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Lan Zhan does not have time for this.

A light flashes somewhere across the gardens, brandished in a glaring search beam. Shouts accompany it, voices snatched away by the hot summer wind. Lan Zhan’s button down is sticking to his back under his jacket. He reaches up and adjusts his tie.

The rooftop gives him a good view of the complex; gardens stretching dappled with mood lighting and frantic guards, the glass-fronted building on the far side dark with panic. He’s memorised the plans thoroughly, cemented them in his mind. There is potential through the orange grove to the south. A dark pathway through the spotlights glinting on over-pruned rose bushes and garish fountains. Probably some kind of underground passage between the garage he’s hiding on and the house as well, but their informant had been found washed up in the harbour before she’d been able to give them anything on it.

He is not sure what alerted the guards. It was certainly not him.

He does, however, have his suspicions.

“Lan Jingyi? What can you give me on visual?”

His earpiece crackles as Jingyi hums. The signal is patchy this far out; they know this. It will be completely gone once he gets inside the house. They have prepared for this too. Agent Luo is ready further up the valley with an entire armoury if he doesn’t re-emerge before morning.

“Disturbance seems to be to the north side of the garden,” Jingyi says in his ear. “Not a lot of cams in that corner. Guards headed that way now.”

“Mn. I’ll be taking the south path. Watch my back. Over.”

“Gotcha, Hanguang-jun. Over.”

He moves away, feet soft on the concrete garage roof, dips into the corner where the AC whirrs loudly enough to cover the noise of his drop to the ground. He flattens himself against the wall, wary of the faint orange light casting shadows into the bushes to his left. There is a camera on the other side of this corner. Another three metres along the building from him.

Embarrassing, really, to design something with so many blind spots.

The orange grove is barely lit, just filtered light from the garden slipping through the evenly-spaced trees. Lan Zhan flits through the shadows with practised ease.

He’d asked for the white suit, back then. He’s learnt how to trick his brightness into shifting shades of grey.

The air is sweet with the smell of citrus, caught on the warm breeze stirring the leaves. The grove is surprisingly unguarded, just a couple of easily avoidable cameras at the fringes. It’s like they’re asking to get caught. Lan Zhan keeps a hand on his holster anyway.

There’s a stretch of open terrace between the abrupt end of the orange grove and the full-length windows of the house, broken only by a jacuzzi glowing bright blue in the darkness. The light catches on the glass, scattering in shimmering waves across the smooth terracotta of the terrace. There are cameras on both corners of the house here. A guard stood fidgeting a few feet away. Lan Zhan crouches at the edge of the trees.

“In position,” he breathes. He slips his handgun out of its chest holster, movements slow, measured. It would not do to give himself away now. Not with something as simple as an over-quick gesture.

“Cams going down in ten,” Jingyi’s voice crackles in his ear. “Eight. Seven. Six.”

Lan Zhan shifts out from behind the tree, lines up the shot.

“Three. Two. And—down. Go.”

He shoots twice, quick, efficient, a bullet to the head and a bullet to the chest. The thwap of his silencer is swallowed up by screeching crickets and rustling leaves. The guard crumples to the ground without a noise.

Four minutes. Four minutes and sixteen seconds, to be precise, before the security override will dissolve, and everything will be on his shoulders.

He darts forward, low across the terrace, slides his hands under the guard’s lifeless body and dumps him in the jacuzzi. He does not linger to watch the water turn red.

The windows are bulletproof glass; it would have been uncomfortable to carry a glass cutter effective enough without a larger operation anyway. He slinks along the side of the house, an eye on the silent spread of space inside. If everything has gone to plan, the owner is downstairs, hiding in the panic bunker. But the darkness of the house does not guarantee safety.

He takes out another guard at the rear corner, a firm hand over their mouth and a twist of their neck. There is a flowerbed blooming high with peonies along the wall of the complex. Their body settles in amongst the petals.

The service door is set back into the building, digital lock, an easy weakness. Lan Zhan slides the card out of his sleeve and presses it to the autoreader. Three seconds pass, precious. It blips green.

“Company coming around from the east,” says Jingyi, his voice cutting out completely on around. “They’re still searching. Get inside quick.”

“I will speak to you in an hour. If I’m not out before then—”

Jingyi’s laugh crackles with static as Lan Zhan eases the door handle down, handgun at the ready, ears open for the sound of footsteps. “Yeah, yeah, Agent Luo will—in with the caval—ood luck, Hanguang-j—Going dark.”

Lan Zhan steps through the doorway, and the signal peters out entirely.

Jingyi is a good desk jockey, he thinks as he creeps down the hallway. He requested he be assigned to him personally, to Lan Qiren’s initial dismay. A little over-familiar at times, but quick thinking and smart. He had soon proven himself.

And he is far more tolerable than Lan Zhan’s previous desk agent.

A door to his left here leads into the kitchens. He skirts around it cautiously, watches the glint of the emergency lights on stainless steel and polished tiles. No movement discernable.

He slips out into the main, open-plan centre of the glass-walled house, feeling horribly exposed. It is completely silent, still; he could be in a showhome, frozen in time. The fashionably blocky furniture stands out in sharp lines and angles against the faint light coming from outside. Shades of grey. He knows how to fit into them.

A low wall provides some cover, but only from one direction. He can see the distant flash of guards still searching the gardens beyond the windows. They will be approaching the jacuzzi soon.

He checks his watch. One minute and twenty-two seconds remaining. His heart rate picks up.

The first bunker door is sealed with a basic code input. He gets out his black light as he moves silently across the open floor, flitting between the shadows. The door is tucked between two large paintings, barely visible in the darkness, just shapes and white lines. The fingerprints are easily discernible. 7 8 2 3 1 0.

He would have thought the security team would knock some sense into the man, setting the code to his own wife’s birthday. Lan Zhan punches in 032178 as his remaining time ticks down to ten seconds.

Black light extinguished. Gun raised. Click of the lock.

The alarms go off.

Lan Zhan ignores them; the sirens are for the open house and bloodied jacuzzi and sweet-smelling citrus on the far side of the solid doorway at his back. He slips through the doorway.

The bunker hallway could be in another country entirely, so stark is the change in atmosphere. Buzzing yellow bulbs dot along the ceiling, casting flickering light down the steel concrete of the corridor, exposed wires and solid casings. Sound is muffled, flat. No cameras down here.

He keeps his gun raised, training the sight on the door at the far end of the hallway. It’s dark grey, solid steel, no lock or handle or other means of opening in sight. Theoretically it can only be unlocked through the complex’s security system, downloaded onto a single laptop that will be locked in there with them.

Theoretically is not a problem for Hanguang-jun.

He leans up against the door, barrel pointed down towards the ground, presses an ear against it and listens. Silence. The safe room is a bunker within a bunker. He won’t hear them, and they won’t hear him.

The EMP is clever, built into the fabric of his still-perfect powder-blue pocket square, an exemplary demonstration of Agent Luo’s ceaseless creativity. A subtle, elegant, refined design. Completely deadly.

He spreads the unfolded handkerchief over the door, bulky now that it’s no longer in it’s hidden form. The magnetised corners snap down to the steel. Thirty seconds between deployment and execution. He shrinks back down the corridor.

It’s a funny sight, the little square of pale blue fabric in the middle of that big steel door. Lan Zhan does not stop to laugh.

The pocket-square bangs as the EMP rockets out, frying the door’s locks. He hears the thud of bolts sliding back. Bunker. He wonders how people can be so careless.

The room on the far side is empty save for several large storage crates. None of them carry his quarry. He checks his magazine, stepping up to the final door. The sound of the alarms is faint now, a wail in the distance.

This final door is as crude as they get. Huge, thick iron, six feet wide, something straight out of fiction. It would take hours to cut through, even with a laser. Lan Zhan does not have hours.

That is not a problem. He does not intend to use the door.

Even a bunker needs air circulation, and the vents in the ceiling are only held up with crossheads. Crossheads. He’s stung by secondhand embarrassment for the designer of this place.

How convenient of them to leave a storage crate right underneath said vent. How convenient that the crossheads are the perfect shape to fit his belt buckle mini-screwdriver. How convenient that the vent above is exactly 60cm wide.

He jumps up into it easily, hums softly in dissatisfaction at the way his shirt catches on the ledge, nearly pulling off a button. Lan Zhan has yet to properly damage any items of clothing at work. He does not intend to make climbing into a vent the first.

It is undignified, shuffling along, and cramped, and he is infinitely glad he took this mission alone; Lan Sizhui would have been even more uncomfortable with claustrophobia. Lan Zhan reassures himself that he is safe at CR headquarters. He is probably waiting anxiously with Jingyi even now.

Faint light filters into the vent ahead. He flips open his screwdriver, makes sure his gun is easily accessible. Forces a hand through the grill to unscrew it.

He slides the grill up into the vent with caution. There are no thick iron doors to mask accidents now.

The vent opens over a bathroom; he drops down into a crouch behind the shower. A small light glows over the mirror, revealing his set jaw and urgent eyes. He straightens his jacket. Hoists his gun. Steps out into the bunker proper.

He does not expect the sight that meets his eyes.

The plan had been this:

Slip past the perimeter by the trash unit in the south east. Establish route from a vantage point. Get into the house with as few casualties as possible, using the service door. Black light on the keypad. Pocket square on the digital lock. Mini screwdriver on the vents. If possible, keep owner and wife alive. Take out security detail if necessary. Acquire hard drive. Leave.

What he sees is this:

Blood, splattered across the creamy white carpet, sinking in thick. A body over the back of the sofa, another crumpled in the shards of the broken glass coffee table. Several scattered between the sitting area and the kitchen island. Bullet holes in the cabinets. Water trickling from a spilled pitcher on the counter. A mess of rubble and dirt on the far wall, explosion debris.

And in the middle of it all, him.

Lan Zhan had his suspicions. He is not often wrong.

“Ah, Hanguang-jun. So glad you could make it.”

The Yiling Laozu is leaning casually against the back of the couch, spinning a small silver keychain around the end of his index finger. His hair is a mess, sticking sweaty to his blood-splattered face; there is a tear and edge of a wound on his left shoulder. His legs are lazily crossed at the ankles. He’s wearing all black, thigh holsters, gloves. And the world’s most satisfied smirk.

Lan Zhan is going to destroy him.

“Laozu,” he hisses, and lunges, firing off two bullets at the space where the Yiling Laozu had been, dropping into a roll and getting behind a cabinet. A shot rips into the wall over his head, another thudding into the floor, barely missing his feet.

His opponent will not stay still for long. Lan Zhan keeps moving. He darts out from behind the cabinet, flips over the back of the couch, chases the Yiling Laozu as he ducks away towards the kitchen. More shots ring out between them. None of them hit. The Yiling Laozu is laughing.

“What do you want, Hanguang-jun?” he giggles, knocking over a bar stool to slow him down. “This?”

He dangles the hard drive from its keyring like a toy for a cat. Lan Zhan aims a bullet at his hand. It thwaps into the wall behind him.

“Oh, come on, darling, you can do better than that.” The Yiling Laozu rolls out from behind the island and shoots somewhere in his vicinity, but Lan Zhan is already moving, vaulting over the corner of the counter to get to him.

He lands with a kick into the Yiling Laozu’s stomach. Twists and smacks his wrist, sends his gun flying. Gets in a good hit to his ribcage.

The Yiling Laozu smirks, writhing away from him, a quick flurry of movement that knocks Lan Zhan’s gun to the ground and catches him in the knee. “Now that’s more like it.”

They trade blows through the slick of blood on the kitchen tiles, grab and roll bodily onto the carpet. Blood seeps into the knees of Lan Zhan’s suit as he straddles the Yiling Laozu, punches him across the jaw, gets a firm shove into his own throat in return. A kick and they roll again, switching places.

Lan Zhan is on fire. He could do this all day.

“The hard drive does not belong to you,” he says between blows, grabbing at the Yiling Laozu’s ankle as he tries to get away, pulling him down with a thump and twisting a hand around his calf to hold him there.

“It doesn’t belong to you either.” The Yiling Laozu grins and kicks him square in the chest, sending him sprawling.

Lan Zhan can feel the hot edge of it coming, that anticipatory thrill that always accompanies this, blood and sweat and punches and smirks. The Yiling Laozu watches him sit up from across the room, eyes dark, heavy. He’s panting, his chest rising and falling like bellows. He wipes blood from his jaw with the back of his hand. Licks his lips.

Lan Zhan gets to his feet, strides across the room, and slams him into the wall.

“Oh, fuck, yes, Lan Zhan,” gasps Wei Ying, groaning as Lan Zhan immediately hoists him off his feet. His neck is bloodied but no less gorgeous; Lan Zhan bites it, vicious, hungry. Wei Ying curls his hands around the back of his head, tugs his mouth up to kiss him. His tongue is hot and tastes of iron.

“Fuck, was worried you weren’t gonna show up,” he pants between kisses. Lan Zhan pulls his shirt out from his belt, slides a hand up the naked flesh below. “Trust you to always take the most righteous cases.”

“Shut up,” says Lan Zhan, nipping at his collarbone.

Wei Ying sighs happily. A favourite game of theirs. “Make me.”

Lan Zhan does, happily, thrusts his tongue into his mouth like he would impale him on it. Wei Ying turns to butter under his hands, writhing against the wall, already rolling his hips down. It is remarkable, the shift from fierce anger and furious urgence, to—well, whatever this is.

The same fierceness and urgence, tipped into kisses and touches and hot, searching breath.

“Oh, fuck, I really hope they have a king down here,” gasps Wei Ying against his mouth. His chest is sweaty and jumping under Lan Zhan’s palm, sticky with it; he pushes his shirt all the way up to his chin and leans back to lick a broad, salty sweep across his pecs. “Maybe even a—ah, fuck, Lan Zhan,” as he takes a nipple into his mouth, “maybe even a California king. Fuck, that feels so fucking good, but I really wanna go and find out.”

Lan Zhan drags his head back up to kiss his lips, face smeared with fighting and sweat and adrenaline and blood. Its metallic tang is a familiar flavour between their tongues. “There is a bed,” he says. “Through that doorway on the south wall.”

Wei Ying smirks. “As if you needed to know that for the mission.” He slides off Lan Zhan and wobbles on his feet, chuckling. “You are so predictable.”

“Says the man who has never once heard of a quiet entrance.”

“Ah, what can I say, this ass deserves a celebration.” He twists Lan Zhan’s tie between his fingers and starts dragging him through the aftermath of the room. “Right?”

And, well, Lan Zhan can’t disagree with that.

The bedroom is a haven of peace after the blood and dust of the main living area, tastefully decorated in neutrals and olive green, still as pristine as they day it came out of the catalogue. The only thing that gives any sort of indication that everything is not as it should be is the little red light flashing on the phone on the bedside cabinet. Lan Zhan kindly rips the wire out.

Wei Ying spreads himself out on the bed with a filthy groan, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. He is a picture; tight black pants with mud on the cuffs and rucked up shirt and blood streaked over his collarbone, tear and gash on his arm. Thigh holsters stretched around glorious muscle. His hair is mussed enough that he already looks well-fucked; Lan Zhan cannot wait to take it even further.

“Ah, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying moans happily. “This mattress is amazing. Let’s just spend the rest of our lives here, on this bed.”

Lan Zhan crawls onto the mattress, kneeling over Wei Ying’s legs. “And what exactly might we spend our time doing?”

Wei Ying’s grin is like that of a cat about to pounce, hungry, smug. “Well. I have few ideas.”

They fall into each other, sweat-sweet breaths and slick lips and adventurous, roaming hands. Wei Ying is a livewire, never stilling, his heels skidding over the bed and messing up the sheets, his hips and mouth searching endlessly for contact. Lan Zhan settles on top of him, pushes him down against the mattress, tongue-fucks him like every dip into the fiery wetness of Wei Ying’s mouth might be his last. He only goes gently when removing the fabric around Wei Ying’s wound, angry red against the beige Egyptian cotton. Wei Ying shrugs and says it’s fine and pulls him back down on top of him.

He wonders, absently, as Wei Ying fumbles with his belt and launches it across the room somewhere, whether the guards will think to check the bedroom. It won’t be much longer now until they do come down to the bunker, but—well, they’ve learnt how to fuck fast and hard and urgently. Jingyi expects him back on the surface in 40 minutes anyway.

There are not a lot of opportunities for full nudity on the job, but nevertheless, the sight of Wei Ying’s succulent ass once he gets his pants shoved down to his knees is a blessing. His cock is red, hard, leaking against his stomach; Lan Zhan squashes down the desire to spend hours unravelling him in candlelight and tenderness and rolls him onto his front instead.

“Please fucking tell me you remembered the lube this time, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying gasps, hand moving under himself, little quivers of pleasure already trickling over his skin. “I don’t want to have to check if there’s any silicone scar gel in this facility.”

Lan Zhan pulls the little packets out of his inside jacket pocket, nestled there between his fake ID and cyanide pills. He scratches the sharp foil edge of a condom over the flesh of Wei Ying’s ass.

“I believe,” he says, tearing open a packet of lube and dribbling it onto his fingers and Wei Ying’s hole, “that it was your turn to bring it, last time.”

“Fuck you, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whimpers as he slides the first finger in. “We both know that I got all my kit taken hostage along with me. How was I supposed to know that they’d leave me start naked in a supply closet, huh?”

Lan Zhan twists his finger, drags on his rim, slips another alongside it. Wei Ying always makes the prettiest noises when he’s getting needy. “Perhaps next time,” he says, thrusting particularly sharply, “you should come prepared.”

“Ah, fuck! Lan Zhan, please, that’s enough, I’m ready—I’d bet you’d love to see that, huh? Pin me to the floor with a gun to my head and then you rip my pants off and I’m already slick and wet, so nicely plugged up for you—”

Lan Zhan strikes his ass with his free hand, provoking a gasp of delight from Wei Ying. The thought is—Wei Ying, in his brutal sharpness and amidst the ferocity of what they do, only thinking about that, about him—it’s a lot. He opens him up with little kindness, because that’s not what they do, they fuck quick and fast and just as fiercely as they fight, and Wei Ying coming plugged to a battle would only serve to reinforce that, that he’s not here for a long time but he is here for a fun one.

He has made peace with the fact that it will only ever be like this. Snatched moments, gasped words, no afterglow. That’s what they do. That’s who they are.

It doesn’t make him want any less.

He withdraws his fingers and rolls the condom down his cock, lines up with the eager glisten of Wei Ying’s entrance, and thrusts into him with one long, hard, post-fight-adrenaline-fuck-only stroke.

Wei Ying groans raggedly, drops his head down against his hands, mumbles into the sheets. Lan Zhan doesn’t wait around. He moves at a bruising pace, fucking him like it’s a punishment; in some ways, perhaps it is.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, Lan Zhan, please, right—there, ah, you know how much I’ve missed your dick since Milan—”

“Prove it to me, then,” gasps Lan Zhan, tightening his hold on Wei Ying’s hips and slamming him back onto his cock, brutal.

Wei Ying laugh-moans in delight, gets up onto his knees, sits back into Lan Zhan’s lap and curls his arm around the back of his head. “Like this, Hanguang-jun?” he breathes, and starts riding him with eagerness.

Seeing him like this—the long expanse of his torso, the smattering of blood and bruises and the dark trail of hair leading down to his flushed cock, tight in his hand—Lan Zhan can feel the pressure building in his core, the tightness of arousal deep in his veins, ready to break free, to spill out in a sudden punch—

He doesn’t want it to be over yet.

He slides his hand down Wei Ying’s stomach, takes his dick in his hand, jerks him in time with his thrusts, and Wei Ying tips his head back against his shoulder and gasps happily. “Oh, fuck yeah,” he whispers. “Do you do this with any of your other enemies, Lan Zhan? Like to make sure they know who’s won the fight?”

He certainly doesn’t, and he’s struggling to think of Wei Ying as an enemy when he’s got his cock buried deep in his ass and the wet heat of his breath against his jaw, but he’s not about to say that. Especially not when Wei Ying has just given him all of the power in this ‘conversation’.

He bites Wei Ying’s neck. “Did I just hear you admitting to me winning the fight?” he pants.

Wei Ying whimpers. “No, no! Lan Zhan, you didn’t, we all know I’m the better agent here—”

“Is that so,” says Lan Zhan, and throws him forward, grabs his wrists, tugging them together behind his back, and lets go of any control he had left.

Wei Ying blabbers into the sheets, barely-formed words and sentences, and Lan Zhan lays into him like maybe he actually does want to break him, hurt him, make him feel it. It twists, synchronised, in his chest and gut: hot and heavy, filthy passion, for this man and everything he is. The aggression between them, he knows, is a thin veil for so many unresolved words and memories; he knows that his feelings for Wei Ying go beyond fun and adrenaline. They run as deeply as the scars that slash across his back; he wants to make Wei Ying feel them just as achingly.

He comes, a thrill, a drawn out kick, spreading to the edges of his body like a current through water, shuddering. It knocks him, the force of it, stronger than any blow they dealt to each other tonight. He collapses forward, gasping, crashes onto Wei Ying’s back with closed eyes and open mouth, muscles atrophied.

The room slides back into focus, golden-lit and peaceful. There is blood smeared into the sheets below them. Somewhere, something is ticking. They are inoculated from the world down here, hidden; maybe Wei Ying was right, maybe they should just stay here forever.

But it doesn’t work like that.

“Lan Zhan. Ow. You’re squishing me.”

“Sorry.”

He lifts himself off Wei Ying with effort, sliding out and collapsing beside him. All those hours spent lifting and for what. A good fuck reduces him to liquid. Wei Ying is the best fuck he’s had.

“Well,” sighs Wei Ying, groaning as he rolls over towards the side of the bed. There are finger-shaped bruises on his hips where Lan Zhan had been gripping him. The urge to pull him back and spend hours licking over them is overwhelming. Lan Zhan resists it. He is, after all, the better agent.

Wei Ying stumbles onto his feet, pulling his pants up over his ass—a tragedy. Lan Zhan hopes and expects there to be a next time, but. What if there’s not. He would miss it.

(He would miss a lot more things than just Wei Ying’s ass, but at least this he can admit to himself without having to shine too bright a light on the ugly mess of emotions that swirl ceaselessly in the cavern of his heart.)

“I’d best be off,” says Wei Ying. His thigh holsters slipped down around his ankles while they were fucking; watching him strap them back into place is a marvel. “This was fun.” He’s not making eye contact. He never makes eye contact, after. “I’ll leave you to clean up?”

Lan Zhan is not going to be doing any clearing up. It is not his job. But what else can he say? Stay, please. Give me more. How can this be more, between us.

“They will certainly know we were here,” he says, removing the spent condom with a grimace and tying it off neatly. There are no trash cans visible, so he sets it down beside the phone on the bedside table. “You will be safe getting out?”

“Pfft, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying laughs, and if Lan Zhan let himself use the word beautiful around him this would certainly be an occasion. “When have I ever had a problem with that?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know. This is how it always ends: sticky and spent and separate. He doesn’t even know where Wei Ying comes from. And yet.

“Be careful,” he says anyway.

Wei Ying flashes a smirk at him, already on his way to the door. “Please. They don’t call me the best agent in the business for nothing.”

It’s an intentional jibe, a parting tease, but by the time Lan Zhan can respond, he’s gone, slipped away into the chaos of the night. A shadow.

He crumples back onto the bed, still fully clothed except for his dick, softening against his thigh in the cool air. He tucks himself away, does his pants up, sits up and straightens his jacket. Goes to the mirror to try and make himself look a little more presentable for the debrief.

Wei Ying has left a hickey on his neck. To any other eye, it will look like a bruise from a fight, but he knows how it got there. He brushes his fingers over it quietly, and thinks, if this is the only way I can keep him with me, I would let him mark me up like a child with a paintbrush and an entire blank wall. If he were in the business of taking people, like so many in our world are, I would let him take me, and I would let him keep me.

The hickey is impermanent. Nothing is permanent. But this—the steady thrum of surety he feels glowing under his ribcage, more dangerous than any weapon—this, he fears, he will never get rid of.

He straightens up, ready, and pats down his pockets. Jingyi will be waiting. His uncle will be waiting. It is best not to keep them any longer.

It’s only when Wei Ying is long gone, deep into the night, that he realises he took the fucking hard drive with him.

-

It started, as most things do, by accident.

Lan Zhan, fresh out of academic training, first day in the field. Shadowing his brother, of course, Zewu-jun had been CR’s top operative until his early retirement; it had only been natural that newly-minted Hanguang-jun would be working under his wing. It had been a lake in the middle of the mountains, surrounded by silence and snow, the most classic movie villain hideout location imaginable. A device buried deep under the water creating such a strong magnetic field it was pulling aircraft out of the sky. Dozens of unreported missing cases, sucked below the depths, snatched into an underground lab while they were still gasping for breath. Organ harvesting. It had been something of a rude awakening to their industry.

While Lan Zhan and Lan Huan had been going for the identities behind the trap, Wei Ying had been going for the trap itself.

They’d met in the huge, vibrating-drum chamber of the magnetic device, a force ripping through the air that made Lan Zhan’s teeth ache and his skin feel brittle. Wei Ying had been crouched over the control unit in a t-shirt and jeans and a badly-fitting mask, wires spilling everywhere like crayola innards, screwdriver between his lips and laughter in his eyes.

Lan Zhan had not know what he was doing. He had fought him. Neither of them had won, but Wei Ying had escaped, and pulled the device drive free with him. “For my collection,” he’d smirked, before leaping off the steel-rimmed balcony and disappearing into the darkness of the engines below.

Lan Zhan had been left seething with something that veered between rage and attraction at such a pace it made him dizzy. When he’d finally found his brother again, facility operatives neatly tied in bundles like little evil flowers at his feet, all he’d received had been a curious smile.

The second time had been in Mumbai. The third time in Dublin. The fourth, a field in Minnesota.

The fifth time had been in an oasis seeped in the heady scent of pomegranates and sweet mint tea in the heart of the Tunisian desert.

Even in October, the air had still been thick with it, heavy sun and scattered shade of date palms. Irrigation trenches slicing through groves like knives, rocky crags drenched in green, a waterfall that echoed right down the valley. Empty tourist huts and an emptier swimming pool. Mosquitoes.

It had been chasing down some arms dealer, thousands dead to his name, an even sleazier reputation slung around his neck. Only his second solo mission. Lan Xiu on comms; Jingyi was far too young to even be part of the organisation.

He’d seen Wei Ying from the top of the sandstone steps that led down from the tourist-hut campsite to the life-drenched valley clutching the waterfall in its belly, lounging on the beach beside the naturally-formed pool, wearing bright red swim trunks and a smirk on his face. He’d only brightened further at Lan Zhan’s arrival, teased him endlessly until the target arrived; they’d fought him together under the scorching afternoon sun. Lan Zhan had graciously taken out six of his cronies, sweating under his white suit. Wei Ying had stabbed the arms dealer himself before Lan Zhan had got the chance to interrogate, and let his body float in the pool.

The valley had been quiet, and peaceful, sweet trill of water and birdsong, and Lan Zhan had thrown him up against a cliff and stared at him with enough close hot anger for taking out his target too early that Wei Ying had kissed him.

If someone had told him, when he’d joined CR’s agency training program—and he was their youngest new agent in decades—that he would end up fucking a rival agent in the sweltering heat of a North African oasis on just his second ever solo mission, he would have—well, he wouldn’t have laughed in their face, but he would certainly have scoffed and pressed his lips together and ceased further conversations. And yet he did, exposure be damned, just hands and mouths and the press of sweat-slicked bodies together.

He’d started carrying supplies with him after the seventh time.

He doesn’t—he can’t explain it. But Wei Ying is just always there. If a mission looks like Wei Ying, the Yiling Laozu, complete mystery to all of the secret service agencies Lan Zhan has dared ask, would be there, then there he will be. It’s almost predictable—almost. A hair’s breadth away from being dangerously so.

The bunker with the beige king-sized bed and little flashing light on the telephone had been the twenty-second time. At this point, Lan Zhan is beginning to wonder what constitutes as casual.

He cannot, obviously, divulge his activities to anyone. Although he reports after every mission to his brother and uncle, Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui are the hardest to keep it from. Having a junior operative breathing down his ear when Wei Ying is licking over his jaw is—awkward, to say the least. Sometimes, he has a fine excuse to be out of reach, like the patchy signal in the villa. Most times, he just switches his earpiece off. It may earn him a slap on the wrist afterwards, but he’d rather take a short word of reprimand from his uncle than have to witness just how red Jingyi’s face could get if he heard exactly how Wei Ying moans Lan Zhan when he’s coming so hard he sees stars.

On non-solo missions, usually accompanied by Sizhui, but sometimes both of them, Wei Ying has less of a tendency to show up. Lan Zhan has learnt not to get his hopes up, in these circumstances, but he’d rather not have to explain why the Yiling Laozu was looking at him like he was a particularly juicy chicken tender to Sizhui’s innocent little expression.

Lying is against the operational terms of CR; although they do it professionally, within the company, it is utterly taboo.

Lan Zhan has learnt to work with that.

The table in the debrief room is glass with an inlaid cloud pattern in silver-blue, crisp and neat just like the rest of the facility. He would, if he fidgeted, trace his finger down the swirl of a wisp, avoid eye contact with the two people across the table. He does not fidget. His hands remain firmly folded in front of him, and he fixes his uncle with a steady gaze.

“You are certain the target did not make an escape?” asks Lan Qiren. His steeled eyes beget the fact that he has yet to accept the fact that Lan Zhan does not have the hard drive.

“I am certain. I checked the bodies and identified him.” He had, after he’d dealt with the fact that Wei Ying had possibly fucked him into forgetting about the hard drive. At least something could come of the mission.

“We cannot be certain that the Yiling Laozu took the hard drive if you only caught a glimpse of it during the heat of the fight,” Lan Qiren continues. His tone is not forgiving. “You were unable to overpower him and take it yourself?”

Lan Zhan exercises every interrogation technique he has ever been taught to keep his ears from going red at the suggestion of overpowering the Yiling Laozu. “He took it. I am sorry, uncle.”

Lan Qiren bristles, looks down at his papers. Lan Zhan waits for it. The consequence. Of being foolish enough to let his dick (and his heart, but he is not going to admit such a thing to himself) get in the way of his mission. Wei Ying’s smirk as he’d twizzled it around his finger, one long leg crossed over the other. Really, he deserved it.

“We require that hard drive, Hanguang-jun,” Lan Huan says. Lan Zhan is so accustomed now to the usage of agent titles within the CR headquarters that it washes over him. Sets the words apart from those between brothers to those between colleagues. “I think it would be wise to spend some time investigating. I am sure you will agree, uncle.”

Lan Qiren scratches over his short beard and nods. “Hanguang-jun. I am assigning you and your team to not only discover the probable location of the Yiling Laozu, but also to retrieve the hard drive from him as soon as possible. The software it contains could potentially harm thousands.”

“You understand, of course, how important this is,” his brother says, and the omittance this time of his title serves its purpose of making the words come out softer. Lan Zhan is not not fooled by the gentility of his tone. Lan Huan may be his brother, but he is a Lan agent first. As should Lan Zhan be. Rather than losing their hard drive to a good fuck.

“I understand,” he says, and moves as if to stand. “We shall start straightaway.” He rises from the table and inclines his head at his uncle and brother, their eyes unerring in their gaze on him. “I apologise, once again, for my failings in the matter. I shall do everything in my power to retrieve the hard drive as soon as possible.”

“Hm,” Lan Qiren says, which is the most amount of acknowledgment and dismissal Lan Zhan expects to get. He nods again, and leaves the room.

In his office, Jingyi is lounging in his swivel chair, feet up on the desk in front of him, the bubble tea clasped in his hand the same as the one Sizhui is sucking on, perched on the edge of the desk and grinning softly at him. They both scramble to attention when Lan Zhan enters, Sizhui with far more success than his counterpart. Jingyi nearly ends up on the floor. There is a reason he is not a full agent yet.

“Hanguang-jun,” Sizhui greets him with a proper bow, putting his bubble tea down behind him. “You’re back.”

“Mn,” says Lan Zhan, and settles into his desk chair, opening up his laptop. “You received my debrief report?”

“Yeah,” Jingyi says, now fully tipping out of his chair and coming far too close to spilling tea over the computer banks before Sizhui catches his elbow. “Seems like you had quite the fight down there, Hanguang-jun.”

Lan Zhan follows his usual breathing and focus process to avoid letting his ears flush, and nods. “The Yiling Laozu is a talented individual.” He does his best to hold the far more personal meaning of those words carefully on his tongue.

“Is he really, like. Did he actually blow the wall open to get in?”

“What does it say in my report?”

“Woah,” Jingyi exclaims. “No offense, Hanguang-jun, but that is so fuc—fudging cool. Not as cool as you, obviously. But still.”

Lan Zhan keeps his smile to himself. “If you think alerting your presence and location to the enemy immediately upon entering the premises to be cool, then yes, I suppose you’re right.”

Jingyi is so easy to rile up. His face flushes, eyes widening in Sizhui’s direction. “Uh, yeah. Maybe not so cool then.”

Lan Zhan opens up the CR database to start his research. “Jingyi. Do not take it harshly. Sizhui can attest that I have made similar mistakes on missions, is that not right, Lan Sizhui?”

Sizhui’s mouth drops open, clearly uncomfortable at having to point out his direct superior’s failings, but Lan Zhan simply shakes his head, lips twitching. “I am sorry. I did not want to make either of you feel uncomfortable. There are important matters to attend to.”

“Oh?” They wander over to his desk; Sizhui stands politely in front of it, and Jingyi looks like he’s considering sitting on the edge before Lan Zhan shoots him a look and he awkwardly shifts to standing next to Sizhui as well.

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. “And it does, in fact, involve the Yiling Laozu.”

“Oh,” breathes Jingyi, face lighting up. Even Sizhui’s eyes widen.

“As you are aware, our most recent mission was with the goal of laying our hands on the Chang hard drive, which contains data for a form of software which would give the wielder the power to break into hundreds of GDPR databases worldwide, facilitating the sale of personal information, putting private information at risk, and giving the potential to ill-intended players to harm innocent lives. It was vital that it was captured and destroyed.”

“The Yiling Laozu took it,” Sizhui says. “He fought you and overwhel—was able to get away before you could take it from him.”

“That is right,” Lan Zhan agrees, very aware that the Yiling Laozu had very much overwhelmed him, and had fucked him into forgetting about the very purpose of his mission. He chooses, wisely, not to mention this to Sizhui. “My uncle is concerned that the Yiling Laozu poses a potential danger to our agency, as he frequently shows up on missions and intervenes. He has asked us to conduct a research initiative into tracking him down, and hopes that we may simultaneously manage to retrieve the hard drive.”

“We get to work on the Yiling Laozu case?” Jingyi exclaims. “No way! I’ve been waiting for this for so long, Hanguang-jun, you have no idea—oh my god, Sizhui, come on, let’s start right now, I’ve got a whole file on this with a-Ling and Zizhen from the cross-agency training program, we already have a bunch of stuff assembled actually—”

Lan Zhan watches with fondness as Jingyi drags Sizhui over to his computer bank and starts drawing up databases and files and research. He returns his attention to his own laptop, the CR database search bar blue against the screen. He hesitates, and then taps out Yiling Laozu, and hits enter.

He has looked before, obviously. Back in the beginning. There was nothing on him then other than mentions, brief sightings, ghostly appearances. And even now, as he scrolls through the entries, it’s barely more than that—potential lookalikes seen all across the globe, hints of a presence. His name in Lan Zhan’s own reports. But nothing more.

He stares at his most recent report, and thinks about him, leaning on the back of the couch, face alight with delight. The Yiling Laozu. Wei Ying.

How long is he going to hold that name against his chest?

Wei Ying had whispered it to him in the depths of a prison in Russia, concrete slabs and metal railings, shouts and footsteps ringing on gangways. Their bodies intertwined in the darkness of a cell, a tiny window glinting moonlight off the cold floor. Neither of them had been prisoners. But Wei Ying had captured him then, had pressed his open mouth against Lan Zhan’s neck, and breathed Wei Ying, and Lan Zhan had immediately known, then, that this was more than what they both pretended it was. He had held him tight against him, their sweat cooling and making him shiver, and had whispered it into his hair, precious: Lan Zhan.

He has not told anyone else about this. He barely even allows himself to think that name, outside of their encounters, forces his brain to fit him into the trappings of Yiling Laozu. Wei Ying is so much more than the Yiling Laozu. Lan Zhan has seen it through the cracks in his leather and denim, through the cuts and bruises that are never gone from his skin, through the sharp maw of his teeth and the hawk-like gleam of his eyes. The Yiling Laozu is a mask. Lan Zhan wants nothing more than to pry it off and catch a glimpse of the face beneath.

“Jingyi is going to get some lunch,” Sizhui says suddenly, and Lan Zhan looks up, and realises that he has been staring at the words Yiling Laozu on his screen for so long that enough of the morning has passed to necessitate a meal. “Would you like him to get you something?”

Lan Zhan’s stomach very conveniently growls, on cue. He has not eaten anything other than a plain bowl of oatmeal for breakfast since the light meal he took before the mission last night. He is, in fact, rather hungry.

“That would be very kind of him,” Lan Zhan says, and Jingyi pops up from behind Sizhui with a grin.

“I’ll get you your favourite, Hanguang-jun!” Jingyi is already bounding towards the door. “God, I’m starving. I won’t be long!”

And then he’s gone, and Lan Zhan is left with Sizhui still standing in front of him like a little shadow.

“Any luck?” Sizhui asks.

Lan Zhan shakes his head. “I have not,” he admits, “had the opportunity to look in great depth yet.”

Sometimes, Sizhui will look at him and Lan Zhan will have a brief moment of panic that he might know. He doesn’t; Lan Zhan is sure of it. But the moment is there. Is happening, right now.

Lan Zhan meets his gaze, and doesn’t let him see the Wei Ying clutched against his chest like his closest secret. ‘Like.’ Wei Ying is his closest secret.

“Well, Jingyi has already done a bit of research, predictably,” Sizhui eventually says, and smiles, allowing Lan Zhan a brief moment to huff a soft laugh of acknowledgment and rise from his desk to look at Jingyi’s extensive computer back. Sizhui directs his attention to a blurry photo, taken from a height and at great distance, that could be the Yiling Laozu, maybe. “You’d think for someone who blows his way to what he wants there would be more records of him available.”

Lan Zhan is very glad that Sizhui is looking at the screens and not at him, because blows his way to what he wants is too perfect of a description of just what Wei Ying has been doing for him to employ his anti-red ear techniques.

“Mn,” he manages, and Sizhui continues.

“I mean, we obviously have only brushed the surface in terms of investigation. But he does seem pretty elusive.” He turns to Lan Zhan. “Um. Maybe if you had some insights from—from fighting him so often? You could write up a little report or character study and we could use it to further our research.”

Sizhui looks so nervous to ask that Lan Zhan finds himself nodding immediately; he has never been able to say no to him. He is like Wei Ying in that way. “I can put something together,” he says, “if that would be helpful.”

“Thank you, Hanguang-jun,” Sizhui says, and turns back to the screens. He is such a good kid. Barely a kid anymore; he’s nearly twenty-four. He still seems incredibly young sometimes.

“Lunch has arrived!” Jingyi exclaims as he bursts back into the room, and then Lan Zhan is too busy eating and steeling himself against Jingyi’s endless enthusiasm and hoping that his uncle doesn’t ask for further details on the mission to think about Sizhui’s clever eyes or the name held close to his chest or bloodied grins and sharp teeth or anything that makes him feel the way that he does.

-

There is, like Sizhui had said, very little information available on the Yiling Laozu in most of the databases they have access to. In a week they are no closer to discovering his location, faction or—well, with the exception of Lan Zhan’s mostly closely-held secret—identity. He is, by all accounts and purposes, a ghost on the system.

Lan Zhan writes a report on him in a moment of weakness at 2am which is little less than homoerotic poetry, and promptly deletes it. He tries again at work the next morning, hoping that the presence of his junior agents might suppress some of his more… libidinous urges, and ends up starting the same document eleven times in a row until he quits and goes to the training gym instead. He eventually manages to eke something out over the weekend, painfully dry and brief, about Wei Ying’s bold and brash fighting style, and sends it to Sizhui before he can be pestered about it.

If he’s being honest, the investigation is doing nothing to help with his frankly growing obsession with the Yiling Laozu. He closes his eyes and sees his grin. He presses the bruises on his chest and thinks about the person who put them there. He lies in bed at night and jerks off so hard to the memory of Wei Ying’s moans that he has to actually go out and buy a new pump-action bottle of lube.

There is a part of him, buried under layers of trained-in procedures and frequently-uttered rules and his own careful filters, that does not want them to find anything. Does not want to know who, or where, or why. Does not want to share.

It is ridiculous, because he is an Gusu Lan agent and one of the top secret operatives in the world, and the furthering of information that could save lives should be his number one priority. It is. It is his number one priority, but—

He really wishes he hadn’t let Wei Ying take that hard drive.

Another week passes, without any breakthroughs. His uncle comes to visit and frowns at their neatly-assembled data and raises an eyebrow at Lan Zhan’s report and sharply tells Jingyi to remove his feet from the desk. His brother flits in and out more often; he is mostly a desk agent now, after the whole—Nie Mingjue thing. Inter-agency romances are all very well and good until your boyfriend gets killed on a mission and you decide to stop going into the field altogether. Lan Zhan cannot blame him. If he heard that something had happened to Wei Ying (and he does not entertain the thought of something happening and him not hearing, because he has done reading on positive thought processes and visualisation), he would probably go and live in a cave for three years. (He does not entertain this thought either.)

Then, a full thirteen days after Wei Ying had left him fucked-out, panting and hard drive-less in the basement of the mansion, they get something.

Lan Zhan’s stomach does a full acrobatic flip when Sizhui comes barging into his brother’s office—he is politely waiting by the desk for Lan Huan to finish showing him pictures of Agent Meng Yao from the Jin agency’s cats. They are very cute little things: a pure white persian and a bare-skinned sphynx, both adorned with prim golden collars, evidently pampered. They are perfectly posed in every photograph. They both look incredibly smug to be the subject of such high quality photography.

“He bathes Geraldine weekly,” Lan Huan is saying. “And Cornelia sits on the side of the bathtub and watches them, look at this one—”

“Hanguang-jun!”

Sizhui bursts through the doorway red-faced and harried, collapsing against the frame before remembering his manners and nodding formally at them both, still panting.

“Sizhui? What is it?” Lan Huan closes the window and stands. Lan Zhan breathes through the twisting in his stomach.

“We’ve—we’ve—ah, sorry, give me a minute, I ran all the way here—” He inhales deeply, catching his breath, and fixes Lan Zhan with an urgent stare. “We’ve found something.”

Lan Zhan’s stomach drops, much more than a twist; this is a full acrobatic leap through the circus tent of anticipation. “The Yiling Laozu?” he asks. He is proud that his voice comes out steady.

Sizhui shakes his head, and his gut does another fluttery thing—it’s like it has a mind of its own, just because of three words from Sizhui. “No—well, maybe? But the hard drive. And something else. It’s urgent.”

Lan Huan comes around the desk, and Lan Zhan is glad for someone’s lead to follow. “After you,” his brother says, gesturing Sizhui out the door, and following him into the corridor. Lan Zhan stays rooted for the spot, still processing, for too long, and gets the tiniest eyebrow raise from him. “Brother?”

He shakes himself out of it. “Ah. Yes, apologies, Zewu-jun. Following.”

Jingyi is frantically pacing in their office, and looks up with panicked relief when they enter. “Ah, thank fu—goodness, you’re here. Hanguang-jun, you have to see this. And Zewu-jun, of course. And maybe we should get Senior Agent Lan as well? Sizhui—”

“On it.” Sizhui disappears to fetch their uncle, and Jingyi urgently ushers them over to the screens.

“Sizhui says you found something about the hard drive? And something else, urgent—”

“Yes, yes,” Jingyi interrupts Lan Huan. “Look at this.”

He maximises a window, and it’s—a daintily rose-bordered invitation?

“Jingyi, what is—”

“It’s the Wens.”

Lan Huan falls silent, and Lan Zhan feels a prickle of dread rising at the back of his neck. The Wens are the largest arms dealing operation in China, and have so many figures in so many other operations and organisations that they may as well be some sort of mafia, and their leaders certainly have the criminal record to prove it—

It’s the Wens is something no intelligence agency wants to hear.

“What have you found?” Lan Zhan asks cautiously. The invitation looks alarmingly innocent, inviting the recipient to a gala to celebrate someone’s birthday—tomorrow. Wang Lingjiao. The name is not one of the Wen associates listed in Lan Zhan’s head.

“This gala,” Jingyi explains, “is a cover.”

Sizhui returns with Lan Qiren in tow, and ushers him up to the monitors—judging by the pinch of his brow and flat press of his lips, Sizhui has brought him up to speed already. “Go on,” he instructs.

“The Wens are really not subtle,” Jingyi says with a chuckle, and sees Lan Qiren’s face, and schools his own back into something more professional. “You see this? It’s literally just white font between the lines. Save it as a pdf and no one can tell, but come on, do they really think we wouldn’t check that?”

He swaps to another screen, where there’s a mess of writing and information boxed in by the somewhat gaudy rose petals. It looks like it was designed in Word 2003. Lan Zhan cannot help but agree with Jingyi’s subtlety comment.

“So,” Sizhui continues, “we got sent this by Zhizen from the Ouyang agency—he found it on the dark web, and thought that’s really not the kind of graphic design you would expect on the dark web, and he was right. The invitation to the birthday gala is actually an invitation to a huge auction.”

“An auction,” Jingyi jumps back in, “for something called Ironfist.”

“Ironfist,” Lan Huan repeats. “A weapon?”

“Of sorts,” Jingyi continues. “So, er—we managed to find out a bit more information about it,” he drops his voice to a mutter, “although how exactly is not important right now.” He opens up a file that is full of numbers and what look like chemical equations. “It’s a serum. Injected. Designed to inhibit all pain receptors and make you so high on steroids you can basically punch through a wall without feeling anything. And you just keep on going and tearing yourself up until there’s literally nothing left to keep alive.”

An uncomfortable silence echoes through the office.

“We—we think they're trying to sell them to gangs and military groups,” Sizhui says in a quiet voice, “so that they can turn people without any training into essentially human shields. The amount of steroids in here—you’d be like a zombie.”

Lan Zhan feels a little sick. Inhumane, he thinks, but then when have the Wens ever worked in a way that cared about ethical practices?

“And the drive?” he asks, swallowing down the distaste in his mouth. “You said you had—”

“Yeah,” says Jingyi uncomfortably. “So. We—we think the Wens might have the hard drive as well.”

“They’re certainly advertising something that sounds a whole lot like it for the auction, bundled in with Ironfist,” Sizhui adds.

Lan Qiren makes a disgruntled huffing noise. He doesn’t look at Lan Zhan, but he can feel the waves of disappointment rolling off him in his direction. You had the ability to stop this, they say, and you didn’t. You failed.

Lan Zhan is not going to fail this time. But if the Wens have the hard drive, that means that Wei Ying—

What has happened to Wei Ying?

Suddenly, the twisting in his stomach is back in full force, roiling with the sense of unease already settled there, creating a dark, horrible creature that latches onto his guts with worry and does not let them go. Wei Ying is a good agent and an even better fighter, but the Wens are powerful, and what if he was outnumbered, what if he was drugged, what if he was—

He does not let himself complete this final thought. The world without Wei Ying living and breathing somewhere in it is not one that he wishes to be part of. The realisation hits his chest with full force, like being struck by the first blast of wind in a hurricane, like it might just catch him up in its power and whisk him away into its messy spiral, like he might never get out—

He does not want to get out, a quiet voice says. Wei Ying is at the eye of the hurricane. Lan Zhan will find his way to him if it’s the last thing he does.

He shakes himself back to the present. “I’m sure I can pull some strings at the Nie agency,” Lan Huan is saying. “Young Agent Nie is one of the best fixers we know of. He’ll get you in. And A-Yao might have some ideas as well—if you’ll excuse me—”

He’s gone from the room in a rush, and Lan Qiren looks between Lan Zhan and the junior agents with his lips still pressed firm. “I trust that you will be able to handle this, Hanguang-jun,” he says, and the meaning behind his words is clear: you will handle this, and you will not fail this time. “I will be in my office if you need anything.”

Then he’s gone too. Lan Zhan watches his retreating figure, and thinks, I will not fail. Not for you, but for him. I am not going to fail this time.

“So!” exclaims Jingyi. “Wen gala heist. I’m excited. Who’s excited with me?”

Sizhui gives him the same look that Lan Zhan can feel settle across his own features, and Jingyi laughs sheepishly and says, “Yeah, yeah, alright. Serious business, lives at risk, the whole shebang. Still. Heist time, baby.”

-

Lan Zhan sits in the van three streets over from Nightless Tower. Hong Kong is alive around them, as it always is, lights and cars and bikes and people and food and dirt, but in the blue glow of Jingyi’s portable monitor bank, he barely hears or smells any of it. There is a task to do. It is imperative that he succeed. He will not let any distractions stop him this time.

(He will not let thoughts that said distraction might not even be alive to do so come anywhere near his mind. He spent three hours this morning meditating to get through it.)

“You know where you’re going, yeah?” Jingyi asks. “You have no idea how much it cost to get these plans. Please don’t forget them.”

“Mn. Of course.”

Sizhui leans over from the driver’s seat. “T-2 minutes, guys.”

Lan Zhan checks himself over. He is unarmed, but Agent Luo has really outdone herself this time—the scanners will not pick up the shoelace garrottes or mini-C4 hidden in his cufflinks or folding knife in his belt buckle or little remifentanil narcoleptic pills in the fabric of his bowtie. The chip in the collar of his shirt that is casting a subtle hologram over his face that makes him unrecognisable to security cameras. They will not pick up the two and half decades of training in unarmed combat.

His invitation is downloaded on a phone that will also act as a scanner, signal scrambler and contains most of the information he needs about the building, the people within, and the things they’re selling. The card tucked away in his chest pocket identifies him as Su Minshan (courtesy of Agent Meng; Lan Zhan is not sure how he feels about being in disguise as someone from the Moling Bank Society. They have never had good dealings with them in the past, but it does make sense that they would send a representative to the auction), and he has a fine spread of information provided by Nie Huaisang about some of the other people who are likely to be in attendance. He knows who he should talk to if he must, and he knows what to say. Nie Huaisang had also messaged them about half an hour ago and said that he’d managed to get a gun in, stashed in the supply closet on level 36, which was both unexpected and greatly appreciated.

“Alright,” Sizhui says. “20 seconds until your car comes. Comms good?”

There’s a static buzz in his ear, and then Jingyi’s voice resonating both through the earpiece and the back of the van. “All good.”

“Alright.” Sizhui shoots him an encouraging smile. “Good luck, Hanguang-jun.”

“Pfft, Hanguang-jun doesn’t need luck, he’s literally the best agent in the world—”

But Lan Zhan is already getting out of the van, breathing away his words, and sliding silently into the sleek black car that pulls up on the far side of the street.

The front entrance of Nightless Tower is set back away from the main street, and Lan Zhan joins the dozens of other glittering guests stepping out of their cars. Golden light spills out down a garish red and gold carpet, and two long fire troughs burn their way up to the doors, casting everyone who passes by in a flickering glow. He rolls his shoulders back, lets his confident pose carry him, and walks right up to the row of security guards and scanners behind the glass doors.

“ID and invitation,” one of them grunts. He hands over his fake ID card, makes sure to look bored as he waits, and shows them the invitation on his phone. The security guard grunts again and waves him towards the scanners.

He pushes down the fluttering in his stomach and strides through. There are no guilty alarms. The guard on the other side gestures for him to continue through, and just like that, he’s in.

A whole lot easier than the movies make it out to be.

For all their lack of subtlety, it does feel like a gala—people in beautiful and over-the-top clothes, fountains and life-size sculptures, servers passing through the crowds with trays of champagne and canapes. Rather too many fire machines. The space is huge, glass and dark black stone, reflecting the orange light of the flames all the way up to the glittering glass ceiling several storeys above. There are already hundreds of people in attendance, and what looks like one security guard for every five guests. For all the ease of finding the invitation to the real auction behind the gala, the Wens seem to have put an awful lot of effort into making sure there won’t be any unforeseen mishaps.

Well. Lan Zhan might have to prove them wrong with that one.

“Alright,” he murmurs. “I’m in.”

“Cool,” Jingyi’s voice buzzes in his earpiece. “Scope about a bit and see if you can find something for me to hook up to, yeah? We aren’t gonna act immediately, but we don’t wanna act too late.”

“Mn.” Lan Zhan is well aware of the delicate nature of the plan. How much of it rests on his back, and his ability to pull things off in the way he should—a professional Lan agent. The best in the business. Hanguang-jun.

He shoves down the butterflies threatening to take flight in his stomach and focuses.

He joins the crowd, flitting his way through and taking a passing glass of champagne—more to hold than to drink. He does not like crowds, and he does not like parties, and he does not like small talk. Were this a regular gala that he had been invited to, he would stay only long enough to be noticed, and then leave.

Unfortunately this evening is planned to be exactly the opposite of that: do not get noticed, and stay as long as it takes.

He makes his way over to the side of the hall, scanning the perimeter for weaknesses—all the entrances and exits are guarded, and he can feel the eyes of security cameras heavy on the back of his neck. He pretends to sip his champagne. There was little time to research much beyond the plans and details Nie Huaisang had been able to purchase for them, and he doesn’t even know if there will be anywhere for Jingyi to connect to, or whether he’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way—

“You know, I would say I’m surprised to see you here, but you have a rule about lying, so I’m not gonna.”

It rips through him like a bullet, all the butterflies leaping into his chest at once, a mess of panic and relief and fear and—and mistrust. Wei Ying is alive, and has sidled up next to him, but he—the Wens have the drive, so how is he—

“You not happy to see me, Lan Zhan?”

He smirks; fuck, he’s stunning. He’s wearing a slim-fitting black suit, red shirt, the top two buttons popped to expose a sliver of skin. Lan Zhan thinks about how it would taste. How it does taste. He wonders if any of the bruises from two weeks ago have lingered, and how long it would take him to put them back. Wei Ying uncrosses his arms and tilts his head at him. “Huh, Lan Zhan? Hello?”

Lan Zhan is painfully aware of several facts all at once: 1. He is in enemy territory, no doubt being watched by visible guards and not-so-visible guards, and already likely suspicious for not having talked to any guests before this point; 2. Jingyi and Sizhui are on the other end of his earpiece and will hear anything he says; 3. The last time he failed a mission was because he let himself get distracted by Wei Ying; 4. Wei Ying may very well have sold the hard drive to the Wens.

He gestures at his ear, Wei Ying’s gaze following, and understanding dawns on his face with a lazy grin. “Ah, I see. Don’t want to alert those no-associating-with-the-enemy Lans to my presence, huh? I see how it is.” He walks behind Lan Zhan, so close that he can feel the brush of his lapels against his back, and breathes into his unfettered ear. “Never mind that you’ve already associated with me plenty.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan breathes through gritted teeth; his very skin is alert, like a single breath could break him. Wei Ying is currently exhaling warmly over the skin of his neck. Lan Zhan is trying very hard to keep it together.

“What?” Wei Ying says. “You worried about someone noticing? Pfft, Lan Zhan, baby, literally all anyone cares about in this room is themselves and their cash hoards.” A hand dips under the fabric of his suit jacket, settling on his hip. “Come on, I’m sure we could find an alcove.”

Lan Zhan is painfully aware of the fact that his dick is reacting. He is a professional agent, dammit. He should be able to resist this kind of thing. Wei Ying’s hand is snaking further around his waist, fingers trailing along the leather of his belt—and he is glad that they’re to the side of the room, that a truly gaudy phoenix sculpture is partially shielding them from view of the main party, because Wei Ying has moved closer behind him, and he can feel the hard press of his interest against his ass.

“You should really come with a warning,” Wei Ying murmurs against the dip of his neck. “All fucking sexy in your suit. Always so fucking sexy in your suit. They should have turned you away at the door, caution: too hot.”

“That is enough, Wei Ying,” he whispers, which only earns him a chuckle. And a kiss to the sensitive skin behind his ear. Lan Zhan is going to combust, and then there will be no mission, because he will have become just as useless as the fire machines dotted throughout the hall.

“Hey, Hanguang-jun, update?”

It’s Sizhui. Lan Zhan closes his eyes and tries very hard to make his voice steady. “None yet. I shall continue looking. Will let you know when I find an opening.”

“Find an opening?” Wei Ying repeats. “Well, Lan Zhan, if you were to follow me round the back of the elevator shafts I could show you a very acceptable opening, if I do say so myself—actually, you’ve said so too, come to think of it—”

Lan Zhan steps forward, away from him. He can almost hear Wei Ying’s pout.

“Noooo, come on, I’m sorry, I’ll stop. Lan Zhan. Hanguang-jun. Let this one help you?”

Lan Zhan turns to him. Wei Ying’s face is—is genuinely open, like he does want to help, like he’s saying it because he means it, not because he—well, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that Wei Ying is looking far too healthy to have had the hard drive beaten out of his grasp.

It feels like there is a crack inside him, running through his chest, like something has broken: maybe it has, maybe he has. Maybe it is not a crack, but a scar, mending a rift that has been there since that very first day at the bottom of a lake in Siberia. The rift between them: Hanguang-jun, Lan agent and best in the field; and Lan Zhan, head-over-heels into the most dangerous thing he could have fallen into.

Wei Ying’s face is slipping, falling, just like Lan Zhan fell when he was first confronted with that smile, but the wrong way: hardening, lips thinning. Closing off.

“Right. I see.”

Lan Zhan wants to say something. He wants to say, Wei Ying, I want you to help. He wants to say, How could you give them the hard drive like that, why would you do that, don’t you know what it means? I trusted you. I trusted you when I shouldn’t have, and now I’m scar-cracked. He wants to say, Wei Ying, there is a space in my heart that you carved out and I didn’t know what had happened to you and it hurt like nothing else has ever hurt in my life—

He says none of this. Instead, he nods politely, and says, “Have a good evening.”

Then he’s gone.

He does not look back. He cannot look back, because he should not have trusted Wei Ying, and he has been foolish, and he let his heart take over when everything should have been dictated by his head, and it hurts. Everything hurts, and he has a job to do this evening, and he has let himself get distracted too often, and now it has gone too far and people are going to get hurt and ultimately it will be his fault.

He does not stop moving until he has thoroughly lost himself in the crowd.

There’s a loud laugh to his left, and a shriek, and a woman in a glittery gold dress stumbles past, champagne flute in her hand, and—Wen Chao at her back. Lan Zhan quickly steps aside and faces the other way.

Right. The mission. Ironfist. Doing what he came here to do.

He wanders the edges of the party, looking for a charging point, or a comms system, anything that will allow Jingyi in. He can feel the guards’ eyes brush over him when he gets too close. He will have to be careful.

He eventually finds something tucked away near the bathrooms. They are marbled and over-decorated, but hidden behind a fake flower display he finds a small panel for climate control. Perfect. He loiters long enough to slide the chip out from the side of his watch, pretending to check the date, and surreptitiously hides it in a plastic chrysanthemum before leaving the bathroom.

“I have placed the chip,” he mutters, rounding the corner to a group of increasingly drunk people leaning on each other and being watched by a steely-eyed guard. He quickly swerves to avoid them, and heads back out into the hall.

“Awesome,” Jingyi exclaims a touch too loudly in his ear; he has been his desk jockey for long enough now that Lan Zhan has learnt to overcome the urge to flinch. “Alright, give me like five minutes, and I’ll let you know when to get to cover.”

Lan Zhan finds a relatively harmless-looking profiterole to eat while he still has the chance, and loiters near the side of the room, waiting for Jingyi’s signal. Standing here, most of the guests are between himself and the door. He cannot anticipate what the outcome will be, but instinct tells him it is the safest place.

Two minutes pass, and Wen Xu mounts the podium at the end of the hallway. He taps the microphone, and Lan Zhan frowns. Unnecessary.

“Good evening, esteemed guests,” Wen Xu starts, and the crowd tightens in around the podium. “We welcome you into our humble dwelling, and wish that you will find our offerings most pleasing. You all know why you are here, and I’m sure this will be an interesting evening for us all. Now, if I may introduce my father, the man behind everything that we have achieved: Wen Ruohan.”

There is a round of applause, and a thick-faced man joins him on the stage. Lan Zhan has never actually seen Wen Ruohan, concealed as he usually is behind his sons and cronies, and he has a moment of weakness in wishing that Agent Luo would hurry up and develop an eye camera. He catches himself; her work is beyond exemplary, and if everything goes well, they will be a step closer to catching him tonight.

Wen Ruohan extends a hand to silence the audience, and steps up to the mic.

“Alright,” Jingyi says in his ear. “We’re ready whenever you are. You in shelter?”

Lan Zhan glances over towards the third floor balcony overhang, a few feet behind him. He glances back to Wen Ruohan. He is still silencing the crowd. “Mn. Yes. Now would be perfect.”

“Excellent.”

Lan Zhan moves back under the balcony just in time as the sprinklers start.

It is a simple, elementary diversion, but has not failed them yet: and once again, the guests start shrieking, covering their heads with bags and jackets, and people start rushing, and Wen Ruohan and Wen Xu are ushered off the stage, and the guards have to run forwards and start corralling people, and it’s perfect.

Lan Zhan seizes the opportunity, and disappears in the chaos towards the green fire exit stairway sign at the back of the huge hall.

“Alright!” Jingyi crows. “Nice one. Okay, I can’t get into the cameras on this floor, but once you get into the stairs there isn’t one until the next door up on the second landing, so you’ve got some breathing room.”

“Understood. Let me know anything else.”

“Gotcha, Hanguang-jun.”

Lan Zhan is glad to find the door to the stairwell unlocked, and slips behind it quietly. It is bright inside, clearly not meant for public use, but clean nonetheless. He heads up the stairs, not quite running, but sure to keep his momentum up—while the fire machines provided a perfect cover for the sprinkler distraction, there are certain parts of their plan that will no doubt draw attention to his presence in the building.

“Ok, round the next corner and you’re in view of the camera,” Jingyi tells him. “I’m watching the corridor on the far side of the door. I’ll let you—yep! Yep, guard coming down now, get ready.”

Lan Zhan tucks himself behind the central wall of the stairway and unfolds one of the narcoleptic pills out from his bowtie. It is tiny and harmless in his palm; he crushes it and sprinkles it into his pocket square.

“Ok,” whispers Jingyi, and Lan Zhan hears a door above him, “five, four, three, two—”

Lan Zhan yanks him round the corner on one, quick, efficient. He has surprise on his side—he manages to get the man’s hands twisted up behind him before he can even realise what’s going on, and slams him to the floor, cracking his nose against the steps and kneeling on his back. He shoves his pocket square into his mouth and holds it in, pinches his nose as he thrashes, and waits—waits—and the guard’s shudders weaken, and slow, and then stop completely.

The stairwell is not the ideal place to conceal an unconscious body, but there are no cameras watching the storage under the lowest sweep of steps, and it is easy to tuck him behind several cleaning carts once Lan Zhan has swept him of his security card, handgun, and radio. He checks the cartridge; full. He slips the weapon into the chest holster concealed under his jacket.

“Jingyi,” he says. There’s a buzz of acknowledgment. “If you could take out the stairwell cameras around now, I would greatly appreciate it.”

“Doing my best,” Jingyi replies.

“He’s nearly there,” Sizhui chimes in. “The sprinklers are off. We estimate about a minute before they start counting guest numbers.”

At which point his absence will be noticed. He probably has a few more than just one minute to get away and up to the security room, but they need to work fast before the entire building starts teeming with as many guards as the party.

“Okay!” Jingyi exclaims. “Stairwell cameras up to level six are out. They’re in chunks, I’ll do them as you go up. They’ll be back online in, uh, 175 seconds. 173. 172.”

“Thank you, Jingyi,” Lan Zhan interrupts him, already halfway to the second floor. The stairway snakes around twice between each landing; he takes the steps three or four at a time. He is immensely glad for the hours he spent in fitness training in the past two weeks trying to run and cycle Wei Ying out of his mind.

He nearly stumbles onto the fourth floor landing at the thought of him, somewhere in this building—will he be among the guests who are counted? Or will he be doing the counting?

His chest twists at the thought, so he pushes onwards.

By the tenth floor he is panting hard, and by the fifteenth the back of his shirt is soaking through with sweat. The security room is located on the twenty-first. He knows he has been incredibly lucky to have not met anyone yet, but then people do not often take the stairs in a fifty-storey skyscraper, so perhaps it is not as uncanny as it feels.

His luck runs out between floors eighteen and nineteen, as a young woman in a white lab coat almost crashes into him on her way down the stairs.

“Shit!” she gasps, and dives out from beneath his grapple with alarming effectiveness, getting a fine hand around a wrist and twisting, showing a surprising amount of strength as she pushes him down towards the stairs.

Lan Zhan pushes back, almost toppling them both down to the landing below, and gets a foot behind her ankle, kicking it out from beneath him and bringing her crashing down to the stairs. She grunts, rolling out of his way, and he draws the handgun, but she’s too fast, slamming an elbow into the small of his back and another behind his knee, bringing him face down onto the stairs. The breath goes out from him, punched through the chest by the sharp edge, and he barely has time to start twisting around before she’s on top of him with a knee on each arm, a deadly sharp hairpin at his throat, and the guard’s stolen gun in her hand.

Fuck, thinks Lan Zhan.

“You do not work here,” she says matter-of-factly, but her voice has a biting edge to it, like she’s just as sharp as the point at his neck.

“Hanguang-jun?” comes the voice in his ear. He prays that his heavy breathing is enough to cover it.

“You look to me like you might be one of my employer’s esteemed guests,” she continues, shuffling backwards a little and patting him down without releasing any of the control she has on him. “Except for the fact that you’ve got this,”—she tosses his phone up onto the steps above them—“and this,”—the radio, next to his head, the screen a dim yellow—“and this.” The security card, pulled out of his breast pocket. She scoffs at it. “Look. I know Wen Yong, and he is definitely not you. Which means,” she breathes, leaning forwards and pressing the hairpin further into his neck, “that you must be an impostor. Let me guess. All dressed in white, alarmingly silent, great technique. Hanguang-jun?”

Lan Zhan does not reply. He can hear Jingyi and Sizhui discussing furiously in his earpiece, trying to decide whether he is just ignoring them or whether he’s actually in danger. He considers telling them that he is before this surprisingly powerful lab technician can fully insert the needle into his neck, but then she’s scoffing again, and prying the earpiece from him, and he very much cannot.

“Honestly,” she says, pocketing his belongings. “You Lans and your lack of subtlety. It’s like you’ve never even tried to hide the fact that you’re here for one reason and one reason only. Agents. Pfft.”

He feels her shuffle again, and she leans forward, so that her mouth is right next to his ear. “Don’t react, the cameras are watching. I do actually know why you’re here, and I’m willing to help you. But do not blow my cover.”

Lan Zhan remains very, very still.

A thousand different scenarios flash through his mind. The strongest possibility is that she is only saying this in order to make him comply, and bring him somewhere for a full interrogation, and possibly worse. There is also the possibility that she is saying it so that he will relax enough for her to kill him and dispose of his body and keep her own cover intact, if in fact she is not part of the Wen corporation. The only thing that leads him to believe that she could be telling the truth is the fact that she has not killed him yet.

“Prove it,” he murmurs.

“What?”

“Prove that you’re going to help me.”

She is quiet for a long moment, then sighs, and leans in even closer, so that her hair brushes the back of his neck. “Fine. Wei Ying says you’ve got a lovely roundhouse kick.”

His entire body goes tense. She must feel it; she chuckles softly and sits up. “That’s what I thought. Alright, Agent Lan, you’re coming with me.”

He does not move. She knows Wei Ying. She knows Wei Ying by name, not as the Yiling Laozu, not as anything. As Wei Ying. Wei Ying has told her about him, apparently. Wei Ying thinks he has a lovely roundhouse kick.

“Hey,” she says, pulling his hands behind his back as she stands, and giving him a gentle kick for good measure. “Come on, big boy.”

He lets her drag him to his feet, still mostly in a state of shock, and rotate him until she can grab the gun and press the cold barrel of it against his neck. It sends a prickle down his spine; the automatic reaction of being a single trigger away from death. He ignores it. She knows Wei Ying. Wei Ying has told her he has a lovely roundhouse kick.

She leads him up the stairs and out into the floor above. The corridors up here are white and sterile. If her lab coat is anything to go by, they must be in one of the parts of the building used for chemical weapon production. His brain is fuzzy with shock and still trying to piece together the full picture of what is happening. He cannot recall the layout of the building.

“We’re going to my office,” she whispers, in that same voice that she had said Wei Ying’s name in. “I’ll explain everything there.”

Lan Zhan jerks his head in a nod, and wonders where Wei Ying is now. If she is working with him, has she been involved in the handing over of the hard drive to the Wens? Her coat and the fact that she knew the guard he killed and has an office are making a strong case for her working here. Does that mean that Wei Ying—?

They seem to be making a very roundabout trip. Lan Zhan keeps his eyes open, trying to clear his mind enough to forge a mental map of where they’ve come from, to notice camera locations and other exits. The fact that she can just walk him to her office with a gun to his head and that no one has come to stop them yet is either slightly alarming or very concerning. Lan Zhan feels comfortable with neither. Perhaps she is not taking him to her office at all, but to somewhere a lot more dangerous—

She reaches around him to open an unassuming door and shoves him into a small room furnished with a desk and small couch and singular potted plant. A narrow window looks out at the building across the street. There are picture frames on the desk.

“Alright,” she says, slamming the door behind her. She steps away from him, but keeps the gun in her hand, going around her desk. “Well. This has changed plans a bit, but I’m sure we can work with it.” She sighs again, sitting down, and opens her laptop, placing the gun on the wood beside her where it can be grabbed at a moment’s notice. When he remains standing, she sighs again, and gestures towards the couch. “You might as well sit down.”

He does so, reluctantly, still very much alert in case she calls for guards or is only keeping him here long enough for someone else to come and take care of him. But she isn’t, is just looking at something on the screen instead, and he lets a tiny droplet of ease slither down his back.

“Who are you,” he asks, after too many moments have passed, and she glances up at him, her features pale blue in the light of the screen.

“Wen Qing. Yes, a Wen. No, not that sort of Wen. Well, not in spirit, at least.” She returns her attention her screen, and breathes out an oh, fuck at what she finds there. “Look. We thought you might be here this evening—trust me, I have learnt far more about you than I could ever want to know—but really, I did not expect that I would be the one running into you. Things weren’t meant to happen this way. And it’s gonna be fine, but if you have any more weapons on you, now might be a really good time to get them out—”

“What?”

“Ah, shit. We have approximately fifteen seconds before Wen Chao and his bastards burst through the door.”

Lan Zhan is on his feet in a moment, the knife from his belt buckle flicked open and ready between his fingers, and Wen Qing stands and trains the gun on the door. He doesn’t realise quite how quickly his pulse is racing until the door flies open with a kick and she starts firing.

He springs into action, tackling one of the guards advancing through the door as Wen Qing drops and rolls under her desk. He’s a buff guy, but Lan Zhan has mastered the ideal combination of speed and well-placed power, and knocks the gun from his hand before he has time to react and turn it on him. Lan Zhan twists the same hand behind his back and spins him around to use as a human shield, backing up against the couch. Two bullets thud into the guard’s writhing chest, the shock of them knocking back into Lan Zhan, and he stumbles and falls onto the couch.

God, this office is tiny.

Three more guards are crowding into the room, and Lan Zhan throws the dying guard’s body at one of them and spins out of the way of the other, flicking his knife across his stomach as he goes. It meets a hard resistance. Fuck.

Two shots fly past his ear and explode the plaster in the wall behind him, and Wen Qing shouts. Something knocks into his arm. Lan Zhan’s vision usually goes crystal clear in a fight. Right now it is blurring.

He glances down, and sees red seeping across the fine white Italian cotton of his jacket, and thinks, ah, I’ve been shot.

Another yell, and something hits him in the back of the head, and then he doesn’t think anymore at all.

-

Lan Zhan is certainly in hell.

He must be; it is the only explanation for the furious heat of pain that is coursing through his body, starting somewhere to the left of his chest. His arm? Does he have an arm? His head is pounding like a bass drum. He is not sure if he can open his eyes to check. He inhales, sharply. Flames flicker across his chest. He thinks he might be sick, the sudden wave of nausea that comes over him; he sways forward but something is holding him back. Ah. Round his chest. Restraints.

He reassesses the situation: he may not be in hell, but it seems he has been caught, by the people who are very much Wens in spirit as well as in name.

“Try again,” someone grunts, and there’s a hair’s breadth of notice before something shocks across his face with a sting, knocking his jaw aside. A slap.

“I think he’s waking up, boss,” comes another voice. Lan Zhan takes another ragged breath. There’s a laugh that is not a laugh.

“Look at you,” sneers a third voice, a familiar voice. Lan Zhan feels like he might be able to open his eyes soon, and he knows who he will see when he does. Wen Chao. “The perfect Hanguang-jun. Beaten up and bloody.”

Then something presses into his arm, right into the centre of the pain, and Lan Zhan’s eyes fly open as he gasps. The world is a blur, lights and shadows, someone standing over him, others nearby. He is seated opposite a—window? The lights of Hong Kong glisten neon red and blue in the night, casting a soft glow across the backs of Wen Chao’s crowd of overarmed groupies. Wen Qing is not in his field of vision. Wen Chao himself very much is, sneering, and—ah. Yes. Pressing the end of a shiny golden handgun into the wound just above his elbow.

Fuck.

“Does that hurt, Hanguang-jun?” he taunts him. He leans in closer, breathing right into Lan Zhan’s ear. The chokingly artificial scent of his cologne, over-applied and sweet, is almost strong enough to cut through the haze of pain flooding his skin, the throbbing of his skull. “Does the great jade pillar of morality actually feel pain?”

Lan Zhan presses his lips together and does not react. He needs to focus, needs to get his brain working enough to process what is happening and how he’s going to get out of it. Jingyi and Sizhui must be well aware that he’s in trouble by now, but the urgency of the mission means that the nearest Lan agent that could provide backup is hours away somewhere in the Hunan province. By the time any sort of help could arrive it would be far too late. He is in this alone.

“Tch,” Wen Chao scoffs, moving away from him. “You’re really just as frigid as they say you are.” He turns on his heel, and when he faces Lan Zhan again, his face is laced with disdain. “I know why you’re here,” he says. “You agents and your arrogance. You think you can just sweep in and destroy months—years of work. For some moral code of honour. Well, not tonight.” He nods, and two guards come and untie Lan Zhan from the chair, rebinding his arms in front of him, pushing him to his knees. His jacket is nowhere to be seen, but his shoes are still laced with garottes. His sleeves are still cuffed with mini explosives. More narc pills are still safe in his bowtie.

Wen Chao laughs, and flicks his chin at something behind Lan Zhan. “Laozu,” he says, and Lan Zhan’s stomach jolts, shocks right through his sternum, nauseating. “Why don’t you come and show our esteemed guest just what we think of him?”

Then the pain in his arm and the throbbing in his head and the swirling of his guts doesn’t even matter anymore, because Wei Ying—the Yiling Laozu appears beside him at Wen Chao’s order, and he was right, he was right, the Wens have the hard drive because he gave it to them, and this is what happens when you let your heart lead you instead of your head and you trust when you shouldn’t and you end up tied to a chair in Nightless Tower with a bullet wound in your arm and the pieces of your heart scattered like the lights across the window—

The Yiling Laozu stops in front of him, looking just as he always does, wild and dangerous and drop dead gorgeous. His eyes—Lan Zhan cannot understand what he sees there, whether it’s fear or derision or pain or something much worse like regret. He presses his lips together. There is no smirking grin now.

“Well,” Wen Chao says, and Wei Ying closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath, and kicks Lan Zhan in the chest.

It slams through him, knocking him to the ground; he knows how the Yiling Laozu fights, knows the amount of force he can put behind a hit, behind a kick. Lan Zhan has taken his fair share of blows from him. This one hurts the most.

“Ha,” Wen Chao says. “Do it again.”

A pause, during which he barely manages to scrape his eyes open, then there’s another blow, this time to his gut, and he lets out a gust of air against his will. Wen Chao is still laughing. “Good! Good. Show him what he’s worth. Really mean it.”

“Yes, sir,” breathes the Yiling Laozu through gritted teeth, and Lan Zhan—there is a moment, in which he thinks he hears something, but then there are more kicks, more awful blows, to his chest and stomach and legs and side. He rolls with them, unable to stand, unable to defend himself, and Wen Chao guffaws at the sight.

“Huh?” Lan Zhan hears through the haze of red slowly descending over his conscious thought, as the Yiling Laozu lands another boot to his ribcage. “What the fuck? Yes, tell them we’re coming. Fuck. Laozu, keep going. Don’t stop until he’s nothing more than a bloody rag. You! Stay here and watch the exits.”

Running feet, and Lan Zhan manages to squint his eyes open enough to watch Wen Chao and another person leave. He spits onto the cold floor in front of his face. It tastes of iron and salt.

There’s more running, and chaos, and then there’s someone on top of him and a hand in his hair and Lan Zhan’s eyes fly open to find Wei Ying’s face barely inches above his own.

His pupils are blown, adrenaline and fear and something else totally indiscernible. There is wetness in his eyes, too. His breath is coming just as fast as Lan Zhan’s. In another situation—

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying breathes. “You have to fucking trust me.”

Ah, shit.

“I know I really do not appear at all trustworthy right now and I know you know about the hard drive and I know you probably do genuinely want to kill me, but just this once.” He’s talking fast, the words running together at such a pace that Lan Zhan has to focus to keep up. “Just this once, choose to trust me, please.”

Lan Zhan takes another ragged breath, still staring up at him, and Wei Ying’s eyes slip closed, his brow softening into something altogether gentler, and when he opens them again Lan Zhan can clearly see the tears that are glistening there, even through the haze of pain blurring his vision. “Lan Zhan, baby, please. I can’t let you die here.”

There is something in his voice that hooks around the shards of Lan Zhan’s heart like a net, gathers them up together into something resembling an organ, a tumbled mess of hurt and love and desperate desire, and holds them tight in his chest. He nods, and Wei Ying’s face slackens.

“Okay. Good. When I let go—Toronto?”

Toronto. The thirteenth time. They’d only just made it out with their lives, but it had been a hell of a fight.

“Toronto,” he breathes in agreement, and Wei Ying grins, presses a fast, hard, hot kiss to his forehead, and releases his hair.

And all hell breaks loose.

Lan Zhan rolls as Wei Ying leaps to his feet, reaching for his shoes and pulling the quick release on the laces until he has one taut between his hands. Wei Ying is clearly armed; there are shots ringing out behind him, and he stays low. A guard is running towards the door, and Lan Zhan manages to scramble to his feet in time to tackle him, pin him to the ground and get the garotte around his neck. He struggles, but there’s a new energy coursing through Lan Zhan’s veins, and he yanks them both to their feet, swinging the guard round to receive a shot from across the room. Wei Ying is in a similar grapple, and they shuffle together until they’re back to back, one half-dead and one writhing guard as human shields, and the moment they’re pressed together and working in a seamless defensive unit, Lan Zhan feels alive.

The grappled guards are both downed with speed, and Lan Zhan grabs one of their guns and just about manages to aim at two more who are heading to the doorway; one falls, the other he misses narrowly.

“Alright,” Wei Ying gasps behind him, “time to get physical.”

Lan Zhan drops his guard and threads his arm under Wei Ying’s shoulders in one seamless movement. The adrenaline washes over the pain of the wound, and then Wei Ying kicks off the floor and Lan Zhan launches them towards the nearest guard in a spin and there are gunshots and thuds of boots on flesh and crunching bones and he loses himself in it, lets the cold silence of battle focus wash over him and lead him through.

Cold silence, and Wei Ying.

They are a perfect team, he muses as he darts out from a blow and sends the guard reeling in Wei Ying’s direction. In synchronisation like ice dancers. He garottes another and spins him so that Wei Ying can implant a bullet into his head. Exquisite choreography. Eye-catching composition.

And then, all of sudden, the room is quiet.

Lan Zhan drops the guard with a heavy thud, and stops. The only sounds are Wei Ying’s hard breathing and his own to match it. The air reeks of blood and metal. The floor is littered.

And there, cast in red and blue and green neon, is Wei Ying, battered and sprayed, and grinning like he is made of sunlight.

“Hey, Lan Zhan, that was pretty good, yeah? The Toronto move was so neat, the double human shield thing, and when you helped me air-kick, oh my god, and you just had a garotte shoelace? Which I should have expected probably, but trust Wen Chao to not search you properly, god what a piece of dickweed, do you have any idea—”

Lan Zhan grabs the front of his shirt, and because there is nothing else he can do, he kisses him.

Wei Ying makes a surprised noise into his mouth, but responds with enthusiasm. His lips are hot and a little bit sweaty and very much flavoured with blood, but he has never tasted better, and it has never meant more, and Lan Zhan still doesn’t know the full picture, but—but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care, because all that matters is Wei Ying, and Wei Ying kissing him, and Wei Ying looking at him with eyes that can only mean one thing, and he doesn’t care.

God, it’s a good feeling to finally admit it.

He kisses him with such fervour that they stumble backwards into the window, thumping against the glass, and Wei Ying gasps into his mouth and runs a sweat-slicked hand down Lan Zhan’s chest and slides it around his waist and presses them together, and fuck, they could just go for it right here, right against the window, fuck Wen Chao and his guards—

Ah. Wen Chao and his guards. Ironfist. The hard drive. The auction. The mission.

Lan Zhan detaches himself with significant difficulty and rests his forehead against Wei Ying’s. Their breath mingles hot and fast in the space between them. Wei Ying’s hands twist into the front of his shirt, holding him there, and Lan Zhan takes a moment to just be.

“Wei Ying, you—”

“Lan Zhan, I—”

They both laugh softly, and Wei Ying presses a tiny peck against his lips. “You first.”

Lan Zhan moves back so that he can look at him properly, soft and gentle in the glowing light. His eyes are open, asking, and Lan Zhan takes a deep breath. “Wei Ying, you do not have to explain if you do not want to. I know—I know there are some things that you do because you have to do them.” I know that better than anyone, he thinks. “But whatever your reasons are, they do not change how—how I feel about you.”

Wei Ying’s hands tighten in his shirt. “You feel about me?”

Lan Zhan closes his eyes to make it easier and nods. “I have. For a long time.”

Wei Ying pulls him in, presses their foreheads together again, and breathes against his mouth. “What do you feel about me, Lan Zhan?”

There is nothing that Lan Zhan does not feel about Wei Ying. Frustration, desire, fury, devotion, passion, affection. A large portion of the time, uncontrollable lust. But right now—right now—

“Everything.”

Wei Ying is quiet. Lan Zhan opens his eyes and pulls back to look at him. “Wei Ying?”

“Wait,” Wei Ying whispers, eyes still closed and head bowed, and holds up a finger. “Just. Let me. When you say everything, you mean—?”

“Everything. Everything in my heart. Belongs to you.”

The hand in Lan Zhan’s shirt loosens and tightens several times. Wei Ying’s brow creases and uncreases. He inhales deeply. “You. Um. Holy shit.”

“Mn,” agrees Lan Zhan, and strokes a finger down the side of his jaw, gentle. “It is true.”

“Yeah, fuck, I know you don’t lie, you Lan bastard.” Wei Ying pokes him weakly, and opens his eyes. “Okay. So—I do not have, like, words right now, and to be honest I think the adrenaline is messing with my processing functions, but oh my god, Lan Zhan, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, I love you too.”

Lan Zhan’s stomach erupts into a cloud of glitter, and he cups Wei Ying’s jaw, and kisses his love right back at him.

Wei Ying is the one who drags them apart this time, and pushes Lan Zhan back a little. “This is real romantic and shit, but we need to stop Wen Chao from doing—whatever it is he’s doing.”

Yes. Right. The mission. The reason he is here. “Yes. Let us go.”

They grab guns and ammo, and Wei Ying roughly tourniquets Lan Zhan’s arm, and he reties his shoelace and finds his jacket discarded in a corner and dusts it off and feels slightly more human again.

“Cool,” says Wei Ying as they burst out the door and into the hall. “So, this place is teeming with guards, but the only ones who know I don’t actually work for them are currently dead in that room. So if we run into anyone, I’m taking you prisoner.”

“Cameras?”

“Oh, we don’t need to worry about the security system,” Wei Ying tosses casually at him, skidding to a stop in front of the elevators and slamming the up button. “That’s the one thing that’s gone right this evening. Well. Sort of.”

Lan Zhan nods. There are so many questions, but whether now is the right time to ask them is fairly obvious. “I have an assault rifle stashed in the supply closet on—”

“Floor 36, yeah, I know.”

The elevator doors ding, and they get in. “How do you—?”

Wei Ying grins at him. “I stashed it there.”

Lan Zhan takes a moment to process this. “Nie Huaisang—”

“Yeah, had an inside guy. Hi, that’s me. The mole. Or one of the moles. It’s been a whole thing, actually.”

“Agent Nie?”

“Oh no, he’s just been the contact with the other agencies. Mostly it’s just me and my crew. You met one of them—Wen Qing? Yeah, they took her off somewhere else, so if we could work finding her and Wen Ning into the evening’s agenda that would be great actually.”

“Uh.”

“Yes, long story, and the elevator’s nearly there. The hard drive I gave them is a fake designed to download all of the Wen data and then implode their systems. The plan was to set it off tonight when the auction completes, but things have gone a bit apeshit, so we’ll just see what happens. We’ve been working to get into their good books to get it in place for months. Hence.” He gestures at himself rather vaguely, and then the door dings again. “Oh, we’re here!” Wei Ying exclaims brightly.

They are indeed on floor 36, and Wei Ying leads them confidently down the corridor until there’s the sound of approaching voices and he grabs Lan Zhan by the back of the neck and puts a gun to his head. Lan Zhan slumps.

Two guards round the corner. “What—”

“He’s on his way up to Wen Xu’s office,” Wei Ying says happily. “Wen Chao was finished with him, turns out they’re passing him round for everyone to get a kick in? Lan agents, huh. Bastards, the lot of them.”

“Right,” says the guard. He looks at his colleague, and they both look back at them, and Lan Zhan lets out an only-slightly-forced whimper, and they step closer. “Maybe we could—”

“Ah, sorry,” says Wei Ying, neatly sidestepping them and pulling Lan Zhan with him. “Pretty sure he’s close to being gone. Wouldn’t want to get Wen Xu a corpse to knock about, would we?”

The guards seem to take the hint, and Lan Zhan watches with something akin to amazement when they turn and continue down the corridor. Wei Ying releases him and slips the gun back into the holster on his thigh.

“You are,” Lan Zhan starts, and wets his lips. “Very hot when you turn your charm on like that.”

“Oooh,” says Wei Ying. “Do you like it when I schmooze about beating you up, baby? Want me to tell you just how hard I would let all my evil crony friends kick you?”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says sharply. He starts down the corridor, feeling the heat fill his ears. “It will not be me who is being hit,” he mutters, and Wei Ying gasps in delight beside him.

“Lan Zhan! Is that a promise?”

He deigns to ignore him. They reach the supply closet.

The assault rifle is well hidden behind several large containers of bleach, and Wei Ying fumbles around for some extra clips of ammo and straps them onto his belt. “I’ll take it,” he says. “You’re a better shot than me with handguns, and you know how I like to go in guns blazing. Ain’t no better way to do it than with a big old AK.”

“Hm,” agrees Lan Zhan, somewhat reluctantly.

“Alright,” says Wei Ying, propping the gun up on his hip and grinning at Lan Zhan with delight in his eyes. “Activate the phony drive, implode the systems, grab Ironfist, find the good Wens, and blow the lab up for good measure. All in a night’s work.”

“All in a night’s work,” repeats Lan Zhan, and kisses him to seal it.

They run back to the elevator, and Wei Ying slams the buttons with enough force that Lan Zhan thinks he might break them. “Alright. The Wens are really classically evil in that they do actually have a big like, evil storage facility for Ironfist with a multi-storey drop below it and glass and lights and everything—very Star Wars. I think you’ll like it. The fake hard drive is already installed on their system, so all I need to do is press go in the control room up there, and you grab the serum, and boom, two jobs in one. I also worked out how to rig it to self-destruct when the systems implode. I’m a very efficient mole. Digging my little holes. Spraying mud about. God, what an analogy. It’s been a long evening already.”

Lan Zhan is feeling a little stunned by the amount of words Wei Ying has managed to produce since they fought, but he has to admit that it is also very sexy of him to transform his adrenaline into telling him all the ways he has made his mission so much easier for him. Very sexy indeed. If—when they make it out of this, Lan Zhan is going to fuck him very hard about it.

Fuck. Maybe the adrenaline is getting to him too.

“So the cameras,” he says as the elevator begins its ascent once again, and Wei Ying nods.

“Yep. Wen Ning has taken out the entire building’s security system. He managed to get a message in to Wen Qing but then they realised and grabbed him and I guessed grabbed her and you too. Luckily for us, he was smart enough to encrypt everything before he got caught, so the only way they’re gonna get back into their systems is by keeping him alive.” Wei Ying leans against him, eyes gleaming. Lan Zhan feels a prickle of arousal shiver down his spine. Later, later, later. “Only thing is that when they do, I’ll have already destroyed all of the contents, and there won’t be anything there.”

Lan Zhan has definitely got a competency kink. Oh, god, he could just sit and listen to Wei Ying tell him about all the ways he’s hacked and planned and wheedled his way into the Wen corporation all night. Not that he needs anything more to attract him to Wei Ying, but.

The elevator stops, and before the doors open, Wei Ying takes a deep breath. “Lan Zhan,” he says, and looks at him. There is a seriousness behind the excitement gleaming in his eyes. “If we don’t make it out of this, just know—I’m glad it was with you.”

They are going to make it out of this. They are the two best agents in the business, and they are going to make it out of this. But Wei Ying’s sincerity pangs at his heart with cold claws, clenching around it in a fist. Together. Whatever happens, together.

Lan Zhan nods. “And I with you.” He pauses, glances at Wei Ying, and smirks. “Now let’s go kick some bad guy ass.”

Wei Ying lets out a whoop of delight, and launches himself out of the elevator, guns blazing.

-

Lan Zhan is hot, and tired, and slick with sweat and blood and whatever else, but he is alive. Wei Ying is at his side, and they have blasted their way through more enemies than should be possible for two agents with no backup to spare between them, but he is here and they’re together and they’re in love. Oh my god, Lan Zhan thinks as he puts another bullet through a guard’s head. We’re in love.

Wei Ying had not been wrong when he’d said the Wens were very classically evil. It is cartoonish, almost. Incredibly unsubtle. Lan Zhan likes to think that were he the designer for an international arms dealer/mafia/crime gang, he would have at least chosen to make the building a little less over the top sci-fi villain.

“Alright!” Wei Ying yells beside him, kicking another guard out of the way into one of the big glass screen banks. He lands with a crunch and Wei Ying shoots him again for good measure. “That was the last of ‘em. Let’s get the program going.”

The control room had been nothing less than brimming when they’d arrived. At least twenty guards, all heavily armed. Lan Zhan’s shoulder is aching from the backlash of firing so many times. His injured arm is still mostly numb, but once the adrenaline drops he knows it is going to hurt like hell. He follows Wei Ying over to a big control desk and covers the doors while Wei Ying disposes of the body curled over it, then flings himself into the swivel chair with ease.

“Cool cool cool,” he says. “Alright. So Wen Ning should have left me a window—oh yeah, there we go, perfect. Nice. Past the encryption. Alright, fuck. Where did I save this thing.”

He continues to mutter away to himself as he types. Lan Zhan moves to circle the perimeter of the room, checking for other entrances. It is huge, and circular, the rows of desks and screen banks circling around a hologram table in the centre, casting the room in soft blue light.

Wei Ying’s muttering dies away. Lan Zhan glances at him, but it’s only to see Wei Ying frowning at the screen with his bottom lip caught between his teeth in concentration. The room is deathly quiet. Something tightens in Lan Zhan’s chest, something uneasy, something that tells him everything is not quite right.

“Okay!” Wei Ying exclaims. “Done.”

“Done?”

“Yep! We have… 13 minutes and 47 seconds before the data fully downloads, then the system implodes, and the Ironfist mainframe explodes. Give or take depending on megabytes per second. Lots of plosions. Let’s go, babe.”

He flings himself out of the chair, grabbing his gun, and Lan Zhan follows him to a door opposite the one they came in through. Unease continues to coil in his gut, spreading into the gaps left by the adrenaline, slicking tarry and heavy into his limbs. He remembers Wen Chao running out of the room he’d woken up in, thinks that he has not seen him at all since that moment, that if he knew something in CR headquarters was under attack there would be no other place he would be—

“Wei Ying, wait—”

But Wei Ying has already wrenched the door open, and it's too late.

The room beyond is not a room but a—a space is the only way to describe it. It is, just as Wei Ying had said, so Star Wars that Lan Zhan briefly wonders if the Wens have not completely copied the film design. Open to the night sky above, and cavernously dropping away hundreds of feet to the glass ceiling of the reception hall below, it’s right out of an 80s spaceship. The walls are white steel, embedded with lines of light that throw a pale glow over a narrow bridge extending towards the centre of the space. There, right in the middle, a structure hangs from huge, over-engineered supports, white and metal and sleek mechanics, meeting the platform in the centre of the bridge in a glass sphere, inside which he can only imagine—

Ironfist. A single vial, hanging weightlessly in the space. The Wens’ greatest weapon, right there, ready to be taken.

And in front of it: Wen Qing and another nervous-looking young man on the floor with guns to their heads; the two guards, holding said guns; Wen Zhuliu, huge and beefy and stone-faced; and Wen Chao, smiling sickly and aiming a pistol directly at Lan Zhan’s head.

“Do not move,” he says lazily.

Lan Zhan complies, hovering in the doorway. Wen Qing’s eyes flick between him and Wei Ying, and a look that can only be described as tired resignation settles over her face. The man next to her—Wen Ning, he presumes—is wide-eyed and staring right at them.

“Well,” Wen Chao continues, keeping his gun trained on Lan Zhan. “Yiling Laozu. You really thought we’d let you get away with you little ploy, huh? Trying to steal what’s ours right out from under our nose? Bringing your little Lan boyfriend in on it?”

Lan Zhan knows now is not the time or place to react to the word boyfriend. But he reacts to the word boyfriend. Very positively.

“Wen Chao,” Wei Ying says through gritted teeth. “Let them go.”

Wen Chao laughs. “Wait, let me think about that very convincing argument.... No.”

“I am warning you,” Wei Ying breathes.

“Ooh, the terrifying Yiling Laozu, out to get me,” Wen Chao mocks him. Then his face hardens into a derisive sneer. “Move one fucking inch and all three of them die.”

Wei Ying goes very, very still. Lan Zhan can feel the tension pouring off him, rolling in waves through the air, wound up tight tight tight like a spring. Like a spring, ready to unleash in the breadth of a moment.

“Alright,” Wen Chao sneers. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to slide your gun out towards me, then you’re going to put your hands in the air, and then you're going to walk over here and Wen Zhuliu is going to show you exactly what happens to people who betray our trust.” He turns his gaze on Lan Zhan, and his leer widens. “And you are going to stay right there and watch it happen, or you’ll be getting a bullet through the skull. Everyone understood?”

Wei Ying scoffs, and Lan Zhan’s heart thumps, and he can feel it in his mouth. There is real danger here. He knows exactly what Wei Ying is going to do.

“Hm,” Wei Ying muses. “Could you maybe repeat that part about me, er, coming quietly?” He grins, and glances at Lan Zhan. “We all know that I never come quietly, don’t we, babe?”

Thump thump thump, goes his heart. His skin feels hot. “Mn.”

“Right,” says Wei Ying, and then he turns back to Wen Chao. “Go!”

Lan Zhan ducks and rolls back behind the cover of the door before the word is even fully out of his mouth, tucking his limbs in as several gunshots thwack through the doorway and into the desks and computers of the control room. He takes a single moment, during the ear-deafening burst of Wei Ying’s automatic rounds, to catch his breath and check his cartridge, and then he leans back out of the doorway and into the fray.

Wei Ying must have opened up fire onto the guards with guns to the Wens’ heads; one is hanging halfway off the platform, and the other is fleeing along the far bridge towards a closed door. Wei Ying gets him in the back just as he reaches it and he crumples against the metal.

Lan Zhan lines up a shot at Wen Zhuliu, fires, hits. Stomach. He’s still standing. He fires again, and to his dismay, Wen Zhuliu takes absolutely no notice of it, and starts advancing towards them along the narrow bridge. Wen Chao laughs, darting behind the casing holding Ironfist, and shoots wildly at Wei Ying.

“You idiots!” he yells. “You really think we would send a weapon to auction without testing it first? He is invincible, you morons! Eight times his regular muscle strength, high on steroids, and no pain receptors! You lose!”

He ducks to hide behind the framework as Wen Zhuliu continues his advance, raising a hellish-looking automatic rifle, and Lan Zhan thinks he’s somewhat immature and very much incorrect.

The other Wens have scrambled to their feet, and Wen Qing grabs the gun from the guard hanging off the barrier and starts firing at Wen Zhuliu. There is blood from a head wound dripping down her face; she misses each shot, until the magazine is empty. Behind her, Wen Chao has grabbed Wen Ning. Lan Zhan hides behind the door frame as Wen Zhuliu opens up a spray of bullets. Wei Ying grunts in frustration and launches his AK aside, darting back into the doorway with Lan Zhan and shooting him a worried look.

“Shit,” he gasps, and Lan Zhan nods. “Thought that would be easier.”

Lan Zhan pulls him further back from the door; Wen Zhuliu starts laying a steady spray down into the place where he had been standing. “Stay low,” he says. “We need ammo.”

“Yeah, Lan Zhan, I know we need ammo. Fuck.”

He scrambles away from him, but the nearest body is several feet away, and Wen Zhuliu is still firing and there is no way he is going to get to it without getting caught with a shot—

“Wei Ying!” Lan Zhan calls, scrambling to his feet after him, and then the spray stops, and he turns, and Wen Zhuliu is right there in front of his face. Ah.

Wen Zhuliu’s expression does not change. He lowers the rifle, draws a hand back, and brings it swinging into Lan Zhan’s gut before there is even time to react.

It is like being hit by a truck, except very much centred in one location, and very much fist-shaped, and very much punch-the-fucking-life-out-of-you-shaped. Lan Zhan is suddenly weightless, and realises he has been thrown through the air only moments before he hits something, and his head goes back. There’s a crunch. He tastes acid in his mouth, and the lights blur, and then they disappear altogether.

Meaning comes back to him in fits and starts, jolts of light and sound, and Wen Ning is shaking him with urgence, blood in his mouth.

“Hanguang-jun,” he says, “Mr. Hanguang-jun, sir, please wake up—”

“‘M here,” Lan Zhan gasps, and every breath is painful, “Wei Ying—”

“Wen Zhuliu—I saw what he—Wei Ying and I snapped his neck—are you alright—”

“Where’s Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan gasps, and he can’t even get his hand up to Wen Ning’s shoulder to help himself up, god, it’s like every muscle in his body has given up. “‘M fine—Wei Ying—Wen Chao—”

“They’re fighting.”

Wen Ning stumbles to his feet, and drags Lan Zhan with him, and he crumples almost immediately into his shoulder. “Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan gasps.

They stumble out of the control room and onto the bridge, and Ironfist is there, unharmed in its case, and Wen Qing is on the floor not moving, and Wei Ying is flat on his back on the bridge while Wen Chao kneels on his chest and beats the life out of him, and something feral and nasty and deadly erupts in Lan Zhan’s chest.

He stumbles forward, away from Wei Ning, and launches himself at Wen Chao, injuries and possible organ failure and helpless muscles be damned. He lands on his back with a grunt, getting his arms around his neck. He feels like a child squabbling in the playground, completely uncoordinated, but Wei Ying is bloody and unresponsive and Wen Chao just won’t stop—

Lan Zhan yanks him backwards, lands on the bridge, and rolls.

Wen Chao scrabbles at him for purchase, fingers slippery with blood—with Wei Ying’s blood—

Lan Zhan meets his eye, and pushes him over the edge.

It feels like an age passes between the crazed fear of his eyes passing out of sight and the crash into the glass ceiling below. Lan Zhan’s heart stops. Everything is thick with blood, and pain, and urgency, and then—

Wei Ying. Wei Ying, who is currently spreading blood all over the clean white of the bridge.

“Fuck,” Lan Zhan gasps, and scrambles over to him, landing almost on top of him and immediately pulling his head into his arms. “Wei Ying. Wei Ying, please.”

“You’re suffocating me,” Wei Ying mumbles. Something unlocks in Lan Zhan’s chest—he’s alive, he’s okay, he’s here—and he pulls back to look at him. One of his eyes is almost hidden behind swollen skin, the other bloodshot; his grin is lopsided. “Hey.”

“Wei Ying—are you—”

“I’m fine. Or like, as fine as we could be.” Wen Ning rushes past them to check on Wen Qing, and Wei Ying’s good eye follows him. “Such shit luck that they’re here,” he says.

“What?”

“13 minutes and 47 seconds, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, as if he’s reminding him about the weather. “Now, uh—”

He checks his watch, and his eyebrows raise lazily. “Huh. Three minutes and eight seconds. Cool. Cool.”

Three minutes and eight seconds until—

“Wei Ying! We can, come on, let’s—”

Lan Zhan tries to pull him to his feet, tries to pull himself to his feet, but his legs are cotton wool and his arms are jelly, and they both end up further slumped onto each other.

“Hey,” Wei Ying breathes. Lan Zhan can see Wen Ning pressing something against Wen Qing’s head wound right next to the Ironfist framework which is about to explode. And kill all of them. “Hey.” Wei Ying taps the side of his cheek, drawing his attention. “It’s okay. I don’t mind. I’ve got you.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says weakly. He cannot—not when he has only just got him, he cannot lose him—they cannot die here, not like this, not like this, not like this—

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying murmurs. “It’s okay.” He drags his fingers across Lan Zhan’s jaw, and rests the tips of them on his lips, and looks at him with eyes that are full of peace. “It’s okay. Look at me.” His smile is crooked, blood-stained, but genuine; Lan Zhan’s heart aches with it, thinks that if this really is the last thing he will ever see, at least it is the shape of Wei Ying’s face, of his gentle affection, seeping through the gory cracks of the mask he has been hiding behind for so long. He traces Wei Ying’s smile, watches his gaze flit away upwards, towards the ceiling. Watches it turn to hazy surprise.

“Oh,” says Wei Ying. “Would you look at that.”

He’s staring up above their heads, and Lan Zhan follows his gaze, and sees—

White Lan uniforms. Descending towards them.

Maybe they have already died, and this is some sort of mockery of the afterlife?

Then Lan Sizhui lands on the bridge next to them, and he decides that he is either going completely insane, or he is the luckiest man alive.

“Hanguang-jun!”

He strides over to them, eyes bright with excitement and nerves. Lan Jingyi lands behind him, followed by another young man in yellow Jin training gear, and another in dark blue. “Hanguang-jun! I am glad to see you alive—”

“—Of course we knew you would be,” Jingyi jumps in. “We’re here to help though. And we picked up Zizhen and Jin Ling from the Jiang junior agency training week that was happening this week because they were the nearest people we could find who would help, hope that’s okay—”

“We can explain all this to Hanguang-jun, later, junior agent,” Sizhui says, showing remarkable patience. Lan Zhan thinks that were they not all about to be blown to hundreds of pieces, he would consider mentioning to his uncle that he is ready to complete his junior training, but then again—at least thirty seconds have passed since they landed, and Wei Ying’s three minutes and eight seconds are quickly ticking away—

Sizhui crouches down to pull him to his feet. “Come on,” he says matter-of-factly. “We’re going now.” Lan Zhan is not entirely sure what is going on, but then Sizhui has a harness in his hands and is pulling Lan Zhan away from Wei Ying and fastening it around his chest.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” he says. The others spread out and begin putting similar harnesses on Wen Qing and Wen Ning, Jingyi pulling Wei Ying into a sitting position with a look of awe.

“Lan Sizhui,” says Lan Zhan. Every square inch of his body is screaming with pain. “What is going on.”

“We’ll explain in the chopper,” Sizhui says, and hooks a cord into the front of the harness. “According to Jingyi’s calculations this place is gonna blow in seventy-three seconds, so.” He checks the cord, and clears his throat. “Excuse me, Hanguang-jun,” he says, and then fully wraps his arms around him, and there’s a jolt, and they lift off from the ground.

He sees Wei Ying and Jingyi lift off behind him, the Wens and junior agents Zizhen and Jin Ling follow suit—he recognises them, vaguely, thinks that they are likely friends of Sizhui’s and Jingyi’s from the junior agent joint training program—but his brain still feels fuzzy, and all he really cares about is the fact that Wei Ying is being drawn up through the air alongside him, lolling in his harness and Jingyi’s grip, and flashes him another bloodied smile. Lan Zhan’s heart is doing alarming things in his chest, trying to cope with the still-coursing adrenaline of fighting and then the weary acceptance of death in Wei Ying’s eyes and now the deus-ex-machina appearance of his junior operatives to save them from that death—

They speed upwards, away from the bridge and the blood and Ironfist in its extravagant display frame. He can hear Sizhui keeping a steady count in his ear as they rise up, up, and then out through the open roof and into the bright darkness of the Hong Kong night—

“Four, three, two, one. Boom.”

The explosion ripples up through the building towards them, fire and flames and red hot heat. He wonders if the bottoms of his shoes will melt. They swing on the cord. Wei Ying, hanging limply with Jingyi, is lit up golden in the light of it.

Then there are hands under his arms, and he’s being hauled bodily onto the floor of a chopper, and there are voices and colours and more chaos but all that matters is—

Wei Ying. Grinning at him across the metal floor, face bloody, eyes soft. Alive, and his.

Lan Zhan does not mind the effort it takes to tilt his lips at him in return. Anything, he thinks. Everything. He will give him everything.

-

The medical wing of the CR headquarters is sterile and lifeless and soul crushing. The windows are kept most blinded, and voices hushed, and footsteps gentle. Lan Zhan is kept mostly in his bed.

It has been a week since Nightless Tower; it will take several more for his bullet wound and ruptured spleen and broken ribs to heal. He is glad that he has been taught patience, even though he does not always enact it. It certainly comes in useful in times like these.

It particularly comes in useful when Wei Ying is sitting at the end of his bed, still-healing scar slicing through his eyebrow and yellowing bruises on his chin and neck. His grin is contagious. Lan Zhan can feel it bubbling in his broken chest. He’s fire in a frozen world, and Lan Zhan wants to pin him to the wall and let him warm every single inch of his skin. His patience might be useful, but Wei Ying has been flirting with him from the adjoining bed for the past week, and it is beginning to wear thin.

“Come up here,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying chuckles, shuffling up towards him carefully. Technically, Lan Zhan is being dismissed today. His patience is wearing very, very thin.

Wei Ying settles on the bed beside him and folds Lan Zhan’s hand into his own. The backs of his knuckles are scarred. Lan Zhan gently runs a thumb over one.

“Hey,” Wei Ying whispers.

“Hey,” Lan Zhan replies. He brings Wei Ying’s hand up to his mouth to kiss it. “How did it go?”

The air goes out of Wei Ying’s chest, and he curls closer against Lan Zhan’s side. “Eh. Pretty sure your uncle still thinks I’m the devil incarnate, but he agreed to not have me incarcerated, which is pretty cool of him, I guess. I made sure I gave him the correct and genuine hard drive, don’t worry. And your brother’s chill. He said I could use the CR training gym whenever I wanted.”

“You can use all of CR,” Lan Zhan says.

It had been the first thing he had requested when he’d awoken from surgery: protection for Wei Ying, and support from the Lan agency. At the time he hadn’t even known about Wei Ying’s little rogue band of his own, his little set up—in a cave, of all places, terrible wifi and hard beds. Wen Qing his researcher and fixer, and Wen Ning on tech and ensuring that they stayed off the databases. All three of them had infiltrated Nightless Tower thanks to Wen Qing’s contacts in the scientific department. They were in the medical wing when he first moved in. He doesn’t know where they’ve gone.

“Don’t give me too much permission,” Wei Ying teases him. “I’ll be in here every day, corrupting your little juniors, teaching them about hacking and the dark web.”

“They already know about hacking and the dark web.”

Wei Ying huffs. “Yeah, well, I’ll teach them better.”

Lan Zhan kisses the back of his hand again. “Of course you will.”

They both go quiet, painfully aware that if not for Lan Sizhui’s steadiness and Lan Jingyi’s quick thinking, they would not be here. Lan Zhan had heard the full story after coming round from surgery—the panic after his radio had stopped, the hacking into the systems enough to watch what was going on, to discover Wei Ying’s plans—Lan Jingyi suggesting they get in touch with their friends from the Jiang junior agent specialist training week, happening not two miles down the road—Jin Ling’s quick reply, his appearance with junior agent Zizhen from the small Ouyang agency, in a helicopter piloted by his uncle, of all people—

Said uncle, Agent Jiang, had stood at the end of Wei Ying’s bed and stared for a long time, that first night after Lan Zhan’s surgery and before Wei Ying’s. He hadn’t said anything, just looked. Wei Ying had been fast asleep, wrapped in bandages and medical tape, and he’d just watched him. Silent. And then, when the lights in the ward had started flickering on one by one for the morning, he had reached out, and ever-so-gently touched Wei Ying’s ankle under the covers. And then he had left.

Lan Zhan has questions. He knows now is not the time to ask them.

“You’re getting out later,” Wei Ying says, a teasing lilt to his voice. “Got any plans for your first day of freedom?”

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says, pretending to think, his lips still against Wei Ying’s knuckles. He nips one, very very lightly, careful of the healing cuts. “I have some ideas.”

“Oh, do you, gege?” Wei Ying leans in, breathes hot in his ear. “Would you like to share with the class?”

He pushes Wei Ying’s hand back into his chest, moving him back slightly. He has many ideas—touches and kisses and words and finally, finally having the time to take Wei Ying apart, slowly and achingly, overflowing with emotion and tenderness, the way he has never been able to every time they have previously fucked. He wants to make him cry from the intensity of it. He wants to make his name the only thing to leave Wei Ying’s lips, to tear him apart and painstakingly put him back together, to learn every facet of him, of his body and his mind and his enormous, self-sacrificing, loving heart. His plans have a name, and that name is—“Wei Ying. You know I only want to spend my time with you. Now that I have you, I will not let you go again.”

Wei Ying’s face softens, his smile sweet. “You’ve got me, Lan Zhan,” he murmurs. “You’re not going to lose me.”

“No,” Lan Zhan agrees. He pulls Wei Ying to settle carefully against his side, and wraps their bruised hands together in his lap. He would hold them forever. He will hold them forever. From now on, he will have Wei Ying, and Wei Ying will have him, and that burnished, dangerous thing that burns in his heart and that had put everything at risk—finally, he accepts it, and lets it see the light of day. It has the shape of Wei Ying’s smile. It has the sound of his laugh. It has the aching vulnerability of Wei Ying whispering I love you too awash in neon lights and blood, of asking him to trust him with tears in his eyes, of a beat-up grin on the floor of a helicopter.

He turns his head, meets Wei Ying’s there, and kisses him, and seals them together with more than simple words.

But sometimes, simple words have power too, and so he whispers them soft against Wei Ying’s lips: a promise.

“No. I don’t intend to, Wei Ying.”

FIN