Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng snapped the bathroom door shut and sagged back against it, closing his eyes against the headache starting to pulse at his temple. It felt like an especially cowardly thing, hiding in the bathroom that day, and yet there were occasions where the choice was to hide in the bathroom or have some kind of blow up at the table.
After a few deep breaths, he shifted to lean with his back to the mirror and hips propped against the vanity instead of the door, like he always did. He counted the seconds, trying to regain his peace-of-mind as quickly as possible to get back out there.
There was a knock at the door. Jiang Cheng’s eyes flew open, and he stared, wide-eyed, at the door. No one had ever knocked on the door before.
Then the door knob rattled and turned. Jiang Cheng’s breath caught in his throat and his hand flew to the handle. He almost slammed it shut on Lan Jingyi’s face.
“What are you doing?” Jiang Cheng hissed.
“Checking on you, of course! Let me in,” Lan Jingyi whispered in return, jiggling the door against Jiang Cheng’s grip. He let his hand fall away and Lan Jingyi threw the door wide, then hopped into the narrow hall bath and closed the door behind him again.
“I could have been doing anything in here! You can’t just let yourself in!” Jiang Cheng whispered, jerking his elbow away as Lan Jingyi bumped into him while he shuffled inside.
Lan Jingyi snorted under his breath and didn’t move out of Jiang Cheng’s space. “First of all, I know you hide in the bathroom.” Jiang Cheng opened his mouth to argue. “But also, you almost never use the bathroom outside your own home! You think I’ve never noticed?”
Defeated, Jiang Cheng scowled and then sighed, finally adjusting his feet to make more room for Lan Jingyi.
“Plus, even if you were, it’s not like it’s anything I haven’t seen,” Lan Jingyi added lightly, glancing around his parents’ bathroom.
“That is…” Jiang Cheng struggled for the words, horrified, “never happening. Ever.”
“Whatever,” Lan Jingyi chirped back, shrugging. His eyes twitched up to Jiang Cheng’s face happily, and he put both hands on Jiang Cheng’s hips. The answer was far too flippant for Jiang Cheng’s tastes.
“Man, your mom’s taste is… purple,” Lan Jingyi quipped wryly. Accurate, and probably one of the nicer descriptors he could muster.
Jiang Cheng couldn’t help smirking. He glanced around too, trying to take in what it would look like for the first time, like Lan Jingyi. It all faded into the background for him at his point - his parents had lived there for twelve years. But even beforehand, he’d grown up with most of the items and decor in that home.
The shower curtain was a frilly maroon monstrosity, somehow matching with the wallpaper - a plum fruit and blossom motif. There were a number of knickknacks on the shelf and the vanity, all plums, and purple plum-scented soap. A single long runner adorned the floor - an abstract pattern in maroon and fuchsia.
“In case you thought I was bad,” Jiang Cheng replied wryly.
Lan Jingyi laughed and his fingertips inched up and under the soft knit of Jiang Cheng’s sweater, closer to his skin, but still over the button-down he was wearing beneath.
“I stand corrected,” Lan Jingyi agreed.
Jiang Cheng took a deep breath and softened under the touch, allowing Lan Jingyi’s presence to ease him, the way it usually did, even if his brain knew that their absence, together, would be conspicuous.
He threaded his hands up into Lan Jingyi’s hair, which was carefully pinned back - the younger man had spent far too much time trying to tame it for the occasion for Jiang Cheng not treat it carefully now, even though he always longed to muss up Lan Jingyi’s hair. He scratched his fingernails lightly at the nape of Lan Jingyi’s neck, and the younger man’s eyelids fluttered. He rolled back into the touch gratefully.
“I’m sorry she’s being so terrible to you,” Jiang Cheng said. Speaking the words themselves felt like a relief. Just saying it aloud.
Lan Jingyi didn’t open his eyes, still luxuriating in Jiang Cheng’s soft touch, but he did shrug. “Nothing less than what I expected after what you’ve told me. Plus I’m used to being a disappointment.”
Jiang Cheng’s brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to disagree. Not about the expectations, just about the disappointment. Lan Jingyi continued on before he could, “But don’t worry!” His eyes opened, and he winked at Jiang Cheng, “I’ll win her over! I have a way of wearing people down.”
“That is true,” Jiang Cheng admitted.
“Plus, I’m here for you anyway. Don’t worry about me,” Lan Jingyi said, using his hands to pull himself close to Jiang Cheng, pressing their hips together and winding his fingers further up under Jiang Cheng’s sweater to link behind his back.
For some reason, the words caused Jiang Cheng’s heart to flutter wildly in his chest. There was someone there for him. It was still the weirdest thing. It hit him occasionally in moments like these - stunning and almost impossible to believe.
“Really, it’s your dad that’s bothering me more. You never told me that he just acts like you’re not even in the room. And what’s his deal with Jin Zixuan?” Lan Jingyi said. He tucked his mouth against Jiang Cheng’s neck as he said the words, so it was difficult to tell, but there was a slight edge to his voice, a rare occurrence for Lan Jingyi.
Jiang Cheng realized in that moment that maybe he had underprepared Lan Jingyi for Jiang Fengmian’s attitude toward him. But his father ignored him so completely, other than engaging in the act of comparing him to others, that he hardly felt worth mentioning.
“I think he’s spoken to me more than he’s spoken to you,” Lan Jingyi added, voice threaded with exasperation. “He acted like bartending was a fascinating and upstanding profession or something. A truly brave and original choice for a Lan, I think he said.”
Jiang Fengmian had, in fact, used it as an opportunity to make a point that Jiang Cheng was out-of-touch with the common people and too rigid in his approach. His mother had put an end to that quickly, though, remarking scathingly on how a sect heir and a doctor were far more appropriate professions for a sect leader’s partner. Nie Huaisang and Wen Qing had never looked so good to Yu Ziyuan until she met Lan Jingyi, apparently. The sad fact was that they didn’t care at all about getting to know Lan Jingyi. It was the same as always - Lan Jingyi was just another tool for them to score points in their own unending arguments about Jiang Cheng’s capability or lack-there-of.
“But with your mom, I’ve been pretty amused, actually,” Lan Jingyi continued. “I’ve been dreaming up questions I could ask that might really shock her. The students of Intro to Dual Cultivation gave me a lot of good ammunition. I’m thinking maybe something about bodily fluids. Like, whether or not she would agree that pre-come is an acceptable bodily fluid in the act of dual cultivation.”
Jiang Cheng choked on nothing at all and shoved Lan Jingyi away from him. He’d forgotten all about that debacle. Being reminded of it now caused color to flush into his cheeks.
“You are shameless,” he growled.
Lan Jingyi tipped his head back to laugh, bright and unrepentant. He crowded back in close, getting his hands back into Jiang Cheng’s sweater.
“It’s already having the desired effect on you. It’ll definitely work on her,” Lan Jingyi teased.
“Do not ask her that,” Jiang Cheng commanded.
“I would never! You know I wouldn’t!” Lan Jingyi exclaimed, although Jiang Cheng had noticed him fidgeting mightily in his seat back in the dining room, as if he could barely contain the things in his head. Lan Jingyi tipped his forehead against Jiang Cheng’s nose, squeezing his arms tight around Jiang Cheng’s waist. “But now that I’m thinking about it, how would you feel about me going down on you in your mom’s purple bathroom? It might put a new spin on this whole family dinner thing.”
Lan Jingyi had crowded close enough that they were glued together at the hip, enough so that he could probably feel it when blood rushed down to Jiang Cheng’s groin.
“Absolutely not,” Jiang Cheng croaked.
“Maybe next time then,” Lan Jingyi replied breezily. “As we agreed, I have a way of wearing people down.”
Jiang Cheng sighed and Lan Jingyi smirked, then leaned in to brush their lips together. While they kissed, Jiang Cheng moved his hands away from the temptation of Lan Jingyi’s hair and slid them under the younger man’s arms to stroke up and down his spine instead. It occurred to him in the silence that he didn’t feel on the verge of panic at all anymore. He felt… happy. At ease. Supported.
He’d always been alone in this. Of course, it was probably uniquely terrible to be Jiang Yanli there - overlooked, rarely spoken of at all, her presence taken for granted. And Wei Wuxian had suffered an opposite problem - loathed by Yu Ziyuan and treasured by Jiang Fengmian. But Jiang Cheng almost never had a person there with him to remind him that his parents’ opinions of him were not the only opinions that mattered. That they were, perhaps, more of a reflection on themselves, than they were on him at all.
“You OK?” Lan Jingyi asked when he broke away, resting his forehead back against the tip of Jiang Cheng’s nose.
Jiang Cheng automatically started to say ‘I’m fine,’ but then he paused as other words came to mind. They’d been words he’d thought of often, but had struggled to materialize. And ever since they’d lingered there on the tip of his tongue, he’d been trying to track down exactly when it had happened. Where was the moment that his feelings had changed? Deepened? Became so defined? He couldn’t put a finger on it. It was as though he’d felt them since that very first night when he’d decided that he liked Lan Jingyi, was interested in him and could be nicer to him. It had simply taken time, not to trust Lan Jingyi, but instead to trust himself. They seemed so clear now.
“I am so in - to you,” he said, splitting the word carefully and clearly into two syllables.
Lan Jingyi’s head jerked up quickly enough that Jiang Cheng had to dodge back to avoid getting clipped on the chin. His eyes searched Jiang Cheng’s, fervent and fast.
“Really?” Lan Jingyi asked breathlessly.
Nervous, Jiang Cheng just said, “Yes.”
A bright expression of joy bloomed over his face and Lan Jingyi surged forward, bumping their mouths together, shoving Jiang Cheng backwards. The younger man took full advantage, bearing him back onto the vanity and practically crawling up him. Jiang Cheng laughed into his mouth, surprised at the ferocity of Lan Jingyi’s reaction, even though he shouldn’t be. Lan Jingyi got both knees up on the vanity and pushed him back against the mirror, kissing the laugh right out of him. The plum soap dug into the small of Jiang Cheng’s back, wedged between him and the mirror.
Jiang Cheng ran his hands, slow and smooth, up and down Lan Jingyi’s flanks until he settled enough that Jiang Cheng could pull away. “Jingyi, Jingyi, slow down, slow down,” he said.
Scrunching up his nose, Lan Jingyi pulled away to say, “You’re the one that decided to say that to me in your parents’ bathroom. It’s not my fault.”
Jiang Cheng chuckled and pressed at Lan Jingyi’s hips until the other man clambered back off onto the floor. He offered two hands out to Jiang Cheng and tugged him off the vanity too.
“I’m tired of them being shitty to you,” Jiang Cheng said, taking a deep breath and steeling his courage. “Let’s get out of here.”
Lan Jingyi nodded vigorously, his gaze still flicking tellingly between Jiang Cheng’s eyes and his mouth. “And go home?” he asked hopefully, telegraphing his intentions.
“And go home,” Jiang Cheng agreed.