Work Text:
In the evenings, when nobody else was around except for cleaners, workaholics, and security guards, Xue Yang liked to work in the server room. He could vape down there without anyone bitching at him and the hum of the machines was relaxing, in a weird way, like sitting inside one of the chambers of an enormous heart as he tapped away at his main laptop. Or maybe it wasn't a heart. Maybe he was a venomous centipede curled up in the center of a golden apple. It was a pretty rotten apple to begin with, but that just meant there was more space for him to make a home for himself.
Tonight he'd wearied of picking through YLLZ's files pretty quickly. The guy was, or maybe had been, a fucking genius hacker, he could've gotten a computer to put on a tuxedo and tapdance to "Puttin' On The Ritz" if he'd wanted to, but his code was a fucking mess. It had so many goddamn subroutines, and that was before you got into the fact that he habitually worked in at least ten programming languages at once, all of these weird little bits compiling individually and then suddenly clicking together into a harmonious whole like a Magic Eye picture. Xue Yang did admire it, but he was tired of finding snippets of C# in the comments of files in Racket and then trying to figure out where they were supposed to go.
And, also, all of the variables had puns for names.
Fucking exhausting.
His actual current project, in between sessions of trying to make sense of YLLZ's piles of half-finished code, was a little bit of bullshit that he was very excited about. If everything worked out right, it'd be able to core out any system quick as you please, dump all the data into one of his encrypted servers, and then lock everything down until he got paid for all of his time and effort—he accepted wires in USD, all major cryptocurrencies, or unmarked bills left at one of several dead drops. The whole thing was really just a refinement of his previous work, but hell, his previous work had gotten him enough money for a nice place and an extremely cushy gig that provided him a useful façade of legitimacy with included legal backup, so he didn't see any reason to stop.
He'd been trash-talking absently on one of the Discords he was in while he worked, one he mostly used to hunt up gullible investors whenever he was in the mood to mint and run; hearing his phone ping again wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was that someone had DM'ed him.
td: so why do you keep doing it? if you've already had such success in your investing, why not retire on that success instead of risking your continued comfort on gambles like this?
He blinked down at his phone.
Truth be told, he wasn't sure why TD was even in a Discord for crypto investors. The guy didn't invest himself, or even seem interested in trying; he mostly just hung around asking totally reasonable questions that inevitably started fights. Granted, Xue Yang could appreciate a good shit-stirrer, but why had he bothered getting in on a Discord when he could just be trolling the fucking apes on Reddit? Xue Yang did that himself sometimes just to watch the idiots screech.
your favorite disaster: love of the game bby
so what does TD stand fortd: The Dodo. not like that awful website, like the character from Alice in Wonderland.
Xue Yang paused, squinting. He mostly didn't bother looking at people's avatars, especially not in a place where conversation moved as swiftly as it did in the crypto Discord, but when he looked now he saw that TD's avatar was, indeed, a black-and-white drawing of a dodo with a walking stick and human hands.
That was…really fucking cute of him, actually.
Obviously Xue Yang couldn't let it go uncommented on, though.
your favorite disaster: you fr named yourself after a bird famous for being fat and stupid?
td: actually dodos were perfectly reasonable by bird standards, they just had the misfortune of encountering human greed when they were unprepared to do so. i'm fond of them in part because they're so misunderstood.
your favorite disaster: if you say so
so whats got you dming me outta the blue tho
TD didn't respond immediately, so Xue Yang went back to hunting through YLLZ's code until he saw a new notification from that conversation.
td: well if i'm being honest i think you're interesting and wanted to get to know you better. your commentary is incisive and erudite, and you're very funny.
your favorite disaster: huh
so is this a come on or whattd: ^_^ should it be?
Now that was a fun question, and Xue Yang actually gave it a moment's thought before replying.
your favorite disaster: send me a pic and well see
Another long pause, so either he'd scared TD off or the guy didn't have a selfie on hand to send him and was taking one right now. The first option would be disappointing but not surprising; the second option was much more fun. He picked through a couple more YLLZ comments, frowned at his own code, and then grabbed his phone immediately when he got another message from TD.
The selfie was definitely awkward, at a slightly downward angle but not centered enough to show TD's entire face. What Xue Yang could see was pretty tempting, though—a lushly curved pout of a mouth, a broad chest underneath a worn-thin college t-shirt, a truly insane forearm resting across a flat stomach.
your favorite disaster: fcuking hell do you work out or somethign
td: when i have the time to do so, yes. ^_^
may i get a picture from you as well?
Xue Yang fumbled through the gallery on his phone, deemed none of his previous selfies worthwhile, and took a new one, lollipop hanging out of his mouth and all.
td: oh my
you're younger than i'd expectedyour favorite disaster: im 23 ive just got a baby face
td: and a sweet tooth it looks like
your favorite disaster: obvs, y? that a deal breaker for you?
td: not at all i think you're very attractive
it just took me by surprise
Things Xue Yang learned about TD over the course of their initial conversation:
-
He was 28 years old
-
He was in a relationship, with a guy he referred to as "Aurochs" (he hadn't mentioned whether or not it was an open relationship, but Xue Yang sure as hell didn't care)
-
He worked in demolitions and thus knew a lot about how stuff in a house might explode
-
They were in the same timezone
-
He was terrible at telling jokes but he loved all of Xue Yang's
-
He was maybe on the run from the law?
and a few less immediately exciting data points, all of which added up to:
Xue Yang badly wanted to fuck this man.
Fortunately, TD apparently wanted to fuck him too, so maybe they'd be able to work something out.
About two weeks after the first message from TD, Xue Yang went for a walk to get lunch and saw The Guy. Which sounded like a generic descriptor, but the thing was: goddamn.
He'd walked from the Jin Amalgamated building to the nearest Starbucks, because it was a nice enough day to grace the general public with his cute ass for fifteen minutes. He'd gotten his Frappuccino, grabbed a sandwich and a couple of lollipops from the deli next door, and then stopped in his tracks at the sight of someone coming out of the hardware store down the block carrying two fifty-pound bags of fertilizer like they were nothing, and what was more, holy shit was he big. He was loading the fertilizer into a big, beat-up panel van, so he was probably a landscaper or something, but Xue Yang was too distracted by the sight of his biceps shifting under his tattered hoodie to think about that too much.
And then.
His stuff was put away; he was stopping to talk to someone else whose car was also parked at the curb. She'd parked like a dumbass and gotten a rear wheel stuck in one of the city's many potholes, and as Xue Yang stared in something like awe the guy stripped off his hoodie, dropped into a crouch, grabbed the back bumper of the woman's car, and lifted.
Xue Yang did, in fact, whistle.
The guy's eyes flicked to him and then back to the bumper of the car, as in the driver's seat the woman put the whole thing in neutral so he could push her forward. Once her wheel was out of the pothole she turned the car off again and jumped out to thank the guy profusely, while Xue Yang took the opportunity to look at his biceps again and his ancient, washed-thin Greenpeace t-shirt and his pecs and his patched-up cargo pants and his stomach (not flat but no visible abs either, kind of a gut actually, those were go muscles) and the little stud in his earlobe and his scruffy undercut and the chest hair peeking out from his collar. And eventually the woman drove off in her stupid little econobox and the guy turned to look at Xue Yang and said, in a deep voice that Xue Yang was maybe going to jerk off about later, "Can I help you with something?"
Xue Yang lowered his sunglasses (heart-shaped, mirrored lenses, made him look like he was starring in "a cyberpunk remake of Lolita" if you asked Jin Guangyao) and said, "I've got something else here you can pick up if you're in the mood."
The guy did look at him, a long, slow gaze that traveled down from his obnoxious sunglasses to his designer kicks and all the way back up, and then raised his (huge, fucking hell) left hand and wiggled his smallest finger, on which he wore a single plain gold band. "Married."
"So don't tell your wife."
"I may have to, you're exactly his type."
Xue Yang's eyebrows rose, and he took a long sip of Frappuccino before replying. "That's interesting, because you don't look anything like me."
The guy nodded and said, placidly, "You're right, I don't," and then turned to get into his van.
"So that's a no on picking me up, then."
The van door shut. The window slid down. "Never said that." And then the guy drove off, leaving Xue Yang standing on the sidewalk gaping at him.
Later that day, tucked away in the server room picking through YLLZ's code again:
your favorite disaster: met the biggest dude ive ever seen in my fcuking life today
td: oh? do tell.
your favorite disaster: guy had nearly a foot on me
he lifted a car + i almost came in my jeanstd: mmm, sounds very attractive. did you get his number?
your favorite disaster: i fucking wish
he said hes married
+ also that i was his husbands type
which
whattd: hm, interesting
personally i'd take that to mean you should ask him for his number the next time you see him
perhaps he'll tell his husband about youyour favorite disaster: so you jealous?
td: oh no, not at all, i'm really not the jealous type ^_^
and in any case i have a strong intuition that we'll be able to meet in person very soon, if you'd like thatyour favorite disaster: r u fucking kidding when + where
td: i'm not quite sure yet
as i said, this is just an intuition
Three days later he got into the JA building and was immediately collared by Jin Guangyao, who hauled him into one of the conference rooms, shut the door, and opened with, "You've been working late hours recently, yes? In your little setup down near the servers?"
"Yeah, why?" Xue Yang pulled a roll of Lifesavers out of his pocket and popped one into his mouth. "Someone being an asshole about it again? Because I still don't care."
"We had a physical security breach last night ago and I need to know if you saw or heard anything."
Xue Yang blinked. "There was a break-in? What'd they take?"
"Nothing, as far as we can tell currently." Jin Guangyao mostly looked as calm as always, but the lines at the corners of his eyes and the tone of his voice suggested otherwise. "Which I'm sure you understand makes me more uncomfortable, not less."
"Yeah, obviously, that's weird as shit. I don't remember hearing anything unusual, but show me the tapes, maybe that'll jog something."
The security recordings, when viewed, told them almost nothing. There had been two intruders. They had worn surgical masks and standard security uniforms, likely stolen. They both looked pretty big. There was about two minutes of footage, and then the cameras around the server rooms had cut out for fifteen minutes, and when everything came back up they were nowhere to be seen.
"Ok, super fucking creepy, mad respect. But nah, these are time-stamped from two in the morning, I went home half past midnight."
Jin Guangyao sighed. "My father is going to kill me."
"So? Kill him first."
"Don't tempt me." A beat, and then Jin Guangyao dug his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a photo on it. "One last question, does this mean anything to you? It was found on top of one of the server stacks."
Xue Yang squinted at the photograph—a blue sticky note, on which someone had doodled the face of a bull or something, its enormous horns pointed toward the viewer. "Nah. It's cute though."
Another sigh. "You are no help."
He saw The Guy again the next day, coming out of a local bubble tea place with two cups as Xue Yang was about to go in. They both stopped in their tracks, staring at each other, and then The Guy raised an eyebrow and Xue Yang said, "Buddy of mine said I should ask for your number the next time I saw you."
The corner of The Guy's mouth twitched. "Did he."
Xue Yang wanted to bite his forearms, even if that would mean getting hair on his tongue. "I mean, if you'd rather I could ask for your husband's."
"You could."
Today's battered, ancient t-shirt had a picture of some kind of big turtle on it, and the sleeves pulled up on The Guy's biceps, revealing a tattoo that Xue Yang hadn't noticed the other day. Sensing that the phone number tack was useless and "hey, you should smother me with your pecs" would be actively counterproductive, Xue Yang looked at that instead. "So why a cow?"
The Guy glanced over at his own arm and now he actually smiled, just a little bit. "Not a cow. An aurochs, from the Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux. The last one died in 1627." Pause. "Ice is melting. See you around."
He walked off without another word, leaving Xue Yang standing outside the bubble tea place, scowling as he tried to remember where he'd heard the word "aurochs" recently.
That evening:
your favorite disaster: ran into him again today
couldn't get his number or his husband'std: that's a shame
i hope you see him again
i bet you're wearing him downyour favorite disaster: youre weirdly hype for me to fuck this other guy
td: maybe i'm angling for you to send me pictures when you do
^_^your favorite disaster: fuck
ok
sure
i mean i could be persuaded
He sat bolt upright five minutes before his alarm the next morning. "Motherfucker. I knew I'd heard someone talking about an aurochs recently."
To his not-inconsiderable surprise and growing suspicion, when he pulled up Discord on his phone he already had a message from TD.
td: good morning!
i know you're likely not awake yet, but when you do wake up i wanted to ask, would you like to meet in person soon?
i think we'll be passing through your area within the next day or so
Xue Yang squinted at his phone for a moment. Apart from timezone he'd never mentioned where he lived to TD. Had he ever said anything about it on the crypto Discord?
your favorite disaster: how do you know what my area is
td: intuition, as I mentioned the other day
i wouldn't necessarily call myself a psychic but i'm sensitive to some thingsyour favorite disaster: you dont say
is there anything else your psychic powers are telling you about metd: a few, but i don't think any of them would be productive to discuss online, they're more in-person sorts of topics ^_~
your favorite disaster: hm
hey, unrelated, i have a question for you
your bf or whatever
you call him Aurochs yeah?td: yes, that's right. was that your question?
your favorite disaster: nah just lead-up. what's Aurochs mean? that his name or what?
td: it's an animal he likes
the aurochs was the ancestor of modern domesticated cattle
they went extinct, mainly due to over-hunting and loss of their habitat to humans. the last one died in 1627 in Poland.your favorite disaster: interesting
followup question
does your bf have a tattoo of one?
maybe on his left bicep?td: indeed he does. ^_^
your favorite disaster: awesome
next question
why are you and your hubby stalking metd: oh we really haven't been, i promise
aurochs didn't even realize it was you the first time, and he described you in such a funny way i only figured out what had happened when you mentioned him that evening. the second encounter was also a coincidence.
as for why i initiated conversation in the first place, that's best said in person
that is if you still want to meet
the flirting was unrelated to my original intent, that's all been entirely genuine
Xue Yang started typing a response, stopped, started again, stopped again, scowled as another memory swam to the surface, and then went with,
your favorite disaster: do you or your husband have a habit of drawing little cows on sticky notes and leaving them in weird places
like maybe in the server rooms of large arguably-evil corporationstd: on occasion yes
your favorite disaster: ok
ok
ok so
where do you want to meet
has to be a public place so you cant serial kill metd: oh of course
how about the library?
A day and a half and some fairly serious research later, Xue Yang found himself standing in the parking lot outside the public library, staring in vague uncertainty at an ancient, beat-up black panel van with out-of-state plates. Now that he was paying more close attention to it, he noticed that it had the faint fryalator smell of something that had been modified to run on biodiesel. If his research was correct—and it definitely was, he was incredible at research—he was probably on the verge of making the stupidest decision of his entire life.
He hated verges. Time to collapse that waveform, thank you very fucking much.
He went up and rapped on the rear doors of the black van.
There was some thumping, and some rattling, and a shout of, "Just a moment, please!" and then the doors opened to reveal TD. Which was obviously not his real name, but they hadn't exchanged legals when they'd agreed on a time to meet, so it'd have to do for now.
"Oh!" he said, sounding both startled and pleased. "I'd thought we were going to meet inside!"
"We were, I wanted to be sure this was actually your van." Xue Yang squinted past him. "Do you live in this thing?"
"Only when we're working." TD beamed at him.
Huh, Xue Yang thought, staring at TD's smiling face. Maybe this is what getting shot feels like. "So do you want to go into the library or am I climbing right into your creepy murder van?"
"We don't murder people! But the lighting isn't wonderful in the van, so it might be nicer to talk inside." TD hopped down from the van, closed its doors, and then linked arms with Xue Yang like they were on a date in the Nineteen Fifties. "There's a really nice little private meeting room over near the arts and crafts books, it has a couch and everything. It's not booked until this evening, I checked."
As they walked into the library, Xue Yang took the opportunity to get a genuinely good look at TD. He'd gotten a couple more poorly-focused selfies over Discord, but none that gave him a really clear idea of what the guy looked like, and the first thing that struck Xue Yang was this was the hottest he'd ever seen anyone look in battered thrift-store cargo pants. The design on his t-shirt, a plain line-art rainbow pierced by a jagged arrow, was awkwardly placed and slightly messy in a way that suggested it had been silk-screened by hand, and he was wearing probably the world's oldest pair of white sneakers. The edges of tattoos peeked out past the ends of both shirt sleeves. He also had an extremely dorky ponytail (which he unfortunately made look very good) and huge round magenta-tinted glasses, which he made no motion to remove as they got to the aforementioned meeting room, shut the door, and sat down. "Never quite took you for a sunglasses-indoors kind of guy."
"Oh, the tint is medically necessary, I'm very light sensitive. I'm mostly colorblind, you know, I don't think I ever mentioned it before."
"Huh. You mentioned you don't drive, you never said why." It wasn't a big couch; Xue Yang just took his sneakers off and pulled his feet up onto the cushions so he could turn sideways and look TD in the face. "So maybe we start with actual names and then you explain how you weren't actually stalking me."
"That depends, are you a police officer or otherwise a member of any law enforcement agency?"
Xue Yang snorted. "I'm actually kind of offended by the suggestion."
"Excellent, I'll hold you to that." TD pursed his lips thoughtfully, which made Xue Yang think several things that would probably be considered sinful if he gave a shit about that sort of thing. "Maybe it's more accurate to say that we were stalking you, but not for personal reasons, mostly we were data-mining your selfies for location info and trying to get a sense of your workplace's schedule. Well, TT was doing the data-mining, she's the one who's good at that sort of thing."
"TT being…?"
"Tasmanian Tiger. A friend of ours. She's not here, she's too young to do field work." Another sunny smile, which yet again made Xue Yang feel like he'd been shot in the chest. "Anyway! I'm Xiao Xingchen, it's wonderful to finally meet you in person."
His hand was pleasantly warm, and he had a strong grip, and Xue Yang was dying about it a little even as he said, "Motherfucker. Normally I'm the one doing the fucking social engineering bullshit, what the fuck. Xue Yang. Two questions: why me, and also how the hell did your husband describe me that was so funny?"
"He said he'd gotten hit on by someone who looked like if Mattel made an e-boy. And you were behind the Jiangzai cryptocurrency incident last year, weren't you?"
"Listen, if any of my investors had bothered to look up what those characters meant then maybe they would've been able to hold onto their money. He said I was what?"
"A Mattel e-boy. He was very charmed despite himself. And you also programmed the virus that gutted Chang Electronics the year before that, yes?"
"How the fuck did you manage to connect these dots? Like don't get me wrong, I'm impressed, but holy shit." Xue Yang paused, eyeing him for a moment. "Actually, don't answer that, how about I ask a question back, did you and your guy meet while you were bombing the same oil pipeline or something?"
"It was a fishery, actually, the pipeline was on our honeymoon."
Xue Yang was fairly sure he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. Getting horny about this was probably a sign of something wrong with him, but there were already so many things wrong with him that he didn't really care about adding one more. "So, again, why me?"
"Initially because we wanted information regarding Jin Amalgamated, since they're involved in some business we think is fairly unsavory. I kept up contact once we'd gotten the info we wanted because I enjoyed speaking with you." A broad, beautiful grin. "And while you don't seem to have any particularly strong convictions regarding human interference with the environment, you do seem like a man who enjoys causing chaos, and since we do as well I thought it was worth…pursuing. Speaking of which," and the grin got a little bit wider, Xue Yang was so hot for this loon that he was going to soak through his jeans, "have you ever pulled the fire alarm at the JA main offices? Do you happen to know how long it takes them to evacuate the building?"
He did not, in fact, pull a fire alarm, because all of them were monitored by camera after the last time he'd pulled one for fun. He tripped them all remotely instead, using a little program he'd built that set them off at weird intervals in little clumps of two or three so that it didn't immediately look like a setup. The original plan had just been to do it some day when he was bored and felt like seeing if he could get Jin Guangyao to make that "I'm really pissed but also laughing internally" face. This, though, was way funnier, and it was going to get him laid, so it seemed like a worthwhile use of his bullshit.
(And anyway, Jin Guangyao wasn't in the office today and neither was his kid brother, because Xue Yang had snuggled up to him the day before and murmured, "Hey, you should call out sick tomorrow," in his ear and he'd given Xue Yang the funniest goddamn look in the world and then sighed and said, "Don't tell me anything that might implicate me."
"Baby, would I do that to you?"
"You would and have. Fortunately I'm at least as good at my job as you are at yours.")
Point being, he dipped for "lunch" first, which he was always doing, and activated the alarms once he was a block or two away. The yelling started almost immediately, because someone was always yelling in that building, and then a couple of minutes after that people started piling out of the building in roughly orderly lines. If you could rely on JA for anything, it was that they were good at damage control.
He was pulled into an alley between two stores and shoved against the wall right before a cop car came wailing down the street. Wheezing, he stuck his tongue out against the broad palm covering his mouth, and was after a moment able to gasp out, "The fuck, man, warn a guy first."
Aurochs looked down at him, completely impassive. "Warning you would have impaired your reaction time, you needed to be out of view of the street."
"You know I'm carrying a knife, right?"
Aurochs raised his other hand, the one that hadn't been over Xue Yang's mouth, to show—the knife that had been in Xue Yang's back pocket. "I'd anticipated that, yes."
Xue Yang just gaped at him for a moment before managing to say, "I am so turned on right now."
"Good for you." A ping, and Aurochs dug his phone out of his pocket, glanced at it, and then reached into his other pocket and clicked something that he didn't bring out. "All right, come on if you're coming."
Still stunned, Xue Yang followed after him as he left the alley and started heading down the street. After a moment, there was a loud THUMP behind them, followed by a rising tide of startled yelling and at least one scream. Aurochs paused with a frown, checked his phone when it pinged again, and then continued on after reading whatever message it was that he'd received.
Problem was, trailing along behind Aurochs like this made Xue Yang feel like some dumb kid with a crush on their friend's hot older brother. He didn't enjoying feeling dumb, or like a kid; he'd had enough of both when he was a kid. And this guy was so fucking placid, Xue Yang desperately wanted to get on his nerves. "So if I'm his type, but he married you, then what's his other type? I never took him for being into big and stupid."
"He likes brats who cause problems and people who can keep up with him in conversation." Now Aurochs glanced back over his shoulder. "I have a PhD. I assume you can guess what category you fall into."
Xue Yang's mouth went dry, because he was an insane person. "Holy shit, you're fucking mean as hell."
"When the occasion calls for it."
"Oh, and this is the occasion?"
"You're the occasion, yes."
"So what's your type?"
"Troublemakers."
"Zichen, are you bullying him?"
The sound of Xingchen's voice was a shock; Xue Yang had been so focused on the twin desires to annoy Aurochs and to stare at his ass that he'd completely lost track of where they were going. Now, when he looked up and around Aurochs, he realized that they'd reached the rear corner of a public parking lot, and furthermore that Xingchen was leaning out of the back door of that black van, blinking owlishly at them. Aurochs just shrugged. "He deserved it."
Xue Yang nodded. "I super deserved it. He should be meaner."
More blinking from Xingchen, and then a tiny smile. "Somehow I have the feeling you'd complain about it terribly if he was."
"You want me to complain, you think it's cute."
"I do think you're cute. Here, both of you, get in."
He made them take their shoes off when they climbed into the van, like it was a house or something, and privately Xue Yang was willing to acknowledge that it sort of was? At least, it was a house now. Which was a van. It was…
"Huh."
Xingchen beamed at him. "Not what you were expecting?"
"I mean, given the watchlists you're on I was expecting more of a 'mobile command center' vibe. This feels like someone's grandma's house if she lived in a camper."
"That's because we got it from his grandmother," Aurochs said, sitting down in butterfly position on the carpeted floor next to the door and cracking his neck.
"Did she also use it to bomb places?"
"Of course." Xingchen pulled the van doors shut and clicked the lock. "Where do you think I got the habit from?"
Xue Yang blinked, looking around at the little bolted-down cabinet full of books and DVDs and the map stuck to one wall and the mini fridge and the very funky homebrew computer setup. "This is way comfier than the other big ominous vans I've been in."
"We do our best," Xingchen said pleasantly. "Have you introduced yourselves yet?" At their shaking heads he continued with, "All right, then. Xue Yang, this is my husband, Song Lan, he's a lawyer sometimes but mostly he builds houses. Zichen, this is Xue Yang, he's a computer security expert."
Aurochs—Song Lan—raised his eyebrows. "We're going with 'computer security expert'?"
"Hey, I know tons about computer security." Xue Yang thought about it for a moment and then sat down and flopped backwards so that his head rested in Song Lan's lap, which was, as he'd expected, incredibly comfortable. "How else would I be so good at poking it full of holes? You're not the only one here with an advanced degree, you know, I hacked MIT's student records and issued one to myself ages ago."
At this Xingchen laughed and Xue Yang nearly melted. They'd only spoken in person the once before, and that conversation had been fun but very strange and a little bit tense; he hadn't gotten so much as a giggle out of his weird new friend at the time. He hadn't know people were allowed to laugh like that, like the entire world was a beautiful joke and they'd just gotten to a good part. He was pretty sure he was blushing, or at the very least his ears felt like they were on fire. The whole thing made him feel very gay and stupid and like dying somehow and it was so distracting that he was almost too slow on the uptake to realize when Xingchen stopped laughing, sat down on the van floor next to his hip, and said, "Sweetheart, may I kiss you?"
Feeling even gayer and more stupid about Xingchen calling him "sweetheart," Xue Yang said, "Fucking absoutely you can kiss me." Only after he'd said it and Xingchen had already swung one stupidly long leg over his hips did it process that Xingchen's plan was apparently to kiss him while his head was still in Song Lan's lap.
Which was.
Yeah.
He scrabbled at Xingchen's waist and shoved both hands up under the hem of his dorky Reading Rainbow t-shirt, making an undignified moaning noise as Xingchen's tongue shoved into his mouth. Song Lan shifted a bit but made no attempt to push them off of him. In fact mostly he just carded a rough hand through Xue Yang's hair, which sent a shiver running down through Xue Yang's entire body. That made Xingchen giggle again, and kiss him hard enough to bruise, and say, "Is this all right?"
"Holy shit," Xue Yang croaked, "are you always this fucking intense?"
"We got married six months after we met," Song Lan said above him, deep voice a rumble at such close range, "and it only took us that long because he got arrested. Yes, he's always this intense."
"Fucking hell, that must be exhausting. Hey, Xingchen, take off your shirt."
Xingchen shifted back and peeled his t-shirt off, revealing that the tattoos Xue Yang had seen the edges of the other day actually covered most of his torso in a fabulous tangle of roses and thorns and in one spot near his hip, inexplicably—
"Is that a loaf of bread."
"It is." Xingchen bent back down and kissed him on the side of the neck and then fucking bit him, his hips jerking up against Xingchen's ass as Xingchen murmured, "Give us bread, but give us roses."
Xue Yang's head tipped back further into Song Lan's lap, his eyes rolling back to meet Song Lan's downward gaze as Song Lan mouthed, face solemn but eyes gleaming, "He's always like this." It was also apparently his turn to run his fingers through Xue Yang's hair; Xue Yang considered passing out from sheer pent-up arousal.
Someone knocked on the rear door of the van when they were just finishing getting Xue Yang out of his own shirt, which didn't cover anything nearly so impressive but did look really good on a hot guy's floor. Unperturbed, Song Lan moved Xue Yang's head out of his lap, messed up his own hair, got up, and pushed the door open very slightly so that he could climb out. "Yes? …good afternoon, Officer, can I help you with something?"
Xue Yang and Xingchen both went very still.
A muffled voice outside, only half the words comprehensible. "…reported that this van had been parked here all morning…"
Song Lan listened very seriously and then, when allowed to speak, said, "Of course, it's natural to be concerned. This is my work vehicle, I'm a contractor. I'm in town visiting my girlfriend."
Another muffled reply. "…particular reason you've been—"
Xue Yang glanced at Xingchen, winked, took a deep breath, and then said, in the girliest possible whine he could manage, "Bay-bee, what is it, if my lunch break goes too much longer my boss is gonna notice."
There was an awkward pause before Song Lan said, sounding apologetic and yet somehow also very, very smug, "Like I said. Visiting my girlfriend. Do you mind if I—"
The cop outside said something unclear, accompanied by the indulgent laughter of someone else with him. Song Lan nodded, thanked them quietly, and pulled the van door shut again and relocked it.
—and then gently elbowed Xingchen aside and dropped to his knees on the floor in between Xue Yang's legs, pinning him to the weird floral carpet and saying, "So you're my girlfriend now."
"I'd be an amazing girlfriend, I give incredible head and I love to spend other people's money." Xue Yang fluttered his eyelashes and reached up to wrap his arms around Song Lan's neck so he could lean up and murmur, "So are Daddy and his boyfriend gonna fuck me stupid now or do I have to beg for it first?"
Song Lan's eyes went dark.
"Although fair warning, it takes a lot of fucking to make me stupid."
"You let a pair of internationally wanted activists talk you into aiding and abetting a bombing and then followed them back to their van." Song Lan sounded just as even and calm as always, but he was holding himself up on one elbow now, his other hand moving down between them to pop open the button on Xue Yang's fly and shove the zipper down. Xue Yang's jeans were designer and had cost $800 (of someone else's money) and fit like paint, but they were also pretty wet at this point and Song Lan was doing his goddamn best to get his whole hand into them and holy shit. "A lot of people would call that a stupid decision."
"Hey," not shaky, he was keeping it together despite the hand between his legs and Song Lan's weight pressing him down, "I'm an excellent judge of character, you tell me this was a stupid decision."
A beat, and Song Lan's eyes flicked away from Xue Yang's face, which Xue Yang was ready to be offended about until he glanced in the same direction and saw Xingchen watching them with a look on his face like he'd been given a present. He had one hand clapped over his mouth; the other was shoved under the band of his sweatpants. "Sweetheart," breathed out through his fingers, breath hitching as he touched himself, "you look like you were made to be underneath him."
Song Lan's hand was also moving now, calluses distractingly, deliciously rough as he matched Xingchen's strokes precisely. A whine was building in the back of Xue Yang's throat; he dug his nails into the nape of Song Lan's neck, bared his teeth and was immediately smothered by a kiss, so that when he actually did whine it was directly into Song Lan's mouth. "Put your," cut off on a gasp, it was hard to gather his thoughts again to speak, "put your fucking fingers in me, come on, gimme some—"
Song Lan shifted, and Xue Yang came with two thick fingers buried in his cunt while he ground his dick against the heel of Song Lan's hand.
Next to them, Xingchen made a sort of breathless cooing noise, like he thought it was cute how Xue Yang was shaking to pieces around his husband's fingers, but when Xue Yang looked at him he was flushed and wide-eyed behind his glasses. He leaned down and kissed Xue Yang, kissed Song Lan, kissed Xue Yang again and murmured, "Can I go down on you?"
Another shudder, the impact of the question combined with the feeling of Song Lan's fingers pulling out of him. "Only if you finger me while you're at it, if one of you doesn't fuck me I'll explode."
"You could fuck me."
"Not unless we go back to my apartment first, I don't carry my strap in my fucking laptop bag, people at JA are nosy as hell. I don't need them knowing how big my dick is." Xue Yang smirked up at him. "I'll show you later if you ask real nice, though."
So—he came a second time grinding down on Xingchen's mouth, his own lips stretched wide around Song Lan's cock, and a third time rocked back and forth between them with Xingchen's cock in his ass and hand between his legs. By the time they were done he definitely had rug burn from the goofy floral carpet, and thus felt it was only his right to flop over on his back feeling pleasantly fuzzy about things while the other two dealt with practical shit like condom disposal and finding everyone's clothing. Not that he didn't get dressed, but he gave it a minute, and then once he was dressed he started digging around in his messenger bag and Xingchen said, calmly, "Please step outside if you're going to vape."
"Oh, come on."
It was surprisingly nice, at least, sitting on the back bumper with his legs dangling down and enjoying the good weather alongside the Captain Crunch-scented mist.
When he went back inside, intending to feel out the possibility of getting a ride home and a second round somewhere more comfortable than their fucking van, Xingchen was on the phone, blinking cheerfully at the screen as someone who sounded like an actual kid said, "You guys have got to head out before they notice that I'm redirecting all of their shit."
Xue Yang glanced over at Song Lan. "Who's he talking to? This something I should be worried about?"
"TT. That depends."
"Wait, is someone else there with you—" There was a beat, and then "TT" made a horrified noise and said, "Please tell me you didn't actually make out with the crypto creep."
Xingchen turned faintly pink, which was fucking adorable. "Ah, well…"
"Nah, it was better than that." Xue Yang grinned at the ceiling of the van and then began to whistle "La Marseillaise."
There was a long pause, and then the kid on the phone let out a shriek. "You didn't."
Xingchen looked mystified. "I didn't what? What does the French national anthem have to do with anything?"
Song Lan looked like he was both actually disgusted and desperately trying not to be amused. "The term he's referencing is 'Eiffel Tower.'"
"And what does that—oh. Oh, that does make sense given the, ah…"
Another horrified noise from the phone. "Xingchen. Song Lan. Why. Don't answer that. Hey, crypto creep, if you call the cops on my dads I'll fucking kill you. I'll tank your credit score. I'll get you on the TSA no-fly list."
Xue Yang snorted. "Kid, you check out my resumé and tell me again you think I'm the kind of guy who talks to cops. And anyway I'm pretty sure I'm already on the no-fly list." As Xingchen began talking to TT in a gentle, placating tone, he turned to Song Lan and said, "I feel like it should've been disclosed previously that you have a kid?"
Song Lan shrugged. "Not legally. She's an emancipated minor, we're good friends."
"I met her some time ago when she tried to rob me," Xingchen said cheerfully, finally tucking his phone away, "and then Zichen represented her in a lawsuit, and we've been close ever since."
"What the hell does a kid sue someone for?"
"She needed medical care that her state-issued health insurance was reluctant to cover, Zichen got it all worked out. Sweetheart, can we keep you?"
Xue Yang felt his ears go hot again and distracted himself digging a lollipop out of his bag and unwrapping it. "Only if you mean it. A Xue Yang is for life, not just for Easter. Or Earth Day, or whatever the fuck you celebrate. Anyway it's not like I can go back to JA, because they'll definitely figure out that I helped you guys with this shit and then they'll probably try to have me killed, they've done that before. Like, not to me, obviously, but they've definitely killed people."
Xingchen immediately looked worried. "I wouldn't have asked you for your assistance with this if I'd known it would put you in that kind of danger, why on earth would you agree?"
"You said it yourself the other day." Xue Yang pulled his lollipop out of his mouth with a slow, wet pop. "I couldn't fucking care less about the environment, but I sure as hell love fucking shit up for rich assholes who think they're better than everyone, why else do you think I spend so much time scamming them out of their money? Not like I need any more of their money, my investment portfolio is fucking insane. At this point the scamming's mostly just intellectual enrichment."
Song Lan had gotten a very intent look on his face. "Do you have records of their previous hits?"
Xue Yang looked him dead in the eyes. "If I told you I was willing to share my encrypted drive full of info on all the illegal shit JA's ever done, and the one for the Wen conglomerate, would I get to tie Xingchen up and fuck you while he watches?"
Xingchen made a kind of startled chirping noise.
Jin Guangyao called that evening, well after they'd stopped by Xue Yang's apartment and cleared everything out—it was a big place, but everything he actually owned still fit into two suitcases and his laptop bag. That was probably a sign of paranoia or something, not that he cared. "Xue Yang, what the hell did you do?"
"I got a more appealing job offer." Xue Yang shifted in the van's tiny central front seat so he could flutter his eyelashes at Xingchen, who was looking down at him in concern. "Sorry about that."
"You know I can double any offer they made you."
"You really can't, the benefits on my new gig are fucking incredible."
A heavy sigh. "Don't ever tell anyone I said this, but take care of yourself. I enjoyed working with you, I'd hate to hear about you getting killed."
"Awww, A-Yao, I didn't know you cared."
"Of course I care, jackass, do you know how few people in this world I actually like spending time with?" Another heavy sigh. "I'm guessing I should start looking for alternate employment for myself and Mo Xuanyu."
"Probably a good idea, yeah."
Once he'd hung up the call he turned his phone off and passed it to Xingchen. "You wanna throw that out the window or something? Did my best to get rid of all the shit that was on there but they're still probably tracking it."
"Hm." Xingchen frowned down at the phone in his hand as on Xue Yang's other side Song Lan shifted over into the far right lane, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Normally I don't approve of littering, but given the circumstances I think I'll make an exception."
The phone went out the window.
"Awesome, thanks, babe. What are your opinions on road head?"
"Keep your seatbelt on, please."
"Challenge fucking accepted."
