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Wei Ying is lying to him.
It’s not the first time Lan Zhan’s suspected this. After weeks of assimilation—teaching Wei Ying table manners, taking him to work, showing him how to play the guqin—Lan Zhan has come to understand that his soulmate isn’t just quick-witted and highly intelligent. He’s also one of the fastest learners Lan Zhan has ever seen.
There should be no excuse for Wei Ying to still need help taking a bath. And yet.
“Lan Zhaaan! Help me turn on the tub?”
He doesn’t even look up from his book. “Haven’t you already understood the way it works?”
“There are too many knobs!” Wei Ying complains from the bathroom. Lan Zhan can imagine him pouting at the tub’s edge, bottom lip jutting out where he’s gnawed it red. Lan Zhan does his best not to imagine. “Come on, please?”
Lan Zhan should probably say something. Lying is a terrible habit, for humans and shapeshifters alike. It isn’t like he doesn’t know Wei Ying is lying anyhow.
But.
Lan Zhan slowly exhales through his nose. The bookmark on his pillow—a dried peony, delicately preserved—fits between two pages, just thick enough to mark his place. He sets the book aside.
The bathroom he and Wei Ying share is modest. There are fluffy white towels and a cat-shaped clock (courtesy of their latest IKEA run); there’s a healthy-sized tub and an attached shower with rust-free water valves. Their bathtub is even big enough to sit on the edge and wash hair.
Wei Ying is currently seated on said edge. He’s tied his hair into a messy bun with his favorite scrunchie. He’s pouting exactly as Lan Zhan imagined.
He’s wrapped in a fluffy towel and nothing else.
Lan Zhan would like to think himself a disciplined man. He’s never broken a rule in his entire life, both public or personal. He has a careful routine he follows every day. He takes his lifestyle very seriously, from eating properly and exercising to being the best middle-school science teacher possible.
Even so. At the end of the day, Lan Zhan is only a man—a man weak for one creature only, who laughs like glass bells and smiles like blooming springtime.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says.
Wei Ying crosses his arms. “The knobs, Lan Zhan! The knobs! I don’t know why I can’t remember them—it’s this terrible memory of mine, you know?”
A terrible memory that learned how to read in three days, Lan Zhan thinks. “Mm.”
Then, the same as all the times before: “Could you turn on the bath for me?”
It isn’t that Wei Ying doesn’t use the shower. He does—every day, even. It is simply that one evening Wei Ying had pointed to the lower spigot in the shower and asked, “What’s that for?”
Lan Zhan—helpless to his soulmate’s whims—showed him. He then had to make a bath for Wei Ying, describing how to take one, and offer him the never-used bubble bath kept under Lan Zhan’s sink.
It was a gift from Brother, once.
Now Wei Ying deigns to use the bubble bath whenever he pleases: before dinner, on a weekend morning, in the afternoon glow of a lazy Sunday. He picks the warmest, fluffiest towels out of the linen closet and drapes himself in them; he pours the bubbles until they nearly overflow, filling the bathroom with the heady aroma of lotuses and jasmine. If Lan Zhan cannot find him elsewhere in the apartment, Wei Ying is always in the bath.
It drives Lan Zhan mad. Wei Ying knows it drives him mad. Lan Zhan can see it in the curvature of his soulmate’s smile, in the glint of his eyes when he draws Lan Zhan to the tub.
Wei Ying truly possesses a cat’s cruelty.
“The same as last time,” the shifter prompts. He wiggles his toes—yet another source of humanity-born delight—against the side of the tub. “No colder, please. You made it just right!”
“Alright.”
Lan Zhan feels Wei Ying’s eyes on him as he bends over. The knobs are cool under his palms and the water runs freely when he turns them. Once for cold; twice for hot.
The tub fills. Wei Ying smiles, dragging his feet through lapping waves. The towel slouches where it rests around his waist.
Time and time again. How much will Wei Ying lie before Lan Zhan’s patience breaks?
Lan Zhan turns away. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Eh? But Lan Zhan, look! I even brought a towel for you, too!”
So there is. Lan Zhan blinks at the folded item. Innocuous; fluffy. Surely like Wei Ying’s intentions.
“I can’t,” he makes himself say. It isn’t a lie. Lan Zhan cannot, not without both of them falling to unintended consequences. If Wei Ying wants to bathe and only bathe, he must do it alone.
“You can. Unless..” Wei Ying pauses, shifting. “You don’t want to?”
Ah, Lan Zhan thinks. So there it is.
Slowly—carefully—he turns around. Wei Ying still sits at the edge of the tub, but the towel’s been thrown away. A soft dripping noise echoes above them. The unmistakable scent of lotuses blooms.
The bubble bath, Lan Zhan’s brain supplies weakly.
Lan Zhan cannot tell a lie. His legacy—years under his uncle, following Brother’s model—forbids it. Wei Ying knows this.
His throat is terribly dry. “I do.”
“Then join me,” Wei Ying says. He sinks into the mass of bubbles like a polished stone.
There are two paths Lan Zhan can take. One path, the right one, is to refuse Wei Ying and go back to the bedroom. Perhaps the kitchen. Wei Ying will be left to yet another bath alone, splashing amongst the bubbles until he prunes. A safe path. Proper.
The other path is to join him.
Lan Zhan touches the folded towel. It’s incredibly soft—a purchase made at Wei Ying’s urging when he deemed the old towels too thin. His fingers sink into its tantalizing threads like gentle down.
“Okay,” he says.
Stripping is quick. First go his socks; then, his shirt. He lays his belt carefully on the folded square of his pants.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whines. “The water’s going to get cold. Hurry up.”
Lan Zhan takes a moment to pray to any god listening. Please, he thinks. Give me the strength to survive. And then he shucks off his underwear.
The water is—good. Warm. Bubbles tickle where they kiss bare skin, brushing up his calves, over his hip bones, into his belly button. Lan Zhan sits carefully across from Wei Ying. Their knees still press even with porcelain at his back.
Wei Ying’s eyes flutter open. His cheeks are pink as the sunsets he loves, a flush that spreads from his collarbones to the planes of his chest. He catches Lan Zhan’s eye—and smiles.
Lan Zhan forgets how to breathe.
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Wei Ying’s toe pokes his calf. “There’s plenty of space, too! We each get our own bubble hoard.”
“Yes,” Lan Zhan manages to croak. “Very.. fortuitous.”
And then, because Wei Ying wouldn’t be himself without threatening Lan Zhan’s good health, he says, “Oh, I know! Let me wash your hair!”
“What?” Wei Ying’s already pushing forward onto his knees, reaching for the shampoo. “Wei Ying, that won’t be necessary. I—”
Wei Ying’s eyelashes flutter. “You won’t let me?”
The heat crawling up Lan Zhan’s throat stutters in his mouth. “Ah, no. I..” He wets his lips. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” Wei Ying says. His cheeks crinkle with the force of his smile. “Come here.”
There’s no avoiding the way their skin brushes: wet against wet, warmth against warmth. Lan Zhan turns in a desperate attempt to keep his sanity and feels his palm slide over Wei Ying’s thigh, fingernails precariously scraping a hipbone. Wei Ying’s gasp is too loud in the space they share.
“Sorry,” Lan Zhan mutters. His heart feels as if it’s going to burst through his ribs.
“..It’s fine.” Wei Ying’s voice tickles gently at his ear. “I don’t mind.”
Wet fingers comb through his hair. Lan Zhan tries to ignore the goosebumps erupting over his skin. He closes his eyes, willing himself to stillness. The whisper of Wei Ying’s breath on his nape is nearly overwhelming.
Wei Ying is extremely fastidious. He lathers the soap into Lan Zhan’s scalp, pressing at the back of his head in easy, circular motions. He combs through the strands, tugging them to attention to work at the roots. Once, his fingernails trace Lan Zhan’s ears. It tickles.
There’s a cup kept in the shower now for moments like this. Wei Ying takes it, scooping and pouring gently over Lan Zhan’s scalp. He combs as he rinses, working the soap out, ushering suds down Lan Zhan’s spine.
And then—all too soon—the work is done.
“You’re all clean,” Wei Ying announces. His voice wobbles on some unknown note. “You can check if you want, but I think I did a good job.”
Lan Zhan opens his eyes. “There’s no need. I trust you.”
“Ha! Ah, Lan Zhan, you’re too kind to me.” Waves splash at Lan Zhan’s backside. “Um.. I was thinking..”
Hesitation is strange on Wei Ying. “Oh?”
“Well..” More splashing. Wei Ying goes dangerously still then, his voice close enough to send every hair on Lan Zhan’s arms on end. “Could I.. see you?”
Now this, this is dangerous territory. Lan Zhan fears what Wei Ying will see in his eyes if he turns. He’s hungry in a way he’s been careful not to acknowledge—a fiery ache that coils in his stomach, crawling up his throat.
But who is he if not a man weak to Wei Ying’s every whim?
“Wei Ying,” he warns. “Are you certain?”
His soulmate’s laughter is high and shaky. “How could I not be? It’s Lan Zhan, after all.”
There’s nothing to be done, then. Lan Zhan sighs, exhaling through the tightness in his throat, and turns.
The bubbles are high. They can’t see any of each other below the abdomen, but Lan Zhan finds it doesn’t matter anyway. Wei Ying is so beautiful, he would be content to gaze upon his face alone for the rest of their days.
Water becomes him. Crystalline droplets bead like diamonds on Wei Ying’s skin, highlighting the hollow of his throat, the shapes of his muscles. His hair, tousled by their bath’s heat, curls where it’s spilled free around his earlobes. Lan Zhan aches with the need to kiss him.
“You’re all wet,” Wei Ying observes breathlessly. His purple-grey eyes glitter like jewels. “The great Lan Zhan, soaked like a puppy!”
“You’re wet too,” Lan Zhan points out.
“Ah, so I am! So I am.”
Silence stretches between them. Lan Zhan thinks about how they’ve skipped the order of courtship rituals—surely kissing comes before seeing each other naked? But then, he’d already seen Wei Ying naked before even knowing who he truly was..
Wei Ying breaks through his reverie with a hesitant gesture: a single finger, poised to tap at Lan Zhan’s chest.
“You have a bubble stuck to you,” he murmurs softly. He reddens, a lovely lotus blooming in the sun of affection. “Ah, and there’s one here too..”
Wei Ying taps his way up, up, up to Lan Zhan’s neck. There his fingers freeze—poised on the edge of an unknown boundary. How are there any of those left, after what they’ve learned of each other?
No more hesitation.
Lan Zhan lifts his own hand—careful to allow Wei Ying the chance to pull away—and guides Wei Ying’s fingers to his nape.
Their eyes meet. Wei Ying’s lips part. His breath is warm over Lan Zhan’s mouth, a sweet promise of something new.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan whispers. “Can I kiss you?”
Eyelashes flutter. Wei Ying’s lips are dewey and red, slick from his tongue’s trace. He bites down even as Lan Zhan watches, his cheeks darkening to rose.
“Yes,” he breathes.
Lan Zhan’s pulse races beneath his skin. He fears he might burst with his heart’s insistence to lean in, to press, to take.
He swallows. His hands rise to match Wei Ying’s, fingers dampening where they tangle in dry strands. And then—they meet.
It’s messy. No one has ever taught Wei Ying to kiss. He bumps hard against Lan Zhan’s mouth: lips firm, noses squishing where he fails to tilt. He exhales in a soft laugh against Lan Zhan’s chin, teeth curving against the skin.
But it’s fine. It’s perfect because it’s Wei Ying, and nobody else has stolen Lan Zhan’s heart so completely and irrevocably.
Lan Zhan’s fingers stroke Wei Ying’s nape. The skin there is so soft, wonderfully so. He trails nails over the hairs and delights at the way it makes his soulmate shiver, the way Wei Ying’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks.
“Wei Ying,” he murmurs.
“Lan Zhan.”
The second time they meet is—neater. Lan Zhan guides Wei Ying’s head, coaxing him with soft presses into a rhythm, and the way Wei Ying instantly catches on—always the sharp learner, how Lan Zhan adores him—makes his heart sing.
Mine, Lan Zhan’s heart whispers. Mine, mine, mine.
It’s easy, then, to slip another hand down Wei Ying’s spine. Every nodule is a treasure unearthed; every inch, a beautiful journey. The way his back bows to Lan Zhan’s touch stokes the heat in his belly—he presses, unable to hold back, and gathers Wei Ying entirely to him.
Molten heat. Their skin burns where they touch. Wei Ying gasps— loud, a startling sound in the silence—and Lan Zhan swallows him down, down, down.
The gorgeous canvas that makes up Wei Ying is ripe for marking, so he does: biting Wei Ying’s plush mouth, his delicate neck, the smooth slope of his shoulder. Dark splotches bloom beneath Lan Zhan’s mouth like unfurling petals. He kisses them all, soothing the sting of teeth.
Wei Ying shudders. The noises he makes—sweet, rasping—are heavenly, as is the dig of his nails into Lan Zhan’s hair. He clutches as if afraid he’ll drown, pressing himself to every inch of skin he can, tracing the contours of Lan Zhan’s back frantically.
He is beautiful, and Lan Zhan will never let him go.
“Lan Zhan,” he groans. “Lan Zhan..”
Fingers tug. Hair cascades down to the water, tangling in Lan Zhan’s fingers like silk. He can’t help but gently tug, drinking down the song Wei Ying so willingly sings in response. He’s perfect, terrifyingly so, and Lan Zhan is consumed with the smell of him, the feel of him, the taste of him—
Splash!
Lan Zhan jerks back with a gasp. Water sloshes down into his eyes; he wipes it away, frantically blinking. Wei Ying stares up at him from where he’s flopped back into the tub. He’s soaked his whole head.
They look at each other.
“Ah, Lan Zhan..” Wei Ying bites his lip. His mouth is swollen, his cheeks red, but that doesn’t stop him from tipping his head back and laughing uproariously.
Later, when they’ve drained the tub and wrapped in soft robes and shuffled off to hide under the covers, Lan Zhan marvels at the mess he’s made. Wei Ying’s neck, pale as a morning cloud, is mottled with bruises that look almost painful. He reaches out and gently traces one with a frown.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Wei Ying covers his hand with a soft smile. “You didn’t,” he promises. His cheeks flood with color. “I, ah.. It only aches a little. No worse than my head, anyway!”
Lan Zhan buries his face into the pillow to the melody of Wei Ying’s laughter.
He shouldn’t feel such pride at marking Wei Ying. The shifter is already his, just in the way he is Wei Ying’s. They are irreversibly marked. Eternally intertwined.
Even so.
No, Lan Zhan decides. Perhaps I will let him lie about this for just another day.