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Wei Ying can control himself. He gritted his teeth through his Ph.D. like a trooper. He didn’t kill anyone on the disciplinary committee that one time.
Through the glass of the window, which paints everything with a slight glaze of distortion, Lan Zhan looks like he’s totally unaware the rest of the world exists. His clean white sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. Lan Zhan would never tolerate flour on his sleeves. His tiny frown leaves a single crease between the clean dark lines of his eyebrows, like someone pressed a thumbnail into him before he went into the oven. He pushes, kneading the sticky dough beneath his hands. The muscles of his forearms shift. The palms of his broad hands roll back; he pushes again.
Wei Ying’s mouth is dry. He adjusts the straps of the backpack his supervisor says makes him look like an overgrown schoolboy. Strands of hair, ponytail escapees, stick to the back of his neck. A knot of people brushes past him on the street. None of them even bother with a cursory excuse me.
Inside the bakery, Lan Zhan works the dough one last time. He hasn’t looked up once. When he does, Wei Ying bites his tongue on the shriek that tries to bust out of his throat. He freezes like a startled rabbit, like he thinks Lan Zhan is a predator who can’t see movement.
It’s fine. Lan Zhan doesn’t see him. He’s looking at someone else, someone who must be talking to him. Solemn-faced and intent, he gives a curt nod.
Wei Ying is an idiot. He’s an idiot with an advanced degree, but he’s an idiot. He shouldn’t have come back here. He should have known that fate would stick out its tongue and laugh at him. He still has time. Lan Zhan hasn’t seen him yet.
Snagging a spare scrap of willpower from wherever he squirrels that kind of thing deep inside himself, Wei Ying flees. He doesn’t look back. Lan Zhan wouldn’t thank him if he did.
A week later, Lan Zhan is splitting lotus seeds. He’s perched on a stool by the kitchen’s counter, making it look graceful even though he’s as tall as a building. He’s concentrating again, as if each individual lotus seed is completely fascinating. In his hand, the dinky little butter knife is a delicate instrument, and he wields it like one. Wei Ying would claw his own brain out if he had to sit there and do something so mundane over and over and over, but Lan Zhan doesn’t look miserable.
He doesn’t look happy—but he doesn’t look miserable. His face is blank, calm.
Wei Ying stares. He wills Lan Zhan to look up. He wills Lan Zhan to ignore him. The glass is too thick to hear anything inside the kitchen, but next to him, the door to the storefront swings open. He hears someone’s laugh and the clink of a spoon against a cup, the little beep as someone taps their phone to pay. He imagines he can hear the soft ping every time one half of a lotus seed, rescued from its own bitter center, falls into Lan Zhan’s metal bowl.
Someone bumps past him, and Wei Ying swallows back indignation. Hey, he wants to say to this nobody, look up from your phone! What’s wrong with you? Then again, it’s a narrow window. Maybe this was a noodle shop once, and passersby were supposed to enjoy the sight of men pulling noodles by hand. Or maybe someone with a good head for business looked at Lan Zhan and said, We’ve gotta put this one on display.
Crowds of people should be gathering around to stare as Lan Zhan does his work, but Wei Ying’s the only one enlightened enough. Whatever. Fine. He can stare with all the creepy, spurned fervor of a thousand passersby.
Time slips weirdly around him, measured in nothing but the imaginary plink of lotus seeds against stainless steel. Finally, Lan Zhan finishes, and he disappears from sight. It takes Wei Ying a while to move on this time.
The ube is crazily, ridiculously purple. No way should Lan Zhan be handling something this purple. It’s like watching a swan eat a Cheeto.
Not that Wei Ying’s opinion matters. He's still hovering here like a stalker, like an animal with its nose pressed up against the glass. He's watching the angle of Lan Zhan's wrist as he slices the purple yam. All his slices are the same thickness. He holds the knife like an expert swordsman wielding a weapon, like this is a wuxia bakery and he's the prodigal son.
Wei Ying’s really pushing his luck. He should’ve learned not to do that by now, probably. Jiang Cheng would call him a moron, but Jiang Cheng is the boy who cried wolf. The man who cried idiot.
He still has time. Again. Somehow. Before he can squander whatever the hand of fate is trying to give him, he’s going. No, really. He elbows his way past a few people on the street, clumsily determined. His ears are buzzing. He’s still seeing Lan Zhan’s long fingers on the ube, firm and delicate, and then, shit, he’s seeing Lan Zhan’s long fingers right in front of his eyes, darting out and snatching him by the hoodie strings.
“Ah,” Wei Ying says. “I can explain!”
Lan Zhan stares. Nobody stares like Lan Zhan. Nobody else has eyes like that, brown so honey-light they’re like stained glass, and nobody else has this ridiculous gravitas. It’s like a spotlight opening up from the heavens and pinning Wei Ying in place. “Wei Ying.” Nobody has a voice like that either, flat and low and arresting.
“Hi,” Wei Ying tries. Lan Zhan hasn’t let go of him. The tips of Lan Zhan’s fingers are stained purple, though it’s all a blur at this angle, Wei Ying going cross-eyed trying to stare down his own nose. “I’m not—look, I’ll go. I swear. I know you don’t want me hanging around.”
A muscle twitches at the corner of Lan Zhan’s mouth. His eyes narrow. “Wei Ying—”
“I know!” Wei Ying puts up both hands, palms up, like, ha ha, you got me, or maybe like look, I’m not armed. His heart is clawing at his chest. It must want to get out and scramble for safety. “I know. I’m going. I was just on my way. I’ll leave you alone.”
Lan Zhan’s throat works. His fingers curl tight, cinching the neckline of Wei Ying’s sweatshirt tight, too.
“Lan Zhan!” he wheezes.
All at once, Lan Zhan’s eyes widen. He lets go, his hand snapping back to his side like a rubber band released from tension.
“Bye!” Wei Ying is gone in a flash. Maybe he sees Lan Zhan’s mouth opening, as if he’s about to say something, but maybe he doesn’t. He pelts down the sidewalk too fast to know if anything he’s seeing is real.
Wei Ying. He must have heard Lan Zhan say his name a thousand times. Maybe a million. He’s aggravated Lan Zhan to the end of his rope and back. He used to love doing it, and then things got bad, and then it didn’t feel so good to look at Lan Zhan across a lecture hall and realize that Lan Zhan never liked him in the first place. They weren’t bonding. They weren’t friends. Wei Ying was just annoying, exactly like Jiang Cheng always told him, and Lan Zhan was putting up with him, because Lan Zhan is polite.
He can’t stop thinking about Lan Zhan kneading dough, Lan Zhan measuring flour by the gram, Lan Zhan splitting lotus seeds, Lan Zhan studding the tops of cakes with nuts and fruits, Lan Zhan putting all his attention and care into trays and trays of baked goods that are—what? Eaten day after day? That’s what baked goods are for, but Wei Ying’s chest aches when he imagines it.
He sprawls face-down on his mattress, which doesn’t have a bed frame yet, and he sees Lan Zhan’s ube-stained fingertips dancing in his head. He wonders if Lan Zhan still plays his guqin with those fingers. He wonders where he went wrong and what made Lan Zhan notice he was there.
Back in the day, before Wei Ying pissed off everyone and squandered all his goodwill, he could almost always look over his shoulder and find Lan Zhan watching him. It was this heavy, portentous thing. The spotlight of Lan Zhan’s gaze didn’t pin him then. It made him want to put on a show. Now he’s spent all these days watching Lan Zhan, like turning it back on him could erase all the years between the time when Lan Zhan’s attention was exciting rather than terrifying and now.
His pillow absorbs Wei Ying’s groan of agony. He could be selling things on the internet to pay for a bed frame, or calling his sister, or catching up on the trainwreck of his inbox. Instead, he’s replaying the soft yank and the shortness of his own breath as Lan Zhan pulled his hoodie strings. He’s wondering what else he can get away with before Lan Zhan takes out a restraining order. He’s wondering how one of Lan Zhan’s perfectly-made milk buns tastes, and why he’s so stupid that he spent days loitering outside the bakery and never once tried to find out.
It’s a small storefront, but it’s clean, classy, well-lit. Wei Ying sidles in like he’s a wanted criminal, but of course nobody else gives a shit. A teenager with round cheeks and an appealing smile gives him a little nod of welcome from behind the register.
There are rows and rows of buns and tarts behind the glass of the display case. There’s probably no way Lan Zhan made every single one of these, but Wei Ying pictures his hands shaping each one. He pictures that crease of a frown, the single imperfection between the black brushstrokes of Lan Zhan’s brows.
“Um,” he says, and then all at once he remembers how to smile. “Hi! What’s good?”
The teen, who has an adorable apron that’s slightly too short for him, laughs. “I’m supposed to say everything. But it’s true. Honest.”
“What’s…” Wei Ying can’t ask for the baked good that tastes the most like Lan Zhan, and he swallows the request back in time. His filter’s faulty, not broken. “Dealer’s choice, okay? But not too much. I can’t remember my card limit and I don’t really want to find out today.”
At least that makes the cashier smile. “Okay,” he says with a smart little nod.
Wei Ying ends up with an egg tart, one of those stupid perfect milk buns, and pork floss cake. It’s cheaper than he thought it would be, more expensive than he hoped it would be. He eats it all furtively in one go, like buying baked goods at a bakery is illegal and he might get caught at any second. Every couple of bites, his chin jerks up. He stares at the nondescript swinging doors that go to the back. Maybe Lan Zhan is back there. Maybe he’s heard Wei Ying’s voice. Maybe he’s wondering why Wei Ying broke his promise to stay away. Maybe he’s wondering what’s wrong with Wei Ying, period.
It’s just Wei Ying and the weirdly affable teenager, a quiet afternoon at a quiet bakery. Everything he eats is good. Something sour churns in his gut as he pops the last scraps of gluten in his face and nothing else stirs.
“Hey,” he calls. He slings his empty tray onto the bussing station. “Thanks!”
The cashier gives him that easy smile again. “You’re welcome, sir.”
Wei Ying makes it all of three steps outside before a hand clamps down on his shoulder. It’s furnace-warm, practically searing, but it freezes him in his tracks. “Wei Ying.” It’s low, a rumble that could easily get lost in all the ambient street sound, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t even come close. It’s as clear as a bell in Wei Ying’s ears.
“I can explain.” It sounds even stupider the second time.
Lan Zhan yanks on his shoulder. He does it hard enough that Wei Ying spins and faces him. He’s staring up. Lan Zhan’s mouth is a hard, flat line. He’s in an apron, too. It ties at the back of his neck, beneath the night-black spill of his ponytail. “Where are you going?”
“Away! I’m leaving,” Wei Ying protests.
Lan Zhan’s face sort of… tightens up, like bread in the oven. He huffs out a sharp breath through his nose. For a second, Wei Ying thinks Lan Zhan might smack him. “Not this time,” he says, his voice clipped.
“What?” Wei Ying says idiotically.
“Not this time.” The front of the bakery passes in a blur this time: the same display case, the politely shocked look on the cashier’s face, the door that swings open for Lan Zhan as he hauls Wei Ying past the counter and into the maw of the kitchen. It smells yeasty back here. The lights are bright. You can’t hide from lights like this. “You’ve been watching me,” Lan Zhan says. His fingers are digging into Wei Ying’s shoulder. His voice is thunderous.
“Well.” Wei Ying swallows. A drop of sweat trickles down his spine and disappears into the waistband of his jeans. “Yeah.” What’s he supposed to say? Anyone with eyes should be watching you. Have you seen yourself working?
Lan Zhan looses another breath, his whole chest’s worth of air in it. Wei Ying has seen this face angry before, about a million times. It’s just that he’s seen it meditatively calm, too. He’s seen Lan Zhan looking at his round of half-formed dough like it’ll give him all the answers to all the questions in the world as long as he treats it right. Wei Ying’s gotten soft. He’s not used to Lan Zhan’s rage anymore.
That’s when Lan Zhan lunges forward and kisses him. It’s all teeth. There’s a clack, and Wei Ying’s skull is jarred. His thoughts scramble. Lan Zhan fists his big, broad hands into Wei Ying's ratty T-shirt. Wei Ying whines, like maybe he's surprised or maybe it hurts or maybe he can't stay quiet. He doesn't know. He doesn't know anything but Lan Zhan's tongue in his mouth and how warm it is. Lan Zhan is cold because all the heat in him is here, his sharp and hungry mouth, and Wei Ying barely feels the snack of his own body against the side of an industrial refrigerator. He doesn't feel anything but Lan Zhan sucking on his tongue.
“Wha,” he starts. He sounds blurry and stupid.
“Watch me,” Lan Zhan grits out.
“What?” This time Wei Ying makes it through the whole word.
“You’ve been watching me.” Lan Zhan bites his lower lip. It hurts, and Wei Ying whines again, a sound that spills out of him like Lan Zhan’s bitten into a pastry overstuffed with filling. One kiss and one bite and he feels like a mess, his thoughts smeared into uselessness.
“I mean.” He scrabbles, grabbing for Lan Zhan’s stupidly cute apron. “Yeah! Yeah. I’ve been watching you.” His brain judders back online and remembers that he’s good at bluffing. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Why put a window there if this isn’t a spectator sport, huh? Don’t tell me I’m the only one! This is your business model, right? Eye candy?”
Lan Zhan's next exhale is harsh. He still has Wei Ying crowded against the side of a fridge. He’s tall and solid and his thigh is between Wei Ying’s legs. “You’re still ridiculous.”
A million years ago, or maybe only a handful of years ago, Wei Ying would have done just about anything to get Lan Zhan to look at him head-on. Lan Zhan’s attention was a shining jewel, a gold medal, first prize because it was the hardest thing to earn. It was harder than good grades and harder than making Jiang Cheng smile. He remembers begging Lan Zhan to spare him a glance, teasing him until his ears were crimson, passing him notes flown on paper airplanes. Anything. Whatever it took.
Watch me.
“Oh, shit,” Wei Ying says.
Lan Zhan frowns. As if he’s not grinding his thigh against Wei Ying’s crotch, as if he’s a total innocent here.
“Okay,” Wei Ying says, and then it’s a good thing he’s holding Lan Zhan by the pocket on the front of that apron. He needs it to drag himself upright. He needs the leverage to kiss Lan Zhan, who’s apparently faster on the uptake than he’s ever been, who kisses him with hands on his face and all his weight in it. Wei Ying’s seen Lan Zhan doing his job. He’s ready for those hands to rework him. “Okay,” he says, when Lan Zhan’s mouth will let him. “I’m watching.”