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The trip was supposed to be a simple one. Or rather, Lan Wangji had hoped it would be a simple one. A two-night stay at his family home, provided his uncle didn’t lose his temper and give Wei Wuxian another two month ban, and the whole thing would be over fast and painless.
Things rarely went as easy as that, when it came to traveling with a person like Wei Wuxian.
They had been in each other’s lives long enough for Lan Wangji to know he could get restless fairly easily. And when Wei Wuxian got restless, he no doubt found himself something entertaining to do.
The first years of their acquaintance Lan Wangji had attempted to quell this tendency, watching Wei Wuxian like a hawk to be the first person to stop him from stepping out of line. Only after high school he had realized the numerous detentions had little to no effect. Wei Wuxian was a lit match and the whole world was coated in gasoline.
Now, both of them being adults, he had long given up on trying to change this. The fury he had felt at Wei Wuxian’s chaos had turned to quiet acceptance with age. Once he had learned to understand it, and learned to understand himself. And he had learned. The fact that his immense frustration was rarely caused by Wei Wuxian’s misbehavior and rather the fact that Wei Wuxian was, with all his virtues and vices, the one person in the world who could dominate Lan Wangji’s attention effortlessly.
They were friends, now. Had been for years. And Lan Wangji had learned to accept these things.
Like right now. It was not Wei Wuxian’s fault, in the sense that Wei Wuxian had certainly not intended for them to get lost. Two hours into the drive he had started complaining about the boring route, and wheedling Lan Wangji into taking another one with better views.
Lan Wangji should have stayed resolute. He was more used to taking the train than driving. He did not know the area too well. The car was rented. The weather had turned worse and worse as the day had gone by.
It wasn’t exactly surprising that they got lost. It wasn’t exactly surprising either that Wei Wuxian took this on the chin as usual, even when they were suddenly surrounded only by trees, no other cars around, and their phones had no service.
Even worse, it was starting to get dark.
“It’s summer,” Wei Wuxian said, voice light as ever. “We won’t freeze to death out here, you know.”
“We should drive back the way we came,” Lan Wangji stated, though he knew the response he would get.
As he had expected, Wei Wuxian groaned. “Lan Zhan, we’ve been driving for ages! We might get even more lost if we turn around now.”
“Then what do you suggest we do?” he asked, though he did not need to. While Wei Wuxian was always insistent on joining him on his trips to home, he also cherished any moment away from Lan Qiren.
“Let’s camp out here,” came the expected answer with a smile. “We have water and food, I brought a blanket with me, and the back seats can be pushed down so we basically have a bed, too!”
“You brought a blanket with you,” Lan Wangji intoned.
Wei Wuxian waved his hand nonchalantly. “Your uncle keeps his house freezing at all times. I didn’t plan on turning into an icicle.”
It was true. Lan Qiren preferred cooler temperatures to warm. Despite this, Lan Wangji regarded Wei Wuxian a moment longer. Forethought like this was uncharacteristic when it came to these trips. In fact, taking care of this sort of thing was usually left for Lan Wangji.
“What?” Wei Wuxian asked, blinking innocently at him.
“…” Lan Wangji turned away. “Nothing.
The weather was turning worse, still. The rain was drumming the roof of the car and blurring the windows. The best option really did seem to be staying where they were.
It would be fine, surely, to continue driving in the morning. They would hopefully recognize the location, and worse comes to worst, driving back the way they came was always an option.
Still, it was not the problem. The problem lay in the fact that Wei Wuxian and him were supposed to sleep in the car, in very close proximity, apparently under the same blanket. The thought of it felt almost surreal, like an idle daydream his younger self could have imagined whenever he wasn’t absolutely furious with Wei Wuxian.
We are friends, he had to remind himself. They were friends, had been for years now, and Lan Wangji found himself resolute in his conviction to not make it uncomfortable between them. It would have been disrespectful to their friendship, disrespectful to Wei Wuxian, to be unable to stay close to him like this without his feelings getting in the way.
So he took in a breath of air, rain-fresh mixed with rented car leather, and nodded.
Wei Wuxian grinned at him, an Lan Wangji’s chest felt just that much lighter.
“That was too fast,” came the tease immediately. “Since when did you become so easy to convince? The Lan Zhan of our youth would have called me ridiculous and driven back, even if the road was on fire.”
That Lan Zhan of their youth would have been fueled mostly by panic at the prospect of sleeping next to his crush in such a tight place. Mercifully, Lan Wangji had grown out of that panic years ago. Perhaps it was the exposure to Wei Wuxian’s general presence, or perhaps it was just knowing that Wei Wuxian truly never thought of these situations as anything but normal and platonic.
Lan Wangji only gave him a look in response.
“’Nonsense’, is that it? Or is it ‘ridiculous’ this time?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“Boring,” Lan Wangji said, and thrilled in the way Wei Wuxian threw his head back to laugh. He had always been like this, fast to laugh and take joy in things. A smile was the natural state of his lips.
And with that, Lan Wangji decided to make his best attempt to follow Wei Wuxian’s lead and stay unbothered about this unfortunate turn of events. After all, nothing about the situation was unmanageable.
-
The situation turned unmanageable almost immediately, in quite baffling ways at that. It started fine at first. They folded the backseats in the resting position so they could lie down comfortably as the rain got harder and harder. Lan Wangji settled a respectable distance away from Wei Wuxian, which was not much at all, because they were both tall men in a small car.
He was ready to reach over to the bag with the snacks to distract himself, and hopefully Wei Wuxian, from the current predicament, but then Wei Wuxian reached for his own backpack.
“Don’ t worry, Lan Zhan,” he said while opening it. “I have packed us all the necessities.”
Lan Wangji stared, as Wei Wuxian proceeded to pull out a bottle of some sort of wine, a slightly crushed box of what seemed to be chocolate truffles, and a candle. The items were placed carefully between them, almost as if on a dinner table.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji started, eyes stuck on the candle. Surely he couldn’t be thinking of starting an open fire inside a rental car?
Like reading his mind, Wei Wuxian raised an eyebrow. “What do you take me for, er-gege? It’s an LED candle.”
To prove the point, he pushed the switch on the bottom, and fake fire of the candle started flickering gently, bringing some amount of mood lighting into the car. Baffled, Lan Wangji could do nothing but stare some more.
The moment felt a bit unreal. Wei Wuxian’s dark eyes twinkled in the darkness as the man pulled out his phone next. Lan Wangji had checked his phone only a moment ago for service, but had found zero bars once again. It didn’t seem this was Wei Wuxian’s intention, now. The man tapped the screen a couple of times, and then the first notes of an instrumental song started playing.
Lan Wangji, completely out of words, was offered a piece of chocolate as the muted notes of a smooth jazz song filled the air of the car. Not knowing what else to do, he accepted it. Wei Wuxian looked quite pleased at this, so he couldn’t feel too regretful.
“Wine, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian asked them, a hopeful lilt to his voice.
This is where Lan Wangji drew the line. “Wei Ying, what are you –?”
“What, not even one cup?” Wei Wuxian talked over him, as if he hadn’t said anything. “Come on, now! You wouldn’t make me drink by myself, would you?”
“We are seeing my uncle tomorrow,” Lan Wangji reminded, brows furrowing.
“How would he know? Are you going to tattle?”
Lan Wangji didn’t answer, and instead just pulled the bottle out of Wei Wuxian’s hands. The entire situation was bewildering, and getting drunk was certainly not going to help things make more sense. Even greater reason than that was the fact that Lan Wangji was certain his uncle would somehow know if they had indeed been drinking.
He put the bottle into his own bag, away from Wei Wuxian’s reaching hands, and ignored the man’s pout.
“You’re no fun, Lan Zhan. Wine goes so well with chocolates,” he whined.
“I have cut fruit,” Lan Wangji responded reasonably.
Wei Wuxian sighed. “It’s not – well. You know what, Lan Zhan? We don’t need wine. Does the ‘no talking during meals’ apply to snacking as well? Because I have planned something for us to do.”
The frown deepened on Lan Wangji’s face as the suspicion that had been slowly growing inside him got stronger. “You had planned something?”
“For the car trip,” Wei Wuxian responded primly. “In case we get bored.”
The way he said it was not, to Lan Wangji’s trained ear, all too convincing. Still, he watched silently as Wei Wuxian pulled out his phone again and tapped on it. In a moment, he pushed the chocolates and candle to the side and got closer, as if he had never even planned on snacking on them.
Lan Wangji’s breath got stuck somewhere between his lungs and his throat when Wei Wuxian knocked their legs together, phone still in hand like he didn’t realize what he was doing to Lan Wangji by being so close.
“There are these questions we should ask each other,” Wei Wuxian said, though Lan Wangji could barely hear it. His focus was, unfortunately, mostly on the part of his leg where Wei Wuxian’s bare ankle was thrown over his.
“You know, to get to know each other better,” the man continued.
“We know each other,” Lan Wangji responded. Wei Wuxian’s leg twitched against his.
“I know that, Lan Zhan, but this is for fun! Humor me, won’t you?”
Closing his eyes, Lan Wangji focused himself and nodded. Questions. Wei Wuxian wanted to ask him some questions.
“Alright! So, so, the first question is, ‘given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?’”
A dinner guest. Lan Wangji met Wei Wuxian’s eyes, then. “You.”
“No, Lan Zhan, it could be anyone in the world!”
“Mn.” Lan Wangji nodded. “You.”
The slope of Wei Wuxian’s throat moved up and down as the man swallowed. Then, the man turned back to the questionnaire, “Right. Right, okay. That’s – Lan Zhan, that’s really…”
Lan Wangji didn’t know how the sentence was supposed to end, because Wei Wuxian never finished it. Instead, he pushed on.
“Of course I would return the favor, then,” he responded. “Even if you don’t want to drink with me.”
“Is the dinner the night before meeting my uncle?” Lan Wangji asked.
“Not necessarily. Are you saying you would drink with me if it wasn’t right before seeing your uncle?”
“Mn.”
This time, it was Wei Wuxian who stared. Then, “Okay.”
For a moment, they stayed quiet, the only sound in the car the smooth jazz coming from the phone in Wei Wuxian’s hands.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said then. “Why do you want me to drink with you?”
“That’s not one of the questions,” Wei Wuxian said.
In response, Lan Wangji plucked the phone out of Wei Wuxian’s hands. They were close enough for it to be easy, and then hard, as the man immediately scrambled after it. Only through Lan Wangji’s superior arm strength he could keep Wei Wuxian off long enough to look at the list –
– and read the title.
It was a screenshot of a web page – there was no service here, and no access to internet, so Wei Wuxian had clearly saved the questions to his phone. The phone that was playing almost cartoonishly seductive song into the suddenly frozen silence between them.
Lan Wangji’s heart was thumping loud enough to almost drown out the music.
“36 questions to fall in love” was the title. Something about psychological studies and intimacy. Lan Wangji could not really understand the words.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Wei Wuxian groaned. “Lan Zhan, that’s unfair! Give me my phone back. Be a gentleman.”
“Wei Ying…what…” Lan Wangji tried, though he was too struck to even form a sentence.
He had suspected getting lost had been part of some sort of a convoluted plan. He’d thought it had likely something to do with avoiding Lan Qiren, not – not whatever this was. This. Candles and chocolates and questions to fall in love.
It made sense, as far as lists of things made sense. In context of Wei Wuxian and him being stuck in the middle of a forest, lying down next to each other in the back of his rental car, it was not something within his capacity to understand.
“We were supposed to start with the wine,” Wei Wuxian sighed. “It would have made this so much easier.”
“Made what easier?” Lan Wangji asked. He could see the skin on Wei Wuxian’s face color slightly in the flickering light of the ridiculous LED candle.
“You know,” came the answer.
“Wei Ying.”
“Aiyah, don’t be so pushy,” Wei Wuxian whined, then flopped onto his back to look at the ceiling instead of Lan Wangji. “Lan Zhan, can’t you guess? I feel like you would have to try to get it wrong at this point.”
The candle kept flickering. The song kept playing. Lan Wangji felt like his entire world had turned upside down. “Then you…”
“Lan Zhan, Lan er-gege, Lan Wangji, I like you,” Wei Wuxian said. “I like you, I fancy you, I whatever you. I planned this whole thing to have a chance to confess.”
Surely there would have been a less complicated way to go about it. Still, Lan Wangji could not find a way to complain about it. There was not a single thought in his head right now, other than I love you, I love you, I love you,
so Lan Wangji, letting the carefully maintained composure fall apart in an instant, leaned forward to catch Wei Wuxian’s cheek in his palm and pushed their lips together.
The angle was awkward, and Wei Wuxian let out a muffled sound of surprise, but before Lan Wangji could pull back, the kiss was already being answered with enthusiasm. Wei Wuxian wrapped his arms around his neck to get him closer.
When they finally broke apart, Wei Wuxian’s lips were again in a smile. Lan Wangji’s chest felt warm.
“You know, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said, “We should get lost on our way to your uncle’s place more often.”
Lan Wangji exhaled through his nose, though shook his head. He had a feeling they wouldn’t be doing another trip to visit his uncle anytime soon. Not when tomorrow they would inform him of this development in their relationship.
Pulling Wei Wuxian closer under his arm, Lan Wangji found himself wholly unbothered about this.