Chapter Text
As a lot of things do, it starts with a chair.
Namely, the clunky brown corduroy chair that sits in Wei Ying’s basement. The chair Lan Zhan had sat in before Wei Ying climbed on his lap, surrendering his underwear followed by his virginity.
He’d given it up to the boy who wakes up at 5:00 AM every single morning to go running, of all things. The boy who has ensured Wei Ying endless amounts of detention, because he’d been raised to be a little narc. The boy who plays three instruments and speaks four languages, and is good at all of them. The boy who reluctantly became his lab partner in 7th grade Biology. The boy who had been frightened to admit that he hadn’t had a best friend before Wei Ying.
And now that boy had…
Wei Ying now stares at that same chair, which is sitting in his lawn along with the rest of the furniture that previously sat in the basement. Wei Ying raises the family size jug of Sunny-D in his hand to his lips and takes a hefty swig.
God damn.
Crisp leaves crinkle underneath Wei Ying’s torn up converse as he walks down the cracked pavement. The slowly setting sun casts patterns through the tree branches. It’s a nice afternoon for most people, he’s sure, but most people aren’t him.
Wei Ying wishes he was most people. It seems easier than where he is right now.
By the time he reaches the drug store, the gallon of orange juice that was brand-new as of the other day is now completely drained. Wei Ying’s bladder is now screaming violently at him, because who the fuck downs an entire gallon of orange juice in 15 minutes?
Wei Ying, clearly.
He tosses the empty jug into the trash. The bells chime when he opens the glass door and steps inside, immediately beelining for the third aisle in the back of the store. The deadbeat asshole, Xue Yang, who works behind the counter calls out to him. “Back again, I see.”
Jerk. He can practically hear the smile in that dick’s voice. Wei Ying rolls his eyes and ignores him. He looks over the brands he hadn’t tried yet. He had bought the cheap tests before, because he didn’t think it’d come back positive. But then they did, and Wei Ying figured it was a fluke because they were cheap. Or so he tells himself. Unfortunately, he can’t brush this off. So he sighs, deciding to dish out money he doesn’t really have before grabbing a ClearBlue box.
He trudges over to the counter and slams the box on the counter.
“Third test you’ve bought from here, huh?” Xue Yang remarks as he watches Wei Ying tear into the box.
“Yeah, yeah, well the others were weird. I’m pretty sure they were, like, defective or something because the first one looked like a division sign. False positives aren’t unheard of, you know, that happened to my sister once..” Wei Ying rambles defensively, not even directed at Xue Yang, just… he isn’t sure.
Xue Yang’s face makes an indiscernible expression. “I guess. You paying for that?”
Wei Ying fishes in his pocket before tossing some crumpled up cash on the counter along with some change, not bothering to check how much he’s dumped out of his pockets. He then grabs the test off of the counter and stalks over to the decrepit little bathroom labeled “Employees Only.”
When the thought first came to mind, Wei Ying doubted it. There was no way.
Him and Lan Zhan couldn’t have. He was sure. He was positive that it was fine, because even though they had been too impulsive to consider the importance of condoms and safe sex and all of that junk, he still made sure Lan Zhan had pulled out before he finished. And even if he hadn’t pulled out on time, it wouldn’t really matter, because Wei Ying was on birth control.
So it was fine, until he missed his period.
He remembers it too clearly, waking up this morning when there still wasn’t any sign of his cycle and rummaging through his bathroom and then discovering that, no actually, the thing on the floor wasn’t random trash and it was, in fact, his birth control that’d probably slipped out of his hand. He probably forgot to look for it or whatever and then didn’t end up taking it all, which was great.
Just his luck too, because it’d probably been around the time he slept with Lan Zhan.
Queue his frantic searching on the incredibly slow family computer. When Wei Ying had finally gotten the answer from a reproductive health blog that it was probably fine so long as he didn’t miss another dose, it was already the afternoon. Everyone was out of the house besides him, and he would probably be alone for the rest of the day. Absolutely fucking fantastic, because this is exactly the type of thing you should be dealing with by yourself, but what else could he do?
He had walked back down to the basement and stopped at the sight of the chair. The stupid, ugly corduroy Sex Chair. Clearly, it had to go. He somehow managed to drag the chair out of the house and onto the lawn without any nosy neighbors stopping to ask what the hell he was doing.
Before he knew it, all of the furniture that used to be in the basement’s den was scattered across the yard.
Then, Wei Ying was left staring at the damn Sex Chair, in need of a pregnancy test and maybe an escape ticket to anywhere but here.
Now, Wei Ying is in a cramped convenience store bathroom, in need of a way to deny the likely inevitable positive.
Wei Ying washes his hands but doesn't bother drying them before he grabs the test and storms out of the bathroom. In his haste, he picks a ridiculously sized bag of Funions–distinctly the flaming hot ones–off of the shelf and throws them onto the checkout counter.
He anxiously taps the counter waiting for the test to change.
“What’s wrong? Running a puppy mill in there?” Xue Yang asks, resting his head in his hands, watching Wei Ying with almost an inappropriate level of amusement at his situation.
Wei Ying snaps his attention towards him, shoots him an annoyed look, and then glances back at the test.
Funny, that there seems to be an extra line appearing on the test.
“Well, shit.”