Work Text:
It starts at a charity auction where some of Xichen’s paintings are up for sale.
Xichen spots him first. There’s a familiar shape to his body, even from behind, that (to be fair) he shares with many of the other attendees. Slope shouldered, a beer gut that’s too genteel to be called a beer gut barely restrained by his bespoke tuxedo. He’s laughing with another patron Xichen vaguely recognizes. What draws his eye, though, is the way he’s leaning in a little too close over the patron’s pretty blonde wife, and the way she shrinks slightly under him. Xichen remembers that posture from before, when he used to attend these events as a bidder with his uncle.
He considers guiding a-Yao in the opposite direction, but his husband will notice the man’s presence eventually and resent Xichen trying to handle him. So instead, he squeezes a-Yao’s hand barely perceptibly until a-Yao tracks his gaze.
A-Yao’s smile immediately goes still and placid. “I hadn’t realized he had business in the U.S. this year,” he says, as mild as a weather announcer. “They must be considering expanding the Ohio operation.”
Jin Guangshan happens to glance in their direction, and then to Xichen’s horror he starts towards them.
“Do you want to go hide in the kitchens?” Xichen asks, more out of hope than belief it will work. “You can spill your champagne all over my suit as a distraction. I don’t mind.”
His husband stays rooted in place, as expected, but Xichen is rewarded by the slight exhale of his laugh. “He can’t be coming for us. I doubt he even recognizes me.”
He is in fact coming for them. He draws to a stop in front of them, and Xichen keeps his polite expression rigid in the face of the sinking pit in his stomach. “Meng Yao! It’s been a long time, my boy. And you’re one of the Lan boys, right? Lan Xichen? How’s your uncle?”
“Uncle is doing well, thank you for asking. He will be delighted to hear I saw you.”
“Well, well, that’s good.” He turns back to a-Yao. A-Yao’s nails are digging into Xichen’s palm hard enough they’ll leave marks. “I hear you’ve been doing well for yourself over here. Wen Ruohan told me all about the work you did for Buyetian Industries.” He claps his hand on a-Yao’s shoulder, and a-Yao’s eyes go a little glassy. “I guess Jin blood will tell, eh?”
A-Yao casts his eyes politely down. “If I am even a drop of credit to the Jins, I am honored.”
“Good, good. Well, maybe I’ll see you around, eh? Let me know if you’re ever in Shanghai.” And then he’s off into the crowd again.
“What the fuck,” Xichen’s husband says calmly, “was that about?”
Xichen wishes he had an answer for him. Instead, he lifts a-Yao’s hand to his mouth, kisses the backs of his knuckles. “Shall we call a cab? There’s not much worth bidding on, and we’ve paid our respects to everyone important.”
A-Yao glances at him low-lidded, a flirtatious grin creeping across his face. “I wouldn’t say nothing, gege. There’s an up and coming young artist on display here that I have a good feeling about. I think he’s worth the investment.”
Xichen smiles into his knuckles. “If you keep flattering him, you might get to see his handiwork up close tonight.”
They make their excuses to the organizer - family emergency - and leave within the half hour. In the cab home, A-Yao’s hand stays on Xichen’s knee the whole time as he stares out the window. Xichen covers his hand with his own and strokes it slowly with his thumb, feeling the tension keeping a-Yao as rigid as a live wire.
“We should have stayed,” a-Yao says. “This was your big night. I shouldn’t have-”
“There’s nowhere I want to be but with you.” Xichen slides an arm around a-Yao’s shoulders and he sighs, melting into Xichen’s side. “There will be other auctions. Hopefully with higher quality guests.”
A-Yao buries his face into Xichen’s neck. “You’re too good to me,” he murmurs.
Xichen presses a kiss into his hair, quick and light. “If I’m good to you, it’s only what you deserve.”
At first, Xichen thinks that’s the end of it. It is the end of it, for several more weeks.
***
Xichen’s husband is a consultant. He’s a very good consultant; he was one of the fastest people at his firm to make partner, specializing in US go-to-market strategies for Chinese companies.
It’s not unusual for a-Yao to work past Xichen’s bedtime, but most nights he makes a special effort to be home by eight so they can spend an hour or two together before he goes back to his computer. If he can’t make it, he sends Xichen a text to let him know not to stay up. There’s no text that night, and he might just be busy with his team, but something tells Xichen to stay up anyway.
A-Yao gets home at 11, already sliding off his suit jacket as he closes the door. Xichen is on the couch with a middling book of poetry written by one of their mutual friends, but he puts it down and stands up when he hears a-Yao come in.
A-Yao keeps his back to him, neck perfectly straight, but Xichen catches the tiny shake in his hand as he throws his jacket over the top of their coat rack.
“Baobei?” Xichen slides up behind him, wraps his arms around him. The trembling is full body and only growing, like a-Yao is a toy that’s been wound too tight and just released. “Everything OK?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t text. You should have gone to bed.”
“I think I definitely shouldn’t have.” Xichen tucks his head into the crook of his neck and catches a glimpse of his expression, lightless and stormy. “You remember, Harold said you should text when-”
“I know what Harold said.” A-Yao ducks his chin down. “I didn’t want to worry you. There’s no reason for you to get upset.”
“I want to know when upsetting things happen to you, baobei,” Xichen says gently. “I want to get upset when you’re upset, because I care about you.” He feels a-Yao physically flinch at that.
“Well. If you’re so desperate.” And he hands Xichen his phone.
The email came in at 2:12pm. It’s from a name Xichen doesn’t recognize, with an @jinlintai.cn email address.
Jin Guangshan will be in New York on business next Friday. Your time permitting, he would be honored to have you as a lunch guest near Jin Lin Tai Industries’ Hudson Yards office.
Nine hours. Xichen mentally replays the afternoon in his head - he’d been volunteering at Callen Lorde most of the afternoon, too distracted to notice his texts going unanswered. Not that it was unusual for a-Yao to be too busy to answer texts, but he should have expected at least a brief acknowledgement after meetings finished at 6. He should have known.
“It’s his fucking assistant,” a-Yao snarls. “He couldn’t even be bothered to send the email himself.” Xichen has never seen his husband cry outside of their bedroom, but there’s a telltale thickness in his voice on assistant.
“How did he get your email?”
“He must have guessed it. Or had his assistant guess it. All my firm’s emails are just first name-last name anyway.” A-Yao swallows. “I didn’t know he knew my English name.”
Xichen guides him by his shoulders to the couch. “Tell me what’s going through your head.”
“I just don’t get it,” he bursts out. “What does he want? Is he going to dangle a contract in front of me? Never mind that would be about eighty different kinds of professional ethics conflicts, I don’t know what we could possibly have to say to each other at this point after he made extremely clear to me that he wants nothing to do with me -”
“You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.” Xichen takes one of a-Yao’s hands in both of his. “You can ignore the email.”
“Too late.” a-Yao jerks his head down. “I told him I’d be there, and that I would be bringing my husband. Apologies, gege - I didn’t check first if you had plans.”
Xichen’s husband is hunched over beside him like he’s protecting his stomach from the kick. Not from Xichen - his husband does not fear him like that, Xichen knows. He did for many years, despite Xichen’s best efforts, despite how a-Yao loves him. Not out of evidence or reason, but because someone stitched fear into the fabric of his husband from the time he was just a child, and it has taken Xichen years to pick it all out.
“That’s fine,” Xichen says slowly, “I’ll go if you want to go. If not, you should cancel.”
A-Yao closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. Xichen watches his composure knit back together like the healing of a broken bone. “We should go. It’s good business for me even if nothing comes of it.” He swallows. “I think I would always wonder, if we didn’t.”
Xichen smiles at their clasped hands. “I understand. It’s your decision.”
It’s not surprising, he supposes. His husband has a higher tolerance for uncomfortable social events than almost anyone he knows; Xichen will survive it too, no doubt. Two gluttons for punishment, Wei Wuxian once said jokingly of them before an especially long dinner with some of the more conservative Lan extended family. Usually Xichen disagrees with him - there is almost always some pleasure to be winnowed out of an evening, some unexpected moment of connection or genuine kindness to hold onto. Right now, he is unusually sympathetic to Wei Wuxian’s position.
“Ah, gege.” A-Yao cups his cheek, his eyes gentle now. Xichen has always marveled at that, the way his moods move like wildfire through his face. The way the fire isn’t out, just tucked away in his husband’s gut, banked embers still glowing. “This is why I didn’t text you. I didn’t want gege to see me making a decision we shouldn’t tell our therapist about.”
Xichen’s lips twitch up a little more. “I was going to find out eventually, given you invited me along to lunch as well.”
“I could have told you we were meeting Mingjue for lunch instead,” he replies, chuckling. “You wouldn’t have found out until it was too late.”
A joke, but not a joke. A sign of progress, Xichen reminds himself. A sign that his husband trusts him, even if that trust is hard-won by inches.
***
They started seeing Harold seven years ago. A-Yao had been working constantly, and giving Xichen monosyllablic replies and distantly professional smiles whenever he came home. Xichen later found out that a partner he worked with had somehow found out about his mother and cut a-Yao out of his client list completely. It was only through chance and backbreaking fifteen hour days to win over new sponsors that a-Yao still scraped over the line for promotion.
Harold had insisted on a one on one session with each of them individually after their first meeting together. After Xichen sat, Harold looked him up and down and said, “are you ever angry with your husband?”
Xichen frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“A lot of people, if their partner had been ignoring them the way Yao has been ignoring you, would be furious. When you came into my office, you said a lot about how worried you were for him, that you thought your current communication styles were ineffective, all that. Nothing about how he hurt you.”
“He didn’t hurt me,” Xichen said, reflexively. ‘That is - I know he would never hurt me intentionally.”
“That’s not the same, is it?” Harold was looking at him with sympathy. The back of Xichen’s neck began to prickle. “Do you often have trouble expressing when you’re upset, Xichen?”
The long silence after that was an answer of its own. Xichen couldn’t make himself meet his gaze.
“OK,” Harold said finally. “Let’s start with something small. Let’s not think about your husband for now. Can you name something that made you angry this week?”
“I had a meeting with an art gallery,” Xichen said slowly. “To do a showing of my work. I had an email trail with them showing a certain price per piece, and then when the contract came up the prices were half what we had discussed. I had to walk out after hours of prep time.” The woman had sneered at him as he left, as if he was the one who had soured the negotiations. He could still feel the heat of her eyes on the back of his neck, the rigid grasp of his own self-control to keep walking. He had disappointed her, he knew, and the animal fear in hindbrain had not known that some people deserved to be disappointed.
“And how did that make you feel?”
Xichen shook his head. “It didn’t matter in the long run - there are plenty of other galleries, it wasn’t that much time, and… Money isn’t important, for me. I wasn’t in danger. Meng Yao -”
“Meng Yao isn’t here right now. How did it make you feel, when the gallery offered you half what they’d agreed?”
“It made me feel unappreciated.” The word tasted like hot iron on the back of Xichen’s tongue. He had to wrestle back the panic at hearing his own voice speaking that word aloud, at the internal chorus that burst to life in response. Ungrateful. Selfish. A gentleman knows a good deed is its own reward, and does not ask for more. “I’d started speaking with them as a favor to a friend, and I was… Upset, that he had not done sufficient diligence to ensure they were legitimate.”
Harold made an empathetic noise. “And did you do anything to act on those feelings?”
“No!” This time, he couldn’t keep the horror from seeping into his voice. “My friend isn’t an artist, so there’s no reason he would have known that not all galleries are trustworthy.”
“So you didn’t tell him what happened?”
Xichen shook his head mutely, staring at the neatly scrubbed hands in his lap. It really hadn’t been a big deal. Huaisang hadn’t meant anything by it.
“Anger is an important signal,” Harold said. “It tells us when there’s a wrong that needs to be righted. It gives us the tools to defend ourselves from people with ill intentions, or even people with good intentions who don’t know they’re hurting us. I think Yao knows this better than you - maybe a little too well.”
Xichen thought back to a-Yao’s junior year, when he got another student permanently expelled from their undergraduate business club for making fun of his second hand suit. “Perhaps.”
“But neither of you is good at expressing anger aloud. Not about what happens to you out in the world, and certainly not about each other.” Harold leaned forward in his seat. “Your husband has plenty to be angry about, but that doesn’t mean you don’t too. That doesn’t even mean you don’t have a right to be angry at him, sometimes. If you don’t vocalize that anger when it comes up, you’ll never be able to right the injustice.”
When Xichen wakes up at five the morning after Jin Guangshan’s email, a-Yao is still asleep. He’ll be up at seven to get ready for work, but for now it’s just Xichen and the bleary exhaustion of getting up too early after a late night.
He picks up an untoasted bagel from the kitchen and heads straight to his easel, grabbing one of his smallest canvases. They’ve converted the second bedroom in their Upper West Side apartment into a studio; Xichen loves how the light slowly fills the eastern windows as the sun rises.
Xichen thinks about anger, and he starts to paint.
Most of Xichen’s paintings are landscapes. They’re good for bedrooms and dens, lush with color, dreamy and relaxing. Xichen starts laying out the skeleton of a landscape in pencil, just the outlines of hills and trees.
He thinks about Jin Guangshan at the Harvard graduation of his two sons, how he’d pretended not to recognize a-Yao when a-Yao had come up to him. Jin Guangshan’s wife had been there, and the undisguised loathing in her eyes made clear that she knew who a-Yao was even if her husband didn’t.
He thinks about the dinner afterward at the Chinese restaurant right next to the Yard, just him and a-Yao and a-Yao’s aunts who weren’t his aunts. He thinks about the grainy picture of Meng Shi propped up on the bottle of hot sauce, and how a-Yao’s eyes kept flicking to it when he didn’t think anyone was looking.
He adds some buildings at the base of the hill, small and squat.
He thinks about the first time a-Yao woke up in their shared bed in the midst of a panic attack, not knowing where he was until Xichen coaxed him back to himself; a-Yao avoided him for days after that, a silent ghost in their shared apartment. He thinks about the subsequent times he heard the telltale hitches of breath beside him in the night and did nothing, honoring one of the few direct requests his husband has ever made of him. A-Yao did not relent and allow Xichen to hold him through one until well after they were married; that night, he had shuddered so hard his teeth had chattered against Xichen’s chest.
He picks up his palette and begins filling in color on the hills, dappled greens and grays.
He thinks about how when they first moved in together, Xichen found food squirreled away in odd cupboards and bookshelves, and a-Yao lied straight to his face and said the maid must have left it. He thinks about a-Yao packing a go-bag and disappearing after their first real fight; he hadn’t responded to any of Xichen’s texts or calls for three days, until Xichen had called the police, frantic with worry. He thinks about the four hour long argument that followed, just to get a-Yao to admit that he’d been scared Xichen would leave him.
He thinks about a-Yao working seventy hour weeks for six years straight to make partner, to prove that he was not only worthy, but unimpeachable, so flawless at his craft that any suggestions that he didn’t belong would be laughable. He thinks about himself, alone at home or out to lunch with Wangji or with friends he likes but does not love, always aware of the empty chair beside him.
He fills in the buildings, dark squares against the hill, then moves onto the sky.
He thinks about how lovely it is to meet the smartest, kindest, and most charming boy in the world working box office at your orchestra performance your junior year of college, to have him smile coyly at you and lead you back to his extra long twin bed, to talk for hours about art and literature and your dreams of the future, and then how fucking exhausting it is to spend the next fifteen years playing mind games just to get him to deal with his problems like a normal person because his father taught him he would never get anything good unless he lied, cheated, or broke his back for it.
The painting is complete. It looks much like the base layer of Xichen’s other paintings, perhaps a little rushed, except for the faintest hint of a storm in the distance, and an eerie yellow glow in the windows of the little buildings.
Xichen carefully pulls on the workboots that live in his studio - they’re not allowed in the rest of the apartment, just in case he tracks paint onto the hardwood floors. He’s committed a minor sin by not putting them on already.
Then he lifts the still-wet canvas carefully off the easel, props it on the floor, and kicks through it so hard that the frame snaps in half.
It takes a couple more stomps to break it into pieces small enough to go in the fireplace. It’s one of the old-world quirks about the apartment that made Xichen fall in love with it - these grand, traditional fireplaces in the bedrooms. He opens all the windows, fumbles with the carton of matches he keeps on the mantle, and sets the pile alight. The smoke is slightly acrid from the paint.
Afterwards, he slips off his work boots, heads back into the kitchen, and makes pour-over coffee from the small batch roaster a-Yao discovered during their long weekend in Seattle last year. He wakes a-Yao with a steaming cup and a kiss on the cheek.
***
The lunch is at Estatorio Milos in Hudson Yards. Xichen is resigning himself to a meal composed entirely of hummus, and a-Yao’s eyebrow keeps twitching involuntarily when he looks at the prices.
“So,” says Jin Guangshan, his mouth full of oyster. “When you said you were bringing your husband. I didn’t know you meant you were bringing your husband, haha.”
A-Yao lowers his eyes politely. “I’m sorry we did not inform you when we got married. It will be nine years in the spring.” He is holding Xichen’s hand on top of the table, prominently displaying his engagement ring nestled up against his wedding ring. It was Xichen’s grandmother’s, of a size that Xichen usually finds slightly gauche; a-Yao only wears it when he wants to make a highly pointed and specific statement. Xichen can’t blame him this time.
“Well, no harm done, no harm done. You know, my boy Zixuan is married. He’s COO now. The wife’s a lovely girl, too. Two kids!” He eyes the two of them. “That’s the real pity with your kind. It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. A man’s children are all he leaves behind, you know.”
Under the table, Xichen tangles his foot with a-Yao’s. The tip of a-Yao’s dress shoe rubs against Xichen’s heel in response. “Well, certainly you are excellent evidence of that,” a-Yao says, smiling.
Xichen is glad of his many years of practice at small talk, and for the compulsive politeness that a-Yao sets up like buttresses when he’s stressed. It takes all of both of their power to make it through to the reason Jin Guangshan invited them here.
“Look. Meng Yao. I told you last time we talked about Wen Ruohan. He told me you’re something of an expert in bringing Chinese products to the United States.”
“I have been fortunate to achieve moderate success in my field,” a-Yao demurs.
Jin Guangshan chuckles. “Fortunate indeed. What happened, did you tell them you were a homosexual in the interview process and threaten to sue them for discrimination if they didn’t hire you?”
Xichen’s husband got his job because he went through on-campus interviews at Harvard and got job offers from every major consulting firm. He got into Harvard because he got a perfect 1600 on his SATs and had a 4.8 adjusted GPA while working three part time jobs and living in a series of foster homes in Flushing. He specializes in go-to-market strategies for Chinese companies because he speaks flawless Mandarin and Cantonese and has a brilliant eye for cross-continent arbitrage opportunities, but also because he spent months in college staying up late, after doing all his coursework for his Summa Cum Laude economics degree, obsessively googling details about his father’s China-based consumer goods company and trying to brainstorm ways to make it more profitable.
“I am very grateful to my employer for taking a chance on an unworthy candidate such as myself,” Xichen’s husband says.
“Hm. Anyway.” Jin Guangshan leans over the table. “We’re looking to expand our Ohio operations. Bring more of our products to the US, and capitalize on the American made label. Wen Ruohan told me you were the man to do it if anyone was.”
Xichen’s husband’s face goes as still and shallow as a charcoal sketch. Xichen does not move a muscle, but the bottom drops out from his stomach. It is as if a narrow bridge has disappeared from under them, and now they are in freefall, his hand under a-Yao’s the only point of consistency.
Taking their silence for encouragement, Jin Guangshan continues. “We could bring you in as COO of the American operations. I’m sure you’d see plenty of opportunities for improvement. I don’t know what they’re paying you now but Jin Lin Tai can compete.” He leans back in his chair. “And at the same time… You haven’t been openly known as a Jin so far. Discerning folks like Wen Ruohan know it, but there hasn’t been a public showing for you. If you came into the family, you’d be part of the family.” He smiles slowly. “Jin Guangyao.”
“Jin Guangyao.” His husband tastes the name carefully; it does not seem unappealing. Xichen wishes, after all this time, that he could read him better, that there weren’t still situations where his husband’s bright mask of a face was as inscrutable to him as it is to everyone else. “Would there be further opportunities for development?”
“Further opportunities? Beyond Americas COO?” Jin Guangshan strokes his beard. “Yes, if you proved yourself. Success must be earned, even for family.”
Xichen glances between them, smiling. He is looking at Jin Guangshan’s face, trying to strip off the pale puffiness of age and a life lived poorly. He is studying Jin Guangshan’s eyebrows, which are thick and almost villainous, the same sharp slashes as a-Yao’s. For all they do not look alike, the relationship is unmistakable - not just in those few physical features passed down, but in their matched intensity. A-Yao has certainly inherited that assessing gaze, as if Jin Guangshan can break them down into component parts to be refined and resold. He has inherited Jin Guangshan’s little flicker of satisfaction at seeing his words have an effect on them, winnowing out their unspoken moments of vulnerability. Xichen thinks a-Yao may one day wear his power that easily, like an heirloom fur coat, as if he was born to it.
He is trying to imagine if this is what a-Yao will look like in thirty years. It seems unlikely. Would that be less tolerable than him staying so beautiful, but growing more like this man on the inside, bent out of shape like a tree struck by lightning?
“You have given me much to think about,” a-Yao says. “I am honored by your consideration.”
“Of course, of course. First prize is always family.” Jin Guangshan smiles, and a-Yao smiles back, and Xichen surprises himself by wanting to snuff the warmth in that smile out like a candle under his thumb.
A-Yao suggests they walk home. It is a nice enough day, and both of them enjoy the exercise when they can get it. He says nothing about going back to work.
“Well? What do you think?” A-Yao asks just above Port Authority.
“Hm.” Xichen does not want to look over at his husband. “Do you want to leave your current job?”
“It would be nice to try something different. I haven’t done anything else since starting my professional career. And I wouldn’t necessarily work less in a corporate role, but I would have more control over my time. Fewer surprise late nights.”
“But more trips to China.”
“Indeed. But you’ve been wanting to try painting more traditional Chinese landscapes - you could come with me.”
“I could.” He doesn’t want to look at a-Yao’s face because he doesn’t want to see the carefully neutral expression there. He doesn’t want to see a-Yao pretending that he’s really considering what Xichen has to say, when he has likely already made up his mind and is just deciding how to spin it.
A-Yao’s fingers tangle up in his. “Gege. Will you look at me?”
Xichen comes to an abrupt stop. The pedestrian traffic on 9th Avenue immediately begins to split around them like rocks in a stream. He looks at his husband.
A-Yao’s eyes show nothing but concern. “Won’t gege tell me what’s wrong?”
Xichen sighs. “He’s your father, a-Yao. I can’t tell you how to handle him.”
A-Yao purses his lips. “Let’s go home.”
At home, they remove their coats and scarves in silence. By unspoken agreement, they go to the bedroom and sit on the bed, clothes on. It’s always been easier in the bedroom, where there’s never anyone but the two of them to pretend for.
“You’re right. He’s my father,” a-Yao says, breaking the silence. “I only have one of those.”
“Of course,” Xichen says. “It’s not my place to speak on that.”
“I only get one chance,” a-Yao says. “He’s clearly just jealous because Wen Ruohan bragged about my work, and he doesn’t want other people having something nice that he could hoard for himself.”
Xichen stares at him in mute shock. It is clear that a-Yao thinks this is a point in favor of him taking the job.
A-Yao’s lips quirk when he sees Xichen’s expression. “I’ve done plenty of degrading things to get this far. What’s a few more? He’s old enough and taking poor enough care of himself that I may outlast him at Jin Lin Tai.”
Xichen shakes himself out of his surprise and tries to envision what it would be like to want this. He knows it is different for a-Yao - he has never felt the weight of a family name as Xichen has, only its aching absence. Xichen would not make this choice, but if a-Yao is considering it, he will need to wrap his mind around it. He will need to wear it down like the sharp edge of a jagged tooth, so it will not slice him open when a-Yao asks him to swallow it.
“You would be part of the family,” he says finally, not sounding convincing even to himself. “You’d likely ascend even faster than you would with Jin Guangshan still at the helm.”
“I’m not asking for you to make my own arguments back to me, Xichen.” a-Yao puts a gentle hand on his knee.
“Then what do you want?” Xichen is shocked by the intensity in his own voice. A-Yao takes the slightest of breaths. “It’s your decision, and I love you, and you’re going to decide based on your own counsel no matter what I say. It’s not worth the two of us having a fight. I’d rather you just feel supported.”
“I want your opinion because I value your judgment, Xichen.” A-Yao’s words are encouraging, but he’s not modulating his tone to his usual impeccable standard - there’s a slight air of scolding the disobedient child.
I don’t like watching my husband turn into the worst version of himself to appease a man he’s worth a thousand of, Xichen does not say, because he knows a-Yao will hear I need you to do a better job of pretending to be perfect for me, and then this choice will spiral out of control for both of them.
His own opinion, then. “I suppose I’m a little surprised,” Xichen says through gritted teeth, “that you are considering taking a job with a man who bombarded you with homophobic rhetoric, compared you unfavorably to your half-brother who drank his way to barely graduating, implied that you were not competent enough to advance through his nepotistic company on merit, and - let us not forget - spent the first thirty-five years of your life treating you with worse than neglect.”
A-Yao’s eyes flash. “It’s not - I don’t think he’s right, of course. I’m not a fool.”
“Then what is it, a-Yao? Help me understand.”
“I want to do it better than him,” a-Yao says quietly. “I know I can do better than him. To do it with his own company would prove once and for all exactly what I’m worth. I could take it all away from him before he even had a chance to react. He can’t dismiss it as luck or corruption then.”
That stuns Xichen into silence.
A-Yao smiles, only a hint of fragility around the edges. “You can tell me what you really think. Laogong won’t break just because you disagree with him.”
His hand is still perched on Xichen’s knee like it’s not sure it belongs there. Xichen would touch a-Yao every second of every day if he could - their fingers intertwined as they walk through Central Park, a hand at the small of his back as a-Yao chops cabbage for their evening soup, a-Yao pressed safely into his chest as they fall asleep. A-Yao returns his touches only sparingly, as if he has a limited supply of Xichen and might at any moment run out. Only worth breaking his self-control when he is desperate for it, when his well of sweetness has run dry and he needs another taste to keep him going.
When Xichen’s father died, a-Yao’s hand never left his. Not through the funeral, and not through the tense, horrible week that followed going through his father’s storage unit with Wangji and Uncle. After they found that first set of photographs, a-Yao held him as he sobbed and tucked him into bed and stroked his hair until Xichen slipped into deep, dreamless sleep; the next morning, Xichen woke up to find a new pile in the storage unit, a couple of file folders and papers stacked neatly to one side.
“Gege doesn’t need to look at these,” a-Yao said calmly, his arms wrapped around Xichen’s waist. “There’s nothing new there you need to know.”
He smiled so gently and treated Xichen with such care that day. Xichen had never seen his husband so still, so patient. He had never seen his husband so volcanically furious.
His husband is a master of the impeccably planned anniversary, of the breakfast made or the load of laundry done just when you have run out of the strength to do it yourself, of the perfect gift that you never knew you wanted but shocks you with your own delight when it is opened. After Xichen had recovered himself somewhat, he thought the matter with the photographs was similar. What a gift it was that a-Yao could see the feelings roaring toward him like an ocean wave, see that they would drown him with no hope of finding land, and simply step in front of them to swallow them whole.
A-Yao has such a carefully maintained well of anger - dug into himself slowly and methodically, bricked and mortared up tight on all sides, meting out only what he draws out with his own hands. There was plenty of space for Xichen’s old injustices in there alongside his own. The well runs deep. Xichen suspects he has never seen the bottom of it; perhaps a-Yao has not either.
They are deep in it right now, he realizes. So deep that a-Yao is refusing to move, to acknowledge they are breathing water instead of air, for fear of disturbing the currents and setting off a tsunami that would drown both of them.
This isn’t Xichen’s territory. Xichen doesn’t speak this language; he knows that is one of the things a-Yao loves most about him, akin to the way Xichen loves glimpses of a-Yao’s knife-sharp selfishness, his ability to discount the needs of those who have long discounted him. A longing for the thing he can never have, as embodied in another.
Still, having been invited in, he must be a respectful and considerate guest.
Xichen swallows. “I - well, I was thinking all through lunch what would happen if he choked on his branzino. If they hadn’t deboned it properly, perhaps. And how I might… sit there and pretend I didn’t take that CPR class in college.” He sees in his mind’s eye the purpling of Jin Guangshan’s round face, hears the choked, desperate little noises. He cannot voice these aloud, but he feels in the stillness of a-Yao’s hand that he sees it too, likely in more vivid color than Xichen is capable of. “You would be sitting there and watching him from across the table; Jin Lin Tai would collapse in the wake of its president’s death, and you’d get to watch that too. I thought you might find that… Satisfying.”
“And what about you?” A-Yao’s voice is low and rough. “Would you find that satisfying, gege?”
“I shouldn’t-” Xichen cuts himself off. This is safe, he tells himself. He’s not actually talking about anything happening in the real world. It’s OK if he wants to explore… Hypotheticals.
“I wouldn’t be looking at him,” he says finally. “I would be looking at you. How happy you would be. I would be thinking about how you never have to worry about what he thinks again. Instead of paying attention to his standards because they’re the only ones you can’t blow past without even trying, you could just keep going. Keep working at other companies and bringing them to the stars, until everyone who matters knows your name for your own sake, until he’s nothing more than a footnote on your Wikipedia page.” Lan Xichen’s lips twitch. “Under personal life, right next to ‘loving husband’.”
A-Yao is staring at him, slack jawed. Xichen buries his head in his shoulder to hide from his gaze. “It’s not important. You should just make the decision you want to make, baobei.” He takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of a-Yao’s neck, the faint smell of wet concrete from the walk uptown still lingering. “I support you no matter what.”
A moment, and then a-Yao’s fingers are in his hair, stroking. “Hm. I see.” He sounds distant, like he’s playing out scenarios in his head and is displeased with the results.
Xichen wraps an arm around him and takes consolation in the fact that this is what a-Yao sounds like when his mind is not fully made up.
***
Jin Guangshan’s assistant receives a polite decline of the job offer a respectable three business days after the lunch. Six months later, Meng Yao accepts a job at Jin Lin Tai Industries’ biggest Chinese competitor, as the COO for their American operations.
Two years after that, Jin Lin Tai shutters their American business entirely, in the face of a series of regulatory scandals and severe competitive cost pressures. Meng Yao is promoted to CEO of the Americas at his new firm. There are talks about moving him to Shenzhen, putting him on track to serve as chairman globally; he declines, citing his family’s desire to stay in New York.
After all, a man’s children should be the most important thing in his life.