Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian is a major athlete (I don’t know anything about the various sports ball, so let’s say ‘football’, but only tentatively). Formerly a player himself, Lan Xichen now finds himself in both FIFA management and a tight spot. A bribery scandal has ripped through the governing body’s ranks. The season is in full swing, but almost no one working with the organisation can be considered trustworthy until they’ve been thoroughly vetted, which will take time. Xichen needs someone with an impeccable reputation to arbitrate some of the season’s most important matches who can be Seen to be Clean. Someone unconnected to the major factions in play, hitherto detached from the organisation itself, and knowledgable and cool under pressure. Fortunately Lan Xichen knows the perfect man for the job: his own younger brother.
Lan Wangji, slightly older than Wei Wuxian, has (perhaps temporarily) retired from professional play. Lan Wangji takes the referee gig in part to occupy himself while he rests a serious injury, but mainly to help out Lan Xichen. Lan Wangji quickly becomes highly-regarded in his new role. He’s incredibly tough, but absolutely fair: exactly what the sport needs in this moment.
Lan Wangji ‘discovers’ Wei Wuxian through this position—it was inevitable that they would soon have had to compete, but their leagues and career stages never quite brought them into one another’s orbit before this. Lan Wangji managed to wholly fumble their first conversation (thanks to an internal monologue along the lines of, 'you are too pretty, and so, regrettably, you must die—'), but he thinks he’s really regained his cool since.
The way Wei Wuxian plays makes Lan Wangji’s teeth hurt with how much he wants to be back on the field, ranged with or against this man. It isn’t even fair to say that Wei Wuxian re-ignites Lan Wangji’s flagging relationship with the game (though Lan Wangji was privately feeling somewhat adrift), because the thing is, Lan Wangji has never cared about their sport so deeply before.
The referee position is a god-send that has provided Lan Wangji with a great excuse to attend all Wei Wuxian’s games. He doesn’t even need to feel embarrassed about it. After all, Wangji is helping Xichen! Giving back to the sport! (And sweet Christ, Wei Wuxian’s thighs—)
Wei Wuxian, meanwhile, used to actually like Lan Wangji as a player. He’s retrospectively really embarrassed by how enthusiastic he was about meeting him, now that he knows what a complete asshole the older man is. Jiang Cheng says he’s being ridiculous, but Lan Wangji clearly has it out for Wei Wuxian: all game, every game, Lan Wangji watches him like a hawk. He calls Wei Wuxian out on the tiniest, stupidest infractions, and goes so far as to make patronising comments about how Wei Wuxian is ‘above’ tricky footwork. Which is legal, by the way! It’s a grey area! (For his part, Lan Wangji knows that pass is only technically legal because no one has yet thought to make it officially otherwise. Wei Wuxian is capable of playing cleanly, without a single infraction, and winning spectacularly. Lan Wangji expects him to do so. He does not care what Wei Wuxian's coach told him to do, or what other players commonly do: Wei Wuxian is not other players, and he is never common.) And Lan Wangji goes ice cold when Wei Wuxian whines about a call in the heat of the moment. Or as Lan Wangji puts it, ’disrespects his authority, and thus the game itself’, or whatever.
Nothing about Lan Wangji makes sense to Wei Wuxian (who pays as little attention to the bullshit internal wrangling of FIFA as he ethically can, because it’s like HOA drama, really). The man is from money, and he’s retired relatively young—as far as Wei Wuxian can make out, because he wasn’t feeling sufficiently challenged, or some such bullshit. But then Lan Wangji immediately takes this thankless referee position, which doesn't even pay that much—no one who made the kind of money Lan Wangji did last year even needs this stupid, unglamorous job! Is he making entire life choices just to annoy Wei Wuxian?
One day Wei Wuxian shows up at the team training area for a workout with his adopted son A Yuan in tow, only to find insufferable ice-prick Lan Wangji already there, using the gym equipment himself. Wei Wuxian knows Lan Wangji is a friend of the family of the coach, old man Jiang. Wei Wuxian supposes that Lan Wangji is within his rights to use the luxe, specialised equipment. It's not Wei Wuxian’s business. Lan Wangji’s former Gusu Lords' facilities are certainly too far away to be convenient, if Lan Wangji is living somewhere from which he can easily commute to referee seemingly every Yunmeng Lotus game (aka, to make Wei Wuxian’s life hell).
Trying to be polite, Wei Wuxian introduces A Yuan. Lan Wangji’s reply is somewhat stilted, because he’s surprised Wei Wuxian hasn’t guessed that Lan Wangji has Google-stalked him thoroughly, and thus knows everything about Wei Wuxian that can be learned from Al Gore’s internet.
What Lan Wangji knows is as follows:
- Wei Wuxian has been romantically connected to men and women in the press, but there’s been nothing confirmed, or long-term.
- A Yuan is a distant relation of Wei Wuxian’s good friend, the Yunmeng Lotus team doctor Wen Qing (formerly with the Qishan Suns, before the recent bribery scandal brought that team down entirely; in interviews, she’s credited Wei Wuxian with getting her a fresh start with Yunmeng).
- Wei Wuxian emphatically does not allow press photos of A Yuan, but refers to him lovingly by his milk name ‘Yuan’ in many, many interviews. He’s seemingly confident that A Yuan’s adult name won't be associated with this one, unless a grown A Yuan wants that.
- Lan Wangji has, of course, sought out and watched every Wei Wuxian-related interview.
Jiang Cheng was supposed to meet Wei Wuxian for practice, but gets roped into mediating some family conflict and has to bail. Disappointed, Wei Wuxian starts getting his stuff together to head home. Lan Wangji, who only goes to this gym because Wei Wuxian sometimes does, congratulates himself on the smoothness of his casual ‘I could practice with you, if you wanted. I'm an Olympic medalist in this, actually.’ (Perhaps Wei Wuxian is not aware of this? It might seem rude or deluded, for a ‘civilian’ to offer himself as a sparring partner for a professional player. Lan Wangji feels he must clarify his position.)
Wei Wuxian blinks at him. “…yeah. I know you are, Lan Wangji.” (In his mind, that smug ‘I’m an Olypmic medalist, —actually—,’ will play on a loop until the end of recorded time.) Unable to politely refuse, Wei Wuxian ends up spending the whole afternoon playing with his worst critic. Lan Wangji thinks this was an astoundingly good date, but wonders about the propriety of taking things further and making it official, given his current responsibilities to FIFA and the organisation itself’s delicate status at present.
Wei Wuxian is grudgingly impressed that Lan Wangji found ways to include, entertain and even successfully teach A Yuan.
…all right, so Lan Wangji’s not Satan, and has a soft spot for the most Lovable Orphan since Wei Wuxian himself. That’s not exactly medal worthy. (And Lan Wangji, of course, is an Olympic medalist. Actually.) But it’s a little annoying that A Yuan seems to like awful Lan Wangji so much! Where is his loyalty to the baba who birthed him, huh?
Things get weirder when Wen Chao, who managed to find a place for himself on another team after the implosion of the Qishan Suns, purposely injures Wei Wuxian on the field with a foul. Lan Wangji is not unprofessional about this, but neither does he handle the matter with the delicacy Lan Xichen has come to expect from his brother. Stuck watching the hospital room’s television, Wei Wuxian’s eyes nearly pop out of his head when he sees Lan Wangji coldly defend his advice to FIFA in an interview. Apparently, Lan Wangji does not think a career ban is at all disproportionate, no. Apparently, Wen Chao’s behaviour has no place whatever in the sport—
Wei Wuxian swears, every new thing he learns about Lan Wangji only makes him understand the man less.