Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng is well aware that you’d have to be a Grade A asshole to complain about having Wen Ning as a roommate, especially compared to Wei Wuxian. Wen Ning cleans up after himself. He respects Jiang Cheng’s chore chart. He doesn’t eat Jiang Cheng’s food, play loud music, monopolize the common area or have Nie Huaisang come over to drink until 3 AM and then pass out on the couch. Wen Ning is quiet, clean, considerate, easygoing, and surprisingly cool to hang out with.
The only problem—literally the ONLY problem—is that he’s always home.
9:43…9:44…9:45, at last. Not too early to plausibly go to bed.
“Well,” Jiang Cheng starts, closing his laptop, “Guess I’ll hit the hay.”
“Okay.” Wen Ning glances up from his textbook amiably. “Goodnight, Cheng-ge.”
Jiang Cheng takes his laptop into his bedroom. He sets it on the bedside table, then comes out again to brush his teeth. Coming out of the bathroom, he can still see Wen Ning sitting reading on the couch, the glow of a lamp reflecting warm on his face. He glances up again when Jiang Cheng comes out, and they acknowledge the eye contact with a mutual nod. Then Jiang Cheng goes into his room again and closes the door, listening to the sound of the latch clicking into place. There’s no lock on it, so this is as private as it gets.
Privacy. It’s something he came to take for granted during the period before Wei Wuxian officially moved out, the period when he was still paying rent on their apartment while spending nine nights out of ten—or more like twenty-nine nights out of thirty—with his new boyfriend, Lan Wangji. Even before that, their schedules were different enough that Jiang Cheng was home alone fairly often, and Wei Wuxian got his alone time, too. Then Wei Wuxian moved out, but not before lining up one of his friends, Wen Ning, to take over the lease. Wen Ning had been living with his sister, but she had moved cross country for medical school.
Wen Ning is a grad student as well, one year below Jiang Cheng. He’s in the South Asian studies department doing something about Buddhism and medicine that involves learning Sanskrit and a bunch of other impractical things. He does of course go to classes and so forth, but his schedule is really similar to Jiang Cheng’s, and he doesn’t seem to have much of a social life to speak of. Therein lies his only flaw as a roommate: he’s just always there. He’s there when Jiang Cheng wakes up, and he’s there when Jiang Cheng gets home in the afternoon, and he’s still there when Jiang Cheng goes to bed at night.
This is a problem for Jiang Cheng because, during that bygone era of blissful solitude, he developed certain habits. Like. Sex habits. For one thing, he leveled up his porn watching from free garbage (which was always jump-scaring him with gross stuff) to following a couple of paid-tier creators on a subscription website. With all the time and privacy in the world he also leveled up his corresponding, uh, “self care” routine to something a bit more elaborate, as well. It was very nice, he found, to spend a couple of hours on a lazy afternoon watching artisanal explicit videos and edging himself with his collection of nifty toys. And sometimes, of an evening, it was nice to put in a hefty plug when he got home, and wear it while he cooked and ate his dinner and then lazily play with it while zoning out in front of the TV. Or sometimes it was nice to just have a quickie with his favorite dildo and/or stroker whenever the urge should happen to cross his mind. He’s always had a high libido and a regular masturbation routine, but Wei Wuxian’s period of absence was the first time he realized how much he could enjoy himself.
But now Wen Ning is there. All the time. It’s hard to get fully in the mood when your roommate is just on the other side of a thin wall. You can’t disappear for half the evening and then slip into the shower all red-faced and sweaty—well, you can if you’re not a coward, but Jiang Cheng is a coward, apparently. It is cramping his style. He still masturbates, of course, but it’s quick and stealthy and just much less satisfying than what he’s become accustomed to.
On this particular evening, he’s looking forward to trying out a new item that arrived today. The unopened parcel is on top of his dresser, where he discreetly stashed it after bringing in the mail. He slices open the packing tape and opens the box as quietly as he can. The package inside looks nice, a tasteful white box with the logo of his favorite sex toy company on the front. Seeing the logo, he starts to feel a tingle of anticipation, even though he’s not going to be able to spend nearly as much time with it as he’d like to.
Next time he gets a new roommate—these are his thoughts as he breaks the seal on the packaging and opens it up carefully—next time, he’s going to interview all the potential candidates about their schedules and choose the one with the least overlap with his own. Maybe he can get someone who won’t be home at all—maybe someone who travels a lot for work, or maybe someone who has a secret boyfriend or girlfriend and just needs the appearance of living with Jiang Cheng so their parents don’t suspect. Yes. That would be ideal. Well, the real ideal would be to live alone, but with the price of rent and his grad student salary, that’s not likely to happen any time soon.
The item is fairly unassuming on the outside, just a metallic cylinder, a little smaller in diameter than a soda can, with three buttons on it in a vertical line. The company makes some others that are weirder looking, but he chose this one in part because its looks are plain enough that having someone else see it would be merely embarrassing rather than fatal. He glances at the little instructional sheet that came with the thing, sliding his hand into his pants to quietly stroke himself as he does so. He’s a little pent up from lack of opportunity, so it doesn’t take long at all to get hard.
Then he gets to the end of the instructions and sees the fateful words: Wash Before Use.
Well. It makes sense. He should have expected it.
Maybe he should take another stab at having sex with other people, he thinks, as he treks out to the bathroom again, angling his hips so that Wen Ning won’t see his boner. Like, he could go to someone else’s house, and…do stuff. With them. Eugh. It doesn’t sound good. Having a high libido doesn’t mean he wants to do that. He downloaded a hookup app at one point and got as far as chatting with someone before getting turned off by the whole thing. Having a stranger express interest in his body parts made him feel like a piece of meat about to be butchered. He wonders if he could get someone to invite him over and then just go out for a while and let him chill in their apartment with a wifi connection and a backpack full of personal items. Having someone jack off in your apartment when you’re not home—is that a kink? It wouldn’t be the weirdest one he’s ever heard of.
The metallic tube is split along its length and hinged at one end for easy cleaning. He flips it open and washes out the textured silicone interior with warm water and mild soap, like the instructions say, then lays it on a clean washcloth and washes his face so that he’ll have an excuse for being in the bathroom again. This time Wen Ning doesn’t look up when he comes out, so at least he’s spared that little bit of awkwardness.
A hundred times, Jiang Cheng has been on the brink of snapping at Wen Ning to give him a little space, for god’s sake. If it were Wei Wuxian, he’d have done it long ago, but something about Wen Ning makes him hold back. Maybe it’s because he knows that Wen Ning’s social anxiety makes it difficult for him to find another place to spend his time. Or maybe it’s that Wen Ning’s otherwise impeccable roommate etiquette feels almost like a challenge, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t want to lose by acting like a jerk unprovoked.
Back in his room at last, Jiang Cheng opens his laptop. His favorite creators, Axel and Jace, have a new video that he’s been looking forward to all day, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let Wen Ning’s presence keep him from enjoying it. He connects his bluetooth earbuds and puts one of them in his ear, leaving the other ear open for hazard detection. With a sigh of resignation, he arranges himself on his bed in such a way that the laptop screen faces away from the door and his private regions are shielded from view.
With everything finally in position, he logs in to the website. The new video is headlined “Short and Sweet,” which, unfortunately, fits very well with Jiang Cheng’s plans tonight. He presses play. It opens the way most of their videos do, with the two guys kissing passionately. Jiang Cheng doesn’t need that part but he does like it, partly because it gives him a chance to look at Axel, whose face isn’t usually on camera as much as Jace. Axel is a broad-shouldered, round-faced guy with a soft, hungry smile and warm eyes; Jace is more wiry, with a sharp jawline and dark brows that show everything he feels. He likes that they’re both Asian (of what ancestry the site doesn’t say, and their ridiculous porn names don’t help him guess). He also likes that their content isn’t super focused on fucking—which he actively dislikes—but more on toys and handjobs and other types of play. They feel natural together; he likes how they seem to be sincerely having fun even when they’re doing kinky shit for the camera.
Sometimes these guys do fancy setups with multiple camera angles and possibly even (Jiang Cheng has puzzled over it a bit in the past) a third person shooting video, but this particular one is just a basic handheld shot—maybe a cellphone—in Axel’s hand, which gives the shot a close-up, intimate feel. After the kissing, the camera pans down to show Axel’s hand guiding Jace’s on Jace’s dick, stroking firmly up and down. Jace is already very hard, as though they’ve been at it for a while, his face flushed as he glances up toward the camera, somewhere between defiant and yearning. After a few minutes of this, the camera moves back a little, as though Axel had knelt up between Jace’s legs, and then that big hand lets go of Jace’s stroking hand—giving it a little squeeze before departing, as though telling him to keep going—and dips down to press against—ah—the base of a toy in Jace’s ass. Axel massages the toy in rhythm with Jace’s thrusts, and pretty soon Jace gives a low moan and starts to come, his hand faltering on his cock as he squirts in time with the pressure on his prostate.
Jiang Cheng has watched all of this without touching himself. That gives him time for his arousal to return after all the fussing earlier, and he also likes to watch their videos through first so that he knows what to anticipate. There’s still a few minutes of video left after Jace comes, which is very intriguing, so Jiang Cheng waits to see what else will happen. As the last shocks of his orgasm fade, Jace’s legs relax and fall open, his hand still gently cupped around his spent cock. Axel massages his balls as they slowly relax. Then Axel starts pulling on the toy—Jace says something and Axel murmurs an answer, both too quiet to make out, and then Jace hisses as Axel pulls out the toy, which turns out to be a nice thick silicone probe, the kind with bumps that taper down to the end. His thighs twitch as it comes free, and then the camera lingers on him for a bit before the video ends.
Well. Getting aroused will not be a problem. Jiang Cheng is positively aching. He squirts some lube onto his dick and gets the new toy into position, then restarts the video. While they’re kissing he slides the toy down his cock, savoring the feeling of slow penetration, then strokes himself luxuriously while watching the rest, making good use of the three buttons to put pressure on different areas inside. He holds back so he can watch the video a third time, saving his orgasm for the shot of the toy sliding out, which is his favorite part by a mile. He’ll watch it again, maybe tomorrow, maybe with something in his own ass, which will be even better.
He only has a moment to savor the afterglow before there’s a knock on his bedroom door that makes him jump out of his skin, hastily jerking the bedcovers over his lap.
“Cheng-ge?”
Christ, his heart is pounding, this cannot be good for his health. He clears his throat. “What is it?”
Luckily Wen Ning is too well mannered to open the door if Jiang Cheng hasn’t said “come in.”
“Do you mind if I take your clothes out of the dryer?”
What the fuck, why is he like this? “Yeah, of course you can. Sorry, I’ll try to do it next time.”
“No worries!”
This is followed by silence (Wen Ning always moves so quietly) and then, more distantly, the sound of their laundry machine opening. Jiang Cheng takes several deep, calming breaths, and then carefully slides the toy off of his mostly-soft cock. Damn, wow, that was a good orgasm, though, for a quickie. Money well spent.
The only thing is, he now needs to go into the bathroom again, to pee and clean up. If he was the roommate of someone acting like this, he would definitely have questions. Wen Ning probably has questions, but, crucially, has the good grace not to actually ask them out loud. Jiang Cheng wipes himself off a bit, wraps up the toy in the washcloth, pulls up his shorts, and very casually and quietly leaves his room. The apartment is not large; across the kitchen he can see Wen Ning folding clothes. Fuck, folding his clothes, why is he doing that?? Jiang Cheng would tell him off immediately if not for the fact that he’s trying to avoid Wen Ning’s attention just now. He slips into the bathroom and does what he needs to do.
When he comes out, Wen Ning is standing right there, like RIGHT THERE in front of the bathroom door! Again, Jiang Cheng just about jumps out of his skin, clutching the washcloth-wrapped toy nonsensically to his chest.
Wen Ning smiles. “Oh hey! Sorry. Uh, here’s your clothes.”
And then there’s a moment…a moment when Wen Ning’s eyes track to the washcloth and the obviously cylindrical item that Jiang Cheng’s fingers are wrapped around. As Jiang Cheng realizes, with dawning horror, that it’s too late to put the thing out of sight, Wen Ning’s eyes widen just the slightest bit. Jiang Cheng braces himself for Wen Ning to blush or stammer or — something — but, somehow, it doesn’t happen. Wen Ning just smiles in a sort of soft, wry way, averts his eyes, and holds up the laundry basket like a peace offering.
Right. Clothes.
“Uh. Ok. Thanks.”
Somehow he takes the laundry basket without exposing the contents of the washcloth.
“Just text next time. And, don’t…fold them, by the way. Anymore. I mean, thank you, but that’s—I don’t want you to. Do that.”
Wen Ning blinks as though surprised, then nods. “Okay.”
“Okay. Well. Good night.” Jiang Cheng pivots and flees into his room.
“G’night Cheng-ge!”
Holy fucking shit, fuck, what the hell.
At least he doesn’t have to leave his room again until morning.
***
After that massively awkward Thursday, it takes a long time for Jiang Cheng to get up the courage to try again.
It’s not that he thinks Wen Ning would judge him for masturbating. Hell, Wen Ning must also do it--probably more often than Jiang Cheng does, since Jiang Cheng at least goes out in the evening sometimes! But Wen Ning seems so innocent, somehow, like he couldn’t possibly have any thoughts that are actually dirty, so how could Jiang Cheng be the one to sully him? He would feel like a weird creep if he had to explain that he has needs. And Wen Ning would be so nice about it if he did, would give him all the space he wants, probably on some kind of weekly schedule. He tries to imagine putting it on their wall calendar—“Wen Ning out,” it might say, or “Jiang Cheng’s alone time.” Ugh. What a horrible thought.
So for the next two weeks, he refrains. He still sometimes does turn in early, spending actual quiet alone time studying or reading or playing on his phone before going to sleep (or, at least once, turning off the lights and having a no-frills, unassisted wank to take the edge off). This way, he can preserve the option of going to “bed” early on other nights. But mostly he stays up with Wen Ning. Often they play cards; it turns out that Wen Ning knows a lot of two-player card games, most of which Jiang Cheng has never heard of. He says he used to have a lot of time alone with his sister, and they would play gin rummy or GOPS or Spite and Malice, all of which they learned from a book that Wen Qing had. They would also play the other games they found in their grandmother’s cupboard in L.A.—chess and weiqi and xianqi and checkers and backgammon, and shitty two-player mahjong, but sometimes if they were away from Popo’s house—with their Uncle, Jiang Cheng thinks he said—they only had a deck of cards.
He doesn’t know the whole story of Wen Ning’s family growing up and doesn’t quite have the courage to ask. Sounds like it was bad. The uncle might be in jail now? Wei Wuxian knows more about it. He’ll ask Wei Wuxian when he feels like talking to him again. (They’re sort of not talking right now. Jiang Cheng is giving him the silent treatment, just a little, to let him know his feelings were hurt by the whole moving-out-to-be-with-Lan-Wangji thing. Which is shitty of him, he knows. Their mom used to give people the silent treatment and it was awful. But it’s a language that he and Wei Wuxian have in common, thanks to her.) Wei Wuxian tried to tell him some of the background when he was pushing for Wen Ning to be his roommate, but Jiang Cheng had cut him off, protesting that it was none of his business. But now he’s starting to be curious.
Anyway, besides some pretty severe social anxiety, the spoils of Wen Ning’s bad childhood are this wealth of games for just two people. When they need a break from studying they break out the cards, sitting across from each other at the little dinette. Jiang Cheng likes playing with Wen Ning because he’s clever and because he, like Jiang Cheng, genuinely plays to win. Jiang Cheng has put off a lot of people in the past by being “too competitive” at games, like it’s somehow a bad thing to want to play well. But Wen Ning is just like him that way. He never shows mercy for the sake of sparing Jiang Cheng’s feelings. If he has the ace, he’ll save it up and play it when it counts, and Jiang Cheng will take the beating and like it.
It’s Thursday again. Jace and Axel have a new video out, a long one this time, for top tier subscribers only. Jiang Cheng works through dinner, shoveling up noodles with one hand and correcting O-Chem quizzes with the other. Wen Ning has an insane amount of reading for his literature class, so he’s just as far under, steadily ploughing through a thick book with his eyebrows pinched in concentration. It doesn’t look like the subject matter is too cheerful, but it must be really engaging, because his dinner is only half gone when Jiang Cheng finishes.
“Good night,” says Wen Ning, as Jiang Cheng stands to take his dishes to the sink.
“What?” he says. How did Wen Ning know that he—
“It’s Thursday, right? You always go to bed early on Thursdays,” Wen Ning says.
Jiang Cheng’s dish slips out of his hand, clattering noisily in the sink. “Ah. I didn’t know you’d noticed.”
“It’s pretty obvious.” Wen Ning pauses to slurp up a large bite of noodles. “It’s fine. You don’t have to be so secretive. It’s kind of funny though.”
“Funny? What’s funny? I’m not being secretive.”
“Having a schedule is funny.” Wen Ning, facing him across the kitchen table and the little bar that separates the dining area from the kitchen, grins, like it really is funny. He doesn’t argue about the secretive thing. “I mean, it’s fine. You can do it whenever you want. I just wonder, why Thursdays?”
Are they talking about—are they? Is he? Oh no, oh hell no. Jiang Cheng summons up his most thunderously indignant expression. He is going to make Wen Ning regret bringing up this topic.
“And exactly what is it that you think I’m doing?”
Wen Ning blinks, as though confused at Jiang Cheng’s question. “Jacking off? Obviously?”
With his usually mild-mannered ways, it’s awfully easy to forget that Wen Ning is related to Wei Wuxian’s friend Wen Qing, of whom Jiang Cheng is low-key terrified, but the deadpan way he says “jacking off, obviously” suddenly reminds him of her quite a bit, and he reacts to him the way he would react to her, turning up the thunder to protect himself.
“Fuck off. That’s private.”
Wen Ning shrugs, apparently unbothered by the thunder. “Sure, Cheng-ge. I’m just saying, if you’re trying to hide it, you can relax.”
For a moment, Jiang Cheng can only stand there with his mouth hanging open.
“Yeah, well maybe I don’t want to fucking relax. Fuck this. Fuck you!”
He goes into his room and slams the door.
Lying on his bed, it takes some time for his heartbeat to settle down. What the hell? Why would Wen Ning bring up—this? He thought they had an unspoken agreement. Seems like Wen Ning wants to turn it into a spoken agreement, which is somehow much weirder. He desperately wishes he could go back in time five minutes and somehow prevent this whole conversation from happening.
But now. Here he is. It’s not like he’s not going to watch the new video. He allows himself to flop limply on the bed for a minute before going into his closet to get the plastic storage box that has his stuff in it. Moving the box makes something go clank in his closet, which Wen Ning no doubt can hear.
Fuck, was he too hard on Wen Ning? The thought distracts him as he sorts through his collection. Wen Ning seemed so fine talking about it; should he be more fine with it, too? It’s not the first time he’s considered that being willing to communicate might be beneficial in the long run, as excruciating as it would be in the moment. Wen Ning probably didn’t deserve to be yelled at just for introducing the topic.
When he gets back to the bed, there’s a text.
Are you okay? I heard a thump.
Jiang Cheng sighs deeply before answering. Yes it’s nothing
Well, at least this time there’s nothing he has to pre-wash, so he can just load up the new video and—
okay just checking
would suck if I was giving you privacy and you had a stroke or smth
A stroke?? I’m 24
Yeah but you’re really tense all the time
I WONDER WHY
With a vengeance, he jabs his phone into silent mode and throws it across the room (into his laundry hamper so it doesn’t break). Fuming, he takes off his pants and throws them into the hamper as well. Then he sits down on the bed with the laptop between his spread legs and logs into the site.
It’s a very long video this week, 35 minutes, charmingly headlined “my boyfriend stretches and milks my ass, edging huge handsfree cumshot”, which, sue him, sounds fucking delightful. Just the thumbnail is enough to get him half-hard, in spite of his annoyance. It sounds like a job for his stainless steel prostate massager, so he gets that out of the box, as well as a vibrating silicone one just in case, puts on his noise canceling headphones (checks and double checks that they ARE connected) and presses play.
35 minutes later, he feels better than he has all week. On wobbly legs, he goes to his laundry hamper and fishes out the phone from where it’s slid down to the bottom. There is a text from Wen Ning, from earlier:
I guess you ARE having a stroke, in a way
He rolls his eyes, trying not to be amused and only partially succeeding. Somewhat shakily he texts coming out to shower, please be somewhere else
Wen Ning texts back a thumbs-up, and that’s…it? Okay. Jiang Cheng exits his room with a handful of slippery toys. Wen Ning is nowhere to be seen. He washes the toys and takes a really hot shower, brushes his teeth, and goes to bed feeling perfectly loose and relaxed. He’ll put the toy box away in the morning.
***
His alarm clock wakes him up in the middle of a dream. He whacks the snooze button and then lies there trying to remember the pieces of it, because it seems like it was kind of a nice one. Nice but weird.
He can hear Wen Ning’s alarm clock going off as he makes coffee, pouring water slowly over the fresh grounds. Wen Ning is usually quite a bit slower than him in the mornings, maybe because he often stays up late, or maybe just because Jiang Cheng is secretly, shamefully, a morning person. It’s a habit he developed as an undergrad, waking up early to study in the last peaceful hour before things (Wei Wuxian) got noisy.
He does miss Wei Wuxian, though. Every now and then it hits him hard. He used to ooh and ahh over Jiang Cheng’s coffee making skills and lounge about conspicuously enjoying his cup while Jiang Cheng got ready for class. Jiang Cheng would make it just the way he liked, dark and thick, with brown sugar and no milk. Lan Wangji does not drink coffee. He wonders if Wei Wuxian is making his own or what.
Wen Ning emerges from his room just as Jiang Cheng is putting the final touches on his pour-over. Wen Ning also doesn’t drink coffee, but Jiang Cheng leaves him enough water in the kettle for tea (turning it down a few degrees so it’ll be right for Da Hong Pao), then settles down at the table while Wen Ning takes his turn rattling around in the kitchen.
It’s much like any other morning. Jiang Cheng could almost pretend that nothing weird had happened. But it did. And it actually feels safer to talk about it now, in the innocent morning, when they’re about to separate for the day, than it will in the dim, intimate evening.
“I’m sorry for yelling,” he starts, sullenly. This is an apology he has given many times in his life, including several times to Wen Ning. Sometimes he’s really bored of being himself. “I was feeling vulnerable and lashed out.”
“That’s okay.” Wen Ning slides into the seat opposite him. “I was kind of being a dick."
Jiang Cheng allows himself a crooked smile. “Yeah.”
“It’s fine if you want to keep stuff private.”
Seems like that ship has sailed. Jiang Cheng sighs and gets ready to plunge headlong into a weird conversation.
“So, Thursdays. Since you brought it up, I can at least explain. I have a—some performers. I support. And they release new content on Thursdays.”
Wen Ning’s eyebrows rise in understanding. “Oh, so like a subscription thing? Wait, for porn?”
Jiang Cheng looks down at his coffee, feeling his cheeks aflame. “Yeah.”
“Oh. Oh, wow, I didn’t even think of that. That makes total sense.”
They don’t say anything for a while, Jiang Cheng eating his breakfast quietly, until Wen Ning offers up, “I don’t really look at porn.”
Jiang Cheng half shrugs, avoiding eye contact. “That’s fine. Lots of people don’t, I guess.”
“I mean, no judgement.” Wen Ning fidgets, tapping his spoon on the edge of his bowl. “I just don’t really get it, I guess. Feels weird.”
“Sure.”
“Not that I don’t…you know. I mean I like thinking about stuff. And not just on Thursdays.” He gives Jiang Cheng a sort of twinkling look that on Wei Wuxian would have been a broad wink. Jiang Cheng closes his eyes and breathes deeply. Are they really going to have this conversation? Sure, sure, why not, things have already gone so far off the rails, he might as well go there.
“It’s not just Thursdays,” he says. Wen Ning looks at him inquiringly, noisily chewing his sugary cereal.
“W’dya mean?”
“Well, I used to do it a lot more often.”
“Used to? What’s different now?”
Jiang Cheng looks meaningfully at Wen Ning, and then at the apartment around them.
“I mean, it’s fine, it’s just—I was basically living alone. And now you’re. You know. Here.” Wen Ning looks a bit stricken, and Jiang Cheng winces internally, realizing how that must have sounded. “Not that you can’t be here, it’s your house. Just, if it seems like I’m weird about it, that’s why.”
Wen Ning looks somewhat mollified. He sits back in his chair thoughtfully. “But I don’t get it. What does my being here have to do with it?”
Jiang Cheng struggles to answer. What does that have to do with it?
“I guess, I…wouldn’t want you to feel awkward about it.”
“I don’t.”
“Yeah, clearly you don’t.” Yes, okay, obviously he’s the one who feels awkward about it. “I’m just trying to be considerate. It feels like bad manners to be, like, exposing you. Without your consent.”
”Exposing me? It’s not like you’re walking around the house naked.”
“Not lately,” he retorts without thinking, then looks down again, feeling his cheeks heat.
“Wow,” says Wen Ning, as though suddenly realizing the magnitude of Jiang Cheng’s suppressed horniness. “So you—”
Jiang Cheng waves a hand to cut him off. “Ah-ah! No. Stop right there. Look. The point is, I’ve just been used to having more privacy. It’s an adjustment. That’s all. So if I can have Thursdays and not have it be a big deal—”
“Just Thursdays, though? What about other days?”
Jiang Cheng can’t help it. He covers his face with his hand. “Wen Ning.”
“No, I’m serious. What other days do you want? I can go out, or—”
“No! I don’t want to kick you out. That wouldn’t be fair. I just—if you could ignore me, or, just, I guess—maybe now that we’ve talked, it can just—”
“Yeah, now that it’s out in the open, you can just—whenever. And it’s fine. That’s the only reason I brought it up. To tell you it’s fine.”
“Yes.” He sighs, squeezing his eyes shut, half in relief and half in excruciation. “Fine.”
“Maybe I’ll just do mine at the same time. So we’d both have privacy.”
Jiang Cheng can’t tell if that’s a joke or not. He truly doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Yeah, okay, you do that, man.”
***
Jiang Cheng gets home that afternoon and runs into Wen Ning in front of the elevator, as often happens. Although they’re coming from completely different directions, the timing just works out this way. It was one of the first ways he observed that Wen Ning was getting more comfortable with him, that he started to greet Jiang Cheng with a shy nod and go up in the elevator with him, rather than lurking around the corner and waiting to go up on his own. Jiang Cheng pretended not to notice—truth be told, he wasn’t that keen on having an awkward silence in a confined space, either. Those were strange days. It felt a bit like he was taming a wild animal, a bird, maybe, trying to be very still and quiet so that the timid creature wouldn’t be alarmed. Still and quiet was not really Jiang Cheng’s usual style, so it had been difficult, and he had fucked up more than a few times. But Wen Ning was Wei Wuxian’s friend and clearly a very sweet person—not to mention paying the other half of their rent—so he’d wanted to make it work.
Today, Wen Ning greets him with a smile, and they get into the elevator together. Wen Ning asks him how his day went, and Jiang Cheng vents a little about the fucking undergrads and how they should try attending class if they don’t want to fail the quizzes. Wen Ning shares a related story from his own day, and they’re still chatting when they get into the apartment. Wen Ning grabs a drink from the fridge and offers one to Jiang Cheng, and they both fall silent for a while as they go through their respective wind-down routines, Jiang Cheng catching up on his phone messages and Wen Ning playing a video game on the TV. It’s pleasant—companionable.
“Hm,” Jiang Cheng grunts at his emails.
“What’s up?” Wen Ning asks.
“Ah, it’s my jiejie. She and her peacock are throwing an engagement party.”
“Oh, Yanli? That’ll be nice.”
Jiang Cheng grimaces. “Something like that.”
“What, you don’t think so?”
“Ugh, I don’t know. The guy has no taste and his family sucks.”
“Well, at least your family will be there, too.”
Jiang Cheng almost—almost!—points out that that is not exactly a bonus. But then he remembers that Wen Ning’s family is way, way worse, even worse than those fucking Jins, and he manages to keep his mouth shut.
“Mm,” he says, noncommittally, and sends Yanli his date preferences.
With his personal emails finished, he scrolls his social media for a bit, but quickly grows bored, turns off his phone and tosses it to one side. What now? He has some grading to do, but he doesn’t feel like starting yet. He still feels tense and jittery from being keyed up and annoyed all day. He needs a way to relax. If he were alone, like the old days, the solution would be obvious.
Obvious. Once the idea settles on him, it’s hard to shake off. Why not? He could. They talked about it. Why shouldn’t he? He fidgets for a few more minutes, finishes his drink, then stands up, acting casual.
“Hey.” His voice sounds pretty normal; that’s good. “I’m gonna be in my room for a while.”
“Okay,” Wen Ning says right away, clearly thinking nothing of it, but then there’s a pause in his button-mashing and he glances up at Jiang Cheng. “Oh? Are you—” Jiang Cheng feels stupidly caught out, like it matters that Wen Ning has guessed. Whatever! He’s done here. He leaves without answering.
He goes into his room and shuts the door, again aware of how thin his privacy is. For some reason he stands there listening, waiting for some reaction. After a few moments, the video game music stops, and he hears the sound of Wen Ning’s bedroom door—right across the hallway from his own—opening and closing. Huh. Well. Maybe it wasn’t a joke.
Jiang Cheng shakes off that whole line of thought. It’s officially none of his business. He shucks off his jeans and gets to work.
Even with no porn or toys or anything, it only takes a few minutes to get close; he’s been really pent up, after all. But rather than come right away, he decides to hold off for a bit, just savoring the unaccustomed luxury of jacking off in the afternoon.
There’s a noise across the hall—something shifting. Jiang Cheng has no real guess as to what it was, but he thinks again of Wen Ning being in there. Doing what? Is he really—? It seems so unlikely, but it’s actually quite easy to imagine. He hasn’t seen Wen Ning naked, but he’s seen him with his shirt off, of course. For some reason that’s how he appears in Jiang Cheng’s mind’s eye: shirt off, gothy black pants on, unzipped, dick in his hand, lying down in his mirror-image bedroom. Wen Ning, Jiang Cheng has observed, is pretty pale all over, almost strangely so—or maybe Jiang Cheng is just used to seeing his own skin, tanned brown from countless hours at the lake and at the pool. Wen Ning’s eyes are really dark and his long hair lies in tendrils down his chest. His build is broad, not super ripped or anything, but he has some muscle under a bit of softness. He has a tattoo of botanical vines around his right bicep—a medicinal plant, he said, Jiang Cheng can’t remember which kind—which would flex as he—
Jiang Cheng is still touching himself lightly, holding off from coming. His dick gives a throb, very close now, and he realizes with a little shock that he is definitely thinking about Wen Ning masturbating while he masturbates. These thoughts are certainly not dampening his arousal and they might even be fueling it. He should try not to think about it, but not thinking about it only makes him think about it more, and the Wen Ning in his mind is getting closer, just like Jiang Cheng, arching his hips up, stroking faster, biting his lip and then releasing it to gasp as he—
As Jiang Cheng—
Ah, shit, okay. Okay okay. Wow.
With shaky hands and a wet wipe, he cleans himself up. Jeez. That was weird. Wen Ning is his roommate,, not some sort of…sexual…prospect. Like yes, sure, he likes Wen Ning, he likes spending time with him and most days he would rather be home with Wen Ning than anywhere else, and he’s comfortable talking with Wen Ning in a way he is with almost nobody else in the world, but that doesn’t mean he’s into him. Like that.
It was probably a fluke. Just the situation. No reason to overthink it.
The main issue now is that he can’t just leave his room because then Wen Ning will know exactly how long—or embarrassingly not-long—it took him to masturbate. He plays on his phone for a while, until he hears Wen Ning come out and go into the bathroom. Then he goes to the bathroom himself, and goes into the living room, where Wen Ning has resumed his game.
“Hey,” Wen Ning greets him, focused on the screen. “The fridge is pretty empty. Should we order something for dinner?”
It’s hard to tell if Wen Ning is actually feeling calm and normal or if he’s just pretending, but Jiang Cheng will take it either way.
“Yeah, sure. What are you in the mood for?”
Wen Ning suggests one of their default takeout places, and things go on normally from there, at least on the surface. But all through the rest of the evening, Jiang Cheng feels weirdly hyperaware of Wen Ning’s whole—well. His body makes it sound weird, like he’s thinking about Wen Ning’s abs or something, but just, like, the way he physically exists. Like how his fingers are a different shape from Jiang Cheng’s fingers, blunter, with short-bitten nails, how his black t-shirt stretches over his chest when he stretches, how there’s fuzz at his hairline that becomes visible when he gathers his long hair up carelessly to put it behind his back. How his body heat can be felt as they brush past each other in the kitchen.
Jiang Cheng goes to bed early for real, and then lies awake in the dark, his mind awash in white noise.