Chapter Text
“If I say I also don’t know where I’ve been these 16 years, would you believe me?” Wei Wuxian looks wistfully across the room at Lan Wangji, who avoids his gaze by looking down at his own hands on the guqin.
“Yes, I believe you.”
Wei Wuxian smiles, small and sad, and asks, “Lan Zhan, did you really believe me back then?”
There is a long pause, and then --
“Okay, cut,” Director Zheng calls. “Set up to run the scene again with a tight focus on Lan Wangji.”
Yibo blinks and rocks back a little, letting his shoulders relax out of Lan Wangji’s tense posture. When he makes to actually stand up and stretch, however, the continuity supervisor notices before he does more than get one of his legs unfolded and comes bustling over.
“No, don’t you dare,” she hisses, flapping her hands at Yibo until he settles back into his cross-legged position. “It would be a nightmare to try and get your robes rearranged the same way. Stay still. We’ll be shooting again in a minute.”
When she seems confident that Yibo has been properly chastised, she rushes off again, this time to adjust a bowl on a side table that has been knocked askew by one of the crew shifting the cameras around.
Left alone, Yibo flexes his hands and then drapes them over the guqin in front of him, bouncing his palms against the tight strings so they make a muted little pinging noise. He’s stiff and he’s bored and he hates, hates, hates waiting with nothing to do.
Well, almost nothing.
Turning to look over at Xiao Zhan, who is scrolling through the phone he was clever enough to have secreted away under the covers of the low bed he is reclining on for the scene, Yibo calls out, “Wei Wuxian!”
“Enh?” Xiao Zhan says without looking up.
“Wei Wuxian!” It’s bratty, Yibo knows, but he wants Xiao Zhan to talk to him, not be focused on something else. “Wei Wuxian.”
“Shut up,” Xiao Zhan deadpans in English, but Yibo can see the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. He is looking over at Yibo instead of at his phone.
Yibo plucks at the guqin strings, thrilling at having got Xiao Zhan’s attention. “Wei Ying,” he says, one more time, harsh and loud.
Xiao Zhan laughs at that and drops his phone into his lap.
“You are so cruel to be always teasing me, Wang Yibo,” he says. “Be kinder.”
Yibo tilts his head sideways and shoots a sly look in Xiao Zhan’s direction. “I would never be cruel to you, Zhan-ge. I look up to you and admire you so much.”
Xiao Zhan pouts at him, a big, exaggerated purse of his lips, and replies, “No, no, no, Yibo. You don’t treat me like you would someone you admire. You tease me and hit me. You definitely don’t feel respect for me.”
Yibo tries to control the smirk that is fighting to spread across his face. He dips his head and looks up at Xiao Zhan through his eyelashes to hide the way his lips are twisted at the corners with the smile he’s trying to suppress. “I am full of admiration for you, Zhan-ge. I have so much to learn from you and all of your life experiences. You are so talented and beautiful, how could I not look up to you?”
He means the words as a joke, but realises belatedly there is a thread of sincerity in them that adds unexpected seriousness to what should have been more teasing.
More and more often lately, he catches himself gazing with Lan Wangji-like intensity at Xiao Zhan’s profile, long after the cameras are off. He finds himself running over their exchanges in his mind as he is trying to go to sleep at night, weighing each word in his head for a double meaning.
He recognises the tremulous feeling that has lodged itself in his gut and the way his brain goes blank while his face goes hot every time Xiao Zhan ambles up to him and throws an arm over his shoulders. It’s the early stages of a fierce crush, inconvenient and awkward in the intensely close quarters of on-set life. He is determined to hide it, to get over it before it ruins their friendship.
Yibo feels, suddenly, like he may have shown too much with what was supposed to be just another round in their ongoing compliment war. He shouldn’t have said beautiful. Handsome, maybe, could be passed off as a joke; beautiful is too revealing.
But Xiao Zhan replies, seemingly constitutionally unable to let Yibo have the last word, even if it means following Yibo into this dangerous territory. “Oh, no. There are many people who would tell you that I’m not half as beautiful as Lao Wang. It is no wonder you have so many sponsorships. These people take one look at your gorgeous, small face and rush right out to buy makeup and shampoo and anything else you are advertising.”
This.
This is new.
Not their usual banter at all, but something that feels, maybe, almost flirtatious.
Yibo has been called beautiful and handsome by any number of people in his years in the public eye; hundreds of stylists, choreographers, and photographers have fallen over themselves to praise the delicate bone structure of his face and the elegant lines of his muscled body. It mostly washes over him like so much background noise, having lost its effect with endless repetition.
But when Xiao Zhan calls him gorgeous, it feels different. It feels like it matters.
Yibo can feel from the rush of heat to his face that he is blushing and hopes that it is at least somewhat hidden by the layers of foundation he’d had caked on his face in hair and makeup that morning. The smirk that had been twisting his lips mellows into an all-too-obviously pleased smile, which he ducks his chin to try and hide. He fiddles with the guqin, plucking an aimless, disconnected series of notes on it until he feels like he has his face back under control, and then sneaks a look up at Xiao Zhan.
Xiao Zhan is looking away from Yibo, staring into the corner of the room, but Yibo can see that his ears have blushed bright red.
Yibo wonders if Xiao Zhan is worried that he’s said too much, has crossed a line and is making Yibo uncomfortable. Yibo opens his mouth, nervous and happy in equal measure, ready to flirt just as obviously back when Xiao Zhan jumps in to speak first.
“Ai, I can hardly believe all these people see a kid like you as beautiful! You are cute, sure, but so young.”
Xiao Zhan’s words are like a slap to the cheek.
Yibo snaps his mouth shut with an audible click of teeth. There is a bitter taste in his mouth as he swallows the provocative comment that had been sitting on the tip of his tongue.
A kid like you.
Cute, sure, but so young.
The joy has been drained from the conversation. Yibo isn’t fighting a smirk anymore. Instead, he can feel that his face has settled into the cold, blank mask that he wears for interviews and airport security lines.
It is a relief when, before he has to come up with a reply, the director shouts for everyone to get into place to shoot the scene again.
Yibo pulls Lan Wangji’s poise around himself protectively, pushing the hurt of Xiao Zhan’s dismissive words down and burying them under the character he is playing.
“Action,” Director Zheng calls.