Chapter Text
Lan Zhan never usually takes the train this late.
In fact, he’s usually at least three hours asleep by now. But the last day of this weekend’s family affairs, at the Lan manor in Suzhou, had dragged well late into the evening, well beyond his typical curfew. He had needed to jog to catch the last remaining train bound for Shanghai at — he checks his watch. 11:54. That had been nearly twenty minutes ago.
Lan Zhan fights to stay awake, his eyes gritty as he blinks through half-sleep. The train pitches beneath him like the storm-tossed deck of a ship, rolling with metallic keens along the bumpy spine of the railway.
There’s only one other person in the train car with him, which makes sense, given the hour. The man is wearing dark jeans, scuffed high-tops, and a black sweatshirt, the hood pulled up so that only the lower half of his face is visible. A white headphones cord dangles down his front. He sways loosely with the motions of the train, absorbed in something on his phone.
Lan Zhan observes him sleepily for a moment before he returns to staring at the peeling, yellowed map of the train circuit. The lights here are harsh, white-hot fluorescents. In his tiredness, at this hour, it gives Lan Zhan a strange sense of unreality, like he’s stepping from one dream to another.
The train shudders, jolts as dark-spun tunnels flash past the windows, as he, the stranger, and the train are swallowed further and further into the earth.
The Lans’ monthly conference had not been a peaceful one, Lan Zhan reflects. A new cultivation method involving an unprecedented use of talisman had recently appeared in the western sects and has, in the weeks since, grown rapidly in popularity; some of the smaller cultivation groups had begun to use it rather freely. The gathered Lans had argued over it well into the weekend, in the way that only Lans can — button-lipped, sparse-worded, and riddled with passive-aggressive snipes at each other’s comportment. Even his brother’s famed mediation skills could do little to temper this weekend’s hostility. Additionally, Lan Zhan had found himself caught on the defense from an inconspicuous attempt by one of the elders to set him up with his second-eldest granddaughter — not for the first time — so overall, Lan Zhan’s current fatigue extends beyond the physical. His thoughts turn to his quiet apartment, the wistful idea of slipping between freshly laundered sheets to —
And then the train slams to a shuddering stop, so violently that the momentum pitches Lan Zhan forward. The halt is so abrupt that some of the overheard lights flicker and fizzle, a blinking darkness dropping over the train car like a blanket over a lampshade.
It is made clear, after several moments of ensuing stillness, that the train has no indication of moving again, at least not anytime soon.
Of course. Lan Zhan closes his eyes and casts out for his thinning patience. He could probably fall asleep here, if he really needed to. He’s accustomed to transit delays, but not usually so far past his bedtime.
He waits for the conductor’s voice to crackle over the intercom, to explain a temporary delay or a maintenance issue, some suggestion of when they’ll start moving again — anything at all.
Nothing comes. For several moments, in the silence, there’s only this: the fluorescent buzz of a lone light wickering on and off, the muted, tinny music from the man’s headphones, and the soft, metallic creak of the train settling beneath Lan Zhan’s feet.
The man removes one earbud, tilting his chin up. Though still cloaked by the hoodie, the movement reveals part of a handsome face, its features oddly familiar for reasons Lan Zhan can’t grasp. Lan Zhan stares, trying to place it, to pin some wriggling, distant memory under a thumb. He wonders if his exhaustion is spinning figments, connections where they don’t exist.
The man opens his mouth and speaks. His tone is friendly. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Lan Zhan replies. “The conductor hasn’t said anything yet.”
“Hmm,” the man says, and removes the other earbud. He pockets his phone. “Spooky.”
It’s not the word Lan Zhan would have chosen, but he supposes the assessment is not incorrect.
“Hey,” the man says, still in that amiable tone of voice, but his face is unsmiling. He’s peeled back the oversized sleeve of his hoodie to observe his forearm. His voice is directed to Lan Zhan. “Tell me, do you have goosebumps?”
Lan Zhan looks down at his own arms, the white sleeves of his dress-shirt rolled up neatly to the elbow. The skin there prickles — he hadn’t felt it at first, but he can see each hair on end, as though responding to static electricity.
“Yes,” he says, and the man nods, business-like, and moves, brushing past Lan Zhan and heading toward the exit of the train car.
“What are you — ” Lan Zhan begins, baffled, then watches speechlessly as the man pops open the door and vanishes down onto the tracks, black disappearing into black.
Lan Zhan stares for another moment, still not entirely sure he’s not dreaming this entire bizarre scenario. Then he sighs and follows, because he’s simply too curious not to.
The outside tunnel is dark as pitch, and shockingly cold. An icy draft batters against him from one direction, damp-smelling and earthen. It slices clean through the thin fabric of his dress-shirt. Lan Zhan rolls down his sleeves, shivering as he seeks out the stranger in the dark.
“Ah, you followed me!” the man says, closer than he’d thought. He sounds oddly delighted about it. “Here, one moment.”
There’s the sound of paper crinkling, and then a light talisman flares up, illuminating the man’s face in odd angles and shadow-shapes. The hoodie is pushed back now, revealing strangely endearing ears that stick out, a crop of dark hair that hangs into the man’s eyes, and yes, a very handsome face.
Seeing the rest of his features slides something into alignment in Lan Zhan. Before he can stop himself, he says, nearly chokes, “Wei Ying,” and then freezes.
Wei Ying stills too. His expression settles, almost carefully, into its current mold.
“Have we met?” Wei Ying asks. He tilts his head a little to the side and watches Lan Zhan closely. His gaze cuts like flint now, hardened and wary.
Lan Zhan burns with embarrassment, his throat closing around the words.
He and Wei Ying had — it’s ridiculous, but — he and Wei Ying had attended high school together, for a short window of time, a long number of years ago. Lan Zhan had been absolutely, unequivocally infatuated with him — typhooned by the obsessive despair that only a first crush can engineer, but still a fervor that Lan Zhan hasn’t experienced since.
Wei Ying had transferred out, along with his two cousins, their second year, had moved to a different city. Lan Zhan had cried about it for a week.
In calling his name, Lan Zhan has effectively outed the depth of this pathetic obsession. The chances that Wei Ying remembers him, from so long ago and for such a brief time, are incredibly slim.
“I —” Lan Zhan tries to say. Wei Ying is still watching him, his frown deepening as Lan Zhan struggles.
“School,” Lan Zhan manages. “We went to school together.”
Wei Ying blinks three times, then holds the talisman up closer, running his gaze searchingly over Lan Zhan’s face while Lan Zhan burns, mortified, beneath the amber glow of it.
Then Wei Ying lights up, a sunbeam fracturing through the dark, brighter than the talisman.
“Oh my god, Lan Zhan!” he says, and Lan Zhan hadn’t realized that suspicion had made Wei Ying’s frame so rigid, because the sudden ease of tension is palpable. “What are the chances of — wait, hang on, I can’t believe you recognized me!”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan says, hot from his neck to his ears.
Wei Ying laughs, joyful peals just like Lan Zhan remembers, only much deeper. He’s grown so — handsome, Lan Zhan thinks, a little dazedly. Wei Ying had always been cute, but cute in a mismatched, preteen way; his two front teeth had been a little too long for the rest, earning him some mean nicknames from their peers. Rabbit something or other. He’d been gangly as he’d grown too fast into his limbs, clumsy and always moving too quickly. Lan Zhan had always found it so endearing, all of these faults.
Wei Ying has grown into his smile, into his frame, into all of his features.
Wei Ying shakes his head, still laughing. “Lan Zhan, I can’t believe you remember me. After I spent all that time torturing you! Can you ever forgive me?”
Lan Zhan doesn’t know what to say in response, suddenly aphasic. He had never been a match for Wei Ying’s wit, left speechless and fuming to Wei Ying flirting circles around him, secretly craving every word of it against all of his better judgment.
“I didn’t mind that much,” Lan Zhan manages. “We were young.”
“We were young,” Wei Ying agrees musingly, his eyes crinkling into half-moons as he studies Lan Zhan more closely. “So young. Well, if I’m going to be stuck with anyone several li underground, I’m glad it’s you, strange as that sounds! What are the odds of this, huh?”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan says again, brimming over with a flustered warmth he can’t explain at Wei Ying’s words. At his apparent delight with Lan Zhan’s company. Lan Zhan feels so much like a teenager again, bumbling and awkward and wanting.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says with sudden reproach, and wags his head as though genuinely disappointed. “I can’t believe the audacity of you, to get so handsome. Save some for the rest of us, will you? Puberty blessed you, I see! Not that you were ever hard to look at!”
“Oh,” Lan Zhan says faintly. “I.”
“What have you been up to all these years?” Wei Ying asks, and then reaches out to tug Lan Zhan’s elbow, leading him forward into the dark. “Still cultivating, I bet? You were always really good at that.”
He’s touching me, Lan Zhan thinks, louder than any other conscious thought, as he struggles to answer on autopilot.
“Yes,” he fumbles. “Cultivation work with my brother and the rest of my family.”
Wei Ying nods sagely. “The Lan manor is in Suzhou, right? I imagine that’s why you’re on a train with me at this awful hour.”
“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, eager to move on from his own uninteresting affairs. He wants to collect every minute detail of Wei Ying’s life, over these years. “What do you do?”
“Ah,” Wei Ying says, turning to wink at him. “That’s classified. But buy me a drink first and I might tell you.”
“I,” Lan Zhan says, floundering. “I don’t drink.”
Oh, he’s — stupid, so stupid, Lan Zhan thinks with a sudden stab of dismay. Wei Ying had been — asking him out, maybe, not in any serious way, but flirting with the potential of it, and he’d —
But Wei Ying surprises him, throws back his head and laughs again without a trace of mockery.
“No, I imagine you don’t, huh,” Wei Ying muses, and pulls them to a stop. “The Lans and all their rules! How could I forget?”
He keeps towing them forward, along the length of the train. The cold channel of the wind strengthens as it funnels around them, breathing wet air against Lan Zhan’s face.
Lan Zhan has become so thoroughly distracted by Wei Ying’s reappearance that he’s momentarily forgotten the strangeness of their situation, as well as the fact that for some inexplicable reason, Wei Ying continues to lead him away from their train car, darkness parting way around him and a lone flare.
“What exactly is going on?” Lan Zhan asks, his eyes glued to the way Wei Ying’s hand curls around his elbow.
“Well, I think that I know,” Wei Ying answers, “but I need to confirm a few things.”
Finally Wei Ying brings them to a stop, checking his arm again. In the low light, Lan Zhan can see goosebumps still pebble Wei Ying’s skin, and Lan Zhan can feel the tug of it along his scalp, a strange buzz of energy.
“Should be here,” Wei Ying murmurs, and lets go of Lan Zhan’s arm.
Wei Ying casts the talisman forward, illuminating the far dark corners of the tunnel in a white shock of light.
Lan Zhan blinks, then blinks again, unable to fully process what he’s seeing.
The train is — half-gone. As though cut cleanly in half, where the rest of the cars should be there’s simply — nothing, only the dark esophagus of the tunnel curving away into the belly of the earth.
“So what I said about my line of work,” Wei Ying says, his voice echoing in the dripping quiet. “I may have to declassify it a little, given our current situation.”
“What —” Lan Zhan says. He had been tired before, but now he’s wide awake, paddle-shocked by Wei Ying’s presence, by... this. “What is that?”
“That, Lan-gege, is a rift,” Wei Ying says. “Small pockets of spacetime, in other words. They’re usually pretty harmless, but sometimes things get caught there, kind of like — mmmm, like a bug in flypaper. Sometimes it’s people who get stuck.” He turns to look at Lan Zhan, the shadow of a smile against his cheek. “It’s my job to get them out.”
Lan Zhan stares back at him. Wei Ying’s smile widens, and then turns to observe the place where the train disappears, analytical, two fingers to his chin.
“Fabricator, that’s the official word for it,” Wei Ying says, still without looking at Lan Zhan. “Both of my parents do it, but my mom is the real whiz at it. She taught me everything I know.”
“And the Jiangs?” Lan Zhan asks, trying to process the fact that there is, apparently, an entire underground branch of cultivation that he and his family are utterly oblivious to. That such things as rifts exist, outside of his knowledge.
“Just regular cultivators,” Wei Ying says, smiling in Lan Zhan’s direction. “They know we’re Fabricators, of course. Our families are too close to each other to have secrets.”
“I...I see,” Lan Zhan says.
“Now,” Wei Ying says musingly, and wanders a few steps closer. “Things that are this big are — tricky. There’s almost no chance we’ll be able to get half of a train out.”
“The conductor,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying cuts a glance toward him that looks like approval.
“One step ahead of me, gege! Yes, exactly, there’s an innocent man trapped in there. And the two of us, really, have nothing better to do with our evening than to get him out.”
Lan Zhan’s head is spinning. “What exactly can...I do?”
“Provide emotional support,” Wei Ying says, with total seriousness, and walks toward the rift.
He hops up onto the train car closest to where the rest disappear abruptly into space, chattering all the while.
“Rifts like this, they put out a sort of energy. It’ll give you goosebumps.” Wei Ying reaches into his back pocket, rucking his hoodie up over the ass of his jeans to do so, and Lan Zhan looks away, his cheeks warming.
“If the goosebumps don’t tell me a rift is near, then this will,” Wei Ying says, balancing on the metal joint of the train car’s connecting cable. He holds up a leather-sheathed blade for Lan Zhan’s observation.
Lan Zhan stares up at it uncomprehendingly, then back to Wei Ying, waiting for him to explain.
“Her name is Suibian,” Wei Ying explains. “She can open rifts after things get sealed inside them. And close them! She heats up when rifts are nearby.”
“A spiritual weapon,” Lan Zhan says, his mind starting to whirl again. Suddenly, this weekend’s long debate about a talisman seems laughably insignificant.
Wei Ying nods once. “Exactly.” He rotates on the cable and reaches out as Suibian starts to glow.
“Nice and easy,” Wei Ying says, his tongue poking through his lips as he makes a clean, golden slice into the air in front of him. The incision is as tall as the top of his head, and Wei Ying crouches a little to cut further down. “Like playing Operation.”
Lan Zhan watches, dazed, as a flap in space flays open in front of Wei Ying, like the skin splitting around an open wound. The gap reveals a flash of metal: the next train car, where it had been sealed away.
“There we go,” Wei Ying says, and pockets Suibian. He fishes into his other pocket and pulls out two plastic vials. “Here. If you’re coming with me, you’ll need this.”
Going with him hadn’t even been a question — Lan Zhan refuses to let Wei Ying out of his sight, now that he’s found him. It had simply been a matter of how he could.
Lan Zhan takes the vial from him carefully and holds it up, trying to observe its contents better in the dim light of the talisman. “What is it?”
“Anti-rift insulation,” Wei Ying says. “It will keep the energy here from affecting you. If you didn’t have a core, you wouldn’t be able to come at all, but I know that yours is strong, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. It isn’t a question of modesty, but rather of fact.
Wei Ying nods, winks at Lan Zhan again, and says, “Bottoms up.” He slugs the vial back in one go, then smacks his lips with a loud ah.
At this point, Lan Zhan has accepted that the events of this evening are too strange for words. Too strange, even, for fiction. That he is spindrift to its whims, to wherever it may take him. But Wei Ying is here, Wei Ying, and Lan Zhan will follow him. Into storms, the eye of madness, wherever and however far.
He tips the vial back and drinks, swallows dutifully even as he grimaces at the bitter taste.
Wei Ying offers a hand to him, and Lan Zhan takes it, tries not to think too hard about the strong, easy movements of Wei Ying’s bare forearm as he hauls him up onto the train car with him. Wei Ying steadies Lan Zhan by the shoulders, beaming all the while. He’s only a little shorter than Lan Zhan; they’re nearly of a height.
“You have a workout routine, I see,” Wei Ying says, squeezing one of his biceps with a warm smile. All Lan Zhan can do in reply is stand there, dumbfounded by the concept of Wei Ying flirting with him while an opening in the fabric of reality splays open behind him. Perhaps the energy of the rift is scrambling his mind, despite the vial’s contents, but — no, Wei Ying has always been able to do this, to render this effect on him.
“Follow after me,” Wei Ying says, very serious now, unsmiling. “Don’t leave my side, and don’t...look at anything for too long.”
Wei Ying turns toward the aperture, through which the metal door of the connecting train car is visible.
It takes a while to jimmy open the door — the rift had effectively shut down all power on the sealed part of the train.
Once they’re through, Lan Zhan blinks, his eyes adjusting to the darkness of their surroundings as Wei Ying surges forward ahead of him. It’s as black as the tunnel was, almost too dark to see in front of him, but there’s an odd gray cast to their surroundings, as if all of the color has been bled dry. Even the flickering orange glow of Wei Ying’s lighting talisman has a muted quality.
“Lan Zhan, keep up,” Wei Ying calls over his shoulder. Lan Zhan takes one last look behind him, where the split Suibian had created still flaps open behind them. Through it, Lan Zhan can still just barely make out the glint of the train car on the other side.
And then he turns forward, and follows.
The door to each consecutive train car requires the same treatment as the first, and there are quite a few of them, so after the third, when they’re both panting and sweating with exertion, Lan Zhan suggests, “Perhaps we could step outside, and walk to the front car?”
“Ah, aha, no,” Wei Ying says quickly, chipper but very firm. “No, best to stay on the train, I think. Rifts don’t take kindly to explorers.”
There’s a certain...foreboding in Wei Ying’s voice, despite the light tone, that makes some of the hair at the nape of Lan Zhan’s neck prickle, like the brush of a cold breath.
“How many are there?” Lan Zhan asks when they break through the door and into the next car.
“Oh, hard to say,” Wei Ying says. “Infinite, probably. Not a whole lot is understood about them, since it’s only Fabricators who can access them, and once we’re in here, we, well — we try not to linger.”
Lan Zhan simmers with questions, each more complicated than the last. He imagines what would happen, if he told his sect of the rifts’ existence. They probably wouldn’t believe him, as orthodox as they are in their cultivation methods, and he can’t exactly provide evidence.
“What are they?” he asks quietly as they make their way through the next car, the aisles broadening as they move through first class.
“Like I said earlier, they’re sort of — pockets of space-time. Little tears. Fault-lines,” Wei Wuxian explains over his shoulder. “Empty parking spots? Ah, I’m running out of metaphors. Rifts are manifested absence. Absence of everything that makes us human — conscious thought, your five senses, color and sound and touch. They don’t mean anything by it, but that’s just the nature of their existence.
“The longer people spend in a rift,” Wei Ying continues, “the more its energy affects them. In the best-case scenarios that I’ve seen, people just lose their memory of the last couple days. At worst, there’s total psychological unraveling. Sometimes the time spent there doesn’t even matter; rifts affect different people differently, for reasons that we’ll probably never understand.”
“We,” Lan Zhan echoes. “Meaning you and other Fabricators.”
“That’s right,” Wei Ying says. “Though admittedly there aren’t that many of us. It’s a cool little club, though. Great wine coolers.”
Lan Zhan wonders if he were faced with the choice — death, or permanent “psychological unraveling”— which option he would find favorable. He thinks he knows the answer. Could it be called a mercy, then, to save those caught in the rifts? He keeps the thought to himself. It is Wei Ying’s life’s work, after all, and he cannot fathom insulting it in such a way.
Lan Zhan feels...strange as he continues to follow Wei Ying, whose high-tops squeak quietly on the sticky linoleum. The static electricity-feeling has only magnified as they’ve wandered deeper from the surface, sending chills sweeping down his extremities over and over again. It makes his teeth feel buzzy.
“Finally,” Wei Ying mutters as they approach the front car. “It’s a good thing we were the only other people on here, this late.”
“What do you do when multiple people are trapped?” Lan Zhan asks.
“What we can,” Wei Ying says, with a grim press of his lips together.
Together, they haul the last of the sliding doors open, which leads them into the dark belly of the cab. The conductor, seated in the operator’s seat, sits with his back facing them — stiff and upright, not slumped in repose, as he would if he were unconscious. A few steps further reveals odd, gray specks that suckle lightly at the bare pieces of the man’s skin.
“Rift-dust,” Wei Ying explains, walking around to the conductor’s front. “We think it’s drawn to organic matter. Either way, not good. Not compatible with humans. It heightens the rift’s effects.”
Lan Zhan follows Wei Ying to observe the man from the front. His eyes are open but glazed over, his expression settled into whatever it had been before the rift had sealed him in — tiredness, and the faint beginnings of surprise. All in all, he looks like a non-breathing, incredibly lifelike statue.
Lan Zhan’s heart slams in his chest like the battering of a door. “Is he…”
“He’s not dead,” Wei Ying says quickly. “Ah, I forget how creepy it is the first time, I’m sorry. He’s just frozen. Help me carry him?”
The man’s limbs are oddly difficult to maneuver, as though they’re locked in rigor mortis. Lan Zhan takes up the man’s front, hooking his arms under the man’s elbows, while Wei Ying picks up his feet, and slowly, carefully, they begin to make the long way back.
For the doors, they had cracked them open only as far as they could wriggle through, so maneuvering a fully grown, immobile man through the gaps proves to be as difficult as Lan Zhan would have guessed. He’s sweating and panting quietly by the third car. His struggle does not go unnoticed by Wei Ying.
“I thought you worked out,” Wei Ying teases him, a coy smile hooking his lips. His eyes gleam with silent laughter as he walks backwards with the man’s feet through the business class coach.
“I never accounted for this,” Lan Zhan replies, and Wei Ying does laugh openly to this.
“Okay, I’ll give you a pass,” Wei Ying says generously. “We are in the spinal fluid between dimensions, or whatnot.”
Lan Zhan turns his head to peer out the train windows. Only darkness, and darkness, and darkness, until — the strange shift of something catches his eye, like the movings of a whale or some other giant beast. Lan Zhan freezes, trying to fix his eyes to where he’d seen the motion, but he can only find more black space, unfurling behind his eyes.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says sharply. He sounds oddly faraway. Lan Zhan blinks and shakes his head as though clearing water from his ears, muddled.
“I told you not to look at anything for too long,” Wei Ying says. His tone is so serious that it’s almost unrecognizable. “Keep your eyes on me.”
Lan Zhan can do that. He can definitely do that. He catches Wei Ying’s eyes and holds firm, so intently that Wei Ying visibly starts to squirm as they move into the next train car.
“Okay, not quite like that,” Wei Ying says with a high, nervous laugh. “Look at, ah, my chest or something. I forgot how intense you can be!”
“I’m sorry,” Lan Zhan says quickly, dropping his gaze in embarrassment. He has been told that before. And he is certainly not lacking in intensity where Wei Ying is concerned.
“No, I like it!” Wei Ying protests, just as fast. Lan Zhan can feel a blush working its way up his neck, and finds himself grateful for the odd darkness here. “It’s just — distracting while we’re trying to save a man’s life. This is why I can’t allow any of my colleagues to be beautiful! I’m very shallow and easily led.”
The heat has crept its way to Lan Zhan’s ears. The roar of it is a little deafening, so perhaps he’d misheard Wei Ying implying that he finds him beautiful.
Lan Zhan focuses hard on the frozen man’s face below him, slack as though in sleep but his open eyes sightless and glassy. Yes, it is best not to be distracted.
By the time they finally reach the opening again, Lan Zhan’s dress-shirt is soaked through with sweat, despite the chill that spreads and spreads inside his bones the longer they spend here.
“Just in time,” Wei Ying is saying. “The effects of the insulation will wear off soon.”
Wei Ying backs his way through the opening first, carefully stepping down onto the cable while keeping the man’s knees locked tight in the circle of his arms. Just that transitory moment hits Lan Zhan so strangely — Wei Ying in one world, in view, with him in another.
And then Lan Zhan is following him through, and he gasps for breath. The air is still dank from the tunnel, but still fresh, and earthly. He didn’t realize how strange the atmosphere had been inside the rift until he was outside of it.
The light talisman Wei Ying had lit before still burns, hanging high above the train, but its light has dwindled almost to nothing. Wei Ying casts another one, illuminating the tunnel once more, before he turns to seal the rift, a swipe downward with the flat of Suibian’s blade.
Gently, they cart the man toward the wall of the tunnel, as far away from the tracks as they can manage. They sit him down against it, where he continues to stare off peacefully into nothing. He almost looks bored.
Lan Zhan inhales, trying to catch his breath, trying to catch up with all that’s happened just in the last hour. His head is pounding with exhaustion and the leftover energy of the rift.
“What should we do now?” Lan Zhan murmurs, and turns to stare off into the dark tunnel. “It could be days before someone finds us.”
“Well, we’re in luck there. That’s the other thing about Suibian,” Wei Ying says, and bounces to stand beside him with a pleased grin. “She can get you from place to place. Nowhere too far, but she can cut open spacetime enough to where you can at least get somewhere nearby.”
Stupidly, above the relief, the first question that occurs to Lan Zhan is: “Then why take the train?”
Wei Ying gives a one-shoulder shrug. “The people-watching is fun.”
Lan Zhan stares.
“No, I’m kidding,” Wei Ying says, a wide smile splitting across his face. It notches two dimples in his cheeks, just like Lan Zhan remembers. “Messing with spacetime is always risky, no matter how experienced you are, so I try to only use it in emergency situations.” Wei Ying gestures broadly to either side of the tunnel. “I think this qualifies.”
“Okay,” Lan Zhan says slowly. “So, you will open a...portal, we will step through, and take the conductor with us.”
“No,” Wei Ying corrects. “He isn’t a cultivator. He won’t survive the trip. We’ll go through, and then send help for him. Though god knows where we even are. I think the last stop we passed was Yangchenghu — ” He suddenly winces with a sound through his teeth. “Fuck. Suibian is burning up. Here, feel.”
Lan Zhan reaches out a hand to the knife, his fingers brushing against Wei Ying’s as he does. At once, he recoils — the blade is as hot as the open flame on a stove.
Wei Ying tosses it quickly from hand to hand, making pained noises. “I’ve never felt her get this hot before. Usually it’s, like, bathwater-warm. There must be another rift nearby, a big one.” He shakes his head, looking mystified. “This night just gets stranger and stranger.”
“Indeed,” Lan Zhan answers, feeling a little woozy.
“You might be the strangest part of it,” Wei Ying says, and looks up at Lan Zhan with a small, delighted smile. “I mean that as the highest possible compliment.”
“Oh,” Lan Zhan says. It has been so long since he’s been so flustered, so at sea for what to say. “Then...thank you.”
Wei Ying is appraising him more softly now. He looks a little disbelieving. Like Lan Zhan may disappear in front of him.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says quietly, almost reflective. “After all these years. Wow.”
Lan Zhan stares back, caught by the strange gravity of the moment, helpless to do anything else but drink him in.
He could tell Wei Ying that he missed him; that for weeks after his transfer, he had searched for a way to contact him, after they’d parted without a goodbye. It had been so unceremonious — Wei Ying’s name gone from roll call, and a conversation with Lan Huan, later that night, where his brother explained, offhanded and casual, that Jiang Yanli had transferred out of his class. That the Jiangs and the Weis had found work in a different city, packed up their things, and left within a matter of days. A rush of color and vibrance and motion, Wei Ying entangled in Lan Zhan’s life, and then nothing in his wake except a white-noise silence. Lan Zhan could tell Wei Ying that, even across these years, he had never stopped thinking about him, wondering, mistaking lookalikes in train stations and restaurants and parks with his heart caught in his throat every time, every time.
But there wouldn’t be much use of that. Aren’t they practically strangers, now?
Lan Zhan opens his mouth to say — he’s not sure what, and then Wei Ying winces and swears again, and drops Suibian.
“Okay,” Wei Ying says, with a soft noise of pain as he leans to pick it up. “I’m going to go ahead and create another opening. I think we’re closer to Suzhou than Shanghai, so I’ll open a portal there, and then we can send help back for the man. Don’t let go of me, okay?”
“Okay,” Lan Zhan agrees, and he steps forward to grip Wei Ying’s arm, hard.
“My hand is burning up,” Wei Ying whispers, still tossing Suibian from hand to hand. “Suibian is shaking, can you feel?”
Lan Zhan can feel the tremors on the arm he grips, rippling out from the knife in Wei Ying’s hand.
“I’m going to do it quick,” Wei Ying says, his eyes slitted with concentration as he brings Suibian in front of him. The rift energy from before crackles like a summer storm, setting Lan Zhan’s hair on end. “Hold on tight. In three...two…”
Wei Ying cuts open another incision into the air in front of him, the slice of the knife a bright trickle of light in the tunnel darkness.
“ — one,” Wei Ying finishes, and then he’s stepping through, and Lan Zhan closes his eyes and follows.
When Lan Zhan opens his eyes a moment later, he blinks, trying to grasp his bearings — unsure, for several seconds, as to what he’s looking at. He had not known at all what to expect, when Wei Ying had spoken of a portal, but he realizes that for whatever reason, he had imagined surfacing somewhere on a street in Suzhou.
This is not a street. It may not even be Suzhou. Lan Zhan has no idea where he is. There are — windows, a table, a bed? Those are the only details he can discern in the dark, as his eyes strain to adjust. Wei Ying has frozen beside him. His breaths quicken, loud and harsh.
“This isn’t,” Wei Ying says, in a voice taut with panic. “I’ve never —”
Suddenly, two shadows move in the half-darkness in front of them, movement from the bed — two women? No, the hair length had given Lan Zhan that initial impression, but it is definitely two men, tangled around each other, clearly having just been roused from sleep.
In the low, gray trickle of the moonlight through the windows, the four of them stare at each other, frozen.
One of the men, Lan Zhan can see if he squints, has a youthful face, his features almost pixie-like, dark hair long enough to reach his back, sleep-mussed and bangs drifting into his face.
The other one has the same hair length as the former, and Lan Zhan’s own face.
Lan Zhan’s head whirls with vertigo as he stares at the other him, blinking several times through the darkness to ensure he isn’t mistaken. It would be the strangest thing to happen, on this strangest night of his life, but given its events, he isn’t ruling out anything.
The other Lan Zhan isn’t looking at him, though. He has visibly blanched, looking as shaken as though he’s seen a ghost. He grips one hand to the other man’s wrist, and says, “Wei Ying.”
Despite the address, Lan Zhan gets the unshakeable sense, despite the other Lan Zhan’s fixed stare on the Wei Ying beside him, that he isn’t speaking to him.
“I know, baobei,” the other man murmurs. His gaze is also riveted to Wei Ying, steely and cold and incredibly unforgiving.
“Well.” The smaller man speaks brightly, but the chill in his voice is unmistakable. “You certainly have a lot of nerve to choose that face! I don’t take kindly to spirits who interrupt our sleeping hours, you know. It upsets my husband.”
“Your what?” Lan Zhan says faintly.
“Wei Ying, be careful,” the other Lan Zhan says in a low voice.
Despite the other Lan Zhan’s stature being larger and stronger, it’s the smaller man who seems to draw himself up around the two of them, who exudes a protective and threatening aura. He’s slipped something from one of the sleeves of his inner robe — a talisman, Lan Zhan realizes, still a few steps behind.
“Wait!” Wei Ying says next to him, clearly noticing the same. “Please, we didn’t mean to disturb you, gongzi, and we’re not spirits, we’re just — lost.”
The smaller man hesitates at this, his eyes shifting over to Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan stares back at him, his breath held.
“What’s wrong with your hair?” the smaller man asks, lowering the talisman a little with a puzzled look. “I’ve never seen clothes like these.”
Wei Ying relaxes a little next to Lan Zhan, and offers a shaky laugh. “Well, we could say the same.”
“Hmm,” the smaller man says, leaning more comfortably into the other Lan Zhan as he observes them thoughtfully. “This is, indeed, very fucking weird. Maybe it has to do with the other strange things that have been happening around here.”
“What strange things?” Wei Ying and Lan Zhan ask at the same time.
The smaller man waves a dismissive hand. “Unimportant, for now. Tell me, what names do you go by?”
“I’m Wei Ying,” Wei Ying says. “That’s Lan Zhan.”
The other Lan Zhan audibly releases a slow, measured exhale. The smaller man scrubs a weary hand over his face.
“Right, of course they are,” the smaller man says. “Hmm. Okay.”
“It’s only fair that we know yours,” Wei Ying points out.
“Well,” the smaller man says, and the smile he offers is amicable but a little strained. “My name is also Wei Ying. This is also Lan Zhan. But you can call us Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, so our heads don’t all start spinning.”
“What is happening,” Wei Ying says, apparently to himself.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Wei Wuxian says. “Though, it should be noted, you did come to us. ”
“Has this ever happened to you before?” Lan Zhan murmurs as an aside to Wei Ying.
Wei Ying shakes his head slowly, appearing lost in thought.
“No, never,” he says. “Suibian has only ever opened smaller rifts and portals before, like with the train. Never anything close to this.” Wei Ying speaks more clearly now, directed to Wei Wuxian. “So, wait, if you’re also Wei Ying, why do Lan — ah, the Lan Zhans? — have the same face, but the two of us don’t?”
Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “It’s a long, very convoluted, somewhat depressing story. Very dark in the middle, but a surprising romance in the second act! Anyway, not for tonight.”
“You two are...married?” Lan Zhan asks. It has been, embarrassingly, the primary question that has consumed him since Wei Wuxian had said the word husband.
“Yes,” Wei Wuxian says, with a curious little smile, and he gestures between the two of them, to Lan Zhan and Wei Ying. “Are you not?”
A full-bodied jolt of heat flares through Lan Zhan. Wei Ying laughs next to him, stilted and sharp and awkward. “Ahaha, ah, no. Also a long story, but Lan Zhan and I — we used to go to school together. Tonight is the first time I’ve seen him in years.”
“Oh, I see,” Wei Wuxian says, a smile curving his lips. He’s watching Lan Zhan now, a knowing gleam in his eyes.
Lan Zhan’s mouth has gone dry, his heart knocking hard against his ribs. He and Wei Ying are...married, in this life, in this version of their lives. Sleeping in the same bed. Calling each other baobei. Though he has a different face, this man is certainly Wei Ying, his mannerisms and speech patterns eerily similar to one he knows.
“You’ll have to forgive my husband if he’s a little rattled,” Wei Wuxian says, his smile cooling. His eyes have returned to this Wei Ying. “It’s been a long time since either of us have seen that face, and none of us really parted on good terms.”
“I...sorry?” Wei Ying says.
“But truly, what have you done to your hair?” Wei Wuxian asks, tilting his head. “You’ve gone and mangled it. How is that allowed?”
Wei Ying’s hand flies up to flatten against his hair self-consciously.
“It highlights your cheekbones, though, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says thoughtfully, looking at Lan Zhan, but Lan Zhan, again, instinctively understands the words are not directed at him.
“Hmm,” Lan Wangji says, also observing him. Lan Zhan shifts his weight, a little uncomfortable under their scrutiny.
Wei Wuxian sighs and slips the talisman back into his sleeve. “Fine, I’ll allow it. You two are cute, as hideously dressed as you are. And now we are well and truly awake. Can I get you some tea?”
“And liquor, if you have it,” Wei Ying says weakly.
Wei Wuxian grins broadly and winks at him. “One step ahead of you.”
Wei Wuxian squeezes Lan Wangji’s wrist and slides out of bed. Lan Wangji’s hand shadows after him as though caught by a gravitational pull. Lan Zhan is watching it all, every quiet ripple of intimacy between them, and something in him that he cannot explain or understand aches, a peach pit lodged in his chest.
“Excuse my state of undress,” Wei Wuxian says wryly, and brushes past them barefoot. He smells briskly herbal, like sandalwood and perhaps camellia. “We weren’t expecting visitors.”
In a shared daze, Lan Zhan and Wei Ying drift after Wei Wuxian into the far part of the — where are they, exactly? It reminds Lan Zhan of sets he’s seen in historical dramas. Wei Wuxian lights a few candles and a paper lantern before he leads them to a low, neatly adorned table, where a jade lotus teapot sits in the middle.
“Sit,” Wei Wuxian says, then his jaw cracks open wide on a yawn, which he muffles with the back of a hand. “You’ll have to forgive my unfriendly first impression. You really caught us off guard, it cannot be overstated.”
Lan Zhan has noticed that, a few times now — that Wei Wuxian refers to him and Lan Wangji in the plural. It makes the peach pit sharpen in his chest, jagged-edged.
“Okay, tea and liquor first,” Wei Wuxian says. “And then you’re going to explain how, exactly, the hell you got here.”