Chapter Text
Nie Mingjue had died of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
That thought danced at the forefront of Jiang Cheng’s mind as he raised his hand to the doorbell.
Nie Mingjue had died of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Lan Xichen’s research speciality.
The disease of misfolding proteins that ate holes into the brain, turning it into sponge. Spongiform, as they said.
Nie Mingjue had died of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Humans developed the illness by eating meat contaminated with prions, the proteins that triggered the chain reaction of misfolding in the brain. Beef had been the chief culprit when the condition had first come to public attention. Cows had been fed contaminated meat-bone meal, and just like kuru had developed in cannibal populations, cows had developed BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Nie Mingjue’s death had been unusual. Possibly the first recorded death by VCJD in this country in years, but it had been barely, only quietly, reported. Jiang Cheng suspected that the Nie family, with their ownership of the Nie Media Corp, had probably tried to downplay it as much as possible.
Jiang Cheng shook his head vigorously. He’d told Lan Xichen that it wasn’t Jiang Cheng’s business, so he wouldn’t pry.
The door opened before he could press the button. Lan Xichen stood there, gazing out with those slightly wide, as if always surprised, eyes.
They crinkled with his smile. “Wingji noticed there was someone at the door. I was actually waiting to see how long it would take you to ring the bell, but decided to put you out of your misery. Come on in, I have tea ready.”
“Did you find out how the rabbits have been getting into your garden?”
“I have done my utmost best,” said Lan Xichen solemnly, leading Jiang Cheng through into the living room. Wingji was perched on the back of the garden chair outside the window. Wei Cluckxian, treacherous bird who seemed to be spending increasing hours in Lan Xichen’s garden over Jiang Cheng’s own, spotted him from where he was nestled on the garden chair’s cushion, and greeted him with the squawk like a car backfiring.
“Nice to see you too, you traitor,” Jiang Cheng growled, before taking a seat at the low table again. Wei Cluckxian’s rabbits were nibbling dandelions on Lan Xichen’s lawn. This, apparently, was Wei Cluckxian’s new game. Not only did he, somehow, escape from his own coop and break out Wingji from his, these days he topped off the impossible by helping his two rabbits move between the gardens as well.
Jiang Cheng had insisted on a patrol, which Lan Xichen had joined him on with much amusement. They found nothing, no holes in the fence, that the rabbits could have come through. The only options that Jiang Cheng could think were that either the roosters were carrying the rabbits over the fence – impossible, because these chickens could not fly that high – or his suspicion that Wei Cluckxian was part-fairy and could open transportation portals of some kind should be upgraded to a hypothesis.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Lan Xichen said, settling down at the low table and putting the teapot onto its cloth mat, “but where did you find Wei Cluckxian? He’s a very unusual chicken.”
“As is Wingji,” Jiang Cheng noted, because it was true. That Silkie rooster could give him a stink-eye that was positively human, and he thought he’d caught it singing something tuneful, possibly part of its grand scheme for seducing Wei Cluckxian. He’d have to keep an eye on that.
Lan Xichen raised one eyebrow. “I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”
That was reasonable. “Well, about eight years ago, there was little old lady outside the agricultural sciences department – “
“Selling chicks for 10 RMB?”
“Yeah, that’s the one! Wait – how did you know?” Lan Xichen simply gave him a look, and Jiang Cheng filled in the gaps for himself. “No! You too? You fell for that fraud grandma’s lucky chickens?”
“I didn’t fall for anything,” Lan Xichen replied serenely, swilling his tea in his cup, “except a beautiful white Silkie rooster chick that I could fit in the palm of my hand – and maybe tease my brother with.”
“Your brother?”
“My brother, Lan Wangji.” Lan Xichen winked before looking out of the window to the white rooster on the chair. “You can probably guess Wingji’s namesake.”
Jiang Cheng let out a loud ‘hah!’ “You named your chicken after your brother too?”
“Yes.” Lan Xichen’s shoulders shook with quietly suppressed laughter, but then his expression faltered. “It seems we’ve both got brothers to miss.”
Thinking of what Jiang Cheng had last told his own, Lan Xichen’s words sank like lead bullets into his belly, and the laughter dried away from his tongue. He glared wretchedly down into his teacup and allowed what had been a comfortable tension between them to stretch into fraught silence.
Lan Xichen, probably misinterpreting entirely what Jiang Cheng was thinking, reached out across the table with a hand. “Jiang Cheng – “
Something clattered against the front door.
Lan Xichen’s head whipped up, fast as a deer’s, his eyes just as wide. The clattering resolved from noise into an odd loose rhythm. Someone wasn’t knocking - they were flailing against the front door.
“Stay here,” said Jiang Cheng when Lan Xichen showed no sign of moving, too stunned apparently to do so, but as soon as Jiang Cheng stood, Lan Xichen shook his head and joined him. “I take it you weren’t expecting anyone?”
“No,” Lan Xichen whispered, eyeing the front door like it might explode open at any moment. “Well, in a manner of speaking, I suppose yes...”
“Lan Xichen!?” shouted someone on the other side. “Lan Xichen, are you in there?” There was another frantic bout of scrabbling, and then finally the doorbell rang. “Lan Xichen,” said the voice on the other side, and this time it was quieter, a little more measured, “my brother left me a nifty little app that can track phone location by an accuracy of a metre, give or take. Unless that’s someone else who’s stolen your device in your house, I just saw you move from the living room into the corridor. I know you’re there. I don’t need to be let in. I just want to say my piece. It's Nie Huaisang.” He knocked against the door again, as if to make it clear that he was truly there on Lan Xichen’s doorstep, and Lan Xichen flinched hard, shrinking back behind Jiang Cheng. “If you don’t speak out, Lan Xichen, if you don’t tell the truth, Jin Guangyao is going to get away with murder. He’s going to walk free after murdering my brother with a slow, awful, tormenting death, which my brother knew was happening to him. He could feel it, and he wrote about it. I’d show you the letters, Lan Xichen. You were his oldest, closest friend, but I don’t want you to see them. I don’t think you deserve to. My brother was brave, and you are a coward.”
Lan Xichen was shaking, hands wrapped about himself, fingers digging into his arms. Jiang Cheng extended a hand to Lan Xichen’s shoulder. He grasped it, gripped it tight, grounding the man, or so he hoped - just enough to bring Lan Xichen into the present and keep him there to hear what Nie Mingjue’s brother had to say. Lan Xichen yearned to be heard. So did Nie Huaisang.
“The only thing stopping us from putting Jin Guangyao behind bars is the weapon. That’s Jin Guangyao’s main defence, Lan Xichen. The autopsy shows that my brother died by variant CJD, a disease that takes ten years or more to incubate in a human body. My brother hadn’t even met Jin Guangyao ten years ago. Mingjue wasn’t even in the same country as him. He was abroad, studying, and even then, the chances of developing V-CJD from eating the bad meat aren’t high to enough to make it a reliable weapon. Maybe it was given to him in a blood transfusion, but even then, how could Jin Guangyao have worked to kill a man who’s only been troubling him in the past year or so, from ten years in the past? Is he a time-traveller? Surely, he must have been, to have been able to kill my brother with a poison laid down so long ago!” Nie Huaisang let a theatrical gasp. Then hissed, “Bullshit. All of it. But that’s Jin Guangyao’s argument, and it’s good one. A perfectly reasonable one, according to what science we know.” Lan Xichen shuddered, his face twisted with Nie Huaisang’s words as if they hurt him. The doorbell rang, one more time, as if to remind him that the world outside Lan Xichen’s lifeless house was there, waiting for him, angry, loud and hurt. “You know the truth, don’t you? I know you do. Ge said so. He said, ‘Xichen knows, Huaisang. Xichen will help you. Xichen will help avenge me’. He really, really trusted you. Probably loved you more like a brother than he did frail and pathetic little me.”
A broken laugh, then a thud. This time, like a fist that would dearly like to hit harder, but didn’t want to break skin. “When you’re ready to talk, you can call my brother’s work number. It goes to me now. But I’ve found you, Lan Xichen, and do you know what that means? I might not be the only one finding you soon, and I don’t think Jin Guangyao’s thugs are going to leave you in any state where you'll be able to talk out against their boss. Just a thought.”
Then there was scuffling, possibly of clothes being rearranged, followed by the snap and creak of a fan being opened. Crunching steps. A car starting up. Pulling away.
Silence.
With a gasp more like a sob, Lan Xichen dropped to the floor, his knees giving away, and Jiang Cheng, who had been holding onto him, went down too.
“He’s right…” Lan Xichen said, hands balling into fists on the floor. “Every word Huaisang said, he’s right…There’s the truth, and there’s Mingjue, and there's A-Yao. And I’m a coward.”
“How do you know that was Nie Huaisang for sure?” Jiang Cheng said fiercely. “It could have been some actor. Someone who’s been hired to shake you up! That’s how I’d do it – I’d send someone to prod at what looks like a nest, and if a hornet buzzes out – “
“He’s my best friend’s little brother, Jiang Cheng. I’ve known them both since our school days. I know his voice. He’s changed, much, since his brother died, but that’s understandable, so understandable – “
“Breathe,” Jiang Cheng told him, hand on Lan Xichen’s back, and after a second of struggling, Lan Xichen let out a long, gasping exhale. “I think you should start from the top about this business that’s keeping you locked in here.”
Lan Xichen raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot and just a little red-rimmed and angry-looking, but it was better than the dazed emptiness moments earlier. It was lively, it was living. “Didn’t you say that you didn’t want to be involved in this?”
“I don’t want to be involved in this, but if I want to be involved with you, apparently I do.” Lan Xichen blinked, and Jiang Cheng stalled, paused, rewound his own words, and then his face burned. He spluttered, “I meant, that is – “
“For the sake of supervising Wei Cluckxian and making sure our Wingji doesn’t poach him off you, yes, I understand.” No! Jiang Cheng almost shouted, but now, when they were both on the floor by Lan Xichen’s front door, probably wasn’t the time. He nodded stiffly, and something in Lan Xichen eased. That small smile returned to his face. He laughed and closed his eyes. “Is it selfish of me to want you to know?”
“Sure, it is. Shouting for help’s always noisy. Screaming’s inconvenient to neighbours. Looking out for yourself inherently is selfish, so sometimes, being selfish..." Jiang Cheng struggled, because this was where the division between he and Wei Wuxian lay, where Wei Wuxian was selfishly selfless, and Jiang Cheng was selflessly selfish, and they were never going to come to an agreement on that, “...being selfish is how you survive. So, yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Go ahead. Try me.”
“Go ahead, eh?” Lan Xichen sat back against the wall of the corridor, and Wingji, who had been picking his silent way across the corridor towards them, immediately hopped into his lap, fluffing his feathers until he looked like a giant dandelion puff that Lan Xichen could comfortably pet. “Alright. As you request, Jiang Cheng, so you shall receive.”
“Er…” Wei Cluckxian, the menace, jumped up onto Jiang Cheng’s shoulder like a pirate’s parrot. “I’d rather you didn’t make it sound that sinister.”
“The variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease that killed Nie Mingjue wasn’t because of any poorly cooked steak or blood transfusion from ten years ago,” Lan Xichen spoke fluidly, running his hands through Wingji’s feathers, gentle face inscrutable. “It was given to him, deliberately, at least three months before Nie Mingjue died.”
Jiang Cheng swallowed. “Then, Nie Huaisang’s right? Nie Mingjue was really – “
“Murdered." The word left Lan Xichen in a breath, like it had been waiting to be spoken, “by my then boyfriend, a defence lawyer by the name of Jin Guangyao, and it’s all my fault, Jiang Cheng. That it could have happened at all.”
“Don’t be so arrogant!” Jiang Cheng snapped without thinking. “One person being at fault for every bad thing has got to be, like, a god or something. Oh – er – “ At Lan Xichen’s shocked look, he cringed in on himself. “Sorry, my mouth runs off with me a lot. Keep going.”
Lan Xichen stared at him with a kind of wonder. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me arrogant in the whole of my life.”
“Urgh. Just. Just.” Jiang Cheng flapped his hands. “Keep going. About your murdering boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend?”
“Ex-boyfriend,” said Lan Xichen firmly and Jiang Cheng tried to pretend that didn’t matter in the least bit to him. “Nie Mingjue, as I’ve said already, was my oldest and closest friend. I’d call him my confidante. I wanted him and Jin Guangyao to meet, and as they both meant a lot to me, to be friends as well. It was through me, then, that Nie Mingjue met Jin Guangyao at all, and after that began to take an interest in Jin Guangyao’s cases, noticed things that I was too blind by my affection and trust in the man to see…” Lan Xichen’s hands slowed on Wingji’s wings. “And it was through me that Jin Guangyao was able to kill Nie Mingjue at all.”
“How do you mean?”
“Because I made the weapon, Jiang Cheng,” said Lan Xichen easily, like he was telling Jiang Cheng that Wei Cluckxian was in his garden again, “and I gave it to Jin Guangyao.”
“...Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth.”
Jiang Cheng shook his head. “Not all of it!”
“You don’t think I helped my boyfriend get rid of the journalist out to destroy him out of love and loyalty?”
“Not willingly. I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it for a second.”
The smile Lan Xichen gave him then was so very warm. “Goodness, that’s…nicer to hear than I thought it would be.”
“But I’m fucking right, aren’t I? I know I'm right. You're not a murderer, Xichen.”
Lan Xichen closed his eyes, and after a torturous second, nodded. “I was utterly, completely clueless. I knew nothing at all about what was going on, about how much those two despised each other, or what either were prepared to do. I never thought for a moment that Jin Guangyao could be so ruthless, especially towards Nie Mingjue, when he knew how much Mingjue meant to me. I was too busy in the laboratory, too wrapped up in my research. I thought all three of us were devoted to improving the world, each in our small way. Nie Mingjue would always battle for the truth. A-Yao was fighting tooth and claw for justice and rights for sex workers and social mobility within the legal profession. My research could be applied to other neurological conditions relating to protein misfolding like Alzheimer’s. We each had our world, and I left them to theirs.
“Then nine months ago…” When he trailed off, Wingji let out that weird ‘You’ve got mail’ hum, and Lan Xichen pushed on, “I accidentally created a hyper-aggressively transmissible prion, with a significantly lower incubation period. Significant, meaning, when given to a mouse in the morning with its feed, the mouse was dead before lunch.”
That kind of statement…deserved a reverent, incredulous silence.
Jiang Cheng dutifully supplied.
Then he had to break it. “Wow.”
“Mmm. Yes. Exactly.”
“You...accidentally made a potential bio-weapon.”
“Yes.”
Jiang Cheng let out a long, low whistle. Not even Wei Wuxian had managed that one. Yet. "What did you do next?”
“That’s where I made my mistake.” Lan Xichen’s face reddened. “I panicked. It was irrational, but I thought that I might have to destroy all my research to cover this up, to stop people being able to replicate what I did, and I’ve been working on this for so long, I couldn’t bear the thought of it, but destroying just the one sample didn’t seem enough either. In my hysteria, I…I turned to my nearest source of support at the time.”
“Jin Guangyao.” Jiang Cheng didn't even know him but he wanted to claw up the man's face already.
“I called him from the university. I told him everything that had happened that day. I was crying. It was very undignified. He told me that he’d come to me, that he was on his way, that I mustn’t tell anybody else about this, to give me a chance to get rid of it, and that we’d deal with it together, and that’s what we did. I was so relieved when he turned up and I didn’t have to make the judgement call on my situation alone anymore.” Lan Xichen let out a sharp, bitter laugh and shook his head. “He asked me, first thing, if I’d managed to keep it hidden from the other researchers, and I had. Nobody else knew about it, not even my uncle. We disposed of the samples together, and he convinced me that that would be enough, and that I wouldn’t need to touch the rest of my research. It had been an accident, a freak sample that I wouldn’t be able to replicate. Hearing it from him was a comfort. A-Yao could be very persuasive. He always knew exactly the right words for the moment. He gave me all the reassurance I needed that I could safely, happily, just continue my research like I’d been doing all along.”
Lan Xichen gathered up Wingji and pulled the bird closer to his chest. “Then Mingjue started to deteriorate. A-Yao told me it was best that I didn’t see him. He said that Mingjue was starting to see all his old friends as enemies, and that I’d only make him worse by going to him. The best thing I could do, for all of us, he said was to look out for Mingjue’s little brother Huaisang - which, as you can plainly see, I've failed to do since. And then Mingjue died in January. I was wishing happy birthday to my brother on skype when A-Yao called me.”
“When did you know it was VCJD?”
“Not until April. Someone e-mailed me Mingjue’s autopsy reports, I didn’t know who then, but I believe, now, in light of everything since, it was Huaisang. Until then, it had completely escaped me. Apparently there had been minimal, near completely censored media coverage, as the Nie Media Corp had wanted to keep it quiet, and, well, I was too wrapped up in my work and my research to take an interest in worldly affairs.” Lan Xichen laughed again, bitter and low. “And I’d simply thought it was all the stress from Mingjue’s work getting to him. Stress! Oh, yes, that was work-related stress getting to him, alright!”
Jiang Cheng reached out, and Lan Xichen took the hand he offered. It made Jiang Cheng both sadly happy and furious: happy that Xichen trusted him, sadly so because Jiang Cheng was, frankly, an asshole and Xichen deserved better, furious that such a trusting man had been so poorly used.
“And now if I tell the world that Jin Guangyao used an accelerated VCJD prion sample to kill Nie Mingjue, not only will it likely destroy me and the reputations of my brother, my uncle and the Lan Yi Institute by association, but it will announce to the world - this whole violent, war-ridden, terrifying, murderous world, Jiang Cheng – that a weaponised prion disease is not only possible, but effective as a tool for assassination, and I’d be the man who’d have demonstrated that, and just thinking of all that frightens me so much, and I’m so ashamed. I’m so deeply ashamed.” Lan Xichen turned to him. “You must think me such a fool.”
“Just a bit,” Jiang Cheng said, and Lan Xichen sighed. “But you’re supposed to be allowed to be a bit of an idiot around people you love. They’re meant to be safe. They’re not supposed to take advantage of that.”
Wei Cluckxian clucked softly on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. Damn bird almost sounded proud of him. Damn right, he should be proud. Jiang Cheng was internally screaming, because holy shit, but somehow he was keeping it all together to be, for once, someone’s support.
“You see now why I can’t speak of this?” Lan Xichen said quietly. “You see why I shut myself away from the world?”
If people found out about an aggressive version of Mad Cow’s Disease that could kill a man within three months of being infected with it, normal people might panic, sensible people might be concerned, and then ‘sensible’ people in grey suits in shadowy hallways might be interested.
“Nie Huaisang just wants Jin Guangyao,” Jiang Cheng said slowly. “The Nie Media Corps could probably pull strings to censor the details out of the story if they have to. Why don’t you make that a condition for talking to them? Even they’d shirk at outing that a potentially weaponisable prion disease exists, when it means that all anyone has to do is get hold of Nie Mingjue’s remains to have a sample.”
“You’re underestimating Huaisang.” Lan Xichen drew in a shaky, shuddering breath. “He wants his revenge. He’s every right to enact it, and if he’s going to make it a complete one, he’s going to destroy me too.”
“Wow. Damn.”
They sat in silence against the walls of the corridor. The clock in the kitchen ticked onwards. The chickens whiffled with noises like corn being discretely popped in a cotton-wrapped can.
“I’m so very tired of all this,” Lan Xichen said eventually.
“Hell, yeah.” Jiang Cheng breathed out, long and slow. “And I’ve only known about ‘all this’ for, like, ten minutes.”
And despite everything, Lan Xichen broke into soft, quiet laughter.
He didn’t see Lan Xichen for several days after that. Not because Jiang Cheng was actively avoiding a man who had accidentally created a bio-weapon in his university laboratory, but because the phages had finally stopped destroying Jiang Cheng’s E.coli colonies and he could engineer his chlamydia at last. It was, as far as research went, time for Jiang Cheng to man his battle station.
They messaged each other as they’d done before, exchanging photographs and reports on their chickens’ wellbeing, and updating each other on their days. It would have almost been normal if Jiang Cheng didn’t begin to feel a niggling worry every time Lan Xichen failed to respond within three hours, wondering if the man had been dragged off by the mafia or suited government officials.
The other trouble niggling at Jiang Cheng was Wei Wuxian.
For some reason, Wei Wuxian had started messaging Jiang Cheng during his lab-times, which they'd agreed before to be off-limits. Was it urgent? Probably. Did Jiang Cheng care? No, because he wasn’t going to dignify the brother he’d told to sod off into space with a conversation that would require Jiang Cheng to face him.
So he ignored Wei Wuxian’s texts, and trusted that all his Yiling friends, his fencing club boyfriend and goddamn NASA could help his brother with whatever he’d mess he’d gotten into now. And if he was still texting Jiang Cheng in a week, maybe Jiang Cheng would deign to open just one message.
He missed their weekly skype session, and actually missed it.
Wei Wuxian would know what to do about Lan Xichen. Wei Wuxian wouldn’t just sit in the corridor and hold Lan Xichen’s hand and tell him he was stupid and selfish. Wei Wuxian would probably have gone out there, found Jin Guangyao and, despite getting into trouble and danger with possibly the police and the Jin Corporation, somehow have managed to twist the whole situation, so that Jin Guangyao outright confessed on camera that he’d killed Nie Mingjue.
But Jiang Cheng wasn’t Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng was just Jiang Cheng, who did his best. Who had a bad mouth. Who everyone left behind.
The thought that Wei Wuxian would do better than him at Lan Xichen’s 'All This' gnawed at Jiang Cheng in the lab, so much so that he didn’t notice when a graduate student came over him to his bench and started, going against the warning looks of all other people in room, trying to actually talk to him.
He noticed though when they trod on the Landmine.
Jiang Cheng looked up from his notes. “Say that again.”
“Oh, I was just asking if you were…you know? ‘Jiang’ like in ‘Jiang Fengmian’?” the clueless cretin asked, daring to laugh congenially whilst they ogled Jiang Cheng like he was an exotic big cat. “Like, the Nobel Prize winner? So, your mum would be Yu Ziyuan right? And doesn’t that mean you’re related to that genius astrophysicist Wei Wuxian?”
Jiang Cheng uncoiled from his seat like a snake. “So what if I am?”
The graduate student had the cheek to laugh again. He gestured at Jiang Cheng. “Oh, you know…”
“No, actually. I don’t know. What should I know?”
Their labmates were making furious signs at the graduate student to quit whilst he still had a head. Excellent. Whatever Jiang Cheng did to this obnoxious boy with a face like a Buddha, he would have had plenty of due warning.
“Well, it’s just….they’re all great scientists, and famous, and just…” He laughed like he expected Jiang Cheng to be in on the joke. “Well, look at you. You’re here, doing…what? Not much, right? What are your New Year meals like? It can’t be easy for you – ”
Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure if he punched or slapped him or both. Either way, his hand came away with a satisfying sting in its palm and knuckles, and when the red fog cleared, he was striding out of the laboratory as fast as his legs could carry him. He knew from past experience that nobody would come looking for him for at least an hour when the cowards could all be sure that he had cooled down.
In that hour he went to the empty lab locker room and sat on one of the benches.
He shook out his stinging hand.
What would it take to have someone look at him, for once, and just look at him? Not his family’s reputation, not his Jiang name, not the connections and kudos they could glean off him if they somehow wormed their way under his skin and into his heart to use him for their convenience?
What would it take?
It would probably be best to hang up his coat for the day.
His phone rang just as he’d put away his lab-coat and taken his things out of his locker. It was Lan Xichen. A quick scroll in his history showed that Lan Xichen had already called him twelve times in the past forty five minutes.
Heart in his mouth, Jiang Cheng wasted no time. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Jiang Cheng, I’m outside.”
Jiang Cheng paused. “Er, congratulations?”
“I’m not that much of a recluse. Yet,” came the smiling response, before Lan Xichen became harried and anxious again, “I’m outside the campus’ front gates. Please. Have you got time? I don’t know who else to turn to in this. I don’t know anybody else in that street. Or anyone, really.”
“I’m on my way. What’s happened?”
Lan Xichen's voice cracked. “Wingji’s gone missing."
Jiang Cheng allowed himself a moment to calm down. Oh, good, it wasn’t the mafia. “You came out to the campus for that? He’s probably just in my garden, Xichen.”
“That’s just the trouble. He isn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I climbed the fence into your garden to check.” Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng remembered, probably had the arm strength and certainly had the desperation to do just that. “And I thought that you would appreciate knowing as soon as possible…”
“Know what?” asked Jiang Cheng with a growing sense of dread.
“Wei Cluckxian is missing too – and his coop door was open, in just that way he leaves it when he opens it himself.”
Jiang Cheng ground to a stop, his feet gluing to the linoleum of the stairwell, and then the entire corridor and the five floors of the Pathology Department heard the majestic roar of:
“Are you telling me that those goddamn chickens have eloped!?”
Lan Xichen had come to the campus on foot, hiding his face under the shadow of a navy parasol.
Jiang Cheng had a motorbike in the parking lot. It was a no-brainer how they would get back to their neighbourhood. As long as Lan Xichen’s legs were, they weren’t going to be faster than a bike. Speed was of the essence if Jiang Cheng was going to protect Wei Cluckxian’s virtue from that bloody Wingji.
Yep, that was entirely the reason for why he was sweating, why his heart was punching against his chest, why his stomach was swooping at the thought of all the horrible things that happened to chickens when they tried to cross roads in reality and not in the jokes, and as he waited for Lan Xichen to buckle on Jiang Cheng’s spare helmet (the black and red one that used to be Wei Wuxian’s) he drummed his fingers on the hand brakes, tapped his toes on the ground, and muttered about all the things he’d do to Wei Cluckxian that demon bird when he found him again.
He almost snarled for Lan Xichen to hurry up, but then the leather of the passenger seat behind creaked a little, compressed, and long arms were wrapping securely around his waist.
“I’m so sorry to have troubled you again, Jiang Cheng," Lan Xichen said softly into Jiang Cheng's right ear.
Politeness shouldn’t have made Jiang Cheng’s heart skip a beat, but that was Jiang Cheng for you.
“It’s alright,” he mumbled, quite forgetting how to move his lips. “It’s not you troubling me anyway. It’s our Wei Cluckxian.”
“And our Wingji. He’s not blameless in this.”
“No, he most definitely is not. When did you last see him?”
“When I let him out whilst I made lunch. Around half twelve.”
So the bloody birds might have been on the run for about two hours. Jiang Cheng clenched his jaw. “We’ve got our job cut out for us. Tap me with your left hand if you ever need to me to stop. Hold tight.”
He didn’t know if the, “Oh, gladly.”, he heard as he revved the engine was real or his imagination, so he put it clean out of his mind, leaned over the fuel tank, kicked off the ground and focused on speed and the road ahead. They had an elopement to stop.
Jiang Cheng didn’t have a plan for how they were going to find the chickens. Neither, so it happened, did Lan Xichen. He had some vague idea of driving through every street in the neighbourhood within a ten mile radius of their houses, following either a trail of destruction or pissed off neighbours, but the streets around this time in the afternoon were mostly empty, and he knew impracticality when he heard it, even from his own mind.
And as much as Jiang Cheng wanted to hurtle through the streets like a wind of vengeance, looking exactly the menace Wei Cluckxian deserved bearing down on his feathery, eloping little chicken butt, he couldn’t.
The first traffic lights they came to, which Jiang Cheng had looked at and decided that, given the circumstances and the empty mid-afternoon streets, he could ignore, the arms about his waist tightened warningly, then tightened further, until Jiang Cheng had no choice but to brake and stop for the red lights.
“What’s wrong?” he wheezed as Lan Xichen crushed his waist with, yes, as Jiang Cheng had suspected, very strong arms.
“Traffic lights,” said Lan Xichen firmly, “are never optional.”
“But there’s nobody at the crossing!”
“It takes a village to raise a child, Jiang Cheng. What if an impressionable child was watching from their living room window at this very moment?”
“Xichen, do you want those birds to get away!?”
“Of course, I don’t, but I don’t want you to infringe traffic regulation for their sake either.” Lan Xichen’s arms tightened again and Jiang Cheng had never been gladder for the helmet hiding his face. “Also, do mind the area speed limits, if you please. Oh, look! It’s green.”
Jiang Cheng had no more time to argue back, so he did what any man with the most beautiful accidental bio-weapon engineer in the world politely strangling his waist would do: He obliged.
At the distinctly un-dramatic pace of this residential area’s 35 miles per hour speed limit, they searched for their chickens.
Lan Xichen was silent at Jiang Cheng’s back. He wasn’t the kind to shout over the wind to tell him something, so instead communicated by gentle squeezes of his arms about Jiang Cheng’s body, which Jiang Cheng had absolutely no problem with whatsoever. If it wasn’t for those damn birds, Jiang Cheng might have even sincerely enjoyed himself. The speed was leisurely. The sun was out, the wind was gentle, and it was one of those rare light days where humidity had taken the afternoon off from steaming the town's humans.
But as it was, an hour went by, and there was not a feather, nor wounded innocent victim nor shell-shocked bystander to a demon chicken rampage to be found, and Lan Xichen’s hold on Jiang Cheng became increasingly tense, rather than tight, his fingertips digging into the front of Jiang Cheng’s leather jacket.
And the thought he’d been squashing down the whole time began to cross Jiang Cheng’s mind as garish and jarring as a chicken crossing the road.
What if they didn’t find their chickens?
What if this was it, and Wei Cluckxian and Wingji took off into the wilderness, founding their own demonic kingdom of super fairy chickens and never came back?
Jiang Cheng clenched his jaw and focused on the road. Then good riddance. They were just chickens anyway. They weren’t people. They were pets. And they would probably die in a year or two anyway if they were normal chickens. Wei Cluckxian had always been more trouble than he was worth to keep around. With that damn rooster gone, Jiang Cheng’s life would be infinitely more peaceful, just as it had been when Wei Wuxian went abroad, and the Jiang house had emptied of his life and noise.
Just as it assuredly would be infinitely more peaceful when Wei Wuxian fucked off to space.
Like Jiang Cheng had told him to.
His heart clenched. It felt too small for all this missing that Jiang Cheng did. It was pathetic really, he knew that. He knew that loving his brother and sister meant letting them go. Trees growing side-by-side in the same bed stretched their branches away from each other, reaching for different sunlight, and thriving best when they made their own canopy in their own patch of sky.
Jiang Cheng knew this in theory, but Jiang Cheng was a scientist. Knowing in theory did not equate to knowing in practice.
When their parents had died, Wei Wuxian had promised that he’d be there. Jiang Cheng had clung to that promise. It had helped him pull himself out of the sinkhole of grief that had dropped out beneath him at the deaths, helped him feel safe enough to let go of Jie so that she could go, marry, live her life, without worry for A-Cheng’s mental weather, and helped him through his degree, even as Wei Wuxian moved further and further away as he rose and rose and rose, and Jiang Cheng stayed where he was, guarding their family legacy, their house, their home.
Missing his brother was different from missing Jie or their parents. Missing Wei Wuxian was hoping. Missing Wei Wuxian was stubbornness. It was Jiang Cheng’s middle finger to the universe, because he knew the truth: Wei Wuxian was never coming back, no matter that he always promised he would and always intended it wholeheartedly.
But the thought that Wei Wuxian might, however unlikely, come home was what had given Jiang Cheng a reason to pick himself up from the floor in the wake of the car crash. It had made him go to work, because woe betide him if his annoying big brother actually came home and Jiang Cheng had done nothing to show for their time apart.
That was how he’d lived each day until he bought that lucky chicken for 10 RMB.
He thought of Wei Cluckxian’s fluffy black feathered feet. His ability to scream like a first victim of a slasher flick. His empty coop in their garden.
He thought of Wei Wuxian going to space with his fencing club boyfriend, to be brilliant and adored by multitudes, and how Jiang Cheng’s job would one day be to look on and smile from the back of the crowd.
Was he ready for that yet? The empty coop? The crowd?
Lan Xichen’s grip tightened on his jacket. There was that nervous tremor in his hands again. Similar thoughts were probably running through his head – said head, which had at some point in Jiang Cheng’s wonderings, come to rest between Jiang Cheng’s shoulder-blades, like the man would be pressing his forehead against it, if it weren’t for his helmet, and was curling into him for comfort.
Jiang Cheng glanced about the street. They should probably pull over somewhere and take a break. The chickens weren’t tireless. They’d likely take a break at some point too. Both he and Xichen usually spent their days locked indoors in the air-conditioned havens of their living room or lab. They could both do with water and shade.
Just when Jiang Cheng had spotted a vending machine station about a hundred metres away, a car, travelling significantly faster than 35 miles per hour, came up behind them.
Jiang Cheng squinted into the mirror. He pulled a face. Anybody driving a car like that had terrible taste and clearly nobody who loved them enough to tell it to their face. It was bright gold. Flashy. With dark windows…
When it overtook them, the back passenger seat window wound down and something dark and gleaming stuck out of it.
The long cylinder of a silenced gun.
Jiang Cheng screamed something, something incoherent like, “XichenI’msorrybutyourlife'smoreimportantthanthespeedinglaws!”, and hoped it passed as an acceptable apology. He gripped the throttle valves open and accelerated hard.
The bike flew forwards, roaring down the residential lane, just in time for something to ping off the rear fender with a force that made the whole bike shudder.
Oh, god. Oh, damn.
They were being shot at.
They were actually being shot at.
By some wanker so unloved he thought he could get away with owning a gold car.
Lan Xichen shouted something then, but it was lost in the wind. There was another ping! of something ricocheting off concrete, embedding in a nearby house-front. Jiang Cheng bent over the handles and swerved into an alley, just as there was another whistle and pop of another silenced bullet.
Maybe he could lose them in the lanes. Jiang Cheng's chances were good. He wasn’t, for starters, an international spy in a foreign city in a Hollywood movie. He was a local man in his local patch, and he was a vicious member of the community planning permission committee. He knew where all the dead ends and development sites were. This could work, this could work –
And he almost thought it had.
He broke out from the alleys to the road that edged the forest, because if they could go off the road and into the forest, the gunman might be able to follow, but the car wouldn’t. They’d have the upper hand for speed. Lan Xichen was holding onto him so tightly his grip would probably have hurt if it wasn’t for the adrenaline, but just when Jiang Cheng had spotted an opening in the trees to aim for, he looked up and there was a second car, grey, a four by four, barrelling down the road from directly in front, totally on the wrong side of the road.
Its headlights flashed on full-beam.
Blinded, Jiang Cheng screamed and swerved.
When he blinked the black and the red and the pain out of his eyes, he was face down in the deep, mulchy ditch that ran between the road and the forest.
Leaves, mud and blood had stuffed a clay fist into his mouth. His body was a sack of pebbles and glass. He couldn’t move. He didn’t want to try. It might do something irreparable to his neck and spine. His ears rang and his heart beat too quickly, too quickly, too quickly. He could smell burning metal. Taste it on his tongue, and there was gasoline in the air, in his nose, and…
Lan Xichen was wrapped around him, an arm about his shoulders and a second around his waist. He’d held onto Jiang Cheng so tightly, maybe out of fear, maybe out of sheer necessity from the speed, that they’d been thrown off the motorbike together.
No. That wasn't right. Jiang Cheng remembered the shout, remembered the effort with which Lan Xichen had wrenched them both free from their seats, pulling them away before they'd ended up crushed in a twisted heap with the bike against the trees, throwing them both into the forest ditch. He’d done his best to shield Jiang Cheng on their way down into it, tucking Jiang Cheng against his body.
Wet, ragged breathing echoed from his helmet.
Jiang Cheng shifted. His hands were trapped beneath him, definitely at angles they shouldn't have been able to bend in. Things moved in them that were sharp and jagged and broken.
But he wanted to reach out, he wanted to touch, check...
There were footsteps.
Crunching dried grass and gravel.
Feet in bright gold Wellington boots came down the ditch’s slope from the road to stop in front of Jiang Cheng’s face.
Jiang Cheng did his best to look up without moving. Through the spider-web of cracks in his visor, he recognised this man. He’d been at Jiejie’s wedding reception. One of Jin Zixuan’s many brothers. The lawyer. The smooth talker. Dressed in a dark suit with a gold and red silk cravat, he wore a trilby with gold satin band. A gaudy red stone the size of a swallow's egg caught the light on its side. He’d worn that hat at the reception too. Wei Wuxian had joked about stealing it.
The man crouched slowly, tucking his trousers into the tops of his boots. Jiang Cheng closed his eyes to the thinnest possible slits, pretending to be unconscious.
“Xichen?” said Jin Guangyao, soft as a cat's paw, and he had the gall to actually let his voice shake. “Xichen? No, no, no, not you…You weren’t meant to…You can’t be dead…”
Jiang Cheng did his best not to react, but he realised then the same thing as Jin Guangyao.
Lan Xichen was very still behind him.
His breathing had gone silent. In fact, Jiang Cheng couldn’t even feel it, and Lan Xichen’s broad chest was pressed so close to his back, even through the thick jacket, Jiang Cheng should have – he should have been able to –
Jin Guangyao took off his gloves, put them neatly away in a pocket then reached over Jiang Cheng. He wormed the pale fingers of his right hand between them, seeking out Xichen’s neck, whilst roughly tugging free the hand at Jiang Cheng’s shoulder with his left.
No, thought Jiang Cheng numbly, cold seeping from the forest into his skin, as Jin Guangyao closed his eyes and counted. No. That’s too cruel. That’s too much. We were just looking for our chickens. Just being dumb about our dumb birds. He was alive only seconds ago! Seconds!
Jin Guangyao let out a breath that could’ve been a sob, could’ve been a sigh. He pulled away his fingers, lowered Xichen’s hand. “I never wanted you to be hurt, Xichen.”
Liar, Jiang Cheng wanted to spit, anger so reliably stepping in when he didn’t want to think, to dwell. If you didn’t want to hurt him, you wouldn’t have chased him down with guns when we were on a motorcycle and driven us off the road. You could’ve gone to his house. He would’ve probably made you tea because he’s just well-mannered and nice like that.
Xichen...
“I only wanted to take you somewhere safe. I’d heard that Nie Huaisang had found you, and he’s a ruthless little bitch. He was looking to destroy you too for Mingjue’s death even when you weren’t to blame, not one bit of it. I know this, because I always wanted you to be blameless, right to the very end and beyond. Even if you did give me the poison to do it, knowing you’d unwittingly aided in murder, I knew it would destroy you…” There was a rustle. Hair. It was the sound of Jin Guangyao taking up a handful of Lan Xichen’s long black hair where it stuck out from the bottom of his helmet and smoothing it free of leaves and dirt, before arranging it more tidily on Xichen's shoulder. Jiang Cheng wanted to be sick. “When I saw you on the motorbike today, I thought you were being taken away by one of Nie Huaisang’s men. That’s why we resorted to…such measures.” Say ‘violence’, you little shit, filled in Jiang Cheng savagely, lightheaded with pain and blood loss, giddy on rage. Say 'murder'. Say 'betrayal'. “You understand me, don’t you, Xichen? You forgive me. You only died today because I was trying to protect the one I loved the most, and you always said that was a worthy cause. A cause worth risking everything for. But it seems that...today, I risked you, and I failed.” Maybe it had been Jin Guangyao who’d been in a motorcycle accident and hit his head and not Jiang Cheng, because none of that made any sense, even to Jiang Cheng’s whiplashed brain. “Goodbye, Xichen. I’ll make Nie Huaisang pay for this.”
Nie Huaisang had not been the one to chase them down in a gold car with a gun stuck out of the back seat, but Jiang Cheng kept those thoughts behind his teeth (actually, it was easier to stay quiet than usual, because he hurt and ached so much that the very thought of moving his jaw and tongue was impossible) and stayed as still as he could, waiting for Jin Guangyao to leave.
Jin Guangyao planted a kiss on the back of Xichen’s hand, the one he’d lifted moments ago to find his pulse, then lowered it and stood.
Eyes bored into Jiang Cheng then, hard and cold and full of hate. He kept his breathing quiet, pressed his mouth into the dirt.
“This one’s only unconscious." Jin Guangyao called up to his men on the road. "I want his neck broken and his windpipe crushed.”
“Yes, sir,” came a thug’s response from above, and Jiang Cheng’s heart jumped. Oh, shit. That’s me. My neck. That’s me.
“It’s only fair dues for such reckless driving.” Jin Guangyao put his gloves back on and adjusted his hat. “How tragic motorcycle accidents are. They really are too dangerous to have people legally riding pillion, even with their helmets.”
A broken neck wouldn’t look at all out of place in a motorcycle incident. Jiang Cheng had been lucky he’d landed in the soft banks of the ditch (he pushed aside the screaming inside that said he hadn’t been lucky, he’d been saved, by the man who was still and breathless behind him), lined as it was with years of bracken and grass and mulch, but, no, he couldn’t let this happen to him. He had to move. He had to get away. Someone had to be able to tell others what had really happened to Lan Xichen. Someone had to get all this Nie Huaisang, to see that Jin Guangyao could be brought to justice, and he couldn’t let news reach his Gege and Jiejie that A-Cheng had died in an auto-related incident just like their parents….
A man was coming down the slope. He had heavier footfalls than Jin Guangyao. He had long arms and bulging fists. Jiang Cheng could see him coming, but everything was numb and nothing moved. His mouth opened and closed, but not by his control. He breathed. Xichen didn’t. Xichen was still holding onto him.
He was still warm. In the midst of a cloud of pain and sensation, it was his one island of comfort, and the animal part of Jiang Cheng clung to it.
Get up, he told himself, as the man coming to snap his neck (like a chicken, a hysterical part of him noted, like a chicken for soup) approached. Get up, Jiang Cheng. You have to get up.
Leave him.
Leave Xichen in the ditch.
Damn it.
Damn it all.
Damn it all to hell.
Jiang Cheng couldn’t. He couldn't do that.
Jin Guangyao’s thug stood over him, their shadow long and cold.
Good thing Wei Cluckxian and Wingji eloped when they did, the wild thought suddenly occurred to him, giddy and nonsensical. At least they’ll have each other.
The man bent down. Jiang Cheng watched those hands lowering, stretching towards him, fingers fat and muscular –
There was a scream from above like a human being torn apart.
Or stabbed in a shower.
Or hacked with a chainsaw.
Or possibly the first of many grisly serial killings in a sleepy American town with too many cornfields and a tradition of cults.
Then something black and feathered dropped onto the thug’s head with a battlecry of, ‘Pockawp!’
And Wei Cluckxian was there.
Wei Cluckxian was pecking every inch of the flailing and screaming thug’s face he could reach.
Shouts and screams erupted from the road. Jiang Cheng caught a brief glimpse of Wingji’s white fluff as he chased around a mafia crony, silent but as deadly as a chicken could be. There was so much noise, so much movement. The thug Wei Cluckxian clung to was screaming and doing some strange flailing dance as the chicken scratched at his eyes. Another man tumbled into the ditch beyond him, dripping blood, before scrambling to his knees and running shrieking into the forest.
Sirens wailed on the road above. Wei Cluckxian screeched kazoo noises. Tyres squealed, car doors opened and slammed shut. There were voices taking names, shouts, the loud thumps and thuds of people being tackled. Jiang Cheng couldn't take it all in. Everything took on the slipstream time-bent quality of a dream.
He thought he heard Wei Wuxian calling his name, which was impossible because Wei Wuxian was in Yiling, getting head-hunted for NASA. But there it was, his brother's voice. Calling and calling. First, normally. Then amplified on a megaphone. “A-Cheng! A-Cheng, where are you? Yes, officer, that’s his bike – he’s got to be around here somewhere – A- Cheng! Don’t you dare talk to me, officer, in that fucking gentle voice like you think he’s already dead! I know he isn’t! A-Cheng!”
Here, he wanted to say, but he wouldn't be heard over the screaming, and the chickens, and everything. Here, Ge.
Then someone came to the top of the ditch. A white silhouette, down the slope. Someone who called, “Wei Ying!” before hurrying downwards with a grace that was almost familiar. Funny, it somehow reminded Jiang Cheng simultaneously of both Xichen and Wingji, his accursed seducing chicken.
Whoever they were, they kneeled in the leaf-litter, mud and blood and ditch-water staining their white jeans. They couldn’t have been real. Who wore white jeans in a ditch? A gentle hand landed tentatively on Lan Xichen’s shoulder, scared to shake him, to move him wrong, and Jiang Cheng was about to speak up and tell them not to waste their worry, because the dead didn’t hurt, when there was a crashing and scattering of leaf-litter.
“A-Cheng!”
Ge, shut up, you’re so loud…
“Oh, nice to see you too,” said Wei Wuxian, clearing the debris from Jiang Cheng’s shattered visor, but there was no heat in his voice, no barbs, just something low-simmering and fearful for all the calm he tried to mask it in. “I guess that’s a clear airway, then. Lan Zhan?”
“Will need help with Xiong-zhang’s helmet.”
“Got it. Here – “
“Ge…” Jiang Cheng shifted his forearms, brought his broken wrists up, and Wei Wuxian took them, held them, cupped them in the lightest lattice of fingers as he coaxed Jiang Cheng not to move, but Jiang Cheng had unfrozen, had unstuck at last, and he would say this, would have this heard, “why aren’t you...in space? I thought...you were going to space… “
“A-Cheng, shhh, it’s alright. Let’s talk later. I’m here now. There will be a later – “
“You should be in space,” Jiang Cheng insisted, getting into his stride, and suddenly, surrounded by all the pain and the chickens and the cops and his brother and a Wingji who apparently could turn into a human now, he knew what to say. “That’s where you belong...Not ‘cos I don’t want you here, but ‘cos I’m so proud of you, Ge…so proud of how far you’ve gone, how far you’re still going to go…” He shook his broken hands up and down, shaking Wei Wuxian. “Go far away, further than anyone. I won’t stop you.”
“…A-Cheng…”
And then there was a miracle.
Lan Xichen let out a gasping rattling breath.
He woke with a flinch behind Jiang Cheng and immediately began coughing.
And that, wonderfully, blissfully, was the moment that Jiang Cheng’s consciousness finally decided to drag him under and relieve him of reality.
“I called you so many times, trying to warn you that Jin Guangyao had found Lan Xichen. So, so many times! But did you want to set aside your grudge from our last spat for just one potentially useful life-preserving minute? No! No, you did not.” Wei Wuxian paced back and forth at the foot of Jiang Cheng’s hospital bed, alternating between the spinning the flute in his hand and tapping it against his forehead. “Once I figured out who Blue Bambi was, all your weirdness started falling into place.”
“My weirdness,” said Jiang Cheng flatly, tempted to add that was rich coming from Wei Wuxian, but Wei Wuxian had already moved on.
“Your general reticence about him. How you couldn’t talk about his situation. Or he couldn't slash wouldn't. How, when you did, how similar it was to Lan Zhan’s own brother’s situation. ‘Blue Bambi’…” Wei Wuxian crowed, reminding Jiang Cheng starkly of a certain bird. “Well, Jiang Cheng. I can’t fault you on your taste: Lan Xichen, the pioneering prion disease researcher, listed in the 30 under 30 in Nature December 2019 as the man most likely to find the cure for Alzheimer’s within the next five years. Lan Zhan’s big brother, of all the people in the world! What were the chances?”
“Shut it.”
“It’s fate. Fate’s telling us to be one big happy scientific family. Tell you what? How about we make a bet? I bet that - ”
“Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng let out a long breath down his nose, “tell me whatever it is you’re not telling me.”
It was three weeks since Jin Guangyao had driven Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen into the forest ditch, three weeks since they'd gone into in Lan Yi Institute Hospital’s intensive care unit, and three weeks since Wei Wuxian had come back.
Jiang Cheng was still mostly a B-movie mummy, wrapped in bandages, sitting up in bed with his hands stuck out in front of him as various pins and splints put his hands and fingers back in place. On the whole, though, the doctors had agreed on one thing: that coming away from a motorcycle accident at the speeds they’d been travelling at with only broken wrists, broken fingers, broken legs, broken lower ribs that had narrowly missed his lungs, a fractured kneecap, broken collar, cuts on his chin and forehead, bruised kidneys and a splinter in his thumb was nothing short of a miracle. Jiang Cheng should have been dead. He and Xichen both should have been dead. They should have broken spines and necks, and turned into to shaken up bags of meat, blood and bone, but here he was.
The thought that he’d almost died was skittish when Jiang Cheng tried to catch it, so he gave up grappling with his mortality at the start of his second week. He lay back in the bed and tried to enjoy his brother’s company instead. There were benefits from having Wei Wuxian as a brother. One, he could get hold of almost anything that was otherwise discouraged in the hospital. Two, he had absolutely no scruples about smuggling those items in.
Before he’d started pacing, Wei Wuxian had been in the midst of spooning pork rib and lotus root soup into two bowls. He hadn’t been able to meet Jie for her to give him her home-cooked soup. She’d had to send her secretary to drop it off behind a hotel counter somewhere for Wei Wuxian to collect with a code-word, like they were spies handling contraband. It sounded so utterly ridiculous that Jiang Cheng almost called out Wei Wuxian for lying, but Jiang Cheng was an ordinary chlamydia researcher who’d nearly had his neck snapped by a mafia strongman, and arguably been rescued by chickens. Jie was still under the Jin Corporation’s family member lockdown and watchful eye. Such an elaborate operation just to get Jiang Cheng a bowl of soup might not have been as ridiculous as he thought.
Tucking his flute into the back of his trousers, Wei Wuxian sighed and returned to Jiang Cheng’s bedside, and between spooning soup for Jiang Cheng and himself, he talked. “I accepted that offer from NASA.”
Jiang Cheng raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Wei Wuxian raised a spoonful of soup to Jiang Cheng’s mouth. Jiang Cheng savoured the smell of it first, then ate and couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll be training for the first manned Mars mission. There might be training expeditions to the Moon along the way.”
“Mars,” echoed Jiang Cheng incredulously, licking his lips for drops of soup. Training expeditions to the Moon. Wow. “You’ll be going a long way away.”
From me. From your family.
“Yes, I will be.” With a pair of chopsticks, Wei Wuxian fed Jiang Cheng a chunk of stewed pork rib. Jie had thoughtfully cut everything into bite-sized pieces. “I’ll be the furthest away humans have ever been once I’m there.”
Jiang Cheng nodded, chewing slowly on the pork, just listening.
“I thought about what you said the last time we skyped.” Jiang Cheng winced. Wei Wuxian snorted, but he went on, quiet and serious. “About being there for you, like a brother. I made a promise, back then, didn’t I? After Uncle and Auntie died? That I’d be here for you?”
“Yeah,” he said, equally quiet. Hospital was great. He could blame being teary and emotional on the drugs. “You did.”
I don’t think you ever realised how much that promise meant to me then.
Wei Wuxian met Jiang Cheng’s gaze. “I’m sorry I broke my promise.”
There was a part of Jiang Cheng that cheered. That cried out at the validation, that at last, at last, it felt as if it had been seen and allowed to be more than a bitter shadow.
But there was another part that had grown larger lately, that bloomed then, in the quiet, as Wei Wuxian, for once, sat still, and listened, and waited, hands cupped around a bowl of soup, all there, only there for Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng nodded. Never had a small movement been so difficult, and it wasn’t because of the pins in his collar bone.
He let out a breath. “Okay.”
You’re forgiven. You’re free of me. You never really broke your promise, I was just so scared. He couldn’t decide which of those say, so he said none of them, and let Wei Wuxian do what he did best and fill the silence for two people's worth.
“Really? You never once felt like I’d like left you behind, too engrossed in chasing what I thought was important in the grand scheme of things, just when you needed me most?”
Jiang Cheng stared at him. “Do you want me to be angry with you or something?”
“I want you to be alright, A-Cheng.”
“Oh, yeah? Well,I,” Jiang Cheng leaned forwards again to drink Jie’s soup from the spoon Wei Wuxian lifted to his mouth, “want you to go and get off Planet Earth. I want you to as far as you can go. Haven’t you got it yet, Wei Wuxian? Didn’t you listen to a word of what I said in that goddamn ditch? I don’t want to be the reason you don’t get to be as obnoxiously brilliant as you can be.” Jiang Cheng huffed and turned away from the spoon. “At least have a decency to remember what could’ve been my last words, you bastard.”
A hand landed lightly on his forehead, and Jiang Cheng stilled.
“You too, you know?” Wei Wuxian pushed the hair out of Jiang Cheng’s eyes, a soft gesture he hadn't done for years, before making it totally pointless by ruffling Jiang Cheng's fringe out of place. “I want to see you go as far as possible too. Go the distance, A-Cheng. I know you can do it. Make us all proud. Become the King of Chlamydia.”
“Can you not put it like that, Ge?”
“No, you’re right. Why settle for King when you could be a god? Science God of Chlamydia, our Jiang Cheng.”
“Wei Wuxian!”
Wei Wuxian laughed, bright and unrestrained, and Jiang Cheng wondered why it was that he felt a little freer then too, like he had kicked loose of something tangled at his ankles to the past at last.
They finished the soup together, and just as Wei Wuxian had packed up Jie’s hamper (disguised as a laptop case) there was a knock at the door. Wei Wuxian went to open it, first a crack to see who was in the corridor – just in case it was one of Jin Guangyao’s mafia men, in which case, Jiang Cheng didn’t know what Wei Wuxian was planning to do about them other than beat them over the head with his flute –then a little wider to whisper to whoever was there.
Eventually, Wei Wuxian nodded and opened the door wide.
In came that dour-looking man in white, who Jiang Cheng couldn’t stop thinking of as human-Wingji. In a long white coat, white jeans, white boots, this was clearly a man who prioritised his laundry. Maybe with those looks (Jiang Cheng had eyes, damn it) he even modeled for household bleach products. He was pushing Lan Xichen in a wheelchair.
Jiang Cheng stared. He hadn’t seen Xichen since the forest ditch, and his heart was suddenly thudding, knocking against his ribs, like it was trying to reach from his chest out to the man and confirm for itself, You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.
“Let’s leave them to it,” Wei Wuxian said to human-Wingji, who nodded but then paused. Wei Wuxian looked between him and Jiang Cheng, then slowly smiled and left the room.
Jiang Cheng didn’t like that slow smile one bit.
“Wangji?” Xichen glanced up at his brother with amusement. “Is there something you’d like to say?”
Wangji continued to glare at Jiang Cheng with a look that might have killed him on the spot if he hadn’t already been inoculated to it by that damn white rooster.
Then Wangji addressed Jiang Cheng in a deep, dark voice like he was delivering a warning, “Thank you…Clara.”
Jiang Cheng blinked. Xichen reddened. “Wangji!”
And Wangji swept out of the room after Wei Wuxian, closing the door with a curt click.
Jiang Cheng broke the silence. “’Clara’?”
Xichen shuffled in his seat. “It’s, er, nothing.”
“Nothing?”
A pause, then Xichen relented, big shoulders sagging. “I…may have used certain…codenames to talk about my life here with my brother.”
“You called me ‘Clara’?”
“Yes.”
“After my code for chlamydia?”
“It seemed fitting at the time.”
They looked at each other across the room.
Then they both burst out laughing.
Xichen pushed his wheelchair to the bedside, smiling happily and wiping his eyes. “You seem well.”
“You too,” Jiang Cheng told him honestly, because for a man who had shielded Jiang Cheng from the worst of the fall into the ditch, he looked incredibly intact, more so even than Jiang Cheng since Jiang Cheng was the one still in bed. “What’s your spec?”
“Well, apparently I broke most of my ribs, cracked my pelvis, punctured a lung, fractured my tailbone, ruptured an organ or two, and cracked a few vertebrae but somehow, miraculously have suffered no nerve or spinal cord damage, and miraculously have healed a good deal faster than I should have, so all in all, I’m rather pleased with this. And you?”
Jiang Cheng told him. Once he’d run through everything, Jiang Cheng remarked, “There’s a lot of ‘miraculously’ happening around here.”
“Yes, there is, isn't there?"
“You don’t sound surprised.”
Lan Xichen hummed. “Jiang Cheng, do you remember what the little old lady told you when you bought Wei Cluckxian?”
He did. These eight years, he’d gone over it again and again in his mind, cursing how on earth this chicken would ever ‘make him happy’ when it made the noises that it did and would never shut up. Never mind that he loved that chicken like a son and brother and a piece of himself.
When he finished repeating the old lady for Lan Xichen’s benefit, Lan Xichen said, “That’s different from what she said to me.”
“What’d she say to you?”
“’Buy your lucky chicken, it will bring you luck, good company’,” Lan Xichen’s gaze flicked up and down Jiang Cheng’s bandaged, but ultimately alive, body,” ‘and protection in traffic accidents’."
"That's...oddly specific."
"I remembered it because I thought the wording odd at the time. Usually if you were trying to sell a good fortune talisman, you’d be claim they’d protect you ‘from’ traffic accidents altogether.”
Jiang Cheng raised his eyebrows. “You think we were saved because we fed and watered our lucky chickens?”
“’Feel’, maybe. More than ‘think’.” Lan Xichen pursed his lips. “It’s not especially scientific. I can’t say I like the idea very much.”
“You pulled us both off the bike before we could crash, didn’t you?” It took a real effort not to add, with your ridiculously strong arms, because Jiang Cheng now had a truly legitimate reason to appreciate them. “If anybody saved us both in that mess, it was you.”
“Well, if we’re going to discuss saving, I don’t believe it inaccurate to say that I have been constantly saved this summer by you.”
The plain, guileless honesty of Xichen’s words took Jiang Cheng by surprise, disarming him completely. Apparently they took Xichen a little by surprise too, as his eyes went wide and a faint colour rose to his cheeks, but after a beat of Jiang Cheng ruing how he couldn’t move his pinned up hands to hide his own burning face, Xichen smiled and cleared his throat.
"I was slipping, Jiang Cheng, before I moved into that house. I was truly starting to believe that, perhaps…I shouldn’t be...” Xichen glanced to the side, searching for right words where there were probably none, and Jiang Cheng waited, remembering that xiao music, its yearning to be heard, “…inflicting people. With my existence. Perhaps. Maybe. I’m not entirely certain what I was thinking, and I’m not sure that I wish to be certain. As it is…Wangji was sincerely thanking you, for all the kindness and honesty you’ve extended towards me. I should thank you too.”
“You shouldn’t – “
“Thank you,” said Xichen with a gleam in his eye, as if to spite him.
“Please don’t.” Jiang Cheng’s face couldn’t take this anymore. He was probably beetroot red by now, bordering tomato. “I was just trying to break up our chickens.”
“And I haven’t enjoyed anything in this past year so much as watching you try. You said before,” Xichen went on mercilessly when Jiang Cheng could do nothing but sputter and turn redder, “that you didn’t want to be involved in this, but that if you – hmm, if I recall this correctly – wanted to ‘be involved’ with me, apparently you had to be."
“You,” Jiang Cheng was finally able to wheeze out, “have a horribly good memory.”
“You saw Jin Guangyao directing men to kill us both. You’re a witness now too, so you’ve no choice but to be involved in this. Given all this,” Xichen folded his hands in his lap, and Jiang Cheng thought he recognised that movement. It was the same as that night Xichen had cooked dinner, the way he’d hidden the nervous shake of his hands on the table, “I want being involved with me, and my life, and what I’m going to do next, to be your choice.”
Jiang Cheng’s eyes flew wide. The significance weighing on ‘what I’m going to do next’ hadn’t escaped him. “You’re going to talk to the Nie lawyers.”
“I’m going to make my statement against Jin Guangyao, yes.” Lan Xichen unfolded his hands, and they clasped at his knees instead, digging into the blue pyjamas. “…there was a part of me, Jiang Cheng, deep down, that still hoped…despite all I’d heard, and all that I could deduce myself, that there was some other reasonable explanation for everything…some missing piece in all this that I didn’t know yet, that meant A-Yao wasn’t the one to blame.” He let out a sigh, closing his eyes. “That part of me had to hear it directly from him.”
“The stuff he said in the ditch when he thought you were…” Dead. Jiang Cheng couldn’t say it aloud. It haunted him even now, that quietness at his back. I thought you were dead too.
“Yes. And now I will act. I must,” Lan Xichen said resolutely, again folding his hands. “And there will be fallout, for everyone close to me. That is why…this is why I won’t ask you to…continue being there for me. As much as I’ve enjoyed it.”
“If my hands, Xichen, weren’t like this,” Jiang Cheng began, tipping his chin at the arms the hospital insisted needed to be held up with a frame for the time-being, “what do you think they’d be doing right now?”
“I couldn’t possibly know,” Lan Xichen said, looking so sad it only made Jiang Cheng angrier, and anger made him bold, it always did.
“Well, first off, they’d have tried to strangle you, obviously. Just a little bit, because you’re being so goddamn stupidly kind. And then they would’ve given you a good shaking too, just to dislodge something of that slag heap of rubbish self-hating thoughts from your head that, somehow, I don’t want to be there, be here, for you - that I don’t want to continue knowing you - that I don’t want you in my life anymore, or to be in yours, just because it’s all about to go trench warfare being your friend, and then once I’ve got all that bullshit out of your ear and picked out the crusty bits with a fucking ear-scraper, I’d grab your beautiful sad deer face – “
“My excuse me?”
“ – and kiss it. Not on the mouth, because, sure, I’d want to, but it’d be a dick move if you didn’t want it, and I’ve just had pork and lotus soup, so there’s probably pork between my teeth, and no one likes second-hand pork. I’d kiss your nose, first, because it sticks out and it’s easy to reach, and I've got to start somewhere. Then I’d kiss your eyes, make them close a little, because they’re always so damn wide! And I want you to know you can close them and be safe, because if there’s a bad thing happening, I’ll be here keeping watch for you, over you, whilst you take a break! Then, I’d kiss your forehead with that too nice brain behind it, so that it gets this message stamped onto its frontal cortex! And if your brain then still doesn’t get this message, I’ll just repeat myself until it does!” Jiang Cheng knew his voice was probably louder than it should’ve been a hospital room, but if they heard him in the corridor he didn’t care. “And that’s my answer. That’s my goddamn choice!”
His words rang in his ears, echoed about the room, left him breathless.
Xichen sat, still and straight-backed, staring at him with a sort of glassy-eyed, dazed silence that might have been horror, might have been wonder, might have been plain shock, or all three.
Then just as Jiang Cheng’s brain caught up with his mouth two steps late, as per usual, and his own expression was about to mirror Xichen’s, the sheer horror at what garbage had spilled out of mouth slamming into him like Wei Cluckxian on Jin Guangyao’s mafia man-strangler, Xichen reached calmly for the remote on Jiang Cheng’s side-table, and pressed a button.
The bed under Jiang Cheng moved, folded, raising him to a higher sitting position. “What the - !?”
Raising him, in fact, high enough for Lan Xichen to not have to bend too much or lean too far with his cracked vertebrae and chipped coccyx to take hold of the side of Jiang Cheng’s face, turn his head and kiss him, very much on the lips.
The less said about that kiss the better. Kisses in hospitals are rarely pleasant. It’s an unhygienic process in an environment that demands hygiene. Things tend to taste of cracked lip blood and mouthwash and bile and medicine residue, and in Jiang Cheng’s case a bit of smuggled pork, but let’s say, for a hospital kiss, between two men who’d miraculously survived both mafia and motorcycling, who'd come together over chickens and pathology and murder, this was a very good one.
Jiang Cheng would argue that it was the very best one.
“And this is my answer.” Lan Xichen pulled away, sitting back into his chair, “and my choice.”
There was an ache in Jiang Cheng’s jaw. He’d possibly just broken into a silly, open-mouthed grin. The muscles in his face weren’t used to this expression, so it probably looked distressingly manic, and he shouldn’t be letting it continue, but he did.
Eventually, his jaw loosened enough for him to breathe, “Right, then.”
Lan Xichen smiled so softly. “Indeed.”
“Damn.” Jiang Cheng swallowed. He wished he could fan himself. “Well. We’ll get through Jin Guangyao’s murder trial together then.”
“Yes, we will. It’d be an honour.”
“On the condition that you’re not to die at any point.”
Lan Xichen let out a laugh, amusement making his eyes dance. “I’ll do my very best.”
“I really believed it, you know, when we were in the ditch,” Jiang Cheng tried not to sound too affected by it, but his voice came out too quiet and Xichen’s expression softened in that raincloud way of his. “How did Jin Guangyao not tell you were alive? Is he that bad at reading pulses?”
“Ah, yes. About that.” The corner of Lan Xichen’s lip curled up, and he looked just the slightest bit pleased with himself. “I have a few skills that I don’t have the opportunity to demonstrate very often. It’s not much to boast about, but I do have an exceptionally large lung capacity. Xiao playing does have its uses. And I’ve been meditating since I was a child, and have some degree of control over my pulse rate. All in all, it sets me up very well for playing dead, doesn’t it? But I’m sorry for the distress I caused you. It won’t happen again.”
“It had better not."
There was a knock at the door, and Xichen looked up, saying, “Come in.”
“Oh, good, everyone’s smiling,” Wei Wuxian said the instant he strode into the room, Lan Wangji shutting the door carefully behind them both. “Looks like you’ve talked things through.”
“We have, yes, thank you,” Xichen replied, then smiled reassuringly at Lan Wangji who'd gone to stand at the back of his chair. “I’m fine, Wangji. Better than fine. Don't look so worried.”
“What’s that under your coat?” Jiang Cheng asked suddenly, narrowing his eyes as Wei Wuxian sidled about the room. Wei Wuxian was hugging his own body, which was bulging at the chest under his red trench coat in a way that might have been normal for someone with a curvier figures, maybe somebody married to Roger Rabbit, but not Wei Wuxian. “Why are you walking like your breasts are about to explode off your body?”
“Well, thank you for that graphic image. I thought I’d bring something to cheer both of you up.” Wei Wuxian unbuckled his coat and, beaming, pulled out something black and something white, both feathered. “Surprise!”
Half-asleep and blinking at the lights, Wei Cluckxian and Wingji were both being cradled in Wei Wuxian’s arms.
“Wangji!” Xichen exclaimed, scandalised, looking back and forth from brother to chicken. “This is a hospital! You shouldn’t be bringing animals into the wards…”
But he had lifted his hands automatically for the white rooster even as he spoke, eyes shining, and Lan Wangji, seeing this crossed the room and took Wingji from Wei Wuxian.
“If there is a complaint, I will dare ask them,” he said gravely, placing the bird on Lan Xichen’s lap, “what is right and wrong, what is black and white.”
“Hear, hear,” said Wei Wuxian, petting Wei Cluckxian on the head.
Jiang Cheng bared his teeth. “What do you mean, ‘hear, hear’? Ge, do you know what that bird is like? In what world did bringing that hellbeast into a hospital seem like a good idea!?”
“It was clearly a brilliant idea! Look how lively you are now I’ve brought chicken-me to see you! And he wanted to see you too. You haven’t seen this little buddy moping about the house waiting for you to get better and go home.”
“You’re stupid. You’re a moron.”
“Wei Ying,” came Lan Wangji’s voice, as cold and as full of compressed rage as a submarine of Mariana Trench explorers suddenly cut off from their funding, “is not stupid.”
“I’m his brother, moon-princess. When I call him stupid, he is. Wei Wuxian, how are you so stupid but still getting hired by NASA to represent the human race?”
And it was then that Wei Cluckxian threw back his head and let out the kind of bloodcurdling scream so common to horror movies that doctors and nurses were very much in tune to.
But after every staff member within three floors had descended upon the room, the explosion of chickens had been dealt with, Lan Xichen had been taken back to his room, and Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji both banned and escorted off the premises, Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but laugh.
“Damn chickens,” he laughed to himself. “Damn stupid lucky chickens.”
Sixteen years later, the world is a better place.
Due to Professor Jiang Cheng’s ground-breaking research, chlamydia has been all but eradicated the world over from both humans and koalas. He’s focusing his talents now on gonorrhoea, improving the lives (and sex lives) of humankind everywhere one STD at a time. There are whispers that if he continues at this rate, he’ll be seeing a Nobel Prize in five or so years.
His husband of fifteen years, Doctor Lan Xichen did indeed discover a means for slowing the degeneration of the brain due to prions then reversing it altogether. This was applicable to dementia, so he did, in fact, as predicted, discover a cure for Alzheimer’s (he also accidentally created a virally transmissible version of Alzheimer’s, but that was quickly disposed of and nobody but Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji ever knew of it). There's a Nobel Prize in the future for him too.
Jiang Yanli has salvaged the Jin name and reputation, since it’s now better associated with her ‘Cloud Dream’ restaurant chain, and pork rib and lotus root soup solves all problems, even the collapse of the Jin Corporation’s hotel business. Her husband is a proud and happy man, and is a dedicated homemaker, raising their son and two daughters.
Commander Lan Wangji of the Artemis II mission has just got married to Wei Wuxian on the International Space Station. It was the first wedding between two men in space. Broadcast worldwide, it broke all records for live transmissions, and one hundred years later would be described as the greatest romantic moment of the 21st century.
As far as Jiang Cheng knows, Wei Cluckxian and Wingji are not dead. They disappeared together one day, a year after Jin Guangyao was found guilty of murder, and then after that, occasionally show up in Jiang Cheng and Xichen’s lives like shingles. Or, in fact, like Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Wei Cluckxian still screams like he’s dying on Elm Street, but good things tend to happen when they’re around.
But as the old problems are sorted, new ones arise, and the battles that are scientific research only shift to new fronts, and there’s a new batch of students at the Lan Yi Institute of Science and Technology, leaving their classes late from the front gates.
“Hey, look!” says Lan Jingyi, pulling his cousin Sizhui on the arm. “That little old lady from the morning’s still there! What do you think she’s got in her crate?”
“Probably just motivational tissue packets or something,” mutters Jin Ling sullenly, but Lan Jingyi is already making a beeline towards her, Sizhui in tow.
“Hey, grandma!” says Lan Jingyi with a smile. “What’ve you got there?”
But the old lady looks past him to Jin Ling
“Child, you look sad,” the little old lady says. “Such a handsome child shouldn’t look so sad! Buy a lucky puppy! Only 10 RMB! It’ll help you pass your exams! It’ll make you happy!”