Chapter Text
A-Yuan’s newest obsession is the sort of show that Wei Wuxian would probably have enjoyed as a child, even if he won’t admit it. Wei Wuxian had dropped off a son who had been humming the xiao ding dang theme song for a sleepover with Jin Ling and picked up a son who would not stop talking about mystery-solving rabbits. It’s a web series where in each episode (“Jin Ling says it’s called a webisode”), the host of the show solves mysteries with the clues his rabbit points out. “No, baba,” A-Yuan says very seriously, “Lan-xiong has to figure out what Xiao Yin and Xiao Yang want to do, and they can’t talk so they have to leave clues for him. And after Lan-xiong finds all the clues, he sits in his thinking chair and solves the puzzle!”
Thinking chair , Wei Wuxian mouths to himself as A-Yuan, wiggling animatedly in the car seat, continues giving him the rundown of episodes (webisodes) 1 through 7, which is where they had got up to last evening before Jiang Yanli had stopped them for dinner. “But don’t worry,” A-Yuan rushes to assure him after explaining how ‘Lan-xiong’ had figured out that the rabbits had wanted to go for a picnic in the park and to the butterfly garden and then to try some fresh soy milk at the wet market (can rabbits even have soy milk?), “there are still a lot more webisodes we can watch together!”
Wei Wuxian laughs and gives his son a thumbs-up, catching his eyes in the rear view mirror. He’s faithfully sat through three episodes a week of xiao ding dang for almost a year, so he can certainly deal with however many episodes (webisodes) of Tu ’s Clues A-Yuan wants to watch. Making A-Yuan happy makes him happy.
~~~~~~~
As is probably quite common amongst parents, Wei Wuxian finds that his life is neatly partitioned into ‘before A-Yuan’ and ‘after A-Yuan’.
Before A-Yuan: take-out (several times a week), microwavable meals and sometimes just plain white rice for dinner when all he could manage was to get the rice cooker going. After A-Yuan: less take-out (once a week, and only as a treat), more vegetables (because all the parenting books had been very clear about a balanced diet), and significantly more use of the previously untouched pressure cooker Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng had given him as a housewarming present.
Before A-Yuan: piles of unopened mail, stray pieces of paper that Wei Wuxian would scribble on and then keep (just in case) for the next ten years, and maybe some half-hearted tidying up if he was going to have people over. After A-Yuan: piles of childrens’ books, toy bins stuffed to the brim, and regular picking up because Wei Wuxian had realised that while he did not mind his mess, dealing with someone else’s mess (even his son’s) drives him crazy.
Before A-Yuan: keeping busy all the time, mostly through work, otherwise through video games, because keeping his mind occupied with things he could control kept him going. After A-Yuan: still busy, in fact, probably more so; and although having a 4-year-old son significantly increases the number of unforeseen events in his life, he feels more settled than he has in a long time.
Being a single parent is not easy, even if Wei Wuxian lucked out with how sweet and well-mannered his son is. He can’t stay in bed for two days just because he feels like it, or stay up til three in the morning coding because he’s on a roll. There are so many things he has to keep track of now and Wei Wuxian is unashamed to admit how much he had leaned on his siblings for help when he had first brought A-Yuan home. But somehow all the things he can’t be bothered to do for himself are suddenly so much easier when he has to take care of his son.
~~~~~~~
He’s in the middle of preparing dinner when A-Yuan insists on watching an episode of Tu’s Clues with him. “Each webisode is only twenty minutes, and we still have to wait for the zongzi to steam,” he reasons, then tugs on Wei Wuxian’s shirt with pleading eyes. Wei Wuxian caves like a piece of wet paper. “Okay, okay! Help me clear this away and we can watch it, is that alright?”
After both of them have washed their hands, he settles down on the couch with A-Yuan on his lap, and his laptop on the table. A-Yuan pulls up the show’s webpage suspiciously quickly, and starts episode (webisode) 8.
The theme music is set to a montage of two rabbits, one black and one white, hopping between different scenes. While A-Yuan cheerfully bops and hums along to the song, Wei Wuxian quietly resolves to never tell his son any rabbit meat jokes. The screen cuts to a pastel blue room where a man is kneeling in front of an enclosure with the two rabbits from the opening sequence.
Most childrens’ show hosts are cheerful, energetic people who wear eye-catching clothing. The man on-screen is none of those things. This man (“that’s Lan-xiong!” A-Yuan says helpfully) is eye-catching for completely different reasons. When A-Yuan had started talking about 'Lan-xiong' and rabbits, Wei Wuxian had briefly recalled 18-year-old Lan Zhan sitting back on his heels with two baby rabbits in his lap, but the idea of his high school crush hosting a childrens' show had been so ludicrous that Wei Wuxian had chalked it up to coincidence.
So either Wei Wuxian is hallucinating or that is indeed Lan Wangji on-screen, talking to two rabbits. As the host of a childrens' show.
(It's been over ten years since he had last seen Lan Zhan, and he doesn't know how long rabbits live, but there is one white rabbit and one black rabbit and maybe-)
‘Lan-xiong’ begins by offering his hand to the rabbits to sniff, before petting them gently on the head. “Hello, everyone.” His voice is as sonorous as Wei Wuxian remembers, and he speaks in the same soothing manner that Wei Wuxian imagines a meditation teacher would speak. “Shall we find out what Xiao Yin and Xiao Yang want to do today?”
The show is well thought out- the clues are interspersed in such a way that a child could easily connect them, and Lan Zhan throws in little tidbits of information that are clearly meant to be educational. Wei Wuxian can see why the show would appeal to children. Wei Wuxian is also having distinctly un-childlike thoughts about the show's host.
When Lan Zhan goes to the thinking chair to put all the clues together, his pants stretch a little to show the line of his thighs and Wei Wuxian chokes a bit. He feels a bit winded. He'd apparently forgotten how muscular Lan 'probably-only-shops-at-Muji' Wangji was.
“So did you like it, baba?” A-Yuan asks after the episode (webisode) is over. He’s smiling so brightly and he looks so earnest that Wei Wuxian feels bad that he’s essentially spent the last twenty minutes ogling the host of a children’s show.
“It’s great, A-Yuan.” He says weakly. He has absolutely zero idea what the rabbits actually wanted to do. “Really great.”
~~~~~~~
Jiang Cheng had been highly sceptical about the adoption, worried about Wei Wuxian’s job and apartment and ability to handle responsibility. “It’s not that I don’t think you can’t handle responsibility,” his brother had said when Wei Wuxian frowned at the criticism, “it’s only that when it’s just you, the consequences of messing up fall on just you, but with a son everything you do or don’t do has an impact on him too. It’s just… a lot.”
Jin Zixuan, who had been slowly creeping up in Wei Wuxian’s estimation, lost a significant number of ‘I-guess-you’re-okay-if-you-make-Dajie-happy’ points when he pointed out that it was a lot of work. “We were barely holding it together with Jin Ling, and there are two of us,” he had said, “are you sure you can handle it?”
Jiang Yanli had just given him a long look when he had nervously brought it up to her. “If this is what you want, we will always support you,” she had said firmly, clasping his hands in hers. She had lent him a small library of parenting books that she and Jin Zixuan had bought when she was pregnant with Jin Ling, and bullied Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan into helping to re-organise his apartment to prepare for A-Yuan.
Yu-furen’s reaction had been the most surprising. “How are you going to get married with a son?” She berated, “you’re over thirty already, and now you want to adopt. You’re going to be left on the shelf! Why can’t you be more like Yanli and find someone while you’re still young. And you!” she pointed at Jiang Cheng, who had dutifully accompanied Wei Wuxian for moral support, and who had been steadily inching his way behind an increasingly amused Jiang-shu. “When are you going to bring home someone for the new year!”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t know how to tell her that not everyone can fall in love with their mother’s best friend’s son as a child, have a tumultuous relationship as young adults before getting blissfully married, all before thirty. Instead, he tells her that he hasn’t found anyone who would put up with him day-in-day-out and at least this way he’s still providing them with a grandchild. To which Yu-furen had huffed before giving Jiang Cheng a pointed look.
Wei Wuxian enjoys harmless flirting- it’s nice to be wanted! But he’s never been much for relationships. He has many friends, even more acquaintances, but he's never met someone he could envision spending his life with. Never found someone who could understand him, not the itch beneath his skin, nor the conflicting desires to never be forgotten but also to take up as little space as possible.
(That's not entirely true. There had been someone, a long time ago, but- well, that had been as one-sided as it possibly could have been.)
Even so, he's never felt lonely. He has his siblings, his adoptive parents, his friends, his co-workers. And when he needs it, he has his own apartment, his own space that he can retreat to.
Now that he has A-Yuan, dating is even further from his mind. Besides, he works full time and he’s a single parent, where would he even meet someone?
~~~~~~~
A-Yuan isn’t at all a demanding child. He’s not always thrilled about Wei Wuxian’s culinary choices, and even if he doesn’t particularly like gailan , he’ll still eat whatever Wei Wuxian cooks. He sometimes wants to play when Wei Wuxian has to work, but he’ll entertain himself until his father is free. In turn, Wei Wuxian tries to be as indulgent as he can without spoiling A-Yuan the way his sister and brother-in-law spoil Jin Ling. He and A-Yuan make deals- if A-Yuan eats the gailan , they can have cereal for breakfast the following morning; if A-Yuan can keep himself occupied for the next hour, Wei Wuxian will take him to the playground. He likes to think that this give-and-take will teach his son to be aware of what other people need. It helps that A-Yuan is naturally easy-going.
Even at the height of the xiao ding dang craze, A-Yuan had only asked for a xiao ding dang plushie. Wei Wuxian had splurged for a giant one, almost the size of his son, and A-Yuan had loved it until the stuffing started to come out and Jiang Yanli had to come over to ‘operate’ under A-Yuan’s watchful eyes.
But since he began watching Tu ’s Clues, A-Yuan asks daily about having pet bunnies. He breaks out the sad eyes and the mournful shirt-tugging. He hasn’t quite started the crying yet, but Wei Wuxian thinks it must be a matter of days.
“I don’t know anything about taking care of rabbits,” Wei Wuxian says in exasperation. “Pets are a lot of work, A-Yuan.” He wonders if this is how Jiang Cheng had felt when Wei Wuxian had told him about A-Yuan, and sends his brother a silent apology.
“But baba, we can always learn. Lan-xiong says that rabbits are usually very calm, like Xiao Yin and Xiao Yang!” A-Yuan has taken to starting his rabbit-related sentences with “Lan-xiong says”, and Wei Wuxian closes his eyes and briefly imagines shaking Lan Zhan by his shoulders and shouting ‘whhhhyyyyy????’.
“Well, your baba says that he has to think about it more, okay?” His tone is a bit more snappish than he intended and A-Yuan’s lower lip wobbles dangerously. Wei Wuxian sighs and kneels down to place a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m not saying we can never get bunnies, but we need to be sure we know what we’re doing, alright?”
A-Yuan nods, wiping his eyes and leaning forward to hug his father. “Okay.” He mumbles into Wei Wuxian’s t-shirt. And because he’s too smart for his own good- “baba can we please get french fries?”
Laughing, Wei Wuxian pats A-Yuan’s head. “Okay. Do you want curly fries or normal fries?” A-Yuan gives him a ‘are-you-really asking’ look. Wei Wuxian mimes smacking himself on the forehead. “What was I thinking? Curly fries, of course.”
~~~~~~~
The post office is already one of Wei Wuxian’s least favourite places. In a misguided attempt to be fair to the surrounding housing estates it serves, the post office is approximately equidistant to each of them and therefore on the busiest, most inconvenient, intersection ever. Parking is non-existent and A-Yuan isn’t old enough to ride his bicycle on the road, so Wei Wuxian has to take the bus to the interchange and then walk the rest of the way with the unwieldy box of external hard drives one of his co-workers wants shipped to him.
A-Yuan sticks close to him, clutching onto the fold of his trouser pockets since Wei Wuxian doesn’t have any free hands. The public library is nearby, and Wei Wuxian had told A-Yuan that they could look for rabbit care books, so the plan is to head there after a brief detour to post the box.
Wei Wuxian lets A-Yuan wander around the post office while he’s busy at the counter. His son likes looking at the wall showing all the stamps that have been issued over the years and stamps from other countries and has been told numerous times not to wander off without letting his father know. This is a mistake, however, as once Wei Wuxian is done with his errand, he turns to discover that A-Yuan isn’t where he expected- isn’t in the post office at all.
He panics and runs out of the building, shouting A-Yuan’s name. The street is busy and he doesn’t immediately spot A-Yuan. Wei Wuxian looks left and then right, and he doesn’t know which way to go-
"A-Yuan!" He shouts again. People are starting to look at him. “A-Yuan!”
"Baba! Look who I found!" He hears his son call out behind him. Wei Wuxian whips his head around and sure enough it's A-Yuan. He's smiling and doing the thing where he rocks back and forth on his feet that means that A-Yuan is feeling especially excited.
Wei Wuxian rushes to his son and crouches down in front of him, checking to see if he’s alright. He’s so relieved that he gives A-Yuan a too-tight hug. “A-Yuan! You scared me so much!”
A-Yuan must realise from his tone of voice that he really is upset, because his face falls. “Sorry baba. I saw Lan-xiong so I went to say hello!”
Wei Wuxian looks up at the man who has been silently hovering behind A-Yuan and between the short but gut-wrenching panic of losing track of his son and the person in front of him, he’s stunned speechless and can only gape.
A-Yuan tugs on the pants of the host of Tu’s Clues (aka the most beautiful man alive) to get his attention. “Lan-xiong, this is my baba! We watch your show together!” A-Yuan does a ‘ta-da!’ motion at Wei Wuxian.
“Hello.” Lan Zhan says awkwardly, meeting Wei Wuxian’s eyes. He has a ‘deer in the headlights’ look about him.
Wei Wuxian picks his jaw off the ground, trying to act like a normal human being. “Ah- Lan Zhan! It's been so long.” He grins.
Lan Wangji doesn’t look annoyed that his day has been interrupted, but his facial expression also doesn’t change. “Wei…Ying,” he says.
Wei Wuxian’s smile falters, but he rallies himself. “You know, you’re the reason why A-Yuan here wants to get rabbits. You should buy us lunch as punishment!” He cringes internally once the words are out of his mouth. Shamelessness works well when you’re eighteen and in high school, not so much when you’re pushing thirty-five and have a son. Wei Wuxian can already see Jiang Cheng’s facepalm. His brother always said his mouth worked faster than his brain.
“Lunch.” Lan Wangji echos. He looks a bit dazed. “I- someone is waiting for me back home. I have to go.” He gives Wei Wuxian a nod and A-Yuan a pat on the head before speed-walking away. “Bye Lan-xiong!” A-Yuan calls after him, waving enthusiastically.
Ouch. Wei Wuxian isn't sure what to think of that. His heart is still beating a mile a minute from seeing Lan Zhan. He had thought that he and Lan Zhan had been friends in high school but his memory is famously bad and now he's wondering if maybe..they weren't as close as he had thought. After all, Lan Zhan had basically run away from him.
And- he had said something about someone waiting for him at home. Wei Wuxian feels as though he's been punched in the stomach. It figures that Lan Wangji, who is really one of the best people Wei Wuxian has ever known, would be attached. Which is great! Lan Zhan deserves to be happy, he tells himself.
“Baba, baba!” A-Yuan says excitedly, thankfully completely oblivious to his father’s crisis. “We have to get rabbits now since we saw Lan-xiong! It’s fate!”
Wei Wuxian turns back to give his son an amused look. “Fate? Who’s teaching you about fate?”
“Jin Ling-” of course, he should have realised. “-said that shushu said that gugu and gufu were fated to be together because gufu fell into a lotus pond in front of gugu.” Wei Wuxian laughs. He’s pretty sure that’s not what Jiang Cheng said, but it’s good that he’s teaching Jin Ling the family tradition of making fun of Jin Zixuan.
~~~~~~~
Wei Wuxian doesn't really believe in fate. When you're orphaned before you turn five and have heard over and over that 'when it's your time to go, it's your time to go', it's easy to be resentful about it. He doesn't want to believe his parents were 'fated' to die young, or that he was 'fated' to linger in the underfunded, understaffed orphanage for several years after.
But if he were to believe in it, it would have been because of meeting Lan Zhan; of how he had seen Lan Zhan for the first time and immediately felt something he had never realised had been missing in him fall into place. In his joy he had not considered that Lan Zhan had not had the same revelation.
Lan Zhan had never approved of him. He had gotten annoyed when Wei Wuxian would debate their teachers, which to be fair, Wei Wuxian had been an arrogant little snot. But Lan Zhan was also the only one who ever listened. Wei Wuxian knew his classmates tended to tune him out whenever he spoke in class. But Lan Zhan listened, and Wei Wuxian knew this because Lan Zhan would wait until school was over to hand him a written critique of everything he had disagreed with Wei Wuxian about.
And Wei Wuxian would be irritated at Lan Zhan for being a teacher's pet for ten minutes before oscillating back to wanting Lan Zhan's attention. For Wei Wuxian, whose attention span had frequently been compared to that of a magpie's, it's something of an anomaly.
He still doesn't understand why other people hadn't found Lan Zhan as fascinating as he had. He knows most people thought Lan Zhan nerdy or boring or intimidating, and even Wei Wuxian will admit that his whole goody-two-shoes thing in school had been kind of annoying, but if prodded enough, Lan Zhan had had so much fire in him that Wei Wuxian had been helplessly drawn as a moth to a flame. He had seen it in the gaze that Lan Zhan would turn upon him and the way he gritted out "Wei Ying" when pushed too far.
Wei Wuxian especially enjoyed it when Lan Zhan’s snarky side emerged. “Wei YIng- that’s not right, that’s not even wrong ,” Lan Zhan had said to him once in complete exasperation, and Wei Wuxian had burst out laughing so hard that their disagreement/argument/debate had been forgotten.
But Lan Zhan had always kept the boundaries of their friendship drawn- after school, when Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng and their classmates would go goof off for a bit before returning home, Lan Zhan would disappear almost immediately. Wei Wuxian always invited him, and Lan Zhan always turned him down.
"He's such a jerk to you, I don't know why you keep trying to be friends with him," Jiang Cheng had said to him once.
Feeling unaccountably defensive, Wei Wuxian had said, "We are friends, and Lan Zhan isn't rude to me! He pulled me out of the pool that one time."
Jiang Cheng had simply scoffed. "Lan Wangji would have helped save a drowning raccoon. I said he was a jerk, not that he didn't have manners." And then he had banned Wei Wuxian from talking about Lan Zhan more than three times a day. At the time, Wei Wuxian had chalked it up to sibling jealousy. But then the Great Garden Party Debacle of 2010 had happened and all of Jiang Cheng's anger had turned toward Jin Zixuan and Wei Wuxian could talk about Lan Zhan as much as he wanted again.
~~~~~~~
Wei Wuxian sometimes idly wonders if A-Yuan has this visual of a ‘health bar’ above his father’s head, and it would be depleted every time A-Yuan says ‘rabbit’ or ‘bunny’ and eventually Wei Wuxian would be worn down and surrender and get rabbits.
As part of A-Yuan’s Campaign For Rabbit Ownership, he insists on having Wei Wuxian watch an episode of Tu ’s Clues with him every evening. And okay, Wei Wuxian will admit that Xiao Yin and Xiao Yang are growing on him because bunnies are actually pretty cute (and infinitely better than dogs) and watching them clean their tiny faces and hop onto Lan Zhan’s lap is objectively adorable. And even though he can't be certain that they're the same rabbits, Wei Wuxian starts calling them "our babies" in his head.
The fact that it’s Lan Zhan is also an issue.
"Hypothetically speaking- have you ever had a band you really loved when you were a teenager but then they disbanded so you gradually stopped listening to their music but once in a while still think about them with fond nostalgia? And then one day over a decade later, the band is having a revival tour and suddenly you're thinking about buying 500 dollar plane tickets and VIP concert tickets and booking hotels?" Wei Wuxian says over the phone.
"...No?" His brother-in-law (ugh) replies unhelpfully.
Wei Wuxian huffs. "You're useless. Give jiejie the phone!"
"Wait. You're in love with Lan Wangji?" Jin Zixuan says in disbelief, still obviously stuck two steps behind. His sister married an idiot.
"I am not in love with him! I just really liked spending time with him!" Wei Wuxian protests weakly.
"Jiang Cheng told me you followed him around for years and mooned over his…everything." Jin Zixuan says dubiously. Jiang Cheng is a traitor.
"Oh I'm sorry, who was the one who thought insulting his crush was a suitable way to win her heart?" Wei Wuxian replies snidely. He will never let Jin Zixuan live down the Great Garden Party Debacle of 2010. He and Jiang Cheng had promised each other.
"Oh look! Yanli is here." Jin Zixuan says loudly, ignoring Wei Wuxian. "I'll pass her the phone."
"Jie, why did you marry that moron?" He wails over the phone.
Jiang Yanli laughs, because she's several years past the stage where she worried about her brothers and husband getting along. She'd be worried if they didn't have this 'argument' at least once a week.
"So I'm guessing that A-Yuan made you watch Tu 's Clues with him? Or is there another reason we're talking about Lan Wangji?" She asks.
"I can't believe you didn't warn me," Wei Wuxian replies sulkily. "And now A-Yuan wants rabbits and likes Lan Zhan more than me. What am I supposed to do?"
"Ask him on a date?" Jiang Yanli says, showing her husband's awful influence. In the background, Wei Wuxian hears Jin Zixuan yell "Insult him to his face. It worked for me!"
Wei Wuxian doesn't bother to dignify that with a reply. "I did! Ask him on a date, that is. Sort of. But then he said he was seeing someone and basically power walked away." Wei Wuxian's stomach twists at the memory. Apparently ten years hasn't made him any more tolerable to Lan Zhan.
Some of his unhappiness must leak into his voice, because Jiang Yanli makes an apologetic sound over the phone and takes pity on him by changing the subject, telling him about Jin Ling's swimming lessons. She even throws in an old story of Jin Ling re-enacting his father falling into a lotus pond.
When he finally hangs up, he feels a little better. Nothing is different now, he tells himself. He can sit through twenty minutes a day of watching Lan Zhan playing with rabbits, and eventually the rabbits will run out of things they want to do and he can finally move on.
Wei Wuxian takes a moment to remember the blissful days when the xiao ding dang theme song was the worst part of his evening.
~~~~~~~
Lan Zhan had always intended to go to university after graduating. He had not ever raised the topic with Wei Wuxian, but it was expected of him, and the way his ears turned pink when Wei Wuxian had jokingly asked "doctor, lawyer, or engineer?" made it plain enough.
Wei Wuxian had wanted to leave for university. He wasn't so much bothered by the prestige of the university as the location, and he had told Lan Zhan as much. Whenever they ate lunch together (which was all the time), Wei Wuxian would ramble on about the relative merits of this university versus that university while Lan Zhan listened silently.
One day, when he had paused to have a drink of water, Lan Zhan had quietly said. "Wei Ying- I am staying here for university."
Wei Wuxian remembers being surprised and somewhat panicked when he realised that his plans and Lan Zhan's plans did not intersect. "Lan Zhan, that's so boring! Haven't you lived here your whole life? I personally can't imagine staying here." He had said a whole bunch of meaningless things, as he did when he was worried. It seemed so obvious when Lan Zhan brought it up, but it had been so natural to include Lan Zhan when he had vague images of his future.
Lan Zhan did not say more on the topic, and Wei Wuxian stopped talking about going to university during their lunch breaks. It was a very head-in-the-ground approach to dealing with their paths diverging, but it was the easiest.
The last day they had seen each other, Wei Wuxian had cornered Lan Zhan after school and said, "Lan Zhan! Come with me, I have something for you!" He proceeded to drag Lan Zhan to the school field, where he had handed over a cardboard box containing two tiny rabbits.
"I know you weren't allowed pets when you were growing up, but you're going to university now, so you can make your own rules! Right, xiaotutu-men ?"
Lan Zhan had looked at him then, eyes large. Eventually he smiled, just a tiny curve of his lips, and said, "thank you, Wei Ying," in that gentle way of his.
In retrospect, Wei Wuxian realises two things. First- he had apparently spent a lot of time looking at Lan Zhan's lips, which probably should have been a Clue. And secondly- he had unwittingly sown the seeds for Tu 's Clues back then.
He groans. He had done this to himself.
~~~~~~~
When he and Jiang Cheng had been eleven, they had their minds blown by Nie Huaisang casually mentioning that the word 'bed' looked like a bed and then neither of them could ever unsee it again. Wei Wuxian wonders if that's why he sees Lan Zhan all the time now. He's seen Lan Zhan, thinks more about Lan Zhan over the course of the day than in the previous year. Lan Zhan is suddenly everywhere.
Wei Wuxian has three hours free every Saturday morning when Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan take A-Yuan and Jin Ling for their swim lessons and then brunch. He goes to his usual coffee shop, gets a drink with a hideous amount of sugar and one of their amazing coffee buns, and then reads the same trashy romance novels he used to make fun of Nie Huaisang for (the kind that wouldn’t even make it to airport bookstore shelves).
This week, when he arrives, he immediately notices Lan Zhan sitting in his usual spot. Lan Zhan's eyes widen briefly before he raises a hand awkwardly in greeting. Wei Wuxian is both perplexed and just a little pleased.
"Lan Zhan! What are you doing here?" He asks. There is an empty chair opposite Lan Zhan, but he isn't sure if he's welcome to take it so he remains standing.
"Wei Ying," he replies, tilting his head a fraction to indicate the empty seat, "I got you a drink and coffee bun."
Wei Wuxian sinks into the chair, a bit baffled. On the table is his usual order, the drink is still steaming and the bun has the characteristic "fresh out the oven" aroma. "Ah- Lan Zhan, thank you! How did you know what I usually get here?"
Lan Zhan purses his lips, which is Lan Zhan for 'I don't want to answer this question', but his eyes flicker almost imperceptibly to the counter. Wei Wuxian turns and sees A'Qing unsubtly waving at him, a cheeky smile on her face.
"I was rude the other day," Lan Zhan says haltingly. "I wanted to apologise."
Wei Wuxian blinks at him for a few moments before laughing. "Hahaha, no need to apologise, please. You were in a hurry when A-Yuan attached himself to you. You're not obliged to make time for an old high school classmate!"
Lan Zhan's lips briefly dip into a frown (and Wei Wuxian forces himself to tear his eyes away from Lan Zhan's lips). "In truth I was surprised to see you so suddenly after so long."
This time it's Wei Wuxian's turn to frown. For as long as he's known Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan had never been hesitant with him. It's a little discomfiting. "Aiya Lan Zhan, I'm still me! Nothing surprising there."
From there, they easily fall back into their old behaviour. Wei Wuxian tells Lan Zhan increasingly ridiculous stories about what he's been up to the past decade or so, and Lan Zhan listens to him indulgently. Every so often he asks a question or makes a remark, and Wei Wuxian is reminded of how Lan Zhan had always paid attention to anything he said. He can't help but smile.
Halfway through telling Lan Zhan about the time he had ended up in Sydney, Canada in the middle of winter instead of Sydney, Australia in the middle of summer, Wei Wuxian's mobile phone pings. A quick glance at it tells him that he's about to be late picking A-Yuan up from his sister's place.
"Ack! Sorry Lan Zhan, I have to go get A-Yuan. You shouldn't have let me take up so much of your time." He chugs the rest of his now-cold drink, unable to leave food lying around, and stuffs the remaining half of the coffee bun into his mouth.
"Always have time for Wei Ying," Lan Zhan says firmly. Wei Wuxian is momentarily stunned, and then he flushes. If he didn't have to pick his son up and if he hadn't known that Lan Zhan was attached, he would probably be cartwheeling internally, or hugging Lan Zhan (or both). But he's snapped out of it by his phone pinging again; this time Jiang Yanli is texting him that A-Yuan is threatening to take away 'one bunny point for every minute baba is late', followed by three cry-laughing emojis.
He gives Lan Zhan an apologetic grin and a wave before dragging himself away. He turns once- when he's at the cafe door, and when he looks up, eyes inevitably finding Lan Zhan, he sees Lan Zhan looking right back.
It starts getting strange after that. He runs into Lan Zhan all over the place- leaving the supermarket, at the park with A-Yuan, and even once on the bus. Wei Wuxian wonders if Lan Zhan moved into the area recently or if he somehow had just never noticed Lan Zhan before (improbably to the point of impossibility). When asked, Lan Zhan had just said, “no, I’ve been living in this area for a few years now” before inviting Wei Wuxian and A-Yuan to lunch.
He has no reprieve at home either. Probably because of their high encounter rate with Lan Zhan, A-Yuan is still holding strong in the Rabbit Campaign, and still starts half his sentences with 'Lan-xiong says' even though Wei Wuxian is sure that Lan Zhan has never once said "ten books is not too many" during any episode (webisode) of Tu 's Clues.
Wei Wuxian is truly glad that Lan Zhan is part of his life again. He’s just also a bit (a lot) bewildered. When they had been in school together, Wei Wuxian had almost always been the one to seek Lan Zhan out. But now it seems that every time he leaves his apartment, Lan Zhan pops out from behind a door or a tree. He doesn’t dare question it too much- part of him wonders if Lan Zhan is running some long con, but mostly he’s happy.
It’s quite sweet, he thinks wistfully, that Lan Zhan wants to be friends with him again.