Chapter Text
Lan Zhan, at fourteen years old, has a problem.
He's had this problem since he was twelve, actually, but he didn't know the nature of it then.
He didn't know the nature of it until approximately three minutes ago, when it reappeared unexpectedly in his life directly before the short program warm-up at his second ever junior nationals.
He's always known the name of it, though.
The name of this problem is Wei Ying.
*
Lan Zhan spends the season slowly, piece by intricate piece, losing his mind.
Wei Ying is everywhere.
Wei Ying is infuriating. Wei Ying argues with Wen Chao loudly enough to make all the hairs on the back of Lan Zhan's neck prickle upright with stress, and talks back to his own coach, and skates in the wrong direction on the practice sessions –
– and Lan Zhan knows that latter fact about him already, because they trained together at the pairs camp which has been seared indelibly into Lan Zhan's memory for two years now, and how does he not remember –
(does he not care?)
(was it not the same, for him?)
– and worst of all he teases Lan Zhan like it's nothing, like Lan Zhan is something to be laughed at, and it would hurt so much more than it already does if it wasn't for the way Wei Ying looks up at him from the silver place on the podium every single time he's forced into momentary silence by the ceremony.
Wei Ying's words hurt him. Wei Ying's laughter echoes in his mind when he tries to fall asleep.
But it's Wei Ying's face, soft and half-surprised and wanting, that tells his uncertain heart it's not truly meant as cruelty.
Lan Zhan doesn't understand him. But Lan Zhan knows, deep down beneath layers of frustration and anger and embarrassment and yet more frustration of a different nature entirely –
– Lan Zhan knows Wei Ying is good.
This is why, when Wei Ying shows up at Cloud Recesses Ice Arena with two weeks to go before the world championships and says I don't have anyone to take me there, Lan Zhan spends a full day and a half convincing his uncle to take him as a new skater last-minute – at least until a better solution can be found.
*
Lan Zhan immediately regrets this decision.
"Lan Zhan!" calls Wei Ying, waving his phone in the air. "Show me how the music works here!"
Lan Zhan turns away and skates to the opposite side of the rink. He's not looking at Wei Ying, because Wei Ying is for some reason wearing a too-large baggy hoodie with slightly tatty sleeve ends in combination with skin-tight black leggings and Lan Zhan cannot, absolutely cannot look at this.
(Because it's inappropriate training attire and the hood will throw off his jump axis, of course. It's unprofessional.)
(Nothing to do with the way he can feel his ears burn and his stomach twist uncomfortably every time he lets his gaze linger on the way Wei Ying's slender legs disappear into the overlong hem of the hoodie where it hugs the shape of his body, or the way the fabric drapes around him as he moves – and he's all movement today, alive and excitable with bright gestures accompanying every word and choreographic elegance in each transition step across the ice between flowing jumps and spins – and Lan Zhan's only watching because he needs to know how Wei Ying keeps beating him on program components, there's something there that Lan Zhan's failing to match, and he has to watch so he can know how to meet it – but he can't watch, because the hot-uncomfortable feeling is spreading further than his stomach now and he actually just wants to skate over there and – )
(And what, he asks himself, and then immediately un-asks it and shoves the answer into a locked box and throws it out of an imagined window.)
Wei Ying's laughter echoes across the ice, immediately followed by a song Lan Zhan has never heard before (and would quite like to have continued never having heard, actually).
Because he is a terrible brother who only wants Lan Zhan to suffer, A-Huan has shown Wei Ying how to work the sound system.
*
Wei Ying says, "Lan Zhan, will you help me stretch?"
This sounds. Fine. This sounds like a reasonable request. It is delivered in a reasonable manner.
It is not fine.
Wei Ying stands beside the barrier still in his skates and lifts one leg behind him like he expects Lan Zhan to know what to do with it.
Lan Zhan does know what to do with it. Lan Zhan has been stretching in this exact manner since before he could even talk in full sentences.
Lan Zhan does not know how he is going to make himself do what he knows he is supposed to do with it.
Wei Ying looks back over his shoulder with an open, expectant expression. He –
– his long, messy hair is half falling out of its ponytail.
Lan Zhan feels the tips of his ears burn as he forcibly keeps his face still and wraps one hand around Wei Ying's calf to push his outstretched leg above his head.
"Aiya, Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying, now mercifully facing out across the ice again, "you know I'm more flexible than that –"
How do I know? thinks Lan Zhan with intensity that clenches all his insides. Do you remember how I know?
He pushes Wei Ying's leg higher.
Wei Ying makes a type of quiet noise Lan Zhan has only heard on one occasion when his laptop became infected by excruciatingly embarrassing malware, and sinks back deeper into the stretch with his arms locked out against the barrier until he's pushed it further than a full split, one foot pointed high above his head and –
– the full length of his legs and hips and everything pressed right beside Lan Zhan like this is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever to Wei Ying.
Lan Zhan thinks, if an atomic bomb could feel, this is what it might experience in the final fractional second before the chain reaction tips across the edge into detonation.
He drops Wei Ying's leg.
"Do it yourself," he says with barely controlled stiffness, and leaves.
*
Wei Ying lasts four weeks with them. This is partly because Baoshan Sanren offers him a place at the newly opened Immortal Peak Arena within a week of seeing him skate for the first time, and partly because he gets into his first outright both-sides-shouting argument with Lan Zhan's uncle over jump technique and it's becoming transparently obvious that this particular partnership is a match that should never have been made.
Lan Zhan expects to feel relief when he leaves.
He doesn't expect how quiet the rink feels without him.
– no, he does expect that, the quiet was what he wanted.
What Lan Zhan actually doesn't expect is just how empty that longed-for quiet feels when it finally arrives.
Cloud Recesses stretches vast and cold and silent, and Lan Zhan misses the spark of vitality that had drawn the silence in around itself and filled it for the barest breath of time.
*
Immortal Peak Arena is almost brand-new and has the quietest resurfacer Lan Zhan has ever heard. Immortal Peak Arena has a state-of-the-art sound system and perfect clean ice without a single condensation bump even when the weather outside turns strange enough to ruin any lesser rink. Immortal Peak Arena has a high strip of windows across one side wall that spill late winter sunrise across the ice in a way that belongs in a painting –
Immortal Peak Arena has Wei Ying.
Lan Zhan, now almost eighteen years old, has long since accepted the nature of the response this provokes in him.
Wei Ying says Lan Zhan, watch this! and flies into a trailing-fingertip layback spin with effortless grace – and then, still perfectly centred and barely losing any speed at all from the transition, pulls into a perfect teardrop-shaped Biellmann with one skate catching the light far above his upturned face –
– and Lan Zhan, frozen at the edge of the rink with an incriminating flush burning in the tips of his ears, pulls himself together just enough to leave the ice before Wei Ying finishes the spin and lock himself in the bathroom to calm down.
(Calm down is a euphemism.)
(This happens far more regularly than Lan Zhan would ever admit.)
"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying when he returns, draped over the barrier and pouting as though Lan Zhan has committed a great injury to his heart, "you didn't even watch me!"
Lan Zhan knows the expression on Wei Ying's face is deliberate, for purposes of teasing exaggeration. This knowledge does not prevent the twist of his own heart in his chest and the desperate desire to right the wrong by kissing it from Wei Ying's downturned lips until he smiles again.
(The spent, still-trembling warmth inside him gives a faintly interested clench at the thought. Lan Zhan thinks uncharitable words at himself which would be very much against his uncle's rules to speak aloud.)
"I watched," he only says after a long silence wherein Wei Ying blinks up at him and pouts even harder, and it comes out stiff and forced because he's still trying not to think about how much he wants to pin him against the boards and kiss him, and then he gets back on the ice and skates old-style compulsory figures without looking in Wei Ying's direction until he no longer feels like he's one more snapped thread away from acting on every last one of his desires.
By the second year of this, Lan Zhan is marginally better able to suppress himself.
But before the second year –
*
"Lan Zhan!" shouts Wei Ying across the crowded room, across a sea of suits and dresses and glittering accessories, beneath twinkling lights festooned among draped fabric and above the hotel function room bar he's currently leaning sideways over as he waves with both energetic hands. "Lan Zhan! What do you want to drink?"
Wei Ying is not wearing a suit. Wei Ying, for some reason, is still wearing his exhibition skate costume with the mesh cutout strips up the sides of his legs and body and the gold glitter in a glowing streak across his cheekbones that catches the light and sends it sparkling into his dark eyes – and he's clearly done nothing more than remove his skates in the hours since the gala, because his hair still falls loose and windswept down almost to his waist exactly as it had tumbled out from his dramatically released ponytail halfway through the performance.
"What do you want to drink??" Wei Ying shouts again, because Lan Zhan's been staring at him instead of answering.
Lan Zhan shakes his head. The Lan prohibition on alcohol did not end on the legal milestone of his eighteenth birthday.
Wei Ying rolls his eyes in a manner Lan Zhan can hesitantly guess from jealous months of watching his interactions with Wen Qing might be affectionate, and leans further across the bar to make a loudly animated request of the staff behind it – and thirty seconds later, Lan Zhan has a drink in his hand.
It looks like champagne; golden, with bubbles that catch the same light still sparkling in Wei Ying's eyes. Wei Ying informs him it is alcohol-free champagne, actually, and then drains his own glass in a single long swallow, head tipped back and –
– Lan Zhan wants to bite his neck. Lan Zhan is finding it incredibly difficult to prevent himself from vividly imagining his own lips and tongue and teeth against Wei Ying's smooth skin –
"Wait," says Wei Ying, eyes wide.
Lan Zhan ignores him. Lan Zhan lifts the glass to his lips and tips almost half of it into his mouth at once, and the last thing he hears is wait, Lan Zhan, I gave you the wrong one–!
*
There is someone in Lan Zhan's hotel room.
Thickly, belatedly, he realises that someone is him.
There is someone else in Lan Zhan's hotel room.
This person is hazy, and golden around the edges, and talking very fast.
"– oh my god, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan can you hear me – fuck – what the fuck was that, did you pass out??? Were you not feeling well?? Why didn't you say anything – Lan Zhan, are you awake now, do you want me to get someone –"
"No," says Lan Zhan, interrupting. The word feels heavy and uncoordinated in his mouth.
He blinks, sticky and slow, and Wei Ying is revealed; staring wide-eyed at him with a sigh of what is possibly relief escaping his parted lips.
Lan Zhan wants to kiss him.
Lan Zhan always wants to kiss him.
"Lan Zhan," says Wei Ying suddenly, "are you drunk?"
Lan Zhan does not answer. First, he is not sure what gave this away; second, he is not sure he remembers how.
The bed dips beside him in a way that feels unpleasantly as though it pulls Lan Zhan with it down into the centre of the mattress and further, perhaps through the floor. He is definitely moving; definitely in a way he does not like.
He sits up abruptly, to escape the dizzying sideways slide of the bed.
Suddenly, he is face-to-face with Wei Ying.
Wide, dark eyes with the soft light of the dimmed bedside lamp caught within them. Open, clear surprise on features as fresh and beautiful this close as they ever have been from the opposite side of an ice rink.
Warm breath that ghosts across Lan Zhan's lips in a featherlight caress as he sways ever so slightly closer –
"Haha," says Wei Ying wildly, and scrambles back across the bed until he's pressed to the headboard in almost exactly the way Lan Zhan would have put him there himself. "Lan Zhan, you're definitely drunk. This is so funny."
Wei Ying does not look as though he is finding it funny.
Lan Zhan does something with his face which feels like a frown. "Alcohol is prohibited."
"Aiya, I'm sorry," says Wei Ying with a grimace. "I forgot which hand was mine and which hand was yours, it's so silly – you won't get into trouble, will you? You can tell your uncle it was my fault, he won't mind another reason to hate me –"
"He does not."
"Huh?? Lan Zhan, of course he hates me!"
"Shufu is glad there exists someone to challenge me," says Lan Zhan. The extremely faint part of him which still maintains some conscious awareness is horrified by the frank arrogance of this statement; it may be true, but to say it aloud breaks at least four rules relating to conduct and two more relating to discussion of others – and all this is crammed into an excruciatingly minute speck of momentary thought which blinks out again as soon as it arrives.
Wei Ying laughs, shocked and a little hysterical, and stares at Lan Zhan with an expression he has no hope whatsoever of decoding in his current state.
"Lan Zhan," he says after a long moment of silence where the only thing that happens is eye contact that makes Lan Zhan feel like he's willingly drowning, "are you going to tell the truth right now, whatever I say?"
Lan Zhan thinks the answer is probably yes. He does not say this.
"What did you think of Jin Zixun's short program?" asks Wei Ying with a grin. "You wouldn't tell me yesterday –"
"Poor. Overscored." Lan Zhan considers. "Uncalled flutz. Dead fish hands."
Wei Ying laughs, again – delighted this time, bright and smiling and sparkling-eyed with it. "Who has the best triple axel this year?"
"Me."
"Aiyo, so arrogant! Second-best, then?"
"You."
Wei Ying falls silent.
Again, the eye contact that burns Lan Zhan's lungs from the inside out.
Then Wei Ying takes a breath – and smiles, deliberately teasing.
(There's something else trapped behind teasing. Lan Zhan doesn't understand what.)
"Lan-er-gege," he says, "have you ever wanted to kiss anyone?"
Lan Zhan stares at him in silence.
Every day. Every hour. Every minute.
How do you not know?
How can I tell you?
Wei Ying smiles again – and the something else is pushing through more now; an edge to the tease Lan Zhan still doesn't understand but which unsettles him right down in the base of his heart where every fragile unauthorised hope secretes itself away.
There's silence, for a moment.
"You should try it," blurts Wei Ying, and there's an overwhelming rush of disbelieving anticipation through Lan Zhan's entire chest as the world spins and resettles in a new shape in that single fragment of a second –
– and then Wei Ying, a little wild-eyed as the words spill from him to cut sharp pieces out of Lan Zhan's soul, says, "I kiss people all the time, it's nothing serious, just a bit of fun."
He looks at Lan Zhan, as though this was a good thing for him to say.
The bottom has been torn from Lan Zhan's heart, and all those precious unpermitted hopes are on the floor.
He can only hope Wei Ying won't see them.
"Nothing serious," Lan Zhan echoes as he carefully stamps on every last one within the privacy of his own mind, and turns his face away.
How can I tell you?
Never.
*
Six years later, Lan Zhan has never been happier to be wrong.