Work Text:
Ways in which Wei Ying’s house is in no way ready for Jiang Cheng’s arrival:
1. A-Yuan still has not napped. Is, in fact, refusing to nap, and has grown increasingly quiet in his refusal in a way that usually forecasts a severe afternoon temper tantrum. Wei Ying can't really blame A-Yuan for this one—he's incredibly perceptive for a two-year-old, and Wei Ying has probably been filling the house with enough nervous energy to curdle milk for the whole morning.
2. There's still dry rice scattered under the kitchen table, which is also Wei Ying’s fault, since it was his elbow that knocked over the tub while wiping down the counter (again). Popped the supposedly un-poppable lid clean off. He’d gotten most of it scooped up earlier—shooing away Lan Zhan when he tried to help, telling him to go try to get A-Yuan down one more time—but then Wei Ying went searching for the long-handled dustpan and got sidetracked tidying up the study (also again). It was just...strange, seeing the study as a space to be neutralized. He hadn’t realized how much of himself was in this room, because usually when he’s in here he’s curled over his tablet for hours on end in a bit of a fugue state. They haven’t had anyone come stay with them since the second bedroom became A-Yuan’s, so today is the first time they’ve pulled out the narrow sleep sofa and tried to make the room anything other than the place where Wei Ying works and Lan Zhan drinks his before-work tea and A-Yuan occasionally watches his after-daycare TV. There are pictures of the three of them taped to the wall behind Wei Ying’s desk, and groove marks in the carpet from the desk chair that didn’t quite come out with vacuuming, and to compensate Wei Ying keeps rearranging the books on the little bookshelf next to the sofa. Anyway. The point is, there are stray grains of rice scattered across the kitchen, and no time left to deal with it.
3. Wei Ying’s husband is still standing in the entryway, wearing his second most stubborn expression and refusing to put on his shoes.
“I don’t have to go,” Lan Zhan says, not for the first time today, ever since he got a work call in the middle of lunch saying there was a scheduling mishap and now three ancient woodblock prints will be arriving today instead of tomorrow, and they need him to oversee the transfer and storage or the whole museum will collapse, emotionally. “Someone else can handle the delivery.”
“I’ve met your coworkers,” Wei Ying tells him. “You’d go in on Monday with twice as much to do just to fix everything, if they try to handle this.” He keeps his tone very reasonable, to make up for the fact that, brandishing a dustpan in his hand and a cranky toddler on his hip, he probably looks anything but reasonable.
Lan Zhan doesn’t budge. “Then I’ll do twice as much on Monday.”
“Lan Zhan, don’t be silly.”
Lan Zhan raises his eyebrows, as if to say silly? me? which is a blatant misdirect. “Then A-Yuan can come with me, if that would help.”
“No, no,” Wei Ying says. On any other day this would be a great idea—A-Yuan likes the museum, likes the garden and the puzzles Lan Zhan keeps in his office. But he’s too tired to be there for hours today, and—A-Yuan is the reason Jiang Cheng is visiting in the first place, so. “He still needs to nap, I’ll be home sooner.”
“Hmm,” Lan Zhan says. “Good point. You can stay, A-Yuan can nap, and your brother can call a rideshare.”
“Lan Zhan.” Wei Ying bats at his husband’s elbow with the dustpan handle. Lan Zhan just blinks back, unrepentant. “Out, out. Stop stalling, the sooner you leave the sooner you’ll be back.”
Lan Zhan doesn’t move. “Wei Ying,” he says softly, still sock-footed in the doorway. “I can stay. I don’t mind.”
Wei Ying resists the urge to throw his hands over his face, mostly because his hands are currently full. This man! Unbelievable! First he had tried to take away Wei Ying’s dustpan—to clean the floor himself—and now he keeps trying to ditch his very important job just to—to—support Wei Ying through what should be an absolutely normal occurrence. People get visits from their family. It happens. Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren visited in May for a whole week, though they stayed in an AirBnB. Wen Ning comes by a few times a week to babysit, which surely counts as visiting too, because he usually stays for dinner. It’s totally fine and not a big deal at all.
“I know,” Wei Ying says, instead of doing something silly, like getting all choked up. “And—I appreciate it. But unlike your coworkers, A-Yuan and I can handle this. Right, little radish? We got this.”
“We got this,” A-Yuan mumbles, face half-shoved into Wei Ying’s shoulder.
When Wei Ying looks back up, Lan Zhan is gazing back at them with an expression that is half exasperation, half pure adoration. Wei Ying is weak for that expression, so he makes quick work of hustling Lan Zhan into his shoes and out the door before he can cave and beg Lan Zhan to stay anyway. It’s a good thing he’s still holding the dustpan, as Lan Zhan kisses the top of A-Yuan’s head and then kisses Wei Ying goodbye—one kiss to his mouth, one to the center of his forehead—or Wei Ying might’ve lost to his instincts and curled one hand in Lan Zhan’s sleeve and refused to let go.
Anyway. Lan Zhan goes to work, Wei Ying surveys his still-not-ready house, and takes what might be his last full breath of the day.
“All right,” he says to A-Yuan. “Let’s do this.”
***
They manage to get going about ten minutes later. The air outside is hazy, the kind of day where the distant hills vanish and the world narrows to just their street, bright and muzzy at the same time. Wei Ying blinks against the sun, trying to remember if he left his sunglasses inside or in the car cupholder, as A-Yuan pauses to inspect the fig trees lining the front path.
The trees have been here a year, as long as A-Yuan. The week before A-Yuan came home, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan had to uproot and remove their two little orange trees because huanglongbing had mottled the leaves and turned the fruit hard and green on every citrus plant in the neighborhood. Wei Ying had found himself quietly, unexpectedly devastated about it—objectively he knew they were just trees, but. He’d liked them, silly as it was. Lan Zhan noticed, because of course he did, and six days later he had planted three young fig trees along the walkway. A-Yuan has claimed the middle one as his, and has taken up the job of checking all three for fruit. So far, just leaves. (“The trees have to grow,” Wei Ying told A-Yuan in June. “They’re kids, like you.” The next morning A-Yuan had poured one of his fruit cups at the base of the middle tree, to help.)
“Any luck?” Wei Ying asks now.
A-Yuan shakes his head.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Wei Ying says cheerfully, like he does every day, and bundles A-Yuan into the car.
The trip to the airport takes far less time than Wei Ying budgeted, a shocking lack of traffic heading east landing them there fifteen minutes early. In the rearview mirror A-Yuan’s blinks get heavier and heavier, lulled by the steady drive, and by the time Wei Ying turns toward arrivals A-Yuan is fast asleep. There’s no message from Jiang Cheng yet, so Wei Ying gets into the left lane and does a few slow loops around the terminals, humming quietly to himself and forcing his leg to stop jiggling every few minutes.
And then a message lights up his phone screen, propped on the dash: Landed.
Wei Ying tracks back toward the inside lane, pulling up at the curb outside terminal 2. He didn’t even have to smash his car or bodily threaten another driver to manage it—when Jiang Cheng announced his visit, Wei Ying started mentally preparing himself for a drive to LAX, before Jiang Cheng said, What am I, a monster? and sent his flight confirmation for the far more reasonable airport east of the city. That means there are relatively few people spilling out of the baggage claim doors, so Wei Ying sees Jiang Cheng as soon as he steps outside.
He’s squinting down at his phone as he walks, hair tied-black and flight-frizzed, a soft jacket slung over his arm and a purple duffel bag hanging off one shoulder. He veers to the side, on track to pass the car without looking up. Wei Ying glances in the rearview mirror at A-Yuan—still sound asleep—then opens his door and scrambles out.
“Jiang Cheng!” he calls.
Jiang Cheng halts, head whipping around. They lock eyes over the roof of Wei Ying’s car.
For a moment, nonsensically, Wei Ying thinks: Jiang Cheng got taller.
He didn’t, actually. When Wei Ying shakes himself into motion and hops onto the curb to take Jiang Cheng’s bag, he gets close enough to tell they’re still about the same height. (Wei Ying would even argue that he’s still got a centimeter on Jiang Cheng, a centimeter he clung to all throughout high school and, he knows now, will cling to all the way to the grave.) But something about Jiang Cheng seems taller anyway, like he’s learned to carry himself differently. Somewhere in the shoulders, maybe.
The thing is, he hasn’t actually seen Jiang Cheng in—years. He tries not to calculate the exact number, because some part of his mind had finally stopped keeping a running tally and he knows it will just start up again if he goes down that road. But Wei Ying has been so preoccupied with the logistics of it all, the fact that this tentative de-estrangement seems to hinge on this weekend, on Jiang Cheng seeing the nooks and crannies of Wei Ying’s life and deciding if it’s worth sticking around again, that Wei Ying hasn’t spared much thought to what he is going to see.
Jiang Cheng looks exactly the same, and wholly different. Wei Ying finds that his brain doesn’t know what to do with that yet.
They both hesitate, as Jiang Cheng hands over his bag, staring at each other, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t move in—what was Wei Ying expecting, a hug? A handshake? Both seem ridiculous—so Wei Ying rocks back on his heels.
“You,” Wei Ying says. Reverses track. “How was the flight?”
Jiang Cheng blinks at him. “Horrible. All the vents on my side were broken, it was sweltering. Not that this is any better.” He pulls a face at the sky, like he’s glaring down the sun itself. “I thought you were supposed to have nice weather here.”
“We do, for a few days in January,” Wei Ying jokes. When Jiang Cheng just blinks at him again, he adds: “Ahah. I mean. You can just—door’s unlocked.”
He gestures at his car, then stows Jiang Cheng’s bag in the trunk and slides back into the driver’s seat as Jiang Cheng is buckling himself in. Wei Ying reaches for his own seatbelt, and Jiang Cheng remains twisted to the side, looking into the backseat.
“Ah,” Wei Ying says, hushed. “He fell asleep on the way over.”
“I can see that,” Jiang Cheng says, and his voice is also low, matching Wei Ying’s. It’s almost jarring—Jiang Cheng is so rarely soft-spoken. Wei Ying feels a strange, momentary swell of gratitude, before Jiang Cheng continues: “Your—husband didn’t care to join you, I guess?”
Wei Ying suppresses the urge to snort, buckling in all the way and starting the process of rejoining traffic. Lan Zhan’s dislike for Jiang Cheng is still matched in full, apparently. Wei Ying is sure Jiang Cheng isn’t at all upset about Lan Zhan’s absence. If Lan Zhan were sitting in the passenger seat, it would’ve been a barbed comment about having to sit in the back. If Lan Zhan were here and gave up the passenger seat, it would’ve been a pointed remark about being coddled. This, at least, is familiar territory. “He got called into work. He would’ve, though.”
Jiang Cheng makes a skeptical noise. He’s still turned to look back at A-Yuan. It makes sense—A-Yuan is the reason Jiang Cheng decided to visit in the first place. After the two of them reconnected this summer (in a supposedly coincidental series of events that involved Nie Huaisang’s fingers slipping and adding them both to a group message, before disappearing himself), and after they got to the point where they decided they were going to actually talk and pretend things weren’t ragingly awkward, Wei Ying sent a picture of A-Yuan. Something cute and innocuous—A-Yuan had fallen asleep on the couch watching Super Wings, and Wei Ying snapped a photo and sent it before he could talk himself out of it.
?? Who is that? Jiang Cheng had asked.
a-yuan, Wei Ying told him. my kid.
Jiang Cheng hadn’t replied.
Then, the next day, he messaged: Will you be home the first weekend in october
we should be? why? Wei Ying replied.
Jiang Cheng: Cheap flights on United
Wei Ying didn’t realize what he meant at first. Two minutes later Jiang Cheng’s typing bubble popped back up. Disappeared. Reappeared. If you don’t want me to visit just say so.
And, well. Wei Ying had wanted him to visit.
“He wouldn’t nap today,” he tells Jiang Cheng now, turning left onto the 10. “He got up before Lan Zhan, even, and then wouldn’t settle all morning. So it’s good that he’s asleep. Though he’s very excited to meet you! Hopefully now he’ll be less cranky when he does.”
“Hm,” Jiang Cheng says—a grunt of acknowledgment more than any sort of agreement, but Wei Ying will take it.
He keeps talking to fill the silence as they track back toward home, glancing at Jiang Cheng every now and then, telling him about the house, the guest room (skimming over the fact that it’s his study), the shed in the driveway that is somehow almost full (who knew people could collect so much stuff without even trying?), the little red civic Wei Ying has had since he moved here (you could dump vinegar in the gas tank and she’d still run, honestly), how lucky they are to be heading west as the city edges into rush hour, the touristy and not-touristy things they could do to fill a weekend. “But first we’ll go home, obviously, and you can wash up. Are you hungry? I know it’s not that long of a flight, but I can make food, or we have some leftovers, whatever you want.”
“Anything’s fine,” Jiang Cheng says.
“Anything?” Wei Ying can’t help but tease. His throat aches a bit from keeping his voice at a near-whisper for the last half hour, but he doesn’t mind. “You must be forgetting the time you yelled at me for eating cheerios for dinner.”
“You mixed them with orange juice,” Jiang Cheng hisses.
“We all do things in college we’re not proud of,” Wei Ying says. “Don’t worry, I’ve leveled up to Red Bull now. Though only when I’m on deadline.”
“...I truly don’t know whether to believe you or not,” Jiang Cheng says. “For my sanity, I choose not.”
Wei Ying wheezes out a tiny laugh. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Lan Zhan feeds me very well. I’m so healthy it’s ridiculous, I hardly even have caffeinated tea on weeknights.”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. He’s spared the trouble when A-Yuan wakes up.
“Baba?”
Wei Ying looks in the mirror as they pull to a stop, off the freeway now, close enough to home that the shops around them are their regular errand stops. A-Yuan yawns, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “There you are, little radish,” Wei Ying says. “This is your Jiang-shushu here, see? The one who came to visit you.”
A-Yuan doesn’t look at Jiang Cheng. Instead he’s looking out the window, at their 99 Ranch on the corner. The parking lot is full, like it always is, but it’s the bright rainbow umbrella perched on the sidewalk that has caught A-Yuan’s eye.
“Baba,” A-Yuan says again. Kicks at the back of Wei Ying's seat. “Baba.”
Oh no, Wei Ying has time to think, but it’s too late. “Not this time, A-Yuan,” he says, trying to head it off. “We're almost home, you can have fruit there.”
“No,” A-Yuan says, and starts sobbing, in that terrifying, instantaneous way that Wei Ying has come to learn is just a skill all small children possess. “No, no, no.”
“He really likes the fruit cups,” Wei Ying tells Jiang Cheng weakly as the light changes to green. “Like, from the cart there. It’s—we don’t know why exactly, but, fruit is good, so it’s not—A-Yuan, we have to go home now. Later you can come back with diedie and pick out some snacks for next week, okay?”
A-Yuan just cries harder, tears streaking down his cheeks as they leave the parking lot behind. To the side, Jiang Cheng’s shoulders stiffen, and the stress Wei Ying was keeping at arm’s length descends all at once. “A-Yuan,” he tries again, but he can hardly hear himself over the sudden buzzing in his own ears. Everything feels so fragile, in this moment—the blank expression on Jiang Cheng's face, Jiang Cheng’s presence in this city, in this car at all. Wei Ying's fingers tighten on the steering wheel, his mind simultaneously caught on A-Yuan's crying and also racing ahead, southbound down Atlantic and all the way to his own driveway. He tries to conjure up the image of Jiang Cheng standing there in the hazy sunlight, outside Wei Ying's little house with its three fig trees that haven't even borne fruit, something that is now only minutes away, and it suddenly seems impossible. Like his careful storyboard has disappeared and he's hurtling toward nothing but blank white space.
“Sorry, “ Wei Ying gets out, “I'm sorry—”
“Pull over.”
“It’s okay, we don’t have to—”
“Pull over.”
He pulls over.
They come to a stop in a sprawling parking lot, between a boba shop and a glass-fronted LA Fitness. Jiang Cheng kicks the door open before Wei Ying even unclenches his hands from the wheel, and by the time Wei Ying twists around Jiang Cheng is already around the car, opening A-Yuan’s door.
For a moment the three of them are frozen like that—Jiang Cheng, one hand on the door, staring down at A-Yuan; A-Yuan, startled out of his tears and blinking up at Jiang Cheng; Wei Ying, half-kneeling in the front seat, watching them both.
Then: “Hey,” Jiang Cheng says, gruff, but also somehow the gentlest tone Wei Ying has heard from him so far. “I’m your shushu. Want to get some fresh air?”
A-Yuan blinks again, then nods, dazed.
Jiang Cheng reaches in and unbuckles him, lifting A-Yuan out of his carseat. It looks like he starts to set A-Yuan down, but A-Yuan clings to his shirt, so he settles A-Yuan on his hip instead and closes the back door.
Wei Ying finally gets his brain up to speed, yanking the keys from the ignition and spilling out onto the pavement. “Are you—,” he says. “Is he—”
“We’re fine,” Jiang Cheng says. “Breathe.”
Breathe. Oh. Wei Ying nods and presses back against the car, watching Jiang Cheng shift his weight, not-quite rocking and not-quite standing still, the way Wei Ying does when he’s holding A-Yuan and waiting for the kettle to boil, or looking at the tops of the fig trees together. A-Yuan is still teary-eyed, but not crying, one hand gripping Jiang Cheng’s shirt tightly enough to stretch it.
They’re both okay. It was just a normal toddler meltdown, Wei Ying has weathered countless of these and will no doubt weather countless more. Jiang Cheng’s right. Wei Ying is the one who started to panic, Wei Ying is the one who needs to get a grip. He leans forward a bit, bracing his hands on his knees, and takes a long, slow breath.
When he looks back up Jiang Cheng has wandered a few steps away to peer at one of the large agave plants on the divider.
“Careful,” A-Yuan chides when Jiang Cheng reaches out, the severity undercut by a tiny hiccup. “It’s spiky.”
“Hmm,” Jiang Cheng says, and pulls his hand back.
Wei Ying finds his voice again. “You’re really good with him.”
“I should hope so,” Jiang Cheng says, still looking at the plant. “Zixuan had to work overseas this spring. I stayed with jiejie, practically babysat full-time.”
Jiang Cheng had sent pictures of little A-Ling over the course of their messaging. Just a few, but. One had Jiang Yanli laughing in the background, one hand pressed to her cheek, a stack of dumpling wrappers on the table. Wei Ying’s chest had ached for hours after that.
“I didn’t know that,” Wei Ying says, eventually.
“No,” Jiang Cheng says. “You didn’t.”
Wei Ying swallows. “We don’t have to—,” he starts. In their conversations so far, they haven’t discussed the years he was gone. The reasons he left. He doesn’t know if Jiang Cheng cares to. “We can just…”
“She wants to visit you too, you know,” Jiang Cheng says abruptly. “She made me promise to ask about it. Subtly.”
“Oh.” Wei Ying runs those words through his head again, trying to understand them enough to respond. “I. I couldn’t ask that of her. She has—a whole life now, a kid.”
Jiang Cheng looks pointedly at A-Yuan. Then: “She wants to. We—she just doesn’t know if you want that.”
There’s a stretch of silence. A silver car passes behind the divider, windows cracked enough for music to bleed out, a group of teenagers full of laughter and boba and weekend freedom inside. Wei Ying feels his mouth crack open.
“I do,” he says. “Want that.”
“Well. Great. Expect a not-at-all subtle phone call from her the moment I get back. Just, tell her I asked politely over dinner or something.”
Wei Ying nods. Jiang Cheng scuffs a foot on the pavement.
“If you wanted to get back to the house…,” Wei Ying says after another long pause.
“Stop worrying about me.” Jiang Cheng re-settles A-Yuan on his hip and gives Wei Ying an exasperated look. “It was a ninety-minute flight, I’m not going to wither away.”
Well. In that case. “There’s a bakery across the lot,” Wei Ying says. He straightens up. Takes another full breath, one that tastes like asphalt and sun and whatever citrusy window cleaner the boba shop uses. “A-Yuan likes their milk tarts. He’ll get the crumbs everywhere, though, won’t you, A-Yuan?”
What he means: It will be messy, and inconvenient.
What he means: Are you sure?
“You think I can't handle some crumbs?” Jiang Cheng says. “Let's go. It’s gross outside, anyway.”
“Gross,” A-Yuan echoes.
“All right,” Wei Ying says. It hits him, now: he’s really here. He’s standing here, in this parking lot he’s been in dozens of times with his own little family, and now Jiang Cheng is here, too. His brother is here. “Let’s go, then.”
***
When they finally make it to the house, Jiang Cheng pauses on the front walkway.
“Fig trees,” A-Yuan tells him, pointing with one hand and clinging to Jiang Cheng with the other. Wei Ying doesn’t even try to resist taking a picture, or five. He might send them to his sister, later. When he works up the nerve. “This one's mine. There's no fruit yet.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Jiang Cheng says, and reaches up. It takes Wei Ying a moment to realize what he’s seeing.
Resting against the back of Jiang Cheng’s fingers: a single green bulb, a fig just beginning to grow.
