Beer in the Moonlight

The world didn't seem brighter or clearer or immeasurably sweeter; the sky was puffed cloudy, freckled white-and-blue when the wind whipped bobbles of cloud away from each other, and the sun filtered through in a soft, drizzling slink.

What was true was that Lan Wangji felt lighter.

It was a strange, swirling sort of giddiness, coiling up his throat in a rush of something fiercely sweet and greedy; it lingered at the back of his mind, washing a shine of contentment over everything, diamond-white tinted and shimmering like moonlight.

Even Huaisang, who had managed to be late three days in a row running - the first day, he was searching for the right pair of shoes; then he simply had to make a smoothie before work; finally, he managed to spend twice as long as usual in the shower, failing to offer any explanation other than a yawn and a horrified, bug-eyed stare - couldn't shake it.

If every now and then he cracked the watch box open and looked at it, tracking the second hand as it ticked round bit by bit by bit, silver against the dark blue background, then no one would know.

"I am glad," xiongzhang had said in their last call, Wangji's phone propped up on a pile of books in front of him, the dim light in the video flickering off the smooth black-waxed wood of Lan Xichen's piano over his shoulders and shadowing the smile on his face. "That you're happy, didi."

Lan Wangji had simply hummed and smiled back - a tiny-tiny thing, but there, tucked into the corners of his mouth.

If his ears had shot red when he brushed his fingertips against the watch and remembered the way a red ribbon trailed through the air on the wind, following after a fading laugh, then that was his to know alone.

In his office, in between patients, though, there was no one to see other than the birds which fluttered around the window, heading down towards the lake and the carpet of lotuses and the deep, swaying-still water. Instead of running his fingers link to link along the strap of the watch, instead there was just skin and the bulk of bones and the taut, string-thick tendons of his wrist; his skin felt flushed when he skated over it: hot-hot-hot against the cold of his fingertips.

Once he'd noticed, he couldn't stop either - it was obsessive: strange and childish and rapidly evolving towards a habit.

It wasn't unusual for him to pick up traits and tricks and ticks like this, but they had always been grounding before: this one left him feeling present, but sky-high and soaring and staring down a long, rock-toothed drop which made his head spin if he looked too hard.

It had been five days since he had last seen Wei Wuxian.

He had ordered lunch from Qin Su's restaurant on Wednesday, when he knew Wei Wuxian worked there as a delivery driver; he had stopped by Song Lan's café on Friday, only to be greeted by Song Lan's sombre nod and A-Qing's flounce as she disappeared off to school. He had even waited for thirty-five minutes or so by the junction where Wei Wuxian usually hovered in his boat to collect passengers to take up the canals and rivulets before he had had to admit, reluctantly, that Wei Wuxian simply wasn't coming.

He would think it was deliberate if only for the fact that was nonsensical: Wei Wuxian had found his watch in the lake and brought it back to him, Lan Wangji needed to thank him and thank him properly.

It was infuriating.

He did not, resolutely, determinedly, think about how he knew Wei Wuxian's odd-job, odd-hours schedule - or how he had never tried to learn it, simply absorbed it somehow, like a teenager running through a school timetable week-in, week-out, week-in.

"I want an appointment," the voice carried through the just-ajar door into his office. It was sharp and too confident: it was a voice which demanded, rather than asking.

"Of course!" Huaisang chirped, bright and too-cheerful in the way he always was when faced with a difficult customer. "When would you like?"

There was a pause, pregnant and impatient.

"Did I say I wanted to wait?" the voice huffed a snort and he could hear the headshake and the tutting tongue. "I said I wanted an appointment."

"Yes, gongzi," Huaisang could be infinitely patient when a situation called for it, he was confident and capable enough to handle something like this.

Lan Wangji could feel his own jaw settling stiff and breathed out long and steady, one-two-three-four, forcing his teeth apart and his jaw down.

"We can book you in as soon as possible - let's see: we have an appointment free tomorrow at ten in the morning, would that work? What name should I put it under?"

"Are you stupid?" the man sneered. "I said I wanted an appointment now - why are you giving me appointments for tomorrow?"

Standing up, Lan Wangji swept out of the room in a flurry of white coat and blue shirt, his hands clenched by his sides.

In the reception, Huaisang was wilting as the man - Jin Zixuan's cousin, he was fairly certain - tried to loom over him at the front desk, his voice folding in on itself until it was vanishingly, tremulously small.

"Jin Zixun," Wangji waited until he had finished - interrupting would be rude - and if his own voice was ice-thick, then so be it. "Same-day appointments for emergencies only. All other appointments booked in advance."

Jin Zixun stared, his forehead creased in a frown, his hands falling from tucked behind his back to swing at his sides.

"Why can't I have an appointment today?" he demanded, waving a hand around the clinic reception to show the empty seats sprayed white-light by the sunlight through the windows. "You're not even busy!"

"Is there an emergency?" Wangji asked, blunt and it thudded even blunter in the quiet.

"We - wha - how would you even know?" Jin Zixun spluttered.

"No exceptions," Lan Wangji said.

Jin Zixun's face pinched, "You!" he burst out but nothing followed and Lan Wangji watched, impassive and immovable, as Jin Zixun stormed out, slamming the sliding door behind him; it bounced back out of the frame, gliding to a halt halfway open against the late spring warmth.

When he turned to go back to his office, Huaisang was watching him curiously.

"You didn't need to do that, Wangji-xiong," he said - though there wasn't any reproach in his voice, just calm and a studied sort of ease. "I would have been fine on my own."

"Mn," Wangji nodded, feeling his fingers ghost over his wrist again, lingering on his pulse for a heartbeat, two, three. "Don't like him."

"You should get a bracelet," Huaisang said absently, turning back to his computer screen to hide the curl of his smirk and the glint in his eyes which shone mischief. "Or a watch."

For a moment, Wanji was frozen; but when he carefully shut the door to his office and sank down into his desk chair, his ears were burning.

His wrist was warm, though, and his fingertips were still cold.

On the counter, the ice was slowly dripping off the first iced coffee as the second was poured. Song Lan had a slow, steady, rhythmical hand as he poured in loops; he was pouring with a studied concentration: fierce and unrelenting, a slight squint about his eyes as he watched the pot spiral round and round and round as he poured.  

Two seats down, A-Qing, her hair in a pair of long, French plaits, was glaring at him.

Lan Wangji didn't like to think he was discomforted by her. She was thirteen and he was an adult with his own clinic; what reason was there for him to be nervous?

A-Qing narrowed her eyes at him, the almost-empty cup of coffee in front of her pushed away.

"I still don't believe you," she announced, arms folded. She said it like a judge in court, heavy and solemn: I sentence you to...

Lan Wangji hummed a question, slanting his eyes at her even as he watched Song Lan carefully-carefully pouring the coffee.

"That you're not impersonating Zewu-jun. I mean," she elaborated with a wrinkle of her nose. "That you weren't. When you tried to get away with not paying for things."

The melted ice was puddling around the glass cups, slinking along the grains of the wood in the counter-top, spider-thin and spider-silk-like, dyeing it almost-black. Drops chased each other down the sides, bumped and humped like little splashes of glass: clear-cut and winking up at him, blue-cast in the light.

"Would never impersonate xiongzhang," he said eventually; and he sounded a lot calmer than he felt.

He had never told someone before - had never really needed to: what do you need to say when your older brother is a global star, plastered across billboards and flickering on the tv screen in adverts for this and that and the other product, his voice echoing out of radios in shops about a jumping drumbeat? What is there to say when you look almost exactly like him, only colder, harsher, bleaker? - and it hammered against his ribs with a bruising anxiety.

A-Qing stared at him, her mouth open as she scanned him up and down, head-to-toe in a critical, exacting glare.

"No," she said, hushed, then: "No!" and excitement and disbelief made her loud; her voice echoed around the café, sinking into the walls.

"Don't shout, A-Qing," Song Lan rebuked her absently, the loops of warm water over the coffee beans finally stilling as he squatted down to peer at the coffee in the clear-glass pot.

"No, no-no-no-no-no-no-no!" she hopped off her stool and bounced a little on her feet. Her hands clenched and splayed open by her sides; she didn't seem to be able to keep still: she buzzed on the spot, before swaying and lurching forwards to clutch at Lan Wangji's arm. "You're serious, aren't you? You really are? Do you have pictures? Can I see?"

"Mn," he hummed, gratefully accepting his keep cup back from Song Lan, full and steaming hot. It was hard not to smile: minuscule and inflected smug. "Am late for work."

A-Qing's howl - two parts glee, one part fury - rang in his ears long after he had entered the clinic over a kilometre away.

At quarter past twelve, Huaisang barged into his office with a flutter of a cherry-red fan and a heaving sigh:

"Why is it so hot today?" he complained, slouching into the chair, stiff-backed and white-wood, opposite Wangji's desk. "It's unbearable - and it's only going to get hotter, Wangji-xiong; it's not even summer yet. How will I cope?"

He did look a bit pink and damp, Wangji thought uncharitably, the bright light slinking through the open shutters and shattering on the metal edges of his laptop in a dazzle of silver-sliding-yellow.

"Mn," he agreed, though, and added, after a pause, "It is the humidity. You will adjust."

"Will I?" Huaisang sighed, and for all he enjoyed complaining about the weather whatever kind it was that day - too windy, too rainy, too hot, too cold, too bright - he did seem decidedly deflated in the lethargic, drained-down way people are when they are sticky and dried-out and too hot. "Perhaps I will perish instead."

Another day, Wangji might have ignored him, writing his complaints off as nothing more than Huaisang's usual theatrics - but his thumb skated over the edge of the watch wrist-band and he paused, the words on his tongue trickling away to nothing.

After a moment, he said, simply, "Come," and stood up, gesturing for Huaisang to leave the room - frowning and fluttering his fan and finally quiet.

"Aiya, Wangji-xiong, are you trying to actually kill me?" Huaisang whined later, staring outside at the sun as it glittered off the pavement outside, dyeing the budding leaves yellow-ish.

Wangji plopped a hat on his head and swept outside followed by a squawk that rattled his teeth into a smirk.

Like a wave, the cool air washed over them both as they stepped through the door, Wangji closing it neatly behind both of them, trapping the sunshine and the rolling spring heat outside. Inside the restaurant, the soft pinks and purples drifted in the ever-present breeze, listing in from the lake so close by, and the light patterned soft as the clouds floated by, fat and lazy with high-sunk rain and the still, still sky.

"Ah, Doctor Lan!" Jiang Yanli smiled as she came over, stopping off on the way to drop a tray loaded with tall glass bottles full of water and a homemade lemonade for a group of tourists with cameras on strings around their necks and blistering, sun-reddened faces bright in the wood-dimmed sunlight.

It was a sweet smile, but it wavered, tense and guilty, and Wangji wondered why.

"And Nie Huaisang, are you here for lunch?"

"Mn," Wangji nodded once.

"Let's sit by the windows," Huaisang announced, leading the way over, past Jiang Yanli as she slipped over to fetch them some menus. His voice was louder than usual: he never boomed like his brother did, but his voice somehow carried out-out-out-and-away without much effort when he wanted it to. "You can look out at the lake, Wangji-xiong, and I can eavesdrop on people walking past."

When he looked over, behind the fan, Huaisang's smile was pointed and his eyes sharp.

"I'll bring over some water now and just let me know when you want to order," Jiang Yanli didn't say anything, but her smile had slipped onto her chin; she lingered for a brief moment as though there was something else to say before turning away again, the purple-lined hem of her skirt whisking after her.

"Now," Huaisang carefully laid the folded fan to one side, scanning down the menu with a business-like severity. "We should order rice, of course, and some steamed vegetables, but would you like to share some lotus root soup? There's a version without the pork - and I want some Yunmeng Fish Noodles as well."

"Mn," Wangji glanced down, running through the mix of Hubei and local dishes. Hot Dry Noodles were vegetarian but they sounded, well, hot, and chefs weren't known for being happy about being asked to water down the spice in dishes. "Will be fine."

"Excellent," Huaisang brightened and turned with a hum - a little, skipping song he thought was a k-pop song - to look out of the window, resting his chin on a curled hand and scanning the people walking past.

"Eavesdropping on others is wrong," Wangji told him absently, and nodded at Jiang Yanli, who had just appeared at their table, notepad in hand and a thin smile on her face. She looked pale, and she waited expectantly for the order, vanishing off to greet the newest customers at the door as soon as he had finished listing the dishes.

He wondered if she was ill. She had always seemed more fragile than the rough-cut bustle of the water town and most of its people: if they were wood, she was china, polished but delicate.

He would not ask. It would be rude to ask.

"Doctor Lan," Jiang Yanli stopped him by the door, half-caught in shadow where the restaurant tipped from dining room the kitchen, her hands buried under a circle-spotted dishcloth.

She breathed in, long and deep and full, and he waited while she arranged her thoughts on her tongue.

She was, he reflected, nothing like her brother - quick-tempered, quick-tongued.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, but the intensity of how she was looking at him was identical to Jiang Cheng's and he felt scrutinised even when she looked away, her eyes flitting from curtain to wooden plank to tablecloth to him again. "The other day when you were arguing with A-Xian, we could hear your conversation through the windows. We didn't mean to eavesdrop but still - it was a private conversation and we shouldn't have listened."

Lan Wangji stared, stiff. He jerked a little nod and blinked once and then it was his turn to take a breath in - quick and sharp.

"Is fine," he said - though his tongue felt fat in his mouth. Do not tell lies, he thought to himself, hadn't shufu drummed it into him all his life? Hadn't it always been the best way to live?

Do not tell lies, he thought again but bitter, and walked back to the clinic to the clip-clop sound of Huaisang tapping something out on his phone.

Down the road, the argument thrummed like a bridal procession: it bounced, it swirled, it beat like a drum ba-bum ba-bum and it rang through the air, full of colours and noise and a squirming, restless bubbling. It grew, too, surging up the road, pulling heads round and out of far-flung windows to look, popping up from the edges of the canals to see, shake and dip down again.

For Jinxi, this was normal: it would be stranger if Jiang Wanyin and Wei Wuxian and Jin Zixuan were walking down the street in silence, a trio of comfortable companions.

"Aiya, such a peacock," Wei Wuxian grumbled, grinning at the glare Jin Zixuan shot him; his voice was faked low, the kind of thing which carries across a room or still water or down a mountainside, and he knew he was heard.

"Just stop it," Jin Zixuan snapped at them. His hands were taut around his son's schoolbag, and Jin Ling trotted behind, warily oblivious to the ongoing squabble in front of him as he bent his head in to look at the smartly-wrapped packet of stickers Wen Yuan was holding, bubblegum-pink and lime green and a smooth blue, lumped and glittering.

"I want some too," Jin Ling sulked, eyeing his father up ahead and looking from his father to his uncle, face glum even as he opened his mouth to intervene.

"Look," Wei Wuxian hoisted his backpack on his shoulder. "Peacock - I mean, Zixuan -" there was a pause and then a sigh that contained all the suffering in the world. "We are just good citizens, what can we say? We see a problem and we like to help to fix it."

"Fix it?" Jin Zixuan was spluttering almost before he had finished speaking. "You're not fixing it! You're piling rubbish bags in my offices!"

"As we said," Wei Wuxian continued blithely, waving a hand through the air with an almost musical swing. "We're just doing our civic duty -"

Jin Zixuan scoffed, his face - handsome and pale - scrunched up in distaste, "No you're not! Don't lie, Wei Wuxian. This is about Yanli."

The mention of her name rang like a bell over their heads - like a tower bell or a little handheld bell rang to summon unruly students or a bell at the end of a boxing round, ding-ding-ding take a break, a breather before you go again; like a fighter, Jiang Wanyin tensed and glared, hands already in fists.

"What do you mean by that?"

His voice was sharp and in the sweet spring light, he looked wolfish: toothy and rangy and hungry.

Jin Zixuan flinched, his throat bobbing and he looked away, a flush creeping over his cheeks, patchy and splashed like paint up a wall.

When they were boys, Wei Wuxian reflected, Jin Zixuan hadn't known really how to handle shame - it had made him angry, defensive and snappy and ten times more awkward than usual - but now, now as an adult shame sucked his tongue away, leaving him voiceless and patchwork-guilty.

Growth, Wei Wuxian thought, was an odd thing.

Next to him, Jiang Wanyin snorted, his strict-back ponytail swinging severely from side-to-side as they walked on down the street.

"If you've got a problem with the bin bags in your offices, you should fix the problem," he said, and the bite in his voice made it a challenge of sorts; almost a threat.

"I'm trying," Jin Zixuan protested but the words sunk quiet at the end, trailing off into a sighing silence. "I'll try again, but I don't know if it'll work. It's not my department."

"Peacock," Wei Wuxian said reasonably, half-jovial and half-serious. "Nothing is your department."

As they neared Lotus Pier, with its doors flung open to let the air in and the scent of cooking oil and roasting spices out, Jin Ling suddenly shoved his way through the trio, elbowing his uncle into his, well, his sort-of-uncle who laughed, yelling, "Niang, niang, I'm back!"

"He never does that with me," Wei Wuxian wiped away an imaginary tear.

Jiang Wanyin gloated next to him, one hand tucked over the ribs where his nephew had pushed him aside, sharing a brief - very brief and swiftly regretted - smirk with Jin Zixuan. They looked away at once; and then back, because Jiang Yanli was stepping out of the restaurant carrying a pink napkin clutching a steaming baozi.

She was, sadly, looking past them and at Wen Yuan, who was loitering behind, both hands settled on the bottom of his rucksack straps, little face serious.

"Take this," Yanli told him, carefully transferring it into his cupped hands. The pink cotton flopped over his fingers like long, trailing petals, covering his hands completely. "To eat on the way home."

She stroked his head twice, gentle and smiling, and he ducked his head up under the pressure to smile back.

"Bye, A-Yuan!" Jin Ling shouted from behind, his voice muffled by the bun stuffed in his own mouth; he waved a little, though, jerky with his father's awkwardness, and Wen Yuan gave a small laugh and called back.

"Come on, A-Yuan," Wei Wuxian tapped him on the shoulder - they were a matching pair with their backpacks in sensible black and their hair tied back from their faces. "I'll walk you home. Do you think if we run we'll get there before Wen Qing comes looking for you? I bet we could."

Wen Yuan blinked a frown up at him and shook his head, "Er, gongzi," and looked down at the baozi, gently steaming the napkin dark.

"Oh, right," Wei Wuxian nodded thoughtfully as they headed off. "Well, then, you should focus on eating that before it gets cold. My jie-jie is the best cook, after all."

Early afternoon and Jinxi's streets bustled: there were tourists trekking round with their cameras and phones flashing as they snapped photos of this and that and Li-gonggong sat at his xiangqi board opposite Tao-laoshi with their speckled salt-and-pepper hair and quiet, careful concentration. Restaurants all had their doors half-closed, settled in the lull between lunchtime and dinner, and people smiled in the sun, despite the humidity which had swelled fat for this early in the year.

Even the canals were busy, thronged with boats which shivered past each other, their drivers waving and calling genially across, a riot of let me buy you a drink next time; aiya you must remind me to drop off the dish we borrowed from you; tell your wife I said hello!

"Wei Wuxian!" Mu-gongzi, a young man with sad-set eyes, manoeuvred his boat close to the bank, offering a small, uneasy smile to Wen Yuan - he had never been good with children. "You should come by for dinner tomorrow night - the boiler is perfect now, thanks to you!"

"That's not necessary -" Wei Wuxian started but then laughed, absently taking the baozi-free napkin from A-Yuan and tucking it in a pocket so it drooped out, a wave of pink-on-black. "I'll be there, I'll be there - I can't live to see your mother upset with me again, I swear!"

Mu-gongzi nodded and smiled a bit as he sailed past, the tourists in the belly of his boat dipping their heads to marvel at the red-paper lanterns hanging on the sides of the houses and the carved edges of the roofs.

Rounding the corner, Wei Wuxian steered A-Yuan through the crowds, hands on his shoulders, heading for the red neon sign sketching out the characters for supermarket.

Underneath it, the boys who helped out at the supermarket - a pair of Wen cousins, a tangdi and biaoshu who were both quick to laugh and quick to help - were restocking the shelves of fruit in the front windows: summer-set peaches and long, leafy sticks of rhubarb; piles and piles of little loquats and kumquats and five-pointed starfruit.

"Wei Wuxian!" Wen Qing called, coming out from the supermarket with her hands swirling her hair into a neat bun and her sleeves rolled up to above her elbows. "Thank you for bringing A-Yuan home!"

"No problem at all!" Wei Wuxian beamed, patting Wen Yuan on the head and mussing his hair.

"If you wait inside, there's iced water for you by the table in the back and I've cleared some space for you to do your homework before we go home," Wen Qing told A-Yuan, who nodded and turned to bow to Wei Wuxian.

"Hi Mr Dentist!" he called, adding a second bow to Lan Wangji - who blinked and stopped, startled - as he passed by, his white blazer neatly folded over his arm so the yellow-soft silk lining could only be seen in whisks of wind. "Would it be okay if me and Jin Ling came and visited our rabbit?"

Lan Wangji was stiff, but not in the way he usually was: this was a rusty stiffness, as though his shoulders had seized suddenly, cutting off his hands and arms and leaving his brain stuttering as it tried to work out what had gone wrong.

His eyes flickered over the small group of them outside the supermarket, "Mn," he nodded and Wen Yuan smiled a smile as wide as the sun, bowing to him again and then to Wei Wuxian again for good measures and trotted off inside.

It was silent and then Lan Wangji bowed a little, twice, like a clockwork prince, and strode off briskly up the street, his long hair blowing behind him as the wind broke on his face.

When Wei Wuxian turned back to see Wen Qing, she was vanishing into the supermarket too and there was a fierce pride in the way she punched the numbers into the till.

It had been almost six minutes by his watch; six minutes of standing outside the paper-thin doors with the yellow light blooming from the bedside lamp Huaisang always had turned on in the evenings while he read his magazines and dense political texts and painted his nails to podcasts of people shouting arguments at each other.

Lan Wangji had always been bad at asking for help.

He was used to just keeping on going no matter what, silently and simply; he was good at it, too, and it was natural for him: it was just how he was. Asking for help had always been uncomfortable and at times insurmountable - even when he was young and it was just for something so small and insignificant and then as he grew older and he grew up in his brother's shadow, always following the footsteps of someone who shined so bright at everything.

It just was: he was not the kind of person who asked for help.

"Wangji-xiong," Huaisang opened the door just enough to allow him to fill the space and looked up at him with a decidedly placid face. "Are you going to stand out here all night or are you going to ask me whatever it is you want to ask or say or whatever?"

Wangji swallowed and nodded but the words - how do you apologise to someone you hurt when you feel so impossibly, terribly, horrifically guilty? - stayed heavy on his tongue and didn't move.

"Ah," Huaisang clicked his tongue understandably and smothered a yawn. "Look, if it is that important to you but that difficult to say, perhaps you should try having a drink beforehand? Just a little one - to remove your inhibitions, make you braver, you know?"

He blinked and then nodded again, leaving Huaisang to the soft light splayed around his room in a dizzying shatter of yellows and the pile of books and magazines on his bed, dark against the glare from his iPad screen.

In the quiet of his own room, he braided his hair for sleep and turned the idea over and over and over in his head.

The streets of Jinxi were almost emptied in the early night: they sighed into soft, spooling pools of lamp-light, orange and candied-warm in a light, sprinkling rain; here and there, people hurried past, their heads buried under hooded coats and clear plastic raincoats, white-edged and gleaming in the dark.

Out down north-wards, the lake swam blue-dark and smothered inky; the sky above it hung a mess of black-purple-blue like licked-long bruises, studded with stars through the thin layer of cloud, grey-ish and jostled by the winds up-up-up high.

When he slipped into the bar with its green wood walls, Song Lan was the only person inside, sitting in front of his laptop plastered with stickers, logos of bands and singers and little cartoon animals: Blackpink and a blushing red panda and IU in silhouette, her pink ballgown trailing along the top of the bar.

"Doctor Lan," Song Lan looked up when he approached and nodded once. He glanced at the laptop once more, twitching as though to close it - but he didn't. "Would you like a coffee?"

"En," Wangji shook his head - then elaborated, "No coffee, thank you. Would like -" he hesitated.

Huaisang had been helpful enough to suggest he would need a drink, but not enough to suggest what to drink or how much or how long it would take to take effect?

He had never before thought that he would wish he could remember what happened on the rare, rare occasions he drank anything at all - usually with Huaisang and once, horribly, with a group of his course-mates at university - but there was no doubt that the information would useful now.

Xiongzhang drank, even if not much - but the thought of asking him how much or what he drank seemed almost as bad as asking him if he had ever had intimate thoughts about another person.

Wangji was fairly certain that to ask the question would be to risk one or both of them collapsing from embarrassment.

Song Lan, in his way, was silent, waiting so perfectly patiently for Lan Wangji to work things out in his own head; he seemed almost to be listening to the rain as it fell outside, his eyes distant and his head tilted to one side.

"Would like," he said slowly. "Something to drink. Alcohol."

Song Lan nodded again, sliding off his barstool. "Does Doctor Lan have any preference?"

On the laptop, his brother's sticker-silhouette, midnight-blue-haired and moon-shadowed and indigo-swamped, seemed to watch him. It didn't have eyes - just the bare outlines of a sleek suit as he sat on the curve of the moon, splotches of white-white flowers in his hair - but it watched him all the same.

He felt judged. By a sticker.

When he reached the house again, he stowed the bottle of baijiu recommended by Song Lan in his cupboard, behind a backpack he always took home to Cloud Recesses whenever he went. Then, he flicked through his CD collection, finding his brother's second album, Shuoyue, with its moon-lit cover, and carefully placed it in a drawer upside down.

I thought Doctor Lan doesn't drink?

he doesn't - why what's happened?

aiya does he need rescuing? wait for me

wait, no, send me pictures!!!

He just bought a bottle of baijiu. His purpose wasn't clear but he seemed nervous.

Should we check on him? I'm on the late shift tonight, I could pass by his house?

ah wen ning you are too sweet!! no no need i'm sure if he needs rescuing he'll call!!

You are a good friend to Doctor Lan, Wei Wuxian.

i fucking knew it

A-Cheng don't swear. It's good that A-Xian has friends! And Doctor Lan, too

Since when were you friends with him, Wuxian?

qingqing it's not like that - you're still my best friend!

how could you think i would abandon our friendship like that??

and for what - a stuffy, arrogant, hot doctor??

for shame

well this was pointless

don't update me on this again until there's actual news

chengcheng do you not care about my life???

go to fucking sleep you gremlin

A-Cheng!

Jiang Yanli is right, you should not swear.

You should also all go to sleep.