Chapter Text
Wen Qing has lived in the same apartment for just under a decade. It’s old, and it’s shitty, and it’s hers. She knows all its quirks, knows how to drain the radiators, knows that the back left burner on the stove needs a match to get going, knows exactly where the mice will try to get in come winter. She knows her neighbors, people who have lived in this neighborhood for generations, diverse holdouts against the tide of cupcake shops and gastropubs. Old people. Families. All races, most religions. She knows it’s Ramadan when the downstairs neighbors throw huge feasts at sundown and offer her plate after plate of food. Knows when it’s the High Holidays and the nice family next-door leaves honey cake and kugel outside her door for her and her brother. She, in turn, offers mooncakes in the fall and long noodles at the new year. Dumplings on Christmas.
She knows that she can see her grandmother and her littlest cousin whenever she likes, in their apartment two stories up, in the apartment that was her home from ten to nineteen. Even as exhausted as she is, buckling under the weight of an endocrinology residency, she’s happy here. So she yawns while she sets up for the party, mixing jungle juice like she’s twenty again. Wen Ning shreds cabbage for potstickers, working quietly next to her. It’s just starting to get cold, night coming earlier and earlier each evening, so they mull wine and cider, turn on the space heaters, make this space warm and welcoming for their friends. They shut out the cold. This is their home.
By the end of the weekend, before tomorrow’s sunrise, really, it will be a mausoleum, but they don’t know that just yet. Soon, it will be a place irradiated. A place for no one. But, for now, it’s still their home, and they’re happy.
—
“I don’t want you to go.”
Wei Ying says it from one of his favorite positions: in Lan Zhan’s lap. He clenches hard and grinds down in tight and filthy circles, relishing the pain-pleasure burn of penetration. He’s so wet, dick leaking between their stomachs, trailing precum where it slides against his husband’s abs.
“Don’t go, baby, don’t go.”
Lan Zhan rears up, throws Wei Ying onto his back, gets one shaking leg over his shoulder, and fucks into him, hard and dirty. Digs his fat cock right into Wei Ying’s prostate. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Don’t want to go. Don’t want to miss this.”
“Then, fuck, harder, harder, stay, stay inside me, please, I want it, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” Wei Ying pants into his ear. “Mess me up. Wreck my little hole, Zhanzhan. Get me all, shit, get me all wet, come inside, put your fingers in me, make it hurt, come on, harder, harder.”
Lan Zhan maneuvers one hand down between them, down to where he’s fucking into Wei Ying. Traces one finger around his slick, stretched rim before shoving it inside, stretching him even farther. Wei Ying howls.
“Hurts, hurts, more, please, fuck.”
Not one to need asking twice, Lan Zhan makes it hurt the way Wei Ying wants, pressing in with another finger while his partner chokes on his own filthy words.
“Come inside, please, it hurts, don’t stop, come in me, now, I want it, baby, sweetheart, husband, please—"
This is Wei Ying’s favorite part, watching Lan Zhan come apart all because of him. He clenches again and feels Lan Zhan’s cock twitch inside him, just once, before the fingers are gone and he’s bent in half, wailing, hips nearly perpendicular to the bed, and Lan Zhan is coming inside. Fucks him through it, slick and wet and so, so good.
A trail of semen follows Lan Zhan’s cock when he pulls out, and Wei Ying beats him to it, shoving both hands down to play with his hole. It turns Lan Zhan on so much to see Wei Ying’s wedding band flash between his thighs, but he’s a righty, so needs must. Two hands it is. He holds himself open, hooking a finger inside with his left hand, entirely unselfconscious. He plunges in deep with three fingers with his right, showing off his stretched rim, puffy and slick, cum and lube dribbling obscenely.
“Look what you did, baby, look how hard you fucked me.” Wei Ying is panting, and Lan Zhan is mesmerized, gaze glued to the slide of Wei Ying’s fingers. “You like this? Like my little hole all fucked out for you?”
“So pretty, Wei Ying. Love your sloppy little hole, love you, love you.”
Wei Ying grins, sly and happy and well fucked. “Pretty enough for a picture, Lan Zhan? To remember me while you’re away?”
A short scramble for his phone later and Lan Zhan is back between his legs, camera aimed at his ass, his hard dick curved up against his stomach, his heavy sac and full bush. Wei Ying feels watched like this, wanted and loved. Sexy. So he spreads himself a little farther and keeps making little gasping moans, fingers jammed hard against his prostate.
Once Lan Zhan drops his phone, Wei Ying manages to gasp out “my turn,” to yank his fingers out and grab at Lan Zhan with messy, cum-slick fingers. Lan Zhan, who will follow him wherever he asks, slithers between Wei Ying’s thighs and grasps at the fat of his ass with those big, big hands, tilts Wei Ying’s pelvis up, shoves his face right between his cheeks. Fuck.
“Fuck, good, yes. Eat me out, sweetheart, put your fingers in me, suck my dick, fuck.”
Lan Zhan shoves his tongue inside, chasing his own cum, licking deep. He looks so good like this, his face slick with cum and lube and spit. Singularly focused, too, a little ‘v’ pinched between his brows. Wei Ying plants both feet on the bed and cants his hips even higher, grinding against Lan Zhan’s face. When he’s satisfied that he’s lapped up most of the cum between Wei Ying’s cheeks, Lan Zhan pulls back and stuffs four fingers into Wei Ying’s wrecked hole without warning or preamble and presses hard against his sweet spot. Gets his mouth on Wei Ying’s cock and looks at him through his eyelashes. Is this good? Do you like it?
“So good, so good, so close, gonna come on your face,” he says, and he does, yanking Lan Zhan off by his hair and painting his face white. A few stray streaks of it land in his hair and eyelashes. Lan Zhan holds his mouth open and lets the mess drip into his mouth. Gently, he pulls his fingers free and uses them to smear Wei Ying’s cum across his face. Maintaining eye contact, he slips two fingers into his mouth and sucks them clean. Wei Ying collapses back onto the bed, panting cheerfully, a sticky mess of limbs.
“Mmmmnmnn okay, stay there. Give me a second.”
Wei Ying wipes his hand on his stomach and then props himself up onto his elbows. Fumbles around for his phone. Lan Zhan is frozen in his own favorite position, on his knees between his husband’s legs, commanded to stay where he is by Wei Ying and following to the letter.
Phone located—under a pillow?—Wei Ying sits up on his knees and uses one hand to grasp Lan Zhan’s jaw, tilting his head proprietarily, snapping pictures from each angle.
“You’re so beautiful like this. You look so good with my cum on you. Fuck, I wanna fuck you so bad right now,” Wei Ying groans, dropping the phone and sticking his fingers into Lan Zhan’s ready mouth. He presses down on his tongue, considering, thinking. Lan Zhan makes a thin, reedy sound.
“Come here, let me kiss you.” He yanks Lan Zhan up for a sticky kiss. “I love you.”
After they shower, Wei Ying makes good on fucking him, Lan Zhan bent over the vanity, legs kicked wide and whimpering, and then they have to shower again, and then it’s all last minute bits of packing and Wei Ying pretending he’s not crying about it but is definitely really crying, just so hard, a little snotty, and Lan Zhan saying, “Yes, I really do have to go, please let go of me, Wei Ying, I will see you in two weeks, I will call you when I land, I love you.”
Wei Ying trails all the way down to the street with him, weeping all the while, and if Lan Zhan’s eyes are a little bright, who could say? Certainly not Wei Ying, whose eyes are puffed up unattractively. Lan Zhan kisses his puffy eyes anyway.
“We’ll miss you!” Wei Ying shouts after the car, and three windows slam shut. Whatever. Some people just don’t know love when they see it.
—
After Lan Zhan leaves him alone and bereft—so cruel! Alone with their child!—Wei Ying lounges around their apartment for a time. He feeds Radish a huge pile of hay and a handful of pellets, petting her dark head indulgently. He plays a little piano, ignoring the looming deadlines of his composition commissions, and starts drafting a program for the recital he’s arranging for his junior students.
Before long, when the sun has dipped well below the horizon and the world is dark and his apartment bright, it’s time to get ready for Wen Qing’s party, a celebration for celebration’s sake. It’s not yet near enough to the close of October for it to be a Halloween party, nor is it close enough to the beginning of term for it to commemorate a successful start to her second year of residency. It’s just a party to shoo away the autumn chill, to celebrate being alive in the cold, to acknowledge the hope of surviving it, the sort of party that feels ancient, some joy in the post-equinox darkness. It’s also an excuse to do a ton of drugs and pass out on the floor, a call to a different kind of human predilection.
Wei Ying likes the dark. He dresses in black and turns out the lights.
—
It’s a good party. The booze is flowing freely, Wen Ning is packing a bowl, and Mianmian is at the coffee table, cutting lines of coke with an intensity that suggests she’s already three lines in. Exactly Wei Ying’s kind of party.
“Whatcha doing, Mianmian?”
“Shut up I am focusing.”
“Ooookay, well, when you’re done can I get in there nose first, if you know what I mean?”
“Go get a drink and ask me in five minutes Jesus Christ.”
Sometimes, Wei Ying can’t believe this is one of the peacock’s closest friends. She’s so cool, and a lesbian, and not fucking his sister while being a boring, rich loser a year his junior. All good things. And, because this party is gay and good vibes and therefore poses a very real risk of anaphylaxis to his fun-allergic brother-in-law, he gets to enjoy her at her messiest. No need for her to protect Zixuan from the prospect of having fun. He considers telling her that the line on the left is a good quarter-inch longer than the others and thinks better of it. He’d like to take a bump sometime this millennium.
In the bass-thumping, potentially going to get the cops called noise of a queer house party well underway, Wei Ying finds the host sitting on the kitchen counter smoking a joint with one hand and swirling a glass of wine in the other. She’s perched next to a massive glass bowl full of questionable looking yellow-green liquid.
“Hey, sexy.”
“Shut your fucking mouth. You want a drink? Or a joint? Mianmian is going to be at it for, like, a minute.”
He accepts the joint from her manicured fingers and takes a long hit. Then he blows the smoke directly into her face just to see her scowl.
“I hate you.”
“You love me, Qing-jie! Now let me get at that jungle juice.”
“You’re disgusting. I made that for the kids. Be a grownup and drink wine like a normal person.”
The supposed kids are at least twenty four and in graduate school, but that’s neither here nor there. And Wen Qing and Wei Ying aren’t kids so he sidesteps the stack of blue solo cups and uses a proper glass to scoop up his jungle juice. Ah, the concessions of responsible adulthood.
Wen Qing looks a little pensive when he hands the joint back to her.
“By the way, my bitch cousin and his friends are here. Don’t even get me started. They just showed up, don’t even know how they knew this was happening. Probably Xue Yang told them just to start shit. Enjoy the jungle juice, you philistine.”
“I will, babe!”
Wei Ying finds Wen Ning at the kitchen table, coughing valiantly at the bong, and claps him on the shoulder.
“A-Ning! Let me in there!” he says, whining. Wen Ning passes him the bong, eyes streaming.
“Wei—" Wen Ning erupts in a coughing fit. Wei Ying cheerfully whacks him across the back even harder. “Wei Ying! Thank you for coming! It’s so nice to see you.”
Wei Ying laughs, open and loud. Only A-Ning could be so polite while gushing from the eyes. Such a good guy. He passes Wei Ying a red lighter and watches him take a hit so deep that Wei Ying is the one coughing, red-faced and smiling about it.
Once he’s recovered from his own coughing fit, Wei Ying bumps shoulders with Wen Ning.
“Anyone worth seeing here? Other than you and Qing-jie, of course.”
Wen Ning is a quiet person in general and even quieter when he’s thinking. He’s thinking now.
“Nie Huaisang is here. Mianmian, but maybe don’t interrupt her right now. I saw Mo Xuanyu in the bathroom doing his makeup. Meng Yao. Xue Yang is either causing problems with my cousin or causing problems for his boyfriends.”
Nie Huaisang it is! College bro/sis/sib time!
Nie Huaisang is in the living room, fanning themself and hovering over Mianmian, whose eyebrows have pinched into a deep groove. She’s muttering to herself.
“Just gotta get it perfect. Five minutes.”
Friendly, shoulder to shoulder, Wei Ying crowds into Nie Huaisang’s space, takes their drink and swigs it. He whispers conspiratorially.
“She told me that ten minutes ago.”
“That was my drink! What if I have the flu? Disgusting! What’s up, boo? And where’s your boo?”
Wei Ying rolls his eyes and holds their drink out of reach. He drinks deeply. “Husband! And your drink sucks.”
“And you won’t let us forget it. Where is he, anyway?”
“Shanghai. Family shit. Some second cousin or something is getting married, so Lan Zhan has abandoned me so cruelly, leaving me with our only child to support all by my lonesome,” Wei Ying says, elbowing his friend. “Do you think Mianmian will be done cultivating cocaine perfection within the century?”
“Your child is a rabbit. And yes, look closely—she is putting out the two dollar bill. We’re nearly there.”
Wei Ying whoops. Mianmian grunts. He puts his own glass onto the mantle behind him and plops onto the couch.
“Five perfect lines. Enjoy.”
Oh, he’s going to enjoy. He grabs Nie Huaisang by their elbow and drags them down onto the sofa with them. They each take a bump and cheer. Two lines remain. Mianmian lists a little to the left then rallies almost immediately.
“Let’s get this shit started!” she crows and promptly takes herself to the dance floor.
“Yeah, not till I take a piss. Be right back!”
Wei Ying does find Mo Xuanyu looking apoplectic in the bathroom, leaning over the sink and groaning about his eyeliner, and can’t find the heart to kick him out.
“Can I piss in here?”
Mo Xuanyu ignores him in favor of adding a little flick to his left wing.
“Um. Are you going to get mad if I piss in here?”
“What?”
“Can I pee or are you going to get mad? It’s a bathroom. You know, where people pee sometimes?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.”
Wei Ying does have to negotiate for the sink afterward—“Can I, uh, wash my hands?” “What?” “Like, in the sink?” “Ugh, whatever.”—but manages to return to the festivities with clean hands and an unstoppable urge to chatter.
He locates his drink on the mantle and starts chattering. There’s so many people to talk to! He chats with Mianmian and Wen Qing about their plans for hiking next weekend and takes Mianmian out for a little spin around the dance floor. He gushes to A-Ning about Lan Zhan and Radish and shows him pictures until even Wen Ning’s politeness runs out and he excuses himself to replenish a suspiciously full cheese plate. He even talks to Xue Yang, who is, in fact, causing trouble, pouring a bottle of Stoli down the kitchen sink and replacing it with water. Fucking weirdo. All the while, Wei Ying is drinking his violently yellow jungle juice, which he’s fairly certain is mostly yellow gatorade.
Now he’s dancing with Nie Huaisang, and they’re both talking over each other, and it’s fun until it’s not.
“Hey! That’s the third time you’ve stepped on my foot with those big ass boots! I just got a pedicure, jackass.”
When Wei Ying looks down and back up, it feels like his eyes are vibrating. That’s weird.
“Huh. I guess that jungle juice was a little stronger than I thought. Sorry!” he says and realizes he’s slurring a little. “Haha, uh, maybe a lot stronger….”
Nie Huaisang gets a many-ringed hand onto his shoulder and holds him still. They lean in, getting close to his face.
“Hey, man, you don’t look so good. Let’s get you some water before you barf on my feet in addition to stomping them to death.”
Nie Huaisang directs Wei Ying to the kitchen and, fuck, everything is starting to smear. Weird dripping effects he has never experienced on this particular combo of party drugs. Wei Ying struggles to uncap the bottle of water that Nie Huaisang shoved into his hands for so long that they snatch it from him, unscrew it, and hold it up to his mouth for him. They make him drink.
“Wei Ying…I think you’re a little too fucked up,” they say. Concern for others isn’t a look that they wear often. Wei Ying doesn’t catch it, sagging a little into their space.
“Haha, yeah,” Wei Ying agrees cheerfully, holding onto their shoulders. When had he gone from upright to leaning? “Definitely fucked up.”
“Do you want me to take you home?”
“Nah, was gonna sleep here anyway. Try to enjoy the party without my beautiful face, babe.” When he tries to disentangle himself from his friend, the spinning kicks up. “Ughhhhhhh, can you drag me to the guest room?”
Wei Ying is deposited in the guest room, his old bedroom when he lived here, with two bottles of water, a bottle of gatorade, and a blister pack of ibuprofen. What can he say? He has great friends.
Unconsciousness sneaks up fast.
—
Wei Ying does not wake up to a hangover from hell. He doesn’t wake up to Wen Qing shouting at him to make himself useful and help with breakfast.
Instead, he wakes up flat on his back to a wriggling pressure, painful and dry, in his asshole. A slick sound near his ear. A grunt. Then wetness on his cheek and mouth and chin.
What.
He tries to say what and Lan Zhan and no.
“Whaaa. Nnnngggghhhh.”
Whispered voices and a melting ceiling and pain.
“Shit, he’s waking up. Wen Chao, you said he wouldn’t wake up.”
“I said he probably wouldn’t wake up. He’s tall. This shit is usually for women. Gag him.”
What shit? Women? He tries to struggle. His arms and legs aren’t working, not really. He can flex his fingers and rock his torso, just a little, but every movement brings a fresh wave of nausea. The wriggling intrusion stops. Abruptly, he’s being manhandled onto his front. Someone is peeling off his underwear, which appears to have been tugged down around mid-thigh. They shove it into his mouth. He’s drooling. The wet fabric bunches up against his tongue. He still has his t-shirt on, but it’s rucked up under his armpits, and his chest feels sticky against the duvet cover.
Pain again. More pressure. Bigger. Burning. He’s going to throw up. He’s going to choke. He’s going to die. He’s going to—he’s going to something.
He’s on his stomach and it hurts. He’s on his back and it hurts. They haul him up onto his knees and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.