Chapter Text
He hears it before he sees it. The commotion. He is finely attuned to angry voices – has been since childhood and the interminable routs of bickering in the house around him where he was still finding his place.
He hears the familiar staccato shots of shouting – men’s, well, a man’s, and his suit suddenly feels too hot, too tight. He hates suits anyway. And this one, borrowed hastily from Huaisang when the interview was confirmed yesterday, is too much. Fancy silk lining. Way too short on the sleeves. He has to push them up like an 80s icon, as if he’s trying to look cool.
He is not cool.
It is happening just out of sight, along a corridor from the reception where he and the other, younger, far too young, candidates are waiting to be called. A few of them are shifting uncomfortably in their seats.
There is one raised voice heavy with anger and resentment tempered with…something else. The reception is silent, the receptionist open-mouthed, pretending not to listen, but he’s listening. So is Wei Wuxian. A young man with an earnest face slips buds into his ears, looks away, out to the front of the building as if eyeing an exit.
‘You’re not serious!’ the voices screeches, piercing the quiet hallway.
A different voice follows, one that is too deep, too subtle for Wei Wuxian to catch the words which rumble towards him. He moves before his brain stops him, and he rounds the corner to see, along the corridor, two figures standing close together, one facing him, the other a tall figure in a pale blue shirt standing unnaturally straight-backed. Shoulders set, braced.
‘It’s absurd! You can’t do it. Not without a….’ The man facing Wei Wuxian is red-faced, hair sticking to his forehead with sweat. His eyes are huge, full of outrage, mouth curled in frustration. His gaze is skittering around the figure with his back to Wei Ying, unable to look at him headlong.
‘I can. I have. Pack your things.’
The voice comes from the figure in blue. He is so still he could be a statue, tall and broad-shouldered…but the voice…the voice is devastating. Monosyllables like bullets. Final. A voice that speaks of a right to rule, an inbred sense of power and privilege that Wei Wuxian had heard so many times at University. Those kinds who cruised from public schools, financed by the bank of mum and dad.
He instantly hates him.
The smaller man, fiddling with his lanyard, is looking around for moral support from anybody, but nobody is there.
Wei Wuxian feels his stomach lurch when he sees the man’s face shift from pure anger to desperation.
He knows that look.
‘Lan Wangji. Please. I’ve just bought an apartment. I can barely afford the mortgage as it is. Without this…’ he tails off, and the face is so pathetic Wei Wuxian wants to help, and starts a slow walk towards them.
‘You are living beyond your means. Not our concern.’
Again, the monotone voice cuts through the whining with the precision of a scalpel. Wei Wuxian's approach has been noticed by the flustered man who looks up and catches his eyes in desperation, but clearly Wei Wuxian is a nobody, nobody who can help him. The quick glance, however, gathers the attention of the tall, marble statue who now turns halfway in Wei Wuxian's direction. Not to look at him exactly, but to offer a warning shot. Stay out of this.
His side profile is everything Wei Wuxian expected. All sharp lines. A slice of clenched jaw, large Adam’s apple, and narrow eyes, flawlessly pale skin. Wei Wuxian feels the uncontrollable urge to hit him and clenches his fists.
‘Lan Wangji….please, it was just the…’
‘Enough!’ The word ricochets through the corridor, through Wei Wuxian who has stopped his steady walk towards them. ‘You are not qualified to attempt it and in doing so you have injured a colleague. Damaged the machine. You were warned. On two occasions. You did not listen. This is the consequence. Now leave.’
Wei Wuxian starts to move again but as he does so, there is a movement from the employee who goes as if to grab the blue man’s arm, but it is whisked away quickly and the man stumbles, has to stagger a little to get his balance, bumps against the wall. It’s pathetic, really. But it stirs something and he feels that point on his chest burn.
The man in the pale blue shirt has stepped to one side. ‘You are embarrassing yourself,’ and at the words, Wei Wuxian can feel the heat crawling up his neck, across his scalp, his own quickness to anger rising at the treatment of others, rather than for himself. It’s always been like that. People could be dicks to him, but if anybody looked at Jiang Cheng the wrong way in school, he was a fists first, think later kind of brother.
Pulling himself upright from the wall where he had let himself slump, the man starts shouting again. ‘I’ll…sue. I’ll go to the unions. You can’t treat me like this. I’ll SUE!’ and he is shouting to the figure who is blithely walking away down the corridor without a backward glance.
What. A. Dick.
So this is life at CloudTech™? Wei Wuxian had been unsure about the job before the interview. The details were sketchy, the whole set-up too slick, too cold for his liking. Life at the museum was cosy. Dusty. Quiet. Few people bothered him. Here? He suspected, and now knows, it is all corporate bullshit and unreachable targets, sees it in the snivelling figure of the man in front of him.
‘Hey!’ says Wei Wuxian, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder, offering a tight squeeze of solidarity. ‘You ok? That was rough!’
The man looks up at Wei Wuxian his face set in a sneer, and Wei Wuxian does, for a moment, reign in the desire to slap him, because he has one of those faces, and he hates to admit it, but he is not a likeable man. But Wei Wuxian tries anyway, and smiles.
The man looks at Wei Wuxian’s suit, then his face. ‘You here for the interviews?’ he asks, smirking now as he tidies up his hair, stands a bit taller.
‘Well, kinda…’ and Wei Wuxian doesn’t know if he is or isn’t, because after this, he isn’t sure.
‘Word to the wise,’ says the man, leaning in. ‘They will shaft you. Whatever you do, they will screw you for every idea you have and take it as their own. Run while you can. This place is going to…!’ The man stops and settles his face into a sneer.
Wei Wuxian puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs, not sure how to react.
‘Su She,’ the man says, offering a hand. ‘Remember the name!’ and when Wei Wuxian doesn’t take it, he pushes past him with a huff and storms off.
Wei Wuxian takes a few anxious minutes to decide whether he should follow and walk straight out of the building. He could do without this crap! Seriously, if life has taught him anything it is that bullies run businesses like this, and he can’t abide a bully. But then…the job…is intriguing. And…he needs a job. Rock. Hard place.
Life since University had not been easy for Wei Wuxian. Hell, life in University was no picnic either. The words of his second year tutor are tattooed on his brain. So full of promise. Your college tutor was glowing in her reference. You were set to change the world. What happened?
He still asks himself that, even now, so many years later. What did happen?
If you could just settle, they’d told him, one mentor after another.
Work on one style, one concept.
But he’d known better of course. Wasn’t that the beauty of a Liberal Arts degree? To explore interests in a range of fields?
The technique is there, but the application isn’t, they’d said.
But they’d been wrong about that too. Wei Wuxian did apply himself and showed them. In all things. Discovering all the delights of a semi-adult freedom was something to be savoured and he lost no time in throwing himself into the wilder scenes, the longest parties, the weirdest drinks. But also with his studies - if it was a project he was fired up by, days would go by, a hyperfocus on the project meaning often no food, little water. He fell into a sort of meditation where some insight, some profound connectivity was there, just coming into sight. He would work on huge canvases, wild in his movements, mixing media, playing with expectations, never pleasing anyone’s tastes, other than his own.
But his early promise died along the way, they’d told him, and he had believed them in that.
It hadn’t started badly. In fact, he’d bloomed initially, freed from the oppressive Jiang pressure now that he’d got his grades and was out of their hair. He was vibrant, shining, new friends gathering around him like moths on night jasmine. His trickling laughter filled lecture halls. His paintings were loose, free, massive, inventive. He was moving fast in the slipstream of his own reputation. They were heady days. Not happy, but fast-paced, mad.
But things were never easy. He never let them get easy. Always circling some drain of self-loathing.
The Jiangs were at first bemused, then incensed, by his ‘frivolous lifestyle’ as they called it, or anything other than the family business as he saw it. Artists do not make money! How many times had he heard Madam Yu say that? Well, spit it, actually. He had stopped trying to explain that his course was more than just art. It was art with natural science. That he was able, at last, to connect so many elements of interest, of creativity. That art wasn’t just art. They never listened when he told them about the science bits, the botanical studies.
His sister visited, worried as he started to lose sleep, became pale after painting through nights, forgetting to eat. But nobody could reach him.
He thinks now he didn’t want to be reached.
There came a time when he found he could only paint or work when in an almost feral state. Like his mind had to unhinge before he could spread brushes on the huge canvases, connect looping dots between one crazy thought after another. And one night, when he slipped and knocked a jar of turps over which smashed and slit his arm, he found blood oozing out onto the picture he was working on.
A portrait. Something beautiful, someone beautiful, that he couldn’t quite capture. But the streaks of blood…they made sense.
It started there. The thrill of it. Art by offering parts of yourself. It was animal, and wild, to become a part of the canvas, but for some reason others found it too much. Too disturbing.
The University disciplinary board got involved and as it wasn’t his first warning, well, that was that.
But he took it as an opportunity. Why not? Spent the rest of his student loan travelling, Thailand, Malaysia, places where he could live on virtually nothing, pick up casual jobs in bars. He figured if he surrounded himself with noise, and movement and the constant attention of one stranger after another, he’d return to himself. He was young, pretty, but thin, painfully so and he did not feel strong. Not like in college, all those press-ups and football matches left him thin but lean. And not being strong meant that all those men who go to places like that, where booze is cheap and plentiful, the men approach him. Sometimes he could duck away with a cute laugh, a well-timed exit. Others, well. Others were persistent. Mean when he tried to say no. Cruel when telling him all the filthy things they wanted to do to him that made his flesh crawl.
One of them had managed to convince him he deserved nothing better.
When he returned from traveling, he was aimless. Felt untethered, on some kind of precipice. He took on increasingly boring jobs to calm his brain but instead lost focus. He tried painting, but the wild streak had died in him. He could quite easily have dropped over the edge. Some days it was a seductive calling.
He put his supplies away, locked them in a trunk, and then had somehow been corralled into starting a job at Yiling Museum. He’d laughed when he’d first visited, a sleepy, glum little building tucked in the shadiest backwaters of an already grimy city.
So much promise. What happened?
But then, the unexpected. He enjoyed it. His work there started picking up where the science bit of his unfinished degree left off, helping with their vivarium and propagating tropicals. And that’s how it started, looking after the frogs and maintaining their habitats. Weird things, frogs. Bizarrely cute. He started to name them, but then was so successful the little creatures grew in alarming numbers. A horde. They developed a hefty trade selling to other museums around the country. But the weird thrill of the dark room, the quiet thrumming of the noise of hundreds of tiny creatures going about their little lives, cricking, clacking, throating their songs to the world. He found it joyous. Something alive in him reaching out to them.
He was to the rest of the employees Frog-guy. Kermit. You name it…none of the names were original, except the eccentric frog-guy soon became the go-to for other things. Became Wei-gongzi. His arts background was helpful and people started to come to him from other sections of the museum. He smiled at all who came to see them, dazzling in the dark of the vivarium. He understood different oils, plant and animal, alcohols for thinning, spirits that clean and don’t strip precious pigments. And soon he was given free rein to the archives, working his way through their more ancient artefacts, cleaning, restoring, bringing ancient art back to life. If it was organic, he was your man. There was a deep satisfaction in seeing eons of grime lifted from the encrusted canvases, tattered fabrics. Revealing their youth, their promise of beauty.
He yearned, daily, for somebody to clean him like this.
Tenderly. No judgement. Loving the before and after equally.
The job with CloudTech came out of the blue. He wasn’t aware he was looking until the curator called him in to his office. He had that look on his face, of pity tinged with hardness, and Wei Ying knew. Prepared his veneer.
‘Good news or bad news first?’ he asked Wei Wuxian who shrugged, knowing what was coming. Feeling the familiar black mist drop, the disappointment lodged in his throat.
‘Good. Can I guess? I should guess? You are promoting me. Head of morale. With immediate effect. Doubling my salary. I can see it now, the ‘Wuxian Wing’…’
‘Wei Ying.’ He looks genuinely distressed and Wei Wuxian flinches at the look on his face, accustomed to smoothing over cracks.
‘OK, ok. Hit me we with, lǎobǎn’ he’d said, an empty smile creasing his eyes.
‘Right. This is not easy. OK. I’m sorry but…the cuts mean your role here is unsustainable. You’ve done a great job, Wei Ying. Really, but…so many others are more necessary and last in…’
First out, yes, he knows.
He smiled, wanting to make this less excruciating for the man. He liked him. He’d been kind, left him alone. Let him experiment on items he perhaps shouldn’t have been allowed near.
‘Ah, but…now the good news. I think I’ve got you a new job. One of our benefactors has a collection of…rare antiquities…in a museum up north.’
‘Rare antiquities? What a shit description. What is it?’
‘No idea,’ the man says laughing. ‘It’s all very secretive. I’m pretty sure it’s not war loot or mummified remains knowing the client, but…you never know! They need someone with…unusual skills. One of the employees had been to the last exhibition. The one with your notes on restoration. Was impressed. They need a sound knowledge of botany. A problem solver. I thought of you!’
‘Such praise! You’re making me blush. See? Blushing.’
‘I’m serious. Look, I don’t want to lose you if I’m honest. And if this goes tits up, I’ll make other enquiries. Other museums.’
‘Ah, it’s fine. Don’t worry about me, lǎobǎn’
‘I’m not. You have real talent.’ Wei Wuxian had let the praise slide off him as he always did, laughed it away.
‘Only problem is, you need to be fluent in classical Mandarin. Some ancient dialects. That kind of thing. Is this something you…?’ Laoshi doesn’t finish, and his smile is conspiratorial. He knows damn well this is not something Wei Wuxian has.
‘How hard can it be?’ He has faith in his own learning abilities. Of his ability to improvise. Or bullshit, rather.
‘You will need to live there. It's isolated. Middle of nowhere. I know there's no family and thought…’
‘What's the catch?’ Wei Wuxian considers the splendid isolation of the north, the mountains, the cool mornings, dark skies. It warms something inside him.
The man does glance away, shifts a little in his seat, but returns with a soft smile. ‘No catch, Wei Ying. Your luck is in. It’s a really unusual opportunity.’
‘You hesitated. There’s always a catch.’
‘They did stress the need for confidentiality. I guess you’ll be expected to sign some kind of NDA? I assured them you were to be trusted.’
Wei Ying raised a brow and tilted his head to one side, laughs. ‘Trusted? Me? Does that mean I’m forgiven about the whole ‘sprinkler incident’?’
The man glared.
‘Too soon?’
‘Too soon. Best not mention that at interview.’ The man seemed a little sad and Wei Wuxian flailed to find a funny remark, the light in the dark. ‘We’ll miss you, Wei Ying. You are…unique. Every workplace needs a Wei Ying. We’ll have you back the minute the funding returns!’
‘You’ll have to get in line!’ he laughed. Wei Ying has never really settled into a job as much as this one, but even with this, he already feels himself slipping its ties, breaking away, but not without some regret. He’ll miss the frogs. Their racket in the morning. The scent of the archive room and the delicious quiet of its depths. ‘After all, seems I’m being head-hunted. I’ll be doubling my fee!’
They laugh. Good. He’s made this easier. Can leave with no tug of remorse. ‘Ok. ‘I’ll give it a go,’ he says, jumping into the void. Again.
The taxi, that he can ill afford, takes him a good distance from the city for the interview. The building, when they arrive, is a sleek, low sprawling monster, metallic. CloudTech Gusu™ is written in a utilitarian font across the length of the building. Cool doors swish open, and he's deposited in the entrance.
Where he’d heard raised voices.
Entering the interview room he is blinded by its whiteness. The room is cool but sears his eyeballs. He has to squint, blink to acclimatise to it. Too many days in the windowless vaults at the museum have made him sensitive to light. The windows are screened with white paper blinds covered in beautiful, inked birds. Clearly hand painted. Simple lines and muted colours capturing a bird of prey in all its poses as it soars and swoops, dropping to catch a rabbit in its talons which are outstretched and dangerous.
Wei Wuxian looks at it in admiration before taking in the three faces staring at him.
He hadn’t bothered to research the interview panel, a decision he is now regretting. He’d convinced himself he was ambivalent about the whole thing. Easier that way. If he fails, then no biggie. Nothing to beat himself up about. If it bottoms out, he can travel again and work in a bar and dance with pretty strangers and in this reverie he hears his name snapped in three harsh syllables.
‘Wei Wu Xian?’
The voice comes from the middle of the line-up. An imposing man, goat-like, face frozen in a half sneer of disgust. He looks like he has swallowed a particularly venomous snake. And enjoyed it.
‘Yes!’ Wei Wuxian replies, too lightly, in a voice that is out of place and the man flinches at the loudness. Reign it in, Wei Ying, he tells himself. Tries to relax. But the suit, as he sits, is digging in to his crotch, and his hands are sweating. The rolled up jacket sleeves are edging down. His wrists look pathetic. Pale.
‘Lan Qiren,’ the goat offers, half closing his eyes as if this is a self-evident truth. Wei Ying has no idea who he is, but assumes he is one of the big bosses because he’s a Lan (of the Gusu Lans) and he looks like he has a very cold silver spoon stuck up his backside.
Wei Ying bows his head and tries not to smirk at that image.
On the left, Wei Wuxian sees a younger man with a soft smile, long dark hair falling over a slim-cut white shirt, embroidered with clouds. His smile is warm and genuine, and Wei Ying feels a little soft at it, unnerved perhaps by its sincerity and welcome. His voice, too, is silky and gentle. ‘Mr Wei, a pleasure to meet you. Lan Xichen,’ smiley man offers as introduction. Another Lan. Wei Wuxian gets the picture. Clan employment. 'We’ve heard a lot about you.’
Wei Ying has never known how to respond to that particular statement. It’s embarrassing. Is it meant to be good, the things they’ve heard? In which case, should he say All true! But if they were all terrible things, those embarrassing parties etc, then…he spaces out…only for a few seconds, but here, in this room, it feels like a lifetime.
He needs to relax. It’s not so much nerves, as nervous energy that bounces out of him and is often too much for people to take. So he’s been told. Often. Vociferously by his brother.
‘I hope it was all good,’ he says, breathing deeply once he’s spoken, waiting for some reassurance to put him at ease.
Nobody replies.
Perfect.
Lan Qiren is reading over a sheet of paper in front of him and making him wait, enough time for Wei Wuxian to glance at the man on the right.
He has his head lowered; eyes focused on a pile of resumés spread out neatly on the desk in front of him. His hair is dark, reaching just below his shirt collar, long lashes shifting as his gaze moves around the papers as if searching for something. He does not look up at Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian feels himself tanking. OK. he thinks. So you’re bad cop. Or is goat bad cop? Two bad cops, one good seems to edge the odds against him, and he tries to bring himself back, and is done so with a whipcrack opener from Lan Qiren.
‘I know your old tutor at university,’ Lan Qiren says, his face a picture of delighted scorn. ‘We talked earlier today. Your University career was cut short, it appears. So promising, as an artist. What happened?’
Without thinking, he fires back his staple answer, one that has rolled off his tongue so often he’s beginning to believe it himself.
‘Emperor’s Smile!’ he laughs, his very own watery, delighted laugh but even he can hear the tinny insincerity in it and stops laughing immediately. Lan Xichen has a smile playing around his mouth, almost, but nothing comforting in it. Sympathy, perhaps?
Wei Wuxian falters. Lan Qiren is going for the jugular and seems pleased with his response as if it proves something to the others in the room.
The man on the right is totally still, unnaturally so. Doesn’t move a single muscle, even at this.
OK. Wei Wuxian takes a breath and goes with it. As he speaks, the words flow without much engagement with the brain. Of mistakes made, but many lessons learned. Of how not having focus has taught him what focus is, the value of it. How losing his place meant he was made to work harder, think deeper, grow resilience like a thick bark around him. It is uncharacteristically honest, not hiding behind any false modesty or self-mockery and throughout he is aware of the man sitting on the right, his presence prickling at him like a rising heat. If only he would do something, show he’s listening. Show he is paying attention. That he matters here.
‘So yes, it was an experimental time for me. Perhaps I was out of time…or ahead of my time…who knows. I mean, now, my art could be seen as prophetic. I mean there’s a guy making millions out of preserving dead sharks in formaldehyde, so who knows? But the truth is, I never found my style, or one which the tutors agreed worked.’
He stops talking, waits.
Lan Qiren does not seem to have digested the tale, seems ready to spit it back at him. He is still looking at Wei Wuxian like shit on his shoe and Wei Wuxian continues, unbothered. ‘They say it’s about experimenting, don’t they? University?’
‘Do they?” and Lan Qiren is about to continue when he is interrupted by the smiling man to his left. Wei Wuxian could kiss him. Seriously. Tongues and all.
'We hear your work at the museum is exemplary. We’re interested in hearing about your projects but more specifically, how your University experience prepared you for it.’
It’s a cute attempt by Lan Xichen to offer a path to weave failure into success, one which Wei Wuxian accepts and runs with. He is an expert at it.
He exaggerates, of course, because what the hell, he needs to rescue this shit show. By the time he has finished, he is singlehandedly responsible for saving the museum from financial ruin. His restored artwork and exhibits have brought international interest and created hundreds of jobs. Except he can’t keep his own, but he skims over that.
Perhaps they don’t notice the irony.
Perhaps he hasn’t a hope in hell.
His thoughts are interrupted when the third man raises his head and stares at him.
Wei Wuxian swallows. The man's glare is fierce, and as Wei Ying looks, he moves his eyes away to the side. God, he'd be devastating if he smiled! Which he doesn't.
'Many of our art pieces are fragile,’ the third man says, no introduction as if one isn’t necessary. ‘Some over 1000 years old. What experience makes you suitable for this level of responsibility?’
Wei Ying is gone. Mind empty. He looks back at the man who had asked the question, and smiles, stalling for time, and he sees a slight raise of an eyebrow and it comes to him, then.
This is the man. From outside. Who’d sacked some poor dude and walked away without a backward glance. The pale blue shirt is stretched across his chest, muscular arms testing the fabric. His face is stone, not cruel, but unbothered. A cliff-face. No toehold.
Wei Wuxian holds his gaze, returns it. Feels that rousing anger from before channel into energy he much needs. He shifts gear. Wei Wuxian is many things: garrulous, loud, too much, edgy, but when he wants to, he can wow. Buckle up, bad cop, he thinks, and launches.
‘My last restoration has been of a collection of 9th century Huangdu texts. They were incredibly fragile, neglected for centuries. Handling them has taken months of slow and painstaking work involving all manner of safety checks. We’ve used a high-tech humidifier to keep the texts as close to optimum level as possible. My work with a local lab has been used to ascertain pigments and materials used in order to maximise the authenticity of any restoration. I have, actually, worked with CoreTech to produce a new preservative for texts written on composite early parchment which can deter parasites without compromising the finish. The products are being used internationally now. So I feel I can contribute to the preservation of such texts. Yes.’
He waits. His words are still falling in the room and the third man, Lan Wangji the guy had called him, his name lost in the heat of the present, shows no response in any facial muscle. Not even a micro signal of interest. And yet, Wei Wuxian can’t look away. There is something there, something familiar, something which doesn’t repel him, but instead pulls him in. He wants to push further.
‘Is this the kind of experience you’re looking for?’ he asks Lan Wangji directly.
There. There is a flicker of surprise in the bite-back, and Lan Wangji sits a little taller in his chair. Wei Wuxian feels a flutter of excitement at the sudden interest, like it’s a conquest to get him to look up, pay attention. He’s charged up now, ready to go, and targets Lan Wangji with his own scrutiny.
‘Can I ask if you have a specific object in mind? It may be I’ve had direct experience of something like it before.’
Lan Wangji moves his eyes to Lan Qiren at this point. The beard nods, a very tiny nod of approval, and Lan Wangji speaks. The coldness is gone and all that is left is focus. This is clearly a pet-project for him, and Wei Wuxian leans in to the enthusiasm which is muted, hardly a ripple in his still face, but is there.
‘We have come into possession of personal objects from the estate of a family who can’t be named. They are badly damaged, more so now.’ He looks across at Lan Xichen at this who seems to widen his eyes. ‘But we know about the individual they belonged to and think they could offer insight into some of our current research, but they are in a poor state,’ and he doesn’t finish, his face flushing a little as if he has used up his quota of words for the day.
‘Lan Wangji,’ Wei Ying says confidently the first time he has spoken his name and his heart is thudding too loudly. Surely everyone in the room can hear it. ‘Can you tell me more? Region? Type of parchment or wood? Vague composition?’ Oh, he is happy with this, because suddenly the man’s focus is burning on him, half incredulous, half fascination, and Wei Wuxian shivers in his gaze. The need to triumph, to beat him down after the sight of that conflict in the corridor rousing something revolutionary in him.
‘That would be your job,’ Lan Wangji bites back, his lips thin, eyes steady, but he is interrupted by Lan Xichen.
‘The role is based in our Gusu retreat. It is miles from anywhere and although well supplied is hardly a sociable place. Tell us, how would you cope with such solitude?’
At last, he thinks. My time to shine!
If he is great at any one thing, it is being alone. It’s true, parties find him. He is quick to amuse, to create games, to offer opportunities for exhibitionism, but he is never fully part of it. Not really. After Uni, he was left with only a very few friends still flitting around. Most disappeared when the partying stopped, and things got too intense.
Except for Yanli, who would miss him?
So, he tells them, these strangers, how he has no worries about isolation. That his days are currently spent in dark rooms, alone, painstakingly shifting, microscopic layers of debris, occasionally music, but even that encroaches on his concentration. He doesn’t tell them that he yearns, sometimes, just for some softness in his life, somebody to be there when he gets home, or someone to eat with, feel comfort on seeing, because they do not need to hear it and he has long since stopped hoping for it himself.
You are different, the world has told him, and you get to walk this path on your own.
As he talks about his love of solitude, he sees Lan Wangji paying attention. Real attention. For the first time, he doesn’t look murderous. There is something akin to…understanding there. No little nods, no backchannelling ‘yes’ or ‘Mn’ but it’s there all the same. Something that warms Wei Wuxian a little. He is looking back at Lan Wangji with a hopeful smile when Lan Qiren interrupts.
‘Do you have any questions?’ Oh, he’s cutting the interview short. They aren’t interested. So, what the hell.
‘The salary,’ asks Wei Wuxian, ‘is less than I’m on now and it appears the role will have a lot more responsibility. More travelling costs. I’m wondering if you could match my current salary? What with my unique experience and all?’
He can almost hear the feathers being ruffled in the room. Clearly the Lans feel the salary was a good one, and he is yet again struck by the entitlement of the rich to assume it, those who don’t need to pay back student debt, don’t have maxed-out credit cards..
‘Mr Wei,’ smooths Lan Xichen, ‘you are correct in this, although perhaps it wasn’t clear from our details that there are no living costs when you are at the institute. All is provided. Board, food, travel. We have a company fleet. You will be provided with a car. The salary, therefore, is competitive, we feel.’
Wait, what? Wei Wuxian blinks. A car? No overheads? He quickly calculates what this could mean and has to stop his brain spiralling because with no rent, or food costs, energy, travel, he would be earning....
‘I see,’ he offers calmly, far from calm. Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck.
‘We will be in touch,’ Lan Qiren interrupts, cutting the interview to a close. ‘Please leave your number with us before you leave. Thank you for your trouble.’
Wei Wuxian stands and bows to each of the men respectfully, before taking one last glance at Lan Wangji. So serious, so solid, Wei Wuxian flashes him a radiant, amused smile, and watches in satisfaction as a flush of annoyance spreads across his cheeks, almost to his ears.
It is only when he has left his number at the reception and is heading out, handing over his guest lanyard, that he realises he has lost a button from Nie Huaisang’s jacket. It has popped somewhere. He knows Huaisang’s expensive tastes. Knows the button is probably worth more than his shoes alone and sets about looking for it. He sees the sweet-looking boy from reception heading in to his own interview and they exchange a commiserative look. Supportive in this strange landscape.
He is still perplexed as to why he is so fired up. He’s never wanted a job. Always fallen into roles, never wanted to do well or prove himself worthy of anything. So why the spark of interest here? He looks around, sees all the bullshit certificates lining the walls, the company photos of terribly serious employees with fuck-you smiles and expensive, perfect teeth. All work places need a Wei Ying his curator told him. He doubts it, looking at the roll call of resting-bitch-faces staring back at him from the wall of shame.
The button is not in reception, or the restroom where he’d gone to get a grip on his way in to the interview, and on the way out. That only leaves…
The door to the interview room is open, a breeze playing with it a little as it sways back and forth. He can hear voices inside, and the mortification of going in to find a button of all things makes him wait. He’ll hang around until they’ve gone then check. Otherwise Huaisang will go mad and force him to go to one of those fucking awful installations at the modern museum with him and he shudders at the thought.
But the voices are not quiet, well, except one which is, again, a low rumble, and he tries not to but hears them talking and he knows, knows he shouldn’t but he is incapable of restraint here, and it’s almost as if he wants to hear them trash-talking him because his resentment is building and needs further release.
‘…responsible enough to…’
It’s Lan Wangji whose voice he tunes in to. They are talking about him.
‘Agreed, but there are other things to consider.’ It is Lan Xichen. Quiet, firm, but crisp, clearly batting for team Wuxian.
‘No. That’s not something to….’ And the voice is too low to follow, but he can pick up occasional words, ‘…isn’t focused enough…’ and ‘….to be distracted.’
He doesn’t know why, but the sound of Lan Wangji sabotaging his chances of getting a job he only half wants makes him sad.
It is Lan Qiren who speaks next. ‘I’ve heard you, Wangji. But let’s wait until we’ve seen the others, yes?’
And at the pause, Wei Wuxian turns and leaves, button be damned.
Looks like he’s about to unemployed. Again.
Ah well, he thinks. Could be worse.
Things get worse. As expected, Huaisang is pissed off about the button and offers a dramatic tantrum through which it is clear to Wei Wuxian that he couldn’t care less about the button but is angling. He’s right. Huaisang needs a plus one for the opening of ‘Futures Past’ at the BMA.
He knows he will hate it the minute he steps into the building. Video installations (shudder) of life running backwards. Unexpected moments. So unoriginal. He puffs as he watches people eating, regurgitating food out of their mouths, unchewed, and placing back on plates neat and just cooked. Boring. A baby, slimy with its birth pulling itself back into a bloody vagina is vaguely interesting, but all been done before. He does enjoy, ever so slightly, the video of two people kissing, because backwards it is uncanny, almost the same, but not quite the movements of lips and tongues sliding backwards as if in an alternative universe.
The people are pretentious, Huaisang’s gallery friends, and Wei Wuxian, who no longer drinks, has no recourse to escape the tedium.
‘Are you having fun yet?’ Huaisang asks, seeing very clearly the boredom on Wei Wuxian’s face.
‘Fun like sticking pins in my own eyeballs fun? I don’t deserve this. What was the button made of. Platinum?’
Huaisang laughs, but not in a ‘don’t be ridiculous’ way, and Wei Wuxian wonders.
‘How did it go, anyway?’ Huaisang asks, with barely a modicum of interest.
‘The interview? Shit, actually. Corporate shit, Lan style. All suits and life insurance and death-by-policy wank. Not my idea of fun.’
Huaisang smiles, nods, but then flips his attention suddenly to Wei Wuxian. ‘Wait, what? Lan? As in Gusu Lan? Are you kidding?’
‘No? Should I be?’
‘Hell’s teeth, don’t tell me Wangji was on the interview panel.’
Wei Wuxian is confused. ‘Yes, and how…?’
‘Presume you won’t get the job!’ trills Huaisang, half-laughing and fanning his face with his programme.
‘And why, may I ask, is it so ridiculous that a company would be falling over themselves to employ me? I am highly employable. Very desirable, Huaisang-ge.’
‘Wei Ying, Wei Ying,’ Huaisang offers, shaking his head. ‘You poor, clueless baby boy. Lan Wangji? Gusu Lan Wangji? Remember? Lan Zhan?’
Wei Wuxian is silent.
‘Jesus, just how much Emperor’s Smile did you have at Uni.’
‘Not enough, never enough!’ he smiles at the memories of wild nights, loud bars, fuzzy mornings.
Nie Huaisang takes his hand and pulls him to sit on a stool.
‘Ok, your memory is shot, so let me jog it for you. Lan. Zhan. Laaaaaan Zhaaaan.’
‘Iiiiiiit doessssn’t matter how sloooooowly you speak, I doooooon’t remember….’
It’s easier this way.
‘Think. Lan Zhan. Same dorms as us only penthouse apartment. Was always sort of hanging around, looking mean and aloof and all emo and we never got why he kept coming out with us. But he did. Was always there. Kind of designated driver without the car.’
Something comes to him, vaguely. A shadowy figure, a shape not a person. He focuses on Nie Huaisang who continues with much relish.
‘Come on. Also stupidly hot in a ‘no-touch’ way. Lips. You know. Lips? All…oh how can you not remember the lips? Not interested in anybody though. Liked you for some unknown reason. You painted him. Remember? And he went apeshit and…’
‘Wait!!’ cries Wei Wuxian, crumpling into the memory with a little nausea. ‘Did we…I remember a fight?’
‘There we go,’ offers Nie Huaisang. ‘A fight. On campus. Rooftop. You were disciplined. He got nothing, of course, as Uncle owned half the Uni but he kinda…disappeared after that? No surprise he’s in the family biz. Clever Lan Wangji!’
Wei Ying is reeling. He can’t quite correlate the shadowy shape of the man on the roof with the blank face glaring at him with hardly-disguised contempt.
Lan Zhan. Thin, pale, serious Lan Zhan. He had always been there, on the periphery, so out of place. Waiting to grow into his face, his frame and yet so very beautiful. Never drinking, or smoking, or trying any of the mad shit that fuelled Wei Ying those first two years at Uni. Always there, though, on the periphery. With water. Steadying hand.
And then…he was gone. Something…something happened. He scratches around his memory but the they are hazy, hidden from focus for a reason as at the thought of Lan Zhan, his chest constricts and he starts to feel dread in his stomach.
‘Lan Zhan. Lan Wangji. Ok. No job.’
‘No job,’ repeats Nie Huaisang, with the amount of sympathy only a man who owns a gallery paid for by his Uncle can muster, i.e. zero.
He goes back to his apartment, into the quiet of it, and realises he is disappointed. The idea of the distant museum, hidden in clouds high in the hills of the north. Of nobody but himself rattling around its corridors, unrolling scrolls with a delighted sigh had in a way become his reality without him knowing it. A reel of images he had leaned in to.
Just another possible path closed down by his past.
He undresses and gets ready for bed, heating up a few dumplings, then curls up on the one sofa. Looking around, he suddenly isn’t hungry. The apartment creaks and sighs. He’ll have to move back in with his brother for a bit and as the pit of his stomach drops at the thought his phone vibrates on the chair by his side, and he nearly doesn’t answer but a quick glance shows him it’s a call from a number he doesn’t recognise and he picks it up.
‘Wei Wuxian.’
‘Hello. This is Lan Xichen, from CloudTech. Sorry it’s late. We’ve been interviewing all day for other jobs and only just finished our panel meeting.’
Oh. Oh? Wei Wuxian’s feels a swoop in his stomach but steels himself. He’s got this. It’ll be quick, almost painless.
‘I’ll get straight down to it.’
‘Sure, I understand…’
‘We’d be delighted to offer you the post. Your experience is a great match for us and we’re looking forward to working with you. If you’re still interested in the post.’
Wei Wuxian doesn’t speak. He listens, but doesn’t take in the words that follow because his brain is a riot of sound and colours and possibilities and a bit of stupid hope that he knows not to let out but it’s there, rattling his bones.
‘Wei Wuxian?’ Lan Xichen has stopped talking and he realises the phone has been silent for far too many seconds.
‘Yes. Yes, Of course,’ he says, having no idea what that means only hopes his massive grin isn’t coming through too loud and clear..
‘So is two weeks enough time? It would be ideal if you were in place when we bring all the new recruits for our onboarding retreat.’
There it is, something to piss on his chips, just the phrase, onboarding retreat, sets his teeth on edge but it doesn’t dampen his nervous energy, and he wonders if this is stupid, or hasty, and then remembers he has never done anything less than hasty or stupid in his life so why stop now. ‘I’ll be there!’ he says, already full of mischief because an onboarding retreat sounds like the seventh circle of his own personal hell and they need him…those other poor, unsuspecting newbies, need him before the corporate vampires suck then dry.
‘Good. You can contact HR for contract details and particulars. Oh, and you’ll need to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. I’m sure you understand. Patents are everything in the drugs industry and we need absolute secrecy.’
‘No problem. But…’
‘Yes?’
‘What was it, that made you…?’
‘Select you? Let’s just say that there are some very important people who you impressed, Wei Wuxian.’
So Uncle Qiren had overridden Lan Wangji? Perhaps he’d overjudged the old goat.
Still, Lan Zhan is a problem. He was going to have to work with him, albeit at a distance. And he can’t stop thinking of those dark eyes, riveted on him in disdain. Like they were slicing him open with their focus, disappointed with what lay beneath.
Challenge accepted, he thinks. Time to charm the charmless. Boy, this is going to be fun.
***
Two weeks. Less than that. Ten days to be precise. Ten days to undo 16 years.
It is, by some methods of measurement that are alien to Lan Zhan, impressive. How Wei Ying remains a bringer of chaos. He remains so ungoverned, without control, that it spreads to those around him like a curse. Or the flu. Or rabies.
Lan Zhan returns home after the long day of interviews. His eyes are tired, dry, and his throat raspy. He has let himself get dehydrated and drinks a glass of water slowly, small sips, focusing.
He changes out of his suit, glad to be rid of the blue shirt which is too tight, too constricting, particularly when Wei Ying is sitting opposite. It had made him hot. Wei Ying had thrown him smile after smile and each one told him what he needed to know. He didn’t remember. Had no memory of him, of what they’d been. Each dazzlingly intimate smile one reserved, he knew, for strangers, people who he was trying to charm, or take for fools.
He pulls on joggers, an ironed white t-shirt and makes a cup of white tea, the simple act of measuring leaves, pouring off-boil water over the leaves, watching them start to unfurl, unravel, is a ritual he loves. It is a harbour at the end of a day of being unmoored.
He takes the tea and pulls out the resumés of the selected candidates they’d employed today from his satchel. He needs to plan the induction weekend and knowing the new batch of employees is part of his role. Helps him to tailor the sessions to the needs of the cohort.
He leaves Wei Ying’s scrappy letter of application where it belongs.
The others are spread out in front of him. Some are well-known to him and he feels a fond satisfaction at how well they’d done today. They were so young when they first arrived at GusuTech on their internships, Jingyi and Sizhui, so fresh and raw, eager and adorably polite. They must, he’d realised, have stood out from their peers all the way through their education. Bright, thoughtful, Jingyi perhaps a little rash, jumping from one assay to the next without evaluating its efficiency, but still, inventive. He looks at Sizhui’s picture, a boy for whom he feels great pride. He had been assigned to Lan Zhan from the outset. He’d hero-worshipped him at first, embarrassingly, aped his mannerisms. Held one arm behind his back when talking. Wore similar shoes, shirts. Everyone called him little Lan. But he’d outgrown it as Lan Zhan had grown more comfortable with his presence. They’d done a lot of field-work together, and field-work is not easy, so many faults of a person’s temperament magnified by proximity, heat, humidity, mosquitos. But with Sizhui, it was easy. They worked around each other as a synchronous whole. He had been fastidious when they’d discovered the new variety of gentian deep in the Gangduan Gorge. Mapped its DNA. Ensured it wasn’t a fluke, a genetic throwback, but no, he had proved it was a new genus, one which had provided over two years of study into its medicinal properties. And now, a breakthrough, where it looks like it has some benefits in treating long Covid. And Sizhui will be there, employed, to lead its development. He looks at the soft smile on the young man’s profile picture and wonders if this is how a proud father would feel.
He wouldn’t know.
Others are fresh out of college but no less impressive. Ouyang Zizhen, excelling in his degree, accolades from all his tutors who write references as if he is the next big thing and yet, he was so humble in the interview, shyly showing them his own website where he’d coded a few algorithms in pretty colours, neat and throwing up interesting symmetries. Likeable, but needs focus and discipline. Lan Zhan has spotted this already, the way he flits from one subject to another, alighting with eagerness than distracted by a different, bright, shiny idea, just like…
And then there’s Jin Ling. Lan Zhan hadn’t selected him. Had been outvoted and he still isn’t sure what his brother and uncle see in the boy, because the sulk is there, in the picture, and Lan Zhan can foresee all manner of HR complaints about him over the next few months.
Still, Lan Zhan has talent in resolving conflict.
Except today, his guard has been down. Obliterated. He’d started the day edgy, muscles sore, jaw aching from the tight clench of anticipation. Wei Ying would be here, soon, and it had been 13 years.
Lan Zhan rarely, if ever fails. He cannot think of any time he has lost his temper at work. But Su She…is a disappointment. Always trying to brag, always trying to get a step ahead of others by underhand means. Trying to be a perfect Lan employee and in doing so, being obsequious, toadying. Lan Zhan had to school his own distaste at dealing with the man on all occasions, but the recent disciplinaries had tested him to his limit. He was becoming dangerously flippant with safety, all of which can be glossed over with training, and death glares, and warnings, but today, he had hurt someone.
The new chromatography machine was not anyone’s baby, but Su She didn’t seem aware of that. He was rash, too fast, moving from one filtrate to another and he’d been warned, to give it down time, rest the motor, the heavy duty lamps, but no, he’d been chasing a quota and in doing so, the machine had fired, the fan melting, and MianMian had found herself with a burn to her arm that was nasty, would need hospital treatment, and he’d…well…lost it.
He is aware, of course, that losing it Lan Zhan style looks controlled to others, but they don’t know. They can’t feel they way the heat of anger tips him into a white zone of static and rage. It scares him, this rage, which is why he’s managed to temper it over the years. Meditate. Avoid caffeine. Stretch. Breathe. But today, he’d been sucked into its vortex and almost exploded. And had done it with only a vague awareness of a figure standing behind, watching the show, but had somehow known it was him.
He finishes his tea, puts the profiles away neatly, nestles them against the lone sheet of paper still in there like a rebuke. He’ll look over the others tomorrow. It is late and he heads into his bedroom. It is cool, bed neatly made by the housekeeper. Sheets stretched tight. Cover crisply folded back. The bedside lamp throws golden light through the room and nostalgia creeps around him like an oil slick.
He doesn’t do nostalgia, and baulks at its arrival, but he is at a low ebb, straining against constraints he has tied around himself for so long he doesn’t know what feeling untethered is like, and before he thinks, or breathes through it, he has retrieved the box from the high shelf of his wardrobe and has opened it.
Stupid to keep it. Not having it would avoid moments like this. Not that he needs a reminder. And yet…
He unfolds it. The canvas is damaged from where he’d ripped it from its moorings, and more folds had seemed a necessary evil at the time. Anything to stuff it away, out of sight, in a dark place.
It still has the power to shock him.
He is standing, leaning against a full-length window whose curtains are almost closed and yet some light filters through, lines of slats on the window marking his skin which through the crimson curtain’s filter look like blood red scars slashing across his body.
He is naked.
His heart thunders at the image, and the memory, of the way he’d let his clothes drop to the floor, almost unbothered by Wei Wuxian’s breath which had seemed to stop then sigh as he’d done as he was asked to do. How in that moment, of being seen, unclothed in front of another for the first time since a child, he’d felt something like…freedom, and had let…no, not let, wanted those dark eyes roam over his body because they weren’t looking at him, but at form, lines, angles, the anatomy of a body that was burning with a feverish longing.
It is when he remembers what came after, and the fact that the smudged mark on his naked chest in the painting is most likely Wei Ying’s own blood, that he quickly folds it shut and bundles it back in the box. Where it belongs.
He goes into the bathroom and as he brushes his teeth, looks carefully at himself. Has he changed that much? He is more lined, he knows, but has also firmed up, his face now lean, free of the babyish cheeks that Wei Ying had so loved to scrunch, paddle, squeeze in his annoying, overly tactile way. Even though he’d told him, again and again, that he didn’t like being touched. As if his rules only applied to others. Not Wei Ying. Never Wei Ying.
He removes his top and then, as an afterthought, his joggers and stands naked in front of the full-length mirror. It is a different experience, looking at your own body, rather than just seeing. The portrait had taught him that. He looks now, at his skin, the parts of his body where he can see muscle that flex with tiny movements. He imagines Wei Ying’s eyes roving his body and he is hard, immediately, shockingly, full and flushed, and he watches himself, his cock hard and high and aching to be touched, as it had, back then, in all that confusion and anger.
He waits until he can bring it all back under control. He is an expert at this.
He goes to bed naked for the first time.
The sheets feel cool, and starchy, and good.
The painting sits folded and grotesque in the box.
Even when things had been at their worst, back then when his brother had come to look after him, talk sense into him, he has never struggled to sleep, and as always, he drops quickly, wakes refreshed, except now he wakes to the strange sensation of his painful erection and he begins to doubt the wisdom of persuading his brother to employ Wei Ying because all of it only means more torment, as it had back then.
He has two weeks before the onboarding weekend. Two weeks to learn how to control his anger, his confusion, and his increasingly errant cock.
He doesn’t think it will be enough.