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Lan Zhan has brought flowers. He’s nearly-certain that flowers are a reasonable starting place - only 'nearly' because his brother had just about teared up when Lan Zhan had asked him for date-gift advice, and they’d both been too awkward to continue the conversation. Lan Zhan hopes that Wei Ying likes flowers.
If Wei Ying doesn’t like flowers, Lan Zhan really doesn’t know what he’s going to do with himself, because he doesn’t think that he can, emotionally, steal the cutlery from a restaurant, no matter how much it would make Wei Ying laugh. Physically, he’s certainly able. Morally - that’s a more complex question. If the cutlery brings Wei Ying more joy than it brings the restaurant, it stands to reason that Wei Ying deserves the fork-and-knife set --
“Lan Zhan!” Echoes across the park, and Lan Zhan’s head jerks to face it, like a flower tilting towards the sun. He clutches the flowers maybe a little too hard. Wei Ying is smiling. His hair is in a high ponytail, slightly lopsided, and he has paint on his clothes. On his elbows. A smudge, high on his jaw.
Lan Zhan is combusting, actually. He offers Wei Ying the flowers seriously and Wei Ying beams ever-more-sweetly.
“For me? Lan Zhan, you shouldn’t have! I didn’t bring you a gift at all.”
“Mn. - Wei Ying’s presence is gift enough.” Oh, God, why had he said that? He regrets everything in his life that has brought him to this point.
“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, too sweet! You’re too sweet. Keep being that sweet and I’ll have to kiss you, and you’re so laced up you’ll blush right to death, I know you will.”
“Hhm,” Lan Zhan says in lieu of denying it, because lying is forbidden. He does feel like he’s going to blush to death, though, given the way his blush localizes, it promises to be very messy and unsightly. “You look nice.”
It’s an understatement - Wei Ying looks transcendent. He’d probably look that good wearing just about anything, though, so Lan Zhan’s not actually giving his fashion any credit. He’s just wearing jeans and a tank top in the summer warmth. He looks like someone who eats ice cream.
Lan Zhan, masochist that he apparently is, would love to buy him some ice cream. Wei Ying would look really, unfortunately good eating ice cream.
“Lan Zhan," Wei Ying scolds seriously, “No compliments, or I’ll keel over, I really will.” He shifts the flowers into his elbow and loops his pinky finger around Lan Zhan’s - possibly in deference to the heat, possibly because he thinks that Lan Zhan feels the need to keep their… relationship? Acquaintanceship? Slightly more subtle in public.
He could not be more wrong. Lan Zhan would like to push Wei Ying onto the next patch of grass and roll around with him until they’re both muddy and Wei Ying’s smiling at nothing but Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan has a lot of feelings associated with Wei Ying.
Only about 15% of them are focused on petty larceny, which he feels is a relatively good record, all told. 0% of them are focused on the Earth being flat. That’s even better.
Lan Zhan laces their fingers together properly and Wei Ying swings his hand, grin going so bright it’s sparkling. He’s a little flushed. It is phenomenally cute. It chases across his cheekbones and down his jaw, a little bit, which makes Lan Zhan think that he maybe blushes everywhere. This is the best and worst thing he has ever thought about in his life.
They walk slowly around the park, looking for a place to sit that’s mostly out of the sun, and Wei Ying points out the couples that pass them and makes up increasingly unlikely stories about how they’d met.
“He’s an international jewel thief,” He says to Lan Zhan in an undertone, indicating a man jogging past with no fewer than six dogs attached to his belt. “And the woman following him is a private eye with a personal stake in the case.”
The next pair, he decides are a couple of fae, looking to explore the mortal realm. Lan Zhan considers how ordinary they look and thinks that if he had to pick the fae in the park, it would almost certainly be Wei Ying.
“That pair is, uh -” Wei Ying’s eyes flick to a pair of young men who are fighting over a frisbee, occasionally throwing it much too hard so the other has to chase after it, swearing. “Uh -”
“An archduke and his bodyguard,” Lan Zhan says evenly, and guides Wei Ying out of the path of another stomping frisbee retrieval. “Introduced as children, certainly in love with one another, but with no way to express it without risking their personal and professional relationship.”
Wei Ying stares at him for a long moment before wheezing out a laugh that’s so sincere it’s nearly silent. “Lan Zhan, what the fuck. You’re so funny. You should be a novelist, I want to read that.”
“It lacks a plot but has eight sex scenes, each approximately four pages apart.” Lan Zhan tells him serenely, settling into the rhythm of teasing genuine smiles out of Wei Ying. It’s very, very easy. That’s what makes it so satisfying.
“How long are they, Lan Zhan? Are they juicy?”
Lan Zhan contemplates this. He considers how he would write a sex scene, which he would absolutely not, and contrasts it with the way he imagines Wei Ying would, which is with an absurd amount of onomatopoeia and gratuitous uses of sort of squishy adjectives.
“No,” He decides, and pulls Wei Ying into the shade of a tree. He has to let go of Wei Ying’s hand to flip the blanket out, but that just means that he can pick it up again once they’ve both sat. Well. Lan Zhan sits. Wei Ying sprawls. “No, each of the sex scenes is as dry as a bone. Like a science textbook.”
“Science textbooks are very sexy, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says with the sort of big, sincere eyes that mean he’s being ridiculous. Wei Ying has a face like an open book. It’s very cute. “I’ve actually -” He cuts himself off, going pink all the way up his forehead.
Lan Zhan feels his mouth twitch in a smile that he can’t quite stop. “No, go on,” He encourages blandly. “You’ve actually -?”
“Don’t, don’t, I don’t even know what was possessing me - shut up, Lan Zhan, stop laughing at me. Don’t bully your Wei Ying.”
Lan Zhan doesn’t freeze, but that’s because he’s got very fine control over all of his motor skills. His what. Don’t bully his what? His - Wei Ying. His Wei Ying.
“Would not laugh,” He decides is the safest option, the middlest of all the roads. Wei Ying sighs a noise and starts to take apart his bouquet. Wei Ying, Lan Zhan has noticed in the few times they’ve met since that not-disastrous date in a restaurant that neither had any desire to go back to, always needs to be doing something with his hands.
In the restaurant, he’d fidgeted with the napkins, the spare fork, the tablecloth, the button on his shirt cuff, and the packets of sugar that the waiter had brought out with the coffee for dessert. Lan Zhan doubts he notices - he seems to do it entirely absently and unconsciously. Lan Zhan doesn’t want to bring his attention to it in case he stops.
The bouquet is taken apart, each component piece of it set into its own individual pile, and then Wei Ying slips one of the larger, statement flowers - a ranunculus - into Lan Zhan’s hand.
“For you,” Wei Ying says very seriously, and then taps Lan Zhan on the nose in a display of familiarity so intimate it makes Lan Zhan feel a little bit insane. Lan Zhan twirls the stem between two fingers and then tucks the ranunculus behind his ear, making sure that the stem is entangled far enough into his hair that he won’t lose it.
He’s going to press it between the pages of one of his heaviest books later. Wei Ying doesn’t have to know that, but he’s going to, regardless.
Wei Ying busies his hands again and starts asking Lan Zhan about his day, about how he spends his time when they’re apart. Lan Zhan is a relatively busy person, but he can’t think of a single thing that’s more interesting than listening to Wei Ying talk about - about nearly anything else, and he says so, just to watch Wei Ying blush.
“You’re too much,” He says, setting down a couple of flowers with bent stems so he can press the backs of his fingers to his own cheeks. “You’re making me blush, it’s so ugly. Shush! No more compliments.”
Lan Zhan doesn’t agree, but he does tip his mouth up on one side in a smile, so Wei Ying may think that he does.
The conversation pivots naturally to Wei Ying’s work, his art, his sculpture. He is the sort of artist that Lan Zhan’s uncle would really, truly dislike. Lan Zhan’s uncle cannot stand modern art, and Wei Ying’s art is tremendously modern.
“Oil on canvas,” He’s saying, “Huge. And then I dip myself in paint and do a cartwheel.”
“Messy,” Lan Zhan says, neither agreement or disagreement. “White oil on white canvas. Snow Ghost.”
Wei Ying snorts a laugh down at his hands and starts weaving another flower into the loop. Lan Zhan realizes that he’s making - something. A necklace? Some sort of chain. “That’s the most Lan Zhan art piece I’ve ever heard of. How do you make an oil painting sarcastic?”
“Call it the color series,” Lan Zhan muses, and touches the ranunculus in his hair absently. “Title them appropriately.”
“Blue oil on a blue canvas?”
“Reflection of sky on the ocean.” Lan Zhan agrees, warming to the subject.
“Black on black -”
“A wren’s shadow at midnight.”
Wei Ying wheezes and clutches a hand over his chest, shaking his head so hard the end of his ponytail sticks to the corner of his mouth. “You’re going to kill me, how are you so fast?”
“Would happily name all of Wei Ying’s art.”
“And have people think that it’s great until they realize, like, two weeks later that it’s sarcastic?”
Lan Zhan pauses and selects his words carefully. “They would not notice.”
Wei Ying’s laughter is bubbly and contagious. Lan Zhan’s mouth ticks up into a smile and he leans back on his hands, self-satisfied as he ever is. Wei Ying’s busy hands finish the base of the flower crown and start filling in the spaces with the flowers that had made up the fluffy parts of the bouquet, the soft peach roses and the greenery to pad it out. Lan Zhan watches a gift become something beautiful and preservable.
They talk at length about nothing of consequence, until the sun starts sinking below the horizon and turns Wei Ying’s skin, exposed by his tank top, gold and shimmering. Wei Ying looks up at Lan Zhan with his bright eyes and quick-silver smile and leans up on his knees, shuffling closer so he can drop the flower crown on top of Lan Zhan’s head.
“Beautiful,” Wei Ying names him, and Lan Zhan feels dizzy with the number of things that Wei Ying makes him feel. “I want to - can I take your picture? For my - my phone background.”
That’s so cute that Lan Zhan could - die. Implode. Become, simply, a tiny point of light quivering in the mass of the universe, entirely at peace with being someone that Wei Ying wants to take photos of.
“Mn,” He says, and arranges himself so the light is good. He doesn’t mean to smile, but it comes naturally when Wei Ying sticks his tongue out a little, to concentrate.
“Aah,” Wei Ying murmurs under his breath. His hands had slipped for just a moment. “One, one more, one second -”
Lan Zhan gives him as many seconds as he needs, and then takes his own phone out and sets it on his knee. He takes the flower crown off and gently transfers it over to Wei Ying’s head. His dark hair’s warm to the touch from being in the sun, radiating warmth like sunshine.
“The flowers were a gift for Wei Ying. It is only right he should keep them.” Lan Zhan says steadily, and then raises his phone to take a photo of Wei Ying’s flushing face. He understands, now, Wei Ying’s impulse to take as many snapshots as Lan Zhan would sit still for. Lan Zhan wants to fill his phone with memories.
They lose the light eventually and Lan Zhan walks Wei Ying back to his car, blanket draped over his arm and their fingers tangled together, a little overwarm in the humidity. Wei Ying sways forward, back, forward again, opens his mouth like he wants to say something, leans back again.
Lan Zhan leans down and kisses him, soft, on the corner of his mouth. “Drive safe.” He says, and walks away as quickly as he can to maintain his dignity.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying calls, and Lan Zhan is forced to turn around. He can feel his ears going hot. Wei Ying has his hand pressed just below his mouth, right where Lan Zhan’s lips had touched. “Thank you for the flowers! I’ll bring you something next time!”
Next time. Lan Zhan smiles.
