangji a glare through the screen.

“Lan Wangji. I know that you don’t usually take on situations like this, but a-Li really shouldn’t be stressed right now. Could you maybe… keep an eye on Wei Wuxian until this blows over? I’ll try to work on Father to get him to back off.”

Lan Wangji gave Luo Qingyang a flat look. She grimaced, but didn’t inform her childhood friend how inappropriate it was for him to ask Lan Wangji to put the rest of his work on hold to basically play bodyguard for his wife’s brother. 

“I’ll double what I offered to pay you,” Jin Zixuan said, defaulting to his typical response to anything in his life that needed fixing.

Lan Wangji felt his temper flicker.

“I’ll triple it!” Jin Zixuan said, misreading Lan Wangji’s silence as a negotiation tactic rather than annoyance.

“Zixuan,” Luo Qingyang said, before he could keep going. “Give it a rest. Lan Wangji isn’t one of your employees. You can’t just throw money at him to get him to do what you want.”

Jin Zixuan blinked, seeming non-plussed with her response. But Jiang Yanli wiped her eyes and batted her husband’s arm.

“A-Xuan. Stop it. She’s right,” Jiang Yanli said, turning to look at the screen. “Lan Wangji. I know that you don’t have to do this. You are busy and there are many people who need your services. But a-Xian is my brother, and I would do anything to keep him safe, so I will ask for your help. I would go there myself if it wouldn’t just paint a target on his back. I think that my father-in-law is probably waiting to see if I will lead him to a-Xian. Please. If you can help keep him safe just for a little while, I would be truly grateful.”

Jin Zixuan’s face took on a comically panicked look at her mention of going anywhere near the group of informants and criminal gangs that Lan Wangji had described.

“You are a principled person, Lan Wangji,” Jiang Yanli continued. “I know that you’re aware of the amount of pressure that certain people are putting to make sure that none of the witnesses can come to testify. If you don’t want to stay just for a-Xian, could you not consider staying to look after the others?”

Lan Wangji considered her words.

“You realize that your father-in-law is likely one of the people trying to prevent them from testifying,” Lan Wangji said.

Jiang Yanli looked over at her husband, and they both nodded.

“Yes. As distressing as it is, we are aware,” she said.

“And you still want me to go and protect them,” he clarified.

“We do,” Jiang Yanli confirmed. 

Jin Zixuan looked more reluctant to be going so directly against his powerful father, but he nodded as well.

“Very well,” Lan Wangji replied.

Luo Qingyang’s eyes widened in surprise.

Usually, Lan Wangji did not capitulate to rich people’s pet projects.

But Jiang Yanli was right. The Wen witnesses were innocent and should be protected.

And he was honest enough with himself to admit that watching Wei Wuxian would be no hardship.

Wei Wuxian had been feeling like someone was watching him for the past two weeks, and it was really starting to annoy him. He had gotten a lot better at honing his instincts. It had kept him and the people he cared about alive. Which was why he didn’t ignore the itchy feeling he had between his shoulder blades that someone was watching him. He hadn’t been able to figure out who, though. 

If it had been Wen Ruohan or Jin Guangshan that found them, the Burial Mounds would likely already have been set on fire. But he didn’t know who else would be that interested in watching him.

He had learned how to hold his own against whatever came his way, whether it was with his fists or with information and connections.

If someone was looking for a fight, Wei Wuxian would give them one.

He had managed to make it clear to the local gangs that he wouldn’t tolerate anyone messing with his people. His government contact had told him that it would likely be only a few more weeks before it would all be over. Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen would have notified him if there were any signs that Wen Ruohan or Jin Guangshan had found them. And they were both good enough at their jobs that Wei Wuxian thought they would know if their cover had been blown.

But it didn’t take away the uneasy feeling Wei Wuxian had that someone was watching him.

Wei Wuxian had been so focused on keeping a watch for any sign of Jin Guangshan or Wen Ruohan’s men that he had been completely unprepared for the sight of the new neighbor who had somehow made the bad decision to move into the Burial Mounds.

He was on his way to do some grocery shopping for Popo when he saw a man carrying a stack of boxes that covered his face walking through the entryway, heading towards the stairs. The building was so old that of course there was no elevator. And if there had been one, only a fool would have used it given the overall state of disrepair of everything else.

Wei Wuxian jogged over and offered to take one of the boxes to help.

“No need,” a deep, rich voice replied.

Wei Wuxian moved to open the door to the stairway.

“Which unit are you moving in to?” he asked.

“618,” the man replied.

“You’re carrying all those up to the sixth floor? Let me take one. You can’t even see the steps, and some of them are uneven,” Wei Wuxian insisted.

The man relented and paused, allowing Wei Wuxian to grab the top box. He realized that the guy must be an inch or two taller than him when he had to reach up a bit awkwardly to get a good grip on it, which was unusual given Wei Wuxian’s own height.

It was a good thing that he wasn’t one of those guys who felt the need to show off and insist on taking more than one, because it turned out that the boxes were completely full of books. 

Wei Wuxian staggered under the weight of just one. He had no idea how the guy was carrying three. But the unexpectedly heavy weight of the box wasn’t the only thing that nearly had him stumbling.

The removal of one of the boxes had revealed the most beautiful face that Wei Wuxian had seen on either a man or a woman in the entirety of his life: Perfectly sculpted cheekbones and jawline, a straight nose, pale brown eyes that looked golden in the sunlight that was filtering through one of the dirty windows in the stairwell. 

The guy wore his glossy black hair slightly long, pulled back into a sleek braid that reached the middle of his shoulders.

Which was about the point in time that Wei Wuxian noticed the guy’s shoulders, and… okay. That explained why he was able to carry three boxes of books without even seeming to strain. Wei Wuxian couldn’t help the way his eyes slid down the man’s body, noticing the lean strength of him, his muscles toned and defined without being bulky. Even his hands were amazing, large with long, tapered fingers where they held the heavy boxes with ease in their sure grip.

The man was incandescently hot, and Wei Wuxian was not prepared to handle it.

Wei Wuxian had tried so hard not to think about his new neighbor over the next few days. He had gone twenty-four years of his life without really being interested in anyone physically or romantically. So, of course, it had to be when he was at probably the absolute worst point to have a relationship that he met someone who made him feel like he’d been gut-punched every time he looked at him.

He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t really in a position to date, no matter how viscerally drawn to Lan Wangji he was. The man had only recently been kicked out of his family, and the last thing Lan Wangji needed was to get caught up in Wei Wuxian’s current situation.

To say his life was complicated was an understatement.

He’d been orphaned at the age of three and taken in by a friend of his late parents. Unfortunately, the man’s wife had been decidedly against it, specifically, against anything having to do with Wei Wuxian’s late mother. 

While Jiang Fengmian had insisted on allowing Wei Wuxian to live with them, and even sending him to the same expensive schools as his children and providing food and clothing that went that likely went far beyond the meager inheritance that his parents had left, his wife had ensured that Wei Wuxian knew he was unwelcome in their home every day he’d lived there. 

Any talk of Wei Wuxian being formally adopted by Jiang Fengmian had ended within a month of his moving in and had not been brought up again. 

Which was fine. 

Wei Wuxian had jokingly taken to calling their two children his shijie and shidi, after watching a few too many wuxia movies with them. Jiang Cheng had refused to accept the nickname, but Jiang Yanli had thought it was sweet and her name had stuck. It had ended up being a pretty accurate shorthand for the sibling-but-not-quite-siblings relationship they had.

Then high school came and Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan had arranged an engagement between their daughter and the only son of another wealthy family in the area. Despite not really having any input on who her future husband would be, Jiang Yanli had been optimistic about it. She’d been raised in a wealthy enough family to know that her marriage, as well as her brother’s, would be a matter of increasing the family’s business connections rather than one of true love. And the boy she’d been betrothed to was handsome, and a few years younger than her rather than a decade older, which definitely helped.

Unfortunately, his looks and non-geriatric age were about all that could be said for Jin Zixuan, as far as Wei Wuxian was concerned. 

Jin Zixuan was all the worst stereotypes of what a wealthy, only child could be. He was arrogant, entitled, and dressed in gauche clothing that basically screamed ‘I have more money than taste’ like the rest of his family did. Wei Wuxian had hated him on sight and only partly because he couldn’t imagine anyone being worthy enough to marry his kind and gentle Shijie.

He might have thought that he was overreacting, but Jiang Cheng felt the same way. So when the guy had made snarky comments about the fact that Jiang Yanli was not particularly pretty (in Jin Zixuan’s eyes… in Wei Wuxian’s eyes she was perfect), and how the Jiang family fortune was not as good as the Jin’s and he wasn’t pleased about their engagement, Wei Wuxian had punched him in the face. 

It didn’t matter that Jiang Cheng had been right behind him and only a second slower at being ready to throw his own punch. Yu Ziyuan had been furious and made it clear that Wei Wuxian would no longer be associated with their family once he graduated from high school. She had done it in an effort to appease the Jin family and salvage the engagement.  

The formal engagement party had been postponed until tempers had calmed down. 

It wasn’t as though the severance of financial support had been a surprise. He had only been wondering what excuse she would be able to come up with that her husband would go along with, and Wei Wuxian had done her the favor of providing it.  

Luckily, he had been a good student, earning top grades in all his classes and the college entrance exams without really having to try, so he had gotten into a good program. It had been hard to get financial assistance since it looked like he was still a ward of the Jiang, but Yu Zizuan had been overjoyed to write an official letter stating that there was no financial obligation between them after his eighteenth birthday, which enabled him to apply for financial assistance.

She’d made it clear that the biggest string attached to that letter was that he could not be seen publicly interacting with either of her children after he moved out. He had found it easy to keep in touch, though, talking with Jiang Yanli several times a week by phone while he was in college. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing.

But things changed after his internship at Wen Corporation. 

He had just graduated and was starting a new job on a highly confidential project that the Jin and Wen had launched together. They had been selecting people that didn’t have family ties, supposedly to prevent leaks about the details of it.  All of the people working on it were asked to surrender their personal phones for the six months that they would be staffed to it. 

Wei Wuxian hadn’t realized at the time that the project wasn’t so much ‘confidential’ as it was ‘illegal and off the books entirely’. So he had agreed and let Jiang Yanli know that he would be out of touch for a bit but that he was fine and not to worry.

He quickly learned that part of the reason for the secrecy was more based on fear of someone reporting their illegal approach to medical research rather than someone stealing the formula they were developing. They were rushing the medication through the trials, falsifying data to bury some of the extremely dangerous side effects that had come out during clinical trials.

They were also testing the medication on patients without their consent or knowledge. One of the main trial groups was taking place in Yiling, where the people were relatively poor and uneducated. There had been at least five confirmed deaths, all of which had been buried and simply deleted from the sample data.

Wei Wuxian had made friends with Wen Qing, one of the doctors who was working on the case, and they had figured out a way to steal the data and turn it into the authorities. It was a huge scandal and with two wealthy families trying to ensure that it didn’t ever go to trial, he and Wen Qing and a group of the test subjects had basically gone into hiding. 

The trial was finally happening, though, and Wei Wuxian was trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life once it was over. He still had his academic credentials, but being known as a whistleblower against two powerful families was not something that other companies were necessarily excited to take on.

Not to mention that the child of two of the test subjects who had died in the trials was now sort of his adopted family. He didn’t know if he wanted to leave Yiling to go and work in some big city somewhere where he would have to uproot his family, and where there were always more people like Jin Guangshan and Wen Ruohan grinding the people around them into the dirt.

He wouldn’t mind living in a safer apartment building, though. The building he currently lived in had been nicknamed the Burial Mounds due to its old age and concerns about structural stability. Wei Wuxian suspected that the only reason it hadn’t been condemned was that Yiling was too poor to actually have building inspectors that would come out to check to see what was going on. 

All that was to say that Wei Wuxian had not dated anyone in the years that he had been out of college. In college, he’d been too focused on maintaining his scholarship and honestly had just never really been that interested. After college, he’d been trying to just keep himself and his adopted family alive.

He’d learned to navigate the darker, more dangerous underside of China in a way that he never would in the wealthy, elitist circles he had grown up with.

No. Dating Lan Wangji was not something he could allow himself to daydream about. But he could keep an eye on the man to make sure he was safe and didn’t get caught up in things he shouldn’t.

Wei Wuxian could feel Lan Wangji’s eyes on him as he played with a-Yuan in the empty lot next to the Burial Mounds, which they had converted into a combination of community garden and playground.

The man had told him that he was working as a food delivery-man (which lined up with the bike he kept parked near the entrance of the building), but it didn’t seem to be going well for him, since he didn’t go out much.

The more time he spent with Lan Wangji, the harder it was to remember all the reasons that he could not act on any of the attraction that he felt hum electrically in the air between them whenever they were in the same room. For him, at least, it was more than just physical attraction.

Maybe it was the story Lan Wangji had shared about being disowned by his uncle for coming out as gay. Maybe it was the fact that – like Wei Wuxian – Lan Wangji had spent a significant portion of his life in the upper echelons of society, only to find himself abruptly thrust from it. 

Despite the fact that Lan Wangji was a few years older than him, Wei Wuxian continued to find himself wanting to protect him. He knew how hard the transition could be, and he was worried that the man might find himself targeted. 

He seemed to be a scholarly type, based on the boxes full of books that Wei Wuxian had helped him move into his room. He probably had no idea how dangerous the world could be. Lan Wangji had at least chosen to wear sensible clothing that wouldn’t draw attention to himself and get him mugged. Wei Wuxian had seen more than one fallen rich boy who clung to their old wardrobe and found themselves stabbed for it.

He also understood the choice to not stay and work in a city where he used to be a member of the elites in. Nothing was more humiliating than having to wait tables for a group of customers that used to be your peers, or even your subordinates. People were petty, and they would often take great pleasure in ensuring that the new pecking order was firmly established, often in the cruellest way possible.

There were so many dangers for someone like Lan Wangji.

It was extremely lucky that Lan Wangji had chosen the Burial Mounds to land in. Wei Wuxian would make sure that he was not taken advantage of or targeted. He made sure to ask about his job as a delivery person and looked over his motorcycle, offering to fix it if he needed anything, and told him about what to look out for to avoid being scammed.

Lan Wangji had just watched him with those intense, golden eyes that made Wei Wuxian’s stomach twist in ways he absolutely could not explore until after the trial was over.

Wei Wuxian told himself that it was not a date as he looked over the dishes he had made for his new neighbor. 

He was only being… neighborly. 

The stove in Lan Wangji’s unit hadn’t been working, and building owner was not going to do anything about it. Wei Wuxian had figured out the problem with it, but the part that they needed wouldn’t arrive for a day or two.

So he had invited the man to have dinner at his place. Just in a friendly way!

It had been a long time since he had been this excited to cook for anyone. Longer still since he had met anyone new that he had been willing to let into his space. 

It was probably a bad idea. 

But Lan Wangji was already living in the same apartment complex as him, so it wasn’t like it would draw any additional attention or put him at risk to be seen with Wei Wuxian. And once the trial was over, maybe…

He heard a knock on the door, and Wei Wuxian quickly looked over to make sure everything was ready before jogging over to open the door. 

His breath caught when he saw Lan Wangji, looking impossibly gorgeous wearing a white silk dress shirt and jacket that was clearly more representative of his prior life than his current one. He was wearing what looked like real white gold and sapphire earrings, and Wei Wuxian could not even process how handsome the man was.

This was not supposed to be a date. How could he possibly handle Lan Wangji looking like that in his personal space? The universe was entirely unfair. 

“Are you going to invite me in?” Lan Wangji asked with the tiniest hint of a smirk on his perfectly chiseled lips.

It made Wei Wuxian face heat with embarrassment, but also with the urge to grab him by the collar of his ridiculously expensive and expertly tailored jacket and kiss him. 

Instead, he stepped back and wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on his jeans.

“Right! Come in! I wasn't sure what sort of food you liked other than preferring vegetarian, so I cooked some different options,” he said, leading them towards the kitchen. 

His apartment was small and didn’t have a formal dining area, but it had a counter with some stools where he’d set up the food.

He looked back over his shoulder, and caught Lan Wangji’s gaze focused intently somewhere distinctly lower than Wei Wuxian’s back.

Lan Wangji was not the only one who had taken care in dressing for their not-date.  

Wei Wuxian might have put on the tight, black jeans that Wen Qing had forbidden him from wearing whenever they went out to the bar together because then she had to deal with people coming up and hitting on him all night long. He also knew that the red button-down he was wearing did good things for the golden color of his skin and the jet black of his hair. 

So, yeah. Not a date! But there was nothing wrong with dressing up for dinner with a friend.

Lan Wangji elegantly shrugged out of his blazer, laying it over the back of the chair.

“Sorry, I don’t have a place to put your jacket,” Wei Wuxian apologized, trying not to think about how the silk of the man’s shirt slid across his skin with the movement. “Would you like some wine?”

“I do not drink,” Lan Wangji replied. “But please help yourself.”

“It won’t bother you?” Wei Wuxian asked.

“Not at all. I have an allergy to alcohol, but it does not bother me when others partake.”

“Okay, cool,” Wei Wuxian said, not sure why the man’s carefully precise wording always made him feel so overheated. “I have mango juice or tea, if any of those sound good?”

“Tea, thank you,” Lan Wangji replied.

Wei Wuxian had heated the kettle in advance, and poured some tea to steep as they sat down at the table. 

“I don’t know if you like spicy food,” Wei Wuxian said. “These are dishes from where I grew up and some of them are pretty spicy.”

Wei Wuxian gestured towards two of the dishes that he’d made in the traditional Yungmeng style. He’d toned down the spice from his usual level (which even Jiang Cheng had called diabolical), but there was only so much he could do before it just wouldn’t be the same dish anymore. He’d cooked two others that were much blander, just in case.

Lan Wangji took a bite of one of the flaming red dishes Wei Wuxian had indicated.

“It is good,” he said… or at least tried to say. 

He immediately coughed. 

Wei Wuxian could not contain the laughter as Lan Wangji’s face began to flush red from the spice.  It was amusing to think that carrying all those large boxes of books had not made the man break a sweat at all, but a small bite of spicy food was taking him out.

Wei Wuxian saw Lan Wangji reach for his tea cup.

“Wait! Don’t drink –” but it was too late. 

Lan Wangji had taken his cup of hot tea and drained it, the temperature of it only making the burn in his mouth worse. 

“There’s cold mango juice in the fridge. If you want I can –” Wei Wuxian said, but Lan Wangji had already stood and was walking towards the kitchen. 

The expensive jacket that had been hanging on the back of the chair fell to the ground, causing Lan Wangji’s phone to slip out of its pocket. Wei Wuxian reached down to pick up the jacket while Lan Wangji got himself some of the juice. He hadn’t meant to look at the phone, other than just ensure that it was working, but when he lifted it a message flash across the top. 

It was from Jin Zixuan. 

Lan Wangji’s phone had a password protector on it that meant that Wei Wuxian could not read the content of the note, but he recognized the name and the number. 

Wei Wuxian’s stomach sank and his face hardened. 

Because of course. 

Of course Lan Wangji had not stumbled into his life by accident. Of course it had all been to get close to him and prevent him and the others from testifying. Wei Wuxian breathed out a bitter laugh. He thought he had grown up and learned his lesson from the past about trusting in people and things that seemed too good to be true. 

When Lan Wangji emerged from the kitchen with the glass of juice, Wei Wuxian did not hesitate. 

He was responsible for keeping the Wens safe. His own emotions and naïvete had no place in the equation. He foolishly had not thought to keep a weapon on him, but he was far from helpless. 

In less than a second, he was on his feet and slamming Lan Wangji into the wall. The glass Lan Wangji had been carrying fell and shattered, sending juice and shards of glass spraying across the floor. 

“How much is Jin Guangshan paying you,” Wei Wuxian asked, his voice deadly and cold. 

He felt Lan Wangji’s muscles tense beneath his hold, and—even though he should’ve been expecting it—he wasn’t prepared for the expert and clearly trained way Lan Wangji extracted himself from Wei Wuxian’s grip, spinning free.

So much for the man needing his protection. 

Wei Wuxian dodged Lan Wangji’s attempt to reverse their positions and pin Wei Wuxian instead, and shifted to the side of the kitchen counter where his knife block was. He grabbed one and turned it on Lan Wangji.

The man was watching him warily but did not immediately attack again after his initial reversal had been unsuccessful. 

“I am not here to hurt you,” Lan Wangji said carefully. 

Wei Wuxian scoffed. “Nice try, but I saw the message from Jin Corp on your phone. I’m not stupid enough to believe you’re here by coincidence," Wei Wuxian bit out. 

Lan Wangji‘s eyes flickered to the knife, noting the clearly expert way that Wei Wuxian was holding it before glancing down to take his fighter's stance. 

“It would appear that Jiang Yanli was somewhat misinformed about you needing my protection,” he said. 

Wei Wuxian paused. There were two possibilities of what the man was implying and one was going to get him stabbed and buried in the basement somewhere. 

“What have you done to her?” Wei Wuxian asked, his voice razor sharp in the small room. 

Lan Wangji kept his hands lifted and glanced meaningfully over to where his phone sat on the table. 

“You can call her from my phone. Let her tell you directly. She asked her husband to hire me to find you because she thought Jin Guangshan is looking for you to make trouble. She did not know that you were involved with the Wen. When I told her that you were, she asked me to get close to protect you until the trial,” Lan Wangji lips twisted wryly. “She was under the mistaken impression that her innocent little brother would have no idea about the danger he was in or how to protect himself.”

Wei Wuxian huffed out a small laugh, though he did not lower his knife. 

“Yeah, that could be the truth,” he admitted with a shrug. “But you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take your word for it, no matter how pretty your face is.”

He had to admit that if Lan Wangji really wanted to, he had the strength and skills to at least give Wei Wuxian a run for his money. If he was here sent by Jin Guangshan to kill him or the others, then he would have had several occasions to accomplish that task. 

“Call her,” Wei Wuxian said, gesturing towards the phone with his knife. “And put her on video.”

It would not be particularly difficult to create a voice changer that would make anyone’s voice sound close enough to Jiang Yanli’s that he would not be able to clock it on a call. But making a deep fake video of her that could respond to whatever questions Wei Wuxian might ask would be significantly harder. 

Lan Wangji gave a nod, then carefully walked over to the phone, keeping his hands held high to make it clear and was not attempting to do anything else. It annoyed Wei Wuxian that he got the sense that the man was humoring him rather than actually feeling threatened by him.

To his credit, Lan Wangji did not question Wei Wuxian's insistence that they place a video call rather than audio. He made sure that Wei Wuxian could see that he did not do anything other than press the icon showing Jin Zixuan’s name on the video call app. 

It was evening, so they had a good chance of Jin Zixuan being able to answer the phone rather than being in a meeting somewhere. 

“Turn the phone to face yourself until I hear Jiang Yanli‘s voice,” Wei Wuxian ordered. 

Lan Wangji gave him an assessing look, then complied, seemingly unperturbed by all of his demands. 

Wei Wuxian honestly wasn’t even sure why he was bothering by insisting on it, since it was clear that Lan Wangji knew who he was, and the fact that the man was carrying a smart phone meant that whoever had hired him also knew where they were. 

The cat was definitely out of the bag, but Wei Wuxian still wanted to know if he was going to have to go out fighting or if the strange tale that Lan Wangji had spun about Jiang Yanli hiring him to come find him was actually true and just horribly timed.

“Lan Wangi,” Jin Zixuan’s voice said. “Has something happened?”

Lan Wangji did not take his eyes from Wei Wuxian as he spoke. 

“Is Jiang Yanli there? I am with someone who will not believe that I am not an imminent threat to him unless he hears it from her directly,” Lan Wangji said calmly, meeting Wei Wuxian’s gaze steadily.

“A-Xian? A-Xian are you there? Lan Wangji, did you find him? Is he all right?” 

Wei Wuxian had not heard his foster sister’s voice in years, but he recognized it immediately. 

He motioned for Lan Wangji to turn the phone so that he would be able to see her, hiding the knife he held behind his hip. He didn’t want to scare her, but he also wasn’t ready to put it down.

Lan Wangji tracked the movement, but did not comment as he repositioned the phone.

Jiang Yanli looked both exactly the same and also very different since the last time he’d seen her. It took Wei Wuxian only a moment to realize that she was pregnant—extremely pregnant—as she burst into tears and Jin Zixuan wrapped an arm around her shoulders. 

“A-Xian! We’ve been so worried! Are you safe? They said it’s too dangerous for me to come to see you but your Jiejie is worried about you.”

Jin Zixuan glared at them through the phone as he stroked her arm to comfort her. 

Wei Wuxian finally found his voice, ignoring the slightly constricted sound of it. 

“It’s ok, Shijie,” he said. “It’s all right. I’m okay. Didn’t you get my message when I left?”

Jin Zixuan scoffed. “You mean the one that just said: ‘I’ll be fine and out of touch for a while. Don’t worry?’ What kind of message is that."

Jiang Yanli laughed, wiping her eyes. 

“I’m just glad you’re all right. A-Cheng and I were so worried! No one knew what had happened to you and mother wouldn’t allow us to search. And then my father-in-law started asking questions and I got nervous. I thought he was looking for you because of that silly old fight between you and a-Xuan. I didn’t want him making trouble for you about it. So a-Zuan asked Lan Wangji to find you for us, so we could make sure you were okay.” 

“So this had nothing to do with the Wen?” Wei Wuxian asked, skeptical about that kind of coincidence.

“Not at first. I mean, now we know that Jin Guangshan was probably asking about you since he’d found something out, but at the time, we had no idea you were involved. When I found out, I was so scared!” Jiang Yanli said.

Wei Wuxian glanced over to see Lan Wangji was still watching him. He wondered how much the man had found out about the level of Wei Wuxian’s involvement in the leaks, or his identity as the Yiling Laozu.

“It’s OK, Shijie. It’s all going to be over soon. There are people I’m working with who are keeping me safe, so as long as no one followed Lan Wangji, then I should be fine,” he said.

Jiang Yanli did not look particularly reassured, but Lan Wangji nodded. 

“Someone did a very good job covering your tracks. It was… more challenging than I had expected to find you.”

Wei Wuxian laughed at the barely concealed annoyance in Lan Wangji’s tone. Given how good the man appeared at his job (which was definitely not food delivery-man), Wei Wuxian couldn’t suppress the smug smirk at the thought of it.

“Did I annoy you, gege? Were you frustrated that it took you so long to find some naive college student who probably didn’t even know how to lock his door at night?”

Lan Wangji shot him a dark, heavy-lidded look that sent a dark curl of the same attraction that had been on a slow simmer between them since they’d first met. 

Jiang Yanli looked at both of them with big eyes and tear-stained cheeks. 

“I asked Lan Wangji to keep an eye on you. I know that you don’t like people in your business, but please a-Xian. Do this for your Jiejie. I’m so worried.”

“And pregnant!” Wei Wuxian laughed, forcing his eyes away from Lan Wangji’s. “When is the date when I’m expected to become an honorary uncle?”

“Not honorary. An uncle,” Jiang Yanli asserted forcefully. “He’s due in two months and I’m hoping that you’ll be able to come and see us for his one month celebration.”

That might actually be possible, if the trial went as well as the prosecutor told him it was. But that didn’t mean that Lan Wangji would want to stick around for that long. Wei Wuxian was trying hard not to think about the fact that this whole thing had just been a job to Lan Wangji. But at least he no longer had to worry about the man not being able to handle himself in the dangerous waters Wei Wuxian would be swimming in until the trial was over.

“Well, I’m not sure that Lan Wangji is going to want to be spending the next three months babysitting me, so –”

“I do not mind,” Lan Wangji said, before Wei Wuxian could even finish the sentence. 

Jin Zixuan’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. Jiang Yanli looked at them for a moment, then giggled. 

“So… are there going to be other things to celebrate in addition to the birth of your nephew?” she asked archly. 

Evidently the joy of being able to tease her little brother about a potential romantic prospect overrode her earlier fear for his safety. Wei Wuxian felt his face heat under the combined impact of Jiang Yanli’s knowing look and Lan Wangji’s heavy gaze. 

Jin Zixuan looked as though he was not entirely following the conversation and did not wish to be. 

 “Are you sufficiently satisfied that I was not hired by Jin Guangshan or Wen Ruohan?” Lan Wangji asked. 

Wei Wuxian paused. There was still a small chance that Lan Wangji had more than one employer, but that would be unlikely. 

“Yeah, Jiejie wouldn’t lie.”

Lan Wangji gave a short nod then looked back at the screen to address Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli. 

“Then we will return you to your evening. I will remain with Wei Wuxian and inform you if anything changes between now and his testimony.”

After they disconnected the call, the air in the room was filled with a strange tension that was not as deadly as it had been before the call, but was no less intense as they looked at each other. 

“Well, I suppose I can put this down now," Wei Wuxian said, taking the blade that had been hidden behind his hip and setting it on the counter. “You… uh… didn’t really get a chance to eat. And I should clean up the glass.”

Lan Wangji was looking at him in a way that made Wei Wuxian feel like maybe he shouldn’t have put the knife down.

“Do you think that is the best use of our time right now?” Lan Wangji asked, tilting his head slightly to the side.

Wei Wuxian paused. “I guess we should also talk about how much you know about me. And if you were the one who was watching me for the two weeks before you moved in.”

Lan Wangji hummed.

“You have good instincts,” he acknowledged.

Wei Wuxian shrugged. 

“Not quite good enough to clock you when you moved in. Though, that could be because you are a little distracting,” he admitted.

“Oh?” Lan Wangji asked, leaning against the wall. 

He really was unfairly attractive.

“You know you are,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’d guess it’s a hassle in your line of work. Though I suppose the whole ‘food delivery’ thing makes more sense now.”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji said. “And you were so concerned about making sure I knew how to avoid being scammed as a delivery driver. Cute.”

Wei Wuxian flushed.

“Well, you gave in pretty easily when my sister asked if you’d be willing to keep an eye on me for the next three months,” Wei Wuxian countered. “Though I’m guessing Jin Zixuan is paying you a fortune, so that probably explains it.”

He tried not to be too upset to find out that he was basically Lan Wangji’s job instead of… whatever he had been hoping this would evolve into. Lan Wangji levered himself away from the wall at Wei Wuxian’s words.

“I do not need Jin Zixuan’s money,” Lan Wangji replied. “Nor do I charge people for what I choose to do on my personal time.”

The second part of the statement caught Wei Wuxian’s attention, because there weren’t too many ways to interpret that.

“Personal time?” he asked.

Lan Wangji studied him for a moment.

“Mm. And it occurs to me that it would be much more efficient to watch over you if I wasn’t staying two floors below you,” Lan Wangji said casually, though there was nothing casual about the heat in his eyes. 

Wei Wuxian blinked, then laughed. 

“Confident aren’t you?” he asked, feeling a heady rush that they seemed to be very much on the same page. 

And he no longer needed to worry about getting Lan Wangji involved in his situation, because he already was. Voluntarily, it seemed.

Lan Wangji arched an eyebrow. 

“That wasn’t a no,” he said, walking towards Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian felt his lips slowly curve into a dark smile. 

“No. It wasn’t.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said, with a satisfied look as he took the final step to close the distance between them.

He gripped Wei Wuxian’s hip with one hand while the other fisted into his hair before he pulled him close and kissed him. 

The end.

A/N - Pokerdot, I hope that this was the vibe you had in mind for the story.  I didn't know if you wanted a literal or figurative spicy dinner, so I wrote both! Thanks again for your prompt and activism in helping raise awareness against ICE.