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A/N - I am so excited for this exchange! And I loved that the prompt was broad enough to play with. This story is set in fictional China in a modern setting with ‘canon’ city names and no homophobia, where gay marriage is fully accepted with no social stigma. The only real place mentioned is Tsinghua University because it really does have something called the Research and Conservation Center for Excavated Texts, which Lan Zhan absolutely needed to be a part of. Since this is modern AU, there are no courtesy names.
Thank you to ZazGeek and Epistemology for beta'ing this!
Look, it wasn’t like Wei Ying meant to get so deep into the lie.
It started pretty innocently. He had gotten a great job at the Yiling branch of WenTech. It was a new office, partnering with a lot of start-ups, so it had attracted a group of younger employees working with experimental tech.
His colleagues were fun! He made friends with most of them, as well as with a lot of the people working in the startups they were partnering with.
But he also was actually super into the projects that he was working on and—more often than not—preferred to spend Friday nights working on some new idea that had come into his head rather than going out to the bars or the clubs that had sprung up throughout Yiling with the influx of so many young people with good paying jobs flowing into the area.
If he were still in his college days, he definitely would have been going out more and enjoying the rush of the heady pulse of music and alcohol that filled clubs and bars on the weekends. But he was closer to thirty than twenty, and he’d gotten all of his partying out of his system when he was younger. It didn’t feel nearly as exciting to him as the new ideas that were constantly flooding through his head every day.
He had a job he liked, and he was focused on it.
Not to mention that—in college—his habit of going to parties had earned him an entirely undeserved reputation for being a player, even though he actually had not been interested in dating at all, much less hooking up.
He definitely wanted to avoid a repeat of that in his professional life.
The only problem was that it sometimes got a little bit awkward when he kept turning his friends down to go for drinks after work. He’d heard a couple of them say that maybe he thought he was too good for them or didn’t really like them.
Which was absolutely not true!
Well, except for that asshole from Jin Corp who sometimes came to their offices, who was honestly just the worst, but he didn’t really count since he didn’t actually work there. Wei Ying really liked his co-workers, and would absolutely have had fun partying with them back in college.
So he had been conscious to at least go to lunch with people more often, and started telling people that he’d gotten all of his wild days out of his system back in college and was just focusing on his career at the moment.
He briefly thought he’d struck the right balance.
Except then, in a sort of Uno-reverse of the misunderstanding from his college days about him being a player, people somehow started to assume he was somehow not interested in casual dating or partying because he was wanting to settle down and get married. Which! Was not at all on his radar at the moment.
Being part of the ‘marriageable’ crowd was almost worse, because the people who asked him out tended to be really nice and very sincere and looking for an actual relationship, rather than just thinking that his ass looked great in his jeans.
It made Wei Ying feel terrible!
But honestly, he had never really thought about dating or marriage much. His own parents had died when he was young and he had grown up in a household where the marriage was tense at best. And also, he just had never been… interested?
When he was in college, he had told people that he was interested in someone else whenever someone had asked him out, and that had seemed to work pretty well. He’d gone to Tsinghua University, and it was a huge campus with enough people that no one pressed too hard when he didn’t offer immediate details about who he liked.
So he figured he would just try the same approach here.
The problem was that—unlike university, where he had a few hours of class or lab with someone a week and then didn’t really see them the rest of the time—working in an office with people was different. They had meetings together, got coffee together, had lunch together, worked late over dinner together. There were lots of opportunities for people to ask follow up questions about who you were interested in. And it also felt a little bit immature to just say ‘I like someone else’ as an adult and not actually be in a relationship.
So Wei Ying had started out by simply saying ‘sorry, I’m taken’ when anyone asked him out.
He hadn’t really been expecting to have to expand on it with follow up questions that he got asked like: ‘Is it serious? What do they do for work? Do they live in town? How did you meet? What are they like?’
And… ok, Wei Ying could admit in retrospect that he might have gone a little bit too far. ‘Yes it was serious. They were married! No, he didn’t live in town. They hadn’t been able to solve the two-body problem and find good jobs in the same city, but they were working on it!’
That held people off only for so long, but then more questions would come up asking about ‘what his partner was like’, and ‘what did they do the last time they were together’, and ‘when are they planning to see each other next’. Because normal people in their late twenties and thirties talked about these things, evidently.
Wei Ying did not have a great memory for things outside of engineering and product design, so there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to keep his story straight if he really just made everything up.
It all came to a head at a large group dinner celebrating a major product launch where most people had brought their significant others, or at least a date. Wei Ying had thought that his earlier explanation of being in a long-distance relationship would give him a pass on showing up alone, but somehow people had decided that he must be feeling lonely, so they had made an effort to ask him more questions about his spouse.
In a moment of panic and possibly after a few too many glasses of wine, he started answering questions based on an actual person that he’d known in the past. He didn’t use his name! It was just… it would be easier to keep his story straight if he had a clear picture in his mind. And it wasn’t like they would ever know! The guy lived halfway across the country from them and moved in totally different circles.
He’d just needed a… a mental model of what a potential partner for him could be like. So his brain had pulled up the memory of a guy in college that Wei Ying had always vaguely thought that—if he ever did settle down with someone—it would be like him:
Lan Zhan.
Wei Ying had, in fact, only talked to Lan Zhan exactly once. Calling the exchange a conversation was probably overly generous if you consider that it basically consisted of Wei Ying running up to the guy and saying, excited and all in a rush: ‘Hi! I am Wei Ying. I heard you play your guqin at the concert over the weekend. You’re so amazing! I heard that the score was one that was recovered from an ancient excavation from over a thousand years ago. That’s so cool! I read somewhere that the reduced character notation had some fingering-based instructions that were more about the performer than just the melody. Do you want to grab drinks sometime and you can tell me about it?’
Lan Zhan had simply glared at him and turned and walked away without saying a word.
If Wei Ying had been younger, he might have chased after him and tried again. But high school had taught him enough social awareness to know that some people just found him a bit too much. So he had just rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly in his embarrassment, and hadn’t followed.
If the guy wasn’t interested in talking to him, then so be it.
Wei Ying had still been interested in the idea of bringing ancient music to life. It was very cool! And the university had an entire division called the Research and Conservation Center for Excavated Texts. So there was probably a lot of source material that he could access!
He might have been majoring in engineering, but he had other interests. And Lan Zhan’s playing had really inspired him.
He pulled up the article he’d remembered seeing about Jianzipu, describing detailed, non-rhythmic, fingering-based instructions for ancient qin players. The article mentioned the idea of using machine learning (something Wei Ying knew how to do!) to look for patterns in the radicals and compare them to some of the more modern music theory studies of guqin music and the use of silence in the scores. One of the authors was even at Tsinghua, in the Research Center.
He’d always been drawn to music, even though Madam Yu had made it clear he had to major in something practical (which she had been very clear to define meant either business, engineering, or medicine). But he was allowed to have hobbies! He ended up reaching out to the researcher and they wrote a paper together on it before he’d graduated.
So it was whatever. Lan Zhan wasn’t interested in Wei Ying’s opinions. Fair enough. Not everyone had to be. He’d found someone else to work with on it.
Wei Ying had continued to see Lan Zhan occasionally around campus, though. He was hard to miss, always dressed in pristine white, pale gray, or light blue, with his long hair always perfectly smooth in its thick braid.
He’d eventually learned that Lan Zhan was the top student in his department and had throngs of admirers. Unsurprisingly, he was interning at the Research and Conservation Center for Excavated Texts. Evidently, the piece he had performed at the concert where Wei Ying had first seen him had been from the Center.
They had no classes that overlapped so Wei Ying never talked to him again. He would just see him occasionally across campus. Wei Ying was busy with his own college experience: Competing in various engineering fairs, interning at a couple of startups, drinking his weight in baiju at various parties.
Lan Zhan also came to the student research symposium that the university hosted, where students from different departments presented their research in posters staged around a large auditorium. He had walked past Wei Ying’s poster while Wei Ying was talking to someone else from the music department about his Jianzipu research. Wei Ying had thought maybe the guy would finally talk to him but Lan Zhan had only stared at the poster for a few minutes then turned abruptly and walked away.
Since they hadn’t been friends in college, Wei Ying had obviously not kept in touch with Lan Zhan after they graduated, but he supposed if he was going to have an imaginary husband, Lan Zhan would fit the bill: brilliant, studious, passionate about his own work, and beautiful.
He had noticed that Lan Zhan was now a faculty member at the Conservation Center, and there was a single photo of him on the faculty page. And… ok, so maybe it had crossed a line when he’d downloaded the photo to his phone for the next time someone asked him if he had a picture of his husband. But he never sent it around (reverse image search was a thing, after all) and he didn’t send the link to the profile which would have had Lan Zhan’s name.
It all seemed like a harmless lie. He was halfway across the country from Lan Zhan, working with people who didn’t know him and would never meet him. It allowed Wei Ying to focus on his work without hurting people‘s feelings when he turned them down when they asked him out.
He possibly didn’t realize just how far things had snowballed until one day when one of his colleagues said:
“Hey! I was talking to my cousin the other day and she actually knows your husband. Small world right?”
Wei Ying wondered if the sound of tires screeching and glass shattering that was happening inside his head was audible to the rest of the cafeteria given how loud it was in his mind.
“What?” Wei Ying asked.
He must have misheard. He’d been very careful to never use Lan Zhan’s name.
All hopes of that being the case, crashed and burned when his colleague (Ping? Tang? What was the guy's name again?) replied.
“Yeah! It turns out she knows people at that Conservation Institute you said your husband works at. Small world, right?”
“Uh… right,” Wei Ying said, trying to keep the panic off his face. Because this was not supposed to happen.
Maybe he didn’t really mean Lan Zhan? It could have been someone else who fit the general description. Or maybe, even if they did know him, maybe they… wouldn’t have talked to him. Which was very possible because Lan Zhan doesn’t talk to most people.
“Anyway, she was saying how much she admired you for staying so faithful to each other despite living apart for two years already with no end in sight. You didn’t mention that he’d be coming to town this weekend! That’s great! We should all get together and grab dinner. Unless of course you’re going to be too busy catching up with your husband to hang out with us,” the guy laughed.
Wei Ying forced himself to smile as he tried to think of a non-weird way to ask what the name of the person his cousin spoke to was.
Before he could ask, one of their other co-workers had come up to get the guy’s advice on some code that was glitching.
“Don’t forget to invite him to the launch party on Friday!” the guy said over his shoulder as he went to fix the issue.
“Ah. Ha, ha, right! Let’s see what ends up happening. A lot of times plans for him to come out fall through. He’s very busy! It’s why we get along so well,” Wei Ying said, praying to whatever gods might be listening that Lan Zhan was not actually on his way out to Yiling to kick his ass.
What the fuck was he supposed to do? Was Lan Zhan really going to be in town? Surely he must be coming into town for some other reason. He wouldn’t come all the way out here just to kick someone’s ass for using his name as a fake husband.
Right?
The sight of Lan Zhan‘s scathing look when Wei Ying had just asked him to grab coffee with him flickered through his mind. If the guy was that mad about the concept of coffee, he was probably going to be absolutely livid about the concept of being married for the last two years without even knowing it.
Wei Ying tried not to panic. He had never actually used Lan Zhan’s name. He had been extremely careful about that. It worked out well because he was always talking about ‘my husband’, and no one had come right out and asked him ‘what is your husband‘s name’.
So, if it really were true that his colleague's cousin really had met Lan Zhan and somehow connected the dots that the fictitious husband Wei Ying was always talking about was based on Lan Zhan, Wei Ying could still dodge.
If they said, oh, I asked him if he was your husband and he said no’, Wei Ying could reply, ‘of course not! Of course Lan Zhan is not my husband! So funny that he sounds so similar right?’
Maybe, eventually, he could talk about going through a divorce or being estranged from his husband and then no one would want to bring up the topic and no one would ask him to date.
Ugh. How had it spiraled so out of control?
He lived across the country from the man! It figured that Lan Zhan was just so amazing that people everywhere knew about him.
Wei Ying would figure it out. It was probably someone else. There was no way that Lan Zhan would really fly all the way out to Yiling just to bust him for using his description as a fake partner, right? And even if he did, Wei Ying could try to play it off as a misunderstanding.
Of course, Lan Zhan would know very well that there was no one else by that description at the Research and Conservation Center for Excavated Texts, but Lan Zhan usually didn’t say more than three words to anyone. Would he really even bother to refute the claim or would he just walk away like he always had in the past whenever Wei Ying or anyone else was talking nonsense.
Or whenever Wei Ying was talking at all, actually.
In the past, Lan Zhan’s utter disregard for Wei Ying had made him feel a little disheartened. But now it might actually be the thing that saved him from a huge embarrassment. He felt himself relax.
It was going to be fine.
There was no way that Lan Zhan would take the trouble to fly all the way out here when Wei Ying had never actually used Lan Zhan’s name or besmirched his reputation in any way. After all, all Wei Ying had done was to go on and on about how amazing and gorgeous Lan Zhan was. Surely he wouldn’t be insulted about that!
Unless, of course, he found the notion of people believing him to be married to Wei Ying so terrible that he felt the need to fly all the way to Yiling and tell him off about it. Which… was a depressing possibility.
Wei Ying sighed.
In the end, he decided that it was just too unlikely that Lan Zhan would waste his time traveling all the way out to Yiling just to scold Wei Ying when the man hadn’t been willing to give him the time of day before. Lan Zhan was busy and successful and even if he ever heard that Wei Ying had been claiming to be married to someone who sounded just like him, it would likely only give him a moment's irritation.
He forced himself to play it off, casually with colleagues that mentioned the potential that his husband might be coming to their launch party. As long as no one mentioned Lan Zhan’s name or asked Wei Ying directly about him, then Wei Ying could maintain plausible deniability if the wrong person showed up.
He had been doing a pretty good job of putting it out of his mind until the night of the party celebrating the successful launch of the product that half the office had been working on for the past nine months. It had already made the news to glowing reviews, and Wei Ying’s entire group had been told they would be given a bonus and the following day off.
Senior management had gone all out for the party, renting out the largest ballroom in an upscale hotel in Yiling to celebrate the success. There would be a mix of people from the media and investors investment community, as well as the employees of the company from the senior executives down to the front line.
Given that the general dress code in the engineering department was very casual, this was the first time that many of them were dressed up in their suits. The booze was flowing, and Wei Ying found himself emptying his first glass very quickly, and grabbing a second as he tried to steady his nerves.
He’d had to get there early to meet the delegation from Wen Tech Headquarters who had made the trip to Yiling to show their support, and they’d wanted to congratulate Wei Ying in person. As the official start of the dinner had approached, he had been watching the entrance anxiously, wondering if Lan Zhan was really going to show up.
But as the minutes ticked by and more and more people entered who were not Lan Zhan, Wei Ying found himself relaxing.
He had been being ridiculous. Of course Lan Zhan wasn’t going to make a trip all the way out there to see someone he probably didn’t even remember existed. He felt a mix of relief and disappointment at the thought, and decided it was time for another celebratory glass of wine.
Wei Ying had just turned to go get a drink when he heard a deep voice speak from directly behind him.
“Wei Ying.”
He had only heard that voice once or twice from across a room, and it had never said his name. But somehow he recognized it instantly, despite it having been six years.
He turned to find Lan Zhan standing behind him, looking devastatingly handsome in an elegant white suit with a pale blue silk dress shirt. It was utterly unfair that the man had become even more handsome than he had been in their youth, with his razor-sharp jaw, chiseled lips, and dark golden eyes.
Wei Ying was acutely aware of the number of eyes that were focused on them.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying said, his voice ringing with false cheer even to his own ears as he turned to look at the man he had not seen in at least six years. “What are you doing here?”
“Would I not come to celebrate my husband’s success with him?” Lan Zhan countered, staring at Wei Ying unblinkingly with one perfect brow arched in challenge.
“Haha. Ah,” Wei Ying said stupidly, his mind racing for something to say that would get him out of having this discussion in front of his entire office.
Lan Zhan, the asshole, just stood there calmly, like it was not totally crazy for him to be there acting (???) like Wei Ying’s husband.
Wei Ying could feel eyes on them. He supposed it was only natural. Not only had everyone been curious for ages about who Wei Ying’s husband was, but Lan Zhan had always drawn eyes in whatever room he was in. It was a combination of his drop dead gorgeousness as well as his intense presence and ethereal grace.
If Lan Zhan was in a room, why would anyone look at anything else?
While he could understand it, at the current moment, he found it incredibly inconvenient.
He wanted to ask Lan Zhan what he was doing there, what he had heard, and whether or not he was mad about it. But he couldn’t do any of that in front of a group of people who thought they were married.
If he could just get a read on how Lan Zhan was feeling about this, he would know how to respond. If Lan Zhan was going to come out angrily and accuse him of lying about being married, then Wei Ying could dodge it by saying that, of course he had never claimed that they were married and this at all just been a misunderstanding.
But he had only a very short amount of time to do that before it would be weird.
And Lan Zhan was giving nothing away as he simply stood there and looked at Wei Ying, seemingly perfectly content to be there with everyone watching them, while Wei Ying broke out in a sweat.
“Right! I know you’re very busy at work at the Institute,” Wei Ying said.
That was neutral, right? That could be said to a husband who was surprising him with a visit or to an old college friend that appeared out of nowhere.
Lan Zhan’s golden eyes pinned Wei Ying in place with their intensity. Wei Ying did not know what to do. Either he had to immediately come clean and say that Lan Zhan was mistaken, and this was all some sort of miscommunication, or he had to double down on his bluff and hope that he had entered some strange parallel universe, where Lan Zhan would be willing to pretend to be his fake husband for no apparent reason.
Wei Ying used the arrival of one of their guest speakers to pull Lan Zhan aside.
“Look, I don’t know what… um… Ping or whoever’s cousin said, but I swear I never told anyone that we were married,” Wei Ying spoke in a low voice that he very much hoped would not carry beyond Lan Zhan’s own ears.
Lan Zhan gave him a long look as he slowly arched an eyebrow.
“Tang Yucheng said that your husband worked at the Conservation Center for Excavated Texts. That you had gone to school together at the same time. That he played the guqin. That he had pet rabbits.”
Ok, when it was put all together like that, it did seem highly specific.
“Yes, but there are probably lots of researchers who work at the Institute and – wait, really? You have pet rabbits? Do your bunnies have names? Can I see pictures of them?” Wei Ying asked.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said sternly.
Wei Ying laughed, and he could admit to himself it sounded slightly unhinged but what was even happening, that Lan Zhan was in Yiling because someone had told him Wei Ying was claiming they were married and Lan Zhan seemed to be playing along.
Clearly, reality had ceased to have any meaning and Wei Ying had entered some strange alternate universe. He might as well have fun with it.
“Well, I figure if I’m going to crash and burn, I might as well do it all the way. This is the first time I’ve ever been able to get you to talk to me, so I’m going to take advantage and at least get some cute bunny pictures out of it!”
And if his random question happened to distract Lan Zhan from the whole ‘I made people think we were married’ thing, then Wei Ying would not complain.
Unfortunately, Lan Zhan did not allow himself to be distracted.
“The vast majority of the researchers at the Institute are at least a decade older than I am. There is only one other person my age there, and she definitely does not meet the general description you gave of your husband.”
Wei Ying could not tell if his face was red from the mortification of being caught out in such an extreme lie, or from the overwhelming adorableness of the mental image of the stern Lan Zhan actually having pet bunnies.
“Maybe… there’s someone there that you just don’t know about yet?” Wei Ying said with fake innocence.
Before Lan Zhan could even give him the set down that he knew was coming (and definitely deserved), one of Wei Ying’s lab mates walked over.
“Oh my God, he really does look like that! When you showed us his picture, I thought for sure it was just something you downloaded from the web. I can’t believe he’s actually your husband! No wonder you were never tempted by anyone else asking you out!”
And, okay, now Wei Ying could admit that the redness on his face was one hundred percent humiliation.
“I’m Li Yichen,” the man said. “I work with Wei Ying. “
“Lan Zhan,” Lan Zhan said stoically. “Wei Ying’s husband “
Lan Zhan gave Wei Ying a heavy look, and Li Yichen laughed.
“Well! I can tell that you too have a lot of ‘catching up’ to do. Wei Ying, don’t forget that you have to give a speech tonight before you sneak that man of yours back to your apartment!”
Lan Zhan gave Wei Ying a slightly smug look as the man slapped Wei Ying on his back and then went off to mingle with other people.
“Is there someone else at the Institute that also has my face that I am unaware of?” Lan Zhan asked flatly.
How did Wei Ying not know that Lan Zhan had a sense of humor? And why did that sense of humor only make an appearance when it was eviscerating Wei Ying?
“Lan Zhaaaaan,” Wei Ying whined, though he found himself grinning.
The stress and fear he’d felt earlier at the prospect of Lan Zhan finding out he’d been using him (though not by name!) as his fake husband had melted away and had been replaced but a different sort of anticipation that was starting to bubble inside Wei Ying.
Lan Zhan was not angrily calling him out. This was not something that Wei Ying had expected, and there were only a few ways to interpret that.
Of course, all of those ways were completely inconsistent with everything Wei Ying knew about Lan Zhan from college, but he was definitely going to roll with whatever strange thing was happening to him at the moment.
“You are a lot less mad about this than I expected,” Wei Ying said looking up at Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan let his eyes move briefly from Wei Ying face down to his shoes and back up his body again. And oh, okay. That was a lot.
Wei Ying felt his skin shiver with goosebumps.
When the hell had Lan Zhan learned to give a man a look like that?! That was not the look of a man who innocently and chastely read his ancient tomes every day at work.
No, that was the look of a man who could take Wei Ying apart.
Just then, someone stepped up to the podium and called for everyone to take their seats to begin the celebration. Wei Ying did not even know if he was breathing when Lan Zhan placed his large hand on the small of his back to guide them to a nearby table to sit.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying said, but Lan Zhan gave him a stern look.
“The speeches are starting,” Lan Zhan said.
It was the same firm tone that Lan Zhan had dismissed him with when they were younger, but this time there was an underlying note of something else that made Wei Ying’s toes curl in his uncomfortable dress shoes.
Wei Ying struggled to focus on the words that everyone was saying as the different group leaders got up to celebrate their teams. Several of them mentioned Wei Ying as well and each time they did, Wei Ying could feel Lan Zhan’s gaze rest heavily on him.
When it was his turn to get up, he almost tripped over the leg of his chair, but Lan Zhan caught his elbow and steadied him.
Wei Ying tried very hard not to think of the strength of his grip as he laughed, embarrassed, and made his way up to the podium to sing the praises of his team. It was a good thing that he knew his team’s accomplishments like the back of his hand so he didn’t need to worry about forgetting what he had wanted to say. They had all been living and breathing the project for the last six months.
Even so, he found himself fumbling over his words anytime, his gaze met that of Lan Zhan’s, who was watching him steadily from the audience.
He saw a few of his colleagues laughing at him and heard more than one not so quiet whisper about how they expected Lan Zhan and Wei Ying to leave early to ‘catch up’, since Wei Ying had been living like a monk for the past who-knows-how-long.
There had definitely been a lot of alcohol consumed before dinner by the group. Wei Ying wished that more of it was inside him, because he felt way too sober to deal with any of this.
As he walked back to take his seat, one of the people who had asked him out earlier and had definitely had a few too many drinks at the celebration said quite loudly:
“No wonder you turned me down if you had him waiting for you at home!”
Wei Ying’s face was bright red by the time he got to his chair and he expected to see an angry Lan Zhan, but instead, the man merely looked at him with an intense, slightly hooded gaze that made Wei Ying reach for his own wine glass and drain it when he got to his seat.
Lan Zhan leaned forward to speak low enough that no one else could hear.
“I was told that Wei Ying has been turning everyone down for the past two years since he already has a husband.”
Wei Ying made a strangled sound. With so many people sitting around them and the speeches still going, he couldn’t say anything in response. Which was totally fine, since he had no idea what to say, even if he could.
As soon as the last talk ended, Wei Ying stood and grabbed Lan Zhan by the arm. The man arched a brow at him, but allowed himself to be pulled away. Wei Ying ignored the cat calls from his colleagues and tried to pretend like his face was not on fire as he led Lan Zhan out of the main room to one of the smaller conference rooms down the hall from the ballroom.
“OK, Lan Zhan, “Wei Ying said, releasing his hold on Lan Zhan’s arm and running a hand through his hair. “I need you to help me out and understand and explain what is happening here. “
“I came to support my husband in his achievements, “Lan Zhan said, deadpanned.
“Right, great. You’re the funniest, and in other circumstances, I would totally appreciate your sense of humor but at the current moment, I’m confused as fuck because—from what I remember—you couldn’t stand to say two words to me back in university. So I don’t really understand how we went from that to married.”
“Are you not the one who said he was my husband?”
Wei Ying rolled his eyes.
“OK, so first of all, I technically never said that I was your husband. I said that I was married to someone who very very closely fits your general description, “Wei Ying said.
At Lan Zhan‘s skeptically arched eyebrow, Wei Ying repeated:
“Very closely. I admit that it was an extremely close similarity. But I never actually said that I was married to Lan Zhan. And even if you thought that I had, I would have expected you to either ignore it like you ignored everything about me in college, or you would have come out to yell at me and embarrass me in front of everyone for making it up.”
“I did not ignore you in college,” Lan Zhan replied.
“You absolutely did! I’m actually even surprised that you know who I am. We only ever talked once and that was just me asking about your concert and you walked away without even saying one word.”
Lan Zhan looked slightly embarrassed.
“At the time, I thought you were propositioning me. There were many people who had approached me making similar statements about my hands and ‘fingering abilities’. I thought you were doing the same.”
Wei Ying thought back to that day. He couldn’t remember the exact words that he used, but he did remember that it had been shortly after he had skimmed through the article that had talked about notation describing fingering techniques rather than just the music itself.
That was actually very embarrassing.
“OK, I can see where maybe that might have come out the wrong way,” he acknowledged. “But I really was just interested in your work and impressed by your playing!”
Lan Zhan shifted the tiniest bit. The first sign of true discomfort that Wei Ying had seen on the man.
“I came to realize that. Later,” Lan Zhan admitted.
“You saw my research poster later. I didn’t think you recognized me, since you left without talking to me then, too,” Wei Ying said, slightly accusatory.
He had been upset at the time. Maybe, he had been hoping that Lan Zhan would see his research and want to talk to him back then. And, instead, the man had skimmed over his poster and walked away without a single comment.
“I recognized you,” Lan Zhan admitted. “I had seen you around campus before. But I was not sure what to say and you were dating many other people at the time.”
“I was not! Everyone always said that. Look, I liked to go out to parties and drink and have fun, but I wasn’t dating anyone,” Wei Ying said.
At Lan Zhan’s look, Wei Ying expanded, “I also wasn’t sleeping around. I just like to hang out with people and talk and laugh and drink, but that was it.”
Lan Zhan studied him for a moment and then nodded.
“I read the paper you wrote with the other professor from the conservation center. It was good. I regretted not speaking to you earlier.”
Wei Ying looked at him, dumbfounded. He had definitely not expected Lan Zhan to have even remembered him much less have regrets about not talking with him.
“Oh! Well, that’s OK. Everyone else thought pretty much the same thing you did so I don’t blame you for it.”
“I should not have made assumptions,” Lan Zhan said.
Wei Ying grinned and rubbed the back of his neck. There was a tiny thought forming in the back of his mind. It seemed… impossible. But it was really the only explanation for why Lan Zhan would have been upset enough about the thought of Wei Ying dating other people that he would have avoided talking to him at the conference when he thought the research was interesting.
But it seemed like such a big leap from what he thought he knew about Lan Zhan’s opinion of him that he wanted to get a little bit more information, first.
“So, is this whole thing about you flying all the way out here to be my fake husband just a big belated apology for some random misunderstanding when we were both kids at uni? Because if it is, it’s definitely overkill! I honestly would have just settled for you not outing me to Ping whoever’s cousin.”
“Tang Yucheng,” Lan Zan corrected patiently. “And no.”
Wei Ying had to think back through the words he had just rambled out to figure out what Lan Zhan was saying no too.
“OK so if it’s not an apology, then why are you here?” As Lan Zhan‘s lips parted to respond, Wei Ying preempted him. “And don’t tell me that you’re just here to support your husband. I mean: why are you here playing along with being my pretend husband?"
“Why did you say I was your husband?” Lan Zhan countered.
Wei Ying was about to respond again that technically he had not claimed Lan Zhan was his husband, but the sharp look from Lan Zhan stopped the words in his throat.
Wei Ying considered their situation. Lan Zhan said he had not hated Wei Ying back in college, and he had no reason to lie. In fact, if anything, he had more of a reason to dislike Wei Ying now then he did back then.
Lan Zhan was also a very busy man who did not let himself get easily distracted, and would definitely not have flown halfway across the country for no reason at all.
Lan Zhan had been upset at the idea of Wei Ying dating other people.
That left very few remaining explanations. Even if the growing idea in his head was wrong, he still owed Lan Zhan an explanation.
“I haven’t really ever been interested in dating anyone,” he began, and Lan Zhan’s expression flickered with something Wei Ying couldn’t quite parse. “But I like to give people compliments and make them feel good about themselves. But sometimes this means that they think I’m interested in them romantically, and it can make things awkward. So I figured it was easier for me to just tell people that I was already in a relationship. I used to do that back in college. If someone asked me out, I would just tell someone I was interested in someone else and it wasn’t a big deal. But the older I got, the less that seemed to be sufficient. People were always talking about how I was approaching thirty and if I liked someone then I should either be dating them or marrying them or finding someone else. So…”
“So you told them you were married,” Lan Zhan filled in when Wei Ying trailed off. “To me.”
“It didn’t start that way! It started more just generally that I was married. But then, when people would get together and everyone was talking about their significant others, they would ask me questions about mine. And I’m not very good at lying!”
At Lan Zhan’s dry look, Wei Ying had to laugh.
“Okay, okay. You can scold me for it but I knew that if I completely made someone up, I’d forget and then I’d get caught out. So it was easier for me to have someone specific in mind,” Wei Ying explained.
Lan Zhan tilted his head slightly to the side, considering his words.
“It has been six years. There was no one else you considered?”
“Well I’ve been busy!” Wei Ying said defensively. “But what about you? You flew halfway across the country. Surely you have better things to do then track down someone who has a husband that sounds suspiciously like you.”
“No,” Lan Zhan replied.
Wei Ying spluttered, though the firmly spoken words made the strange, bubbling energy inside him build further.
“And you chose me as the husband you would want. Despite not having seen me in six years,” Lan Zhan pressed, but it was clearly a question.
Wei Ying decided that if Lan Zhan could take a risk and fly halfway across the country, then Wei Ying could take a risk and be honest in return.
“Yeah. I guess… All the talk of marriage made me really think about what kind of a partner I would want, if I could be married to someone. And I thought of you,” Wei Ying admitted. At Lan Zhan’s intense look, he rushed to continue. “I also figured that since you worked in a totally different field on the other side of the country, it would be harmless as long as I never used your name.”
“Back in college. When you told others that you were interested in someone else. Was that also me?” Lan Zhan asked, because he was relentless and Wei Ying liked him so much.
“I… yes?” Wei Ying said.
“Mm,” Lan Zhan said, sounding pleased as he stepped closer to Wei Ying.
Wei Ying realized for the first time that Lan Zhan had closed the door behind him when they stepped into the empty conference room.
“So, does this mean you want to be my boyfriend for real?” Wei Ying asked with a sly grin.
Lan Zhan‘s eyes flashed as he stepped forward to grip Wei Ying’s chin.
“No. Husband.”
And then he kissed him.
The end