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Jiang Cheng steps off the plane to an airport in Shanxi province, hours away from Beijing with heat thrumming like a second skin just below the surface of his body. The air is thick with humidity and the crowds which filter out of the streaked glass doors, the hard tones of arguments and the soft ones of exhaustion winding together between the squealing wheels of suitcases and the beat of footsteps, but all Jiang Cheng can hear is the ringing in his ears, the tension in his jaw, the grit of his teeth and the way his hand tightens around the handle of his duffle bag.
I found you, he thinks, as the crowd spills out of the walls of the airport with him in tow. Sunlight beams down on his face, burning at his cheeks and the tip of his nose and making his eyes sting; he squints as he waves down a cab, letting chatter and the rush of wheels against tar wash over him like a tidal wave. It’s not enough to put out the fire racing through his veins - the fire which had started at an ice rink in Beijing, when he had arrived half an hour earlier than he was supposed to, like always, only to find that he was alone.
I found you, Jiang Cheng thinks, as he slides into the torn black leather seats of the cab. An article is open on his phone, the screen a guiding light in the shadows of the car. The headline reads, Top Skater spotted coaching in a small town in Shanxi?
The thought of it sends sparks of embers from the tips of his fingers down to his feet, igniting any part of his body that might have hoped to cool down. He always used to laugh at Jiang Cheng for it, joking about how he might just melt the very ice he was skating on if he didn’t learn to burn his anger a little less.
“You want to go there?” asks the cab driver, a cigarette smoking from the tip in his mouth, resting between cracked lips. Jiang Cheng can see his eyes in the rearview mirror, narrow and slack and bored. “Why, a young man like yourself? Only people who ever go to towns like that are-”
“Just shut up and drive,” Jiang Cheng spits, patience worn thin by the plane ride and journey here and by waking up for days to find the ice rink empty when he got there at ass-o’clock in the morning and a blank space which was supposed to have been filled with a promise.
Fucking liar.
“Alright, alright! Jeez, kids these days…” The cab driver pulls out of the line of cars in monotone shades of black and grey, driving straight forward to a chorus of enraged honks and shouts without a care in the world. Jiang Cheng ignores them. He doesn’t care. He can’t care, right now, about anything besides the feeling of ice beneath his skates, the shine of a gold medal under the spotlights, and a cheeky, roguish smile which had sworn to stand behind him and had left.
I found you, Jiang Cheng thinks, as the cab drives towards a town in the middle of nowhere in another province where he had apparently decided that some useless skater, who hadn’t been able to get over himself enough to perform properly during the type of chance people would kill for, was more important than Jiang Cheng.
I found you, Wei Wuxian.
Jiang Cheng first meets Wei Wuxian when he’s seven and the latter is nineteen. Jiang Cheng is young, with wide, sparkling eyes at the sight of the graceful figures who glide along the ice, spinning and leaping like angels. At his shoulders, his father’s eyes are absent, and his mother’s tongue is caustic and demanding, and his sister’s smile is soft and indulgent as she listens to him ramble about every person he sees, tugging her along by her sleeve with the type of joy that, even so young, he doesn’t often express.
Jiang Cheng’s mother had been a skater; the limp that she still walks with to this day is a remnant of the injury which had forced her out of it. The bitterness seeps from her as she tugs her children along without a kind word, her husband’s dismissal only angering her more. Even in this center of talent, where victory permeates through the air, she does not look happy.
It makes Jiang Cheng hungry. Hungry, to make his father look his way; hungry, to remove the tension in his sister’s shoulders as she looks between them; hungry, to make his mother happy. Most of all, hungry to fully taste what just lines his lips as he watches older teenagers and adults, their forms steady and to his eyes perfect, pride in every bone in their body. Athletes are full of pride - the fierce type which makes anything less than the top the same as the bottom.
Jiang Cheng is not yet one of them, but even at age seven, when the ice is a solace from the conflict which his home breathes, he knows he wants to be. He knows that the stars in his eyes are not just admiration, but desire.
His mother pulls at his shoulder to keep him by her side as they stride to the doors of a large facility, which towers over them all, even his mother, metal gates and sleek glass walls. The man who greets them there is in his 30s, his eyes sharp, a goatee on his face and his posture ramrod-straight. He looks over all four of them, from his father’s indifference to his mother’s force to his sister’s attempts at a smile, until finally, his eyes land on Jiang Cheng.
“I’m glad to meet you in person,” he says, this time to Jiang Cheng’s mother. “My name is Lan Qiren. Your son is the skater?”
“He is,” says his mother, and even with the thorns in her tone Jiang Cheng can’t help but bask in the pride woven between them.
The adults talk above him, about the importance of childhood and the strain of training from so young and how not everyone can be allowed to train in China’s biggest skating facility from the same age that most start skating. After a while, Jiang Cheng grows bored; they’re speaking of tests and contracts, and even Yanli’s eyes are wandering, a small blush coloring her cheeks at the defined muscles visible through some of the clothes of the male skaters.
“Why don’t you go look around, A-Cheng?” his sister suggests, gently pushing him back towards the skating rinks and away from Lan Qiren and their parents. Jiang Cheng lets her, even though part of him wants to insist that he’s a big enough boy to listen to the adults, because right now he doesn’t want to listen to the adults.
His eyes catch on one of the skaters spinning thrice in the air before landing so smoothly the movement is like water, and any hesitation dissipates.
“Yes, Jie-jie,” Jiang Cheng whispers, before bolting back over to the skating rinks. He doesn’t see his sister’s smile behind him; his eyes are too focused on everything else around him. Skaters ranked nationally, internationally - skaters who, he realizes, he wants to be one of.
“You’re a little young to be here,” says a voice from behind him. Jiang Cheng’s vision flicks back to reality; he jumps, spinning around to face a boy much older than him, leaning on a grey cane with dark, flinty eyes scanning over the same scene Jiang Cheng had just been watching with much less reverie.
The boy looks almost like a ghost, Jiang Cheng thinks, with sallow cheeks and bags beneath his eyes. He’s dressed in a red track suit, hair long and pulled away from his face, strands falling out of the ponytail in a way which would have made his mother sneer. As he scans over the skater Jiang Cheng had been watching - a man perhaps in his 20s, going through a routine with the type of power his seven year old self could only dream of, he shakes his head, sighs, and steps back.
It lights up something at the back of Jiang Cheng’s throat.
“Don’t you think he looks amazing?”
The boy tilts his head and smiles - unhappy and flat.
“I can pick out ten different mistakes he’s making right now.”
Jiang Cheng can feel his cheeks flushing, his head pounding; something behind him eyes turning them red. He spits, “Prove it!”, voice high with childish disbelief, and only blushes more when the boy’s eyes, instead of returning to the skater, snap to him.
“Nah,” he says.
Jiang Cheng blinks at him. The light is cast away from him, and he might have looked like a shadow himself if not for the bright red of the tracksuit, which keeps him from fading away.
“No?”
“I do that all the time,” says the boy, shrugging, “so I don’t want to right now. That’s boring.”
“You said you would!” Jiang Cheng protests, fists clenching at his sides. He stomps his foot, indignance dripping from his lips like dew drops from the cold ice in the air. “If not, you have to agree with me that he’s amazing!”
The boy shrugs again. A shadow falls over his face - it almost looks like Jiang Cheng’s mother.
“Everyone here is amazing.”
Jiang Cheng breathes in and swallows, his throat strangely dry. A bit away, the hum of Lan Qiren and his mother speaking overlaps with the scratch of skates against ice. He feels frozen, like this boy has taken him out of time as the rest of the world keeps moving, and he realizes, with the suddenness that comes with the new discovery of a child, that he hates it.
“So what?” Jiang Cheng demands, gripping at the fabric of his pants so tightly that he feels it stretch to a near-rip. The boy’s lips tick down again, thin and pale with a drop of red pooling on one side - blood. “Does that mean- does that mean no matter how good he is, it won’t matter, because someone will always just be- better?”
The boy laughs a little; it drifts by like a cold chill, stinging at Jiang Cheng’s ears.
“Of course. That’s how skating works, don’t you know that?”
The boy pushes himself up from where he was leaning against a wrought-iron fence; his palms are red from compression and cold where they’re uncovered, and he leans on his cane further, shifting as if to walk away.
“You don’t matter unless you’re the very best.”
He knows that. Jiang Cheng is seven years old and even then there’s something empty in his chest which makes him want to grip at the bottom of competition until he claws his way to the top. There’s something like rage, something that sparks, something which will never be satisfied because he has been told his entire life that there will always be someone better.
He knows that.
“And are you?” Jiang Cheng calls, a puzzle piece carving itself into his mind.
The boy pauses where he’s hobbling away, his back to Jiang Cheng. This way, he can see the tension in his shoulders, their slump, the way that even muted, the shade trying to hide it, this boy seems to outshine everything around him.
“Am I what?”
“The very best,” says Jiang Cheng, in a voice that sounds like a child and words that sound like his mother and a feeling against his teeth and atop his tongue that feels like him. “Are you the very best?”
The boy doesn’t turn around back to face him, but his voice carries; it rings in Jiang Cheng’s ears, tunneling the sounds around them, varied and overlapping and abrasive, to a muted hum in the background. It feels like the focus of a camera on the centerpiece of a photograph, blurring the images around them to capture perfect detail.
“Of course I am,” says the boy. “Just watch, next Grand Prix.”
That next Grand Prix, Jiang Cheng has already turned eight when he’s staring at the television in front of him, knees pressing to the hardwood floor and mouth slack and open. The boy on screen shines in the spotlights as he flies above the ice; an angel, a deity, something supernatural, greater than any human ability. Every spin he executes is perfect; every jump is landed flawlessly. He wins without contest, without rivalry, without a single person to shake his title as the greatest skater in the world.
Wei Wuxian, thinks Jiang Cheng, eyes fixed on the boy who had told him, you don’t matter unless you’re the very best.
Wei Wuxian, he thinks, and the name tastes like victory.
Another puzzle piece emerges in his mind, slowly, and clicks into place with the first.
The building sign flickers, neon lights fading in and out to the shape of Yu-Topia Wen above the door, which shifts back and forth in the wind, slowly, soft creaks from the hinges.
It’s made of wood, and beneath the soles of his boots, Jiang Cheng can almost feel the smooth boards of the floor - the same way it had felt beneath his knees as he kneeled in front of the TV that day, watching the inhuman boy who would become the man who taught him what it meant to make history.
“I’m sorry, can I help you?” the woman at the door to the building asks, her hands folded against her chest. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and her eyes flick over Jiang Cheng - young, expensively dressed, bag in hand and unable to keep his feet still - with skepticism.
“Wei Wuxian is here,” Jiang Cheng says, not bothering to mince his words.
He doesn’t have the patience for such things; not now, when just working his voice enough to moderate it feels like lifting the sky. Anger fuels his movement; every instructor he’s ever had has praised the force of his turns and the sharp, direct way that he shifts from one position to another, no lagging or wasted movements beyond what’s needed for a good show. It’s in moments like this, though, that he feels the inverse; that same anger feels as if it’s leaving him stuck, a rigor mortis that makes the cut of his jaw clenched and his words too flat.
Wei Wuxian has left him frozen in time, still while the rest of the world moves on and expects him to keep up, just as he always has. He hates him for it.
The woman pauses. Her jaw sets, and her hands shift to her hips. He can catch a glimpse of a badge in her breast pocket, laminated with a silver clip towards the center, the type of thing they give hospital staff.
“We’re not accepting press or interview requests, and if you try to camp out here or something I will call the cops on you.”
“I’m not press,” says Jiang Cheng, trying and failing to unclench his hand from around his duffel bag’s handle. The woman’s eyes are drawn to the attempted motion, and then back up to his face. She scans over him like his father over the sudoku puzzles from the newspaper, scanning over the information in front of her to fill in the empty gaps to the picture. For a second, he finds himself wondering what it is that she sees, or that she thinks she’s seeing.
The question fades at the vicious, bitter ache erupting from the deepest part of his chest, spreading through the rest of his body like a wildfire, crackling behind his eyes and at the tip of his tongue, at the man who walks out of the side of the hotel building.
He’s not alone. Of course he’s not. Jiang Cheng hadn’t let himself forget it - why he was even in this town in the middle of bumfuck nowhere to begin with. The man at his side is pale, willowy, with large, droopy eyes and the countenance of a scurrying rodent, like any sound would make him dart away. It turns Jiang Cheng’s lips up; the cowardice, the familiarity , because he’s coming to realize that he’s seen this man before, and if this was who he had decided to coach instead of Jiang Cheng, if this man is who he had replaced him with-
“Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng snarls, teeth in every letter, “you fucking liar.”
Wei Wuxian’s feet still.
For a second, he studies him, with those same eyes which had always made Jiang Cheng grasp at a line which was only getting further and further away the closer he got. He studies him, with those same eyes which had picked apart that other skater when Jiang Cheng had been seven in a matter of seconds, and then refused to tell him the mistakes he had noticed. Those same eyes, which had looked at him and told him it doesn’t matter unless you’re the very best.
Then, his face splits into an open-mouthed, wide, entirely fake grin, and Jiang Cheng thinks something must explode against the edge of his skull and press against his insides with the pressure.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise?”
“Surprise,” says Jiang Cheng, his voice too low beneath the whorl inside his own ears. Wei Wuxian keeps smiling, his body language relaxed and easy; the same lithe, casual grace as when he’s on the ice. “Is that all you have to say to me?”
“What else is there to say?” Wei Wuxian’s smile is painted over the canvas of his face, shaded with something Jiang Cheng can’t read and all too knowing.
Jiang Cheng hates him. He hates him more than he’s hated anyone or anything, more than he hates Wen Ning, the man standing next to him shaking like a leaf in a breeze, but still not more than he hates himself.
“Excuse me,” says the woman from the front, before, and against his will Jiang Cheng’s eyes turn to her at the unspoken command in her voice. Her eyes shift between Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Wen Ning, the turn of her lips thin as she steps smoothly between the latter and the former two.
“And who exactly is this boy?”
The rush of humiliated anger which chokes Jiang Cheng’s throat is almost embarrassing, especially at the exasperated look Wei Wuxian shoots him after, like he knows exactly what he’s feeling. He doesn’t, and he never has, but he likes to think he does - that he knows Jiang Cheng better than he knows himself.
He likes to think that, and then he’d dared to-
“Ah, another skater I train with,” says Wei Wuxian, tone drawling and casual, waving a hand in the air.
If he had been given two seconds, Jiang Cheng thinks he would have hit him. He thinks he would have wound his fist in Wei Wuxian’s collar and pulled them closer together until he could see the beads of sweat rolling down his brow, the flush of red along his nose - until he could see the exact places where he would have to tear at false skin and pretenses until honesty bubbled up and he would finally have a fucking answer.
He’s only given one second.
“Xian-ge, is everything- alright?” Wen Ning asks, and Jiang Cheng wants to laugh.
Even now, standing at the side of a god, Wen Ning looks pitiful - his voice is timid and his stance is curled, as if he wants to disappear into himself. Jiang Cheng hopes he does. It’s infuriating - that this man whose performance had been average at best when Jiang Cheng had been lauded as the second coming of Wei Wuxian, who hadn’t even been able to look him in the eyes in the aftermath of that failure - is enough of a motivation for Wei Wuxian to upend everything, to fly out to the middle of nowhere and get himself painted across newspaper headlines in an entirely new way for reasons no one, and sure as hell not Jiang Cheng, had been given.
“Everything’s fine, A-Ning,” says Wei Wuxian. His eyes slide over Jiang Cheng like water over a stone in a riverbed. “Why don’t we all talk inside, hm? Ooh, Jiang Cheng, A-Ning showed me this lovely tea they make at their hotel - you should really try it!”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t think he’s hearing himself properly. All he can hear is the mask of Wei Wuxian’s goddamned smile, the way his voice carries all that false levity, the way his arm wraps slowly around Wen Ning’s shoulders, snug as if it belongs there when it doesn’t. It belongs on Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, mussing his hair in spite of his complaints, tilting his head up with the thumb brushing over his cheek like a hot brand.
Wei Wuxian had promised him.
“Sure,” says Jiang Cheng, and Wen Ning flinches back at his tone. Good, he thinks, something acidic in the thought - something that he hopes hurts. “Sure. Let’s drink some tea.”
Watching Wei Wuxian skating in person always feels the same way that it did on that television years ago - as if Jiang Cheng is watching something far above him, far greater than him, move without his feet touching the ground or his skill touching the boundaries that other people have to live between. If not for the scrape of gold blades against the rink, the indents left as Wei Wuxian slides from a crouch smoothly into a spin, he might as well have been gliding above the ice, weightless and unencumbered and even with something missing, it doesn’t feel as if they’re looking at a person.
The light shines against the bare skin of Wei Wuxian’s forearm, blinding from its reflection against the rink. His eyes are closed as he skates; his expression is easy, completely relaxed as skates a program that would be the envy of anyone else in a position like theirs. He’s been a living legend in the world of figure skating for almost as long as Jiang Cheng can remember; the finish line for his goals for as long as he’d had them set. Watching him feels like a mirror of every mistake that he makes, shown to him through the golden gleam of what it means to be without them; every perfectly landed quad and jump, every transition that’s just a bit too jagged when Jiang Cheng does it but perfect when it’s Wei Wuxian.
At his side, Wen Ning, too, has paused. His mouth is agape, his hands clenching the wall between the rink and the floor as if holding on for his life. Jiang Cheng hates to admit how much he understands him.
“They’re for a program he was practicing for next season,” Jiang Cheng says, not looking at Wen Ning. He doesn’t think he could even if he had any desire to - not when Wei Wuxian is right there, and the world’s eyes will always be drawn to him, first, above all. The world, and Jiang Cheng along with them.
“What?” Wen Ning asks, surprised, and Jiang Cheng feels his chest clench and his tongue ache with the urge to snarl out his next words. He doesn’t; he holds himself back, lets it out in curt bursts instead. Keeps his eyes on Wei Wuxian’s perfection, and his eyes on the one, singular flaw which pervades the entire piece.
“He was already putting together programs for next season,” Jiang Cheng manages. When Wei Wuxian lands his second Lutz, his technique is near-perfect, and when his hands thrust out it’s precise and careful and utterly unemotional.
Jiang Cheng can remember watching Wei Wuxian choreograph these. Lan Qiren’s scathing words were an eternal background to the image of a phantom making his way across the ice, disappearing and reappearing with the rays of light which would dance across the ice with far less grace than Wei Wuxian had. There were nights when it would be just the two of them, or mornings when they would be up earlier than everyone else, and in the hours before or after he was more of an example, a standard, than a person, Jiang Cheng would watch Wei Wuxian perform yet another perfect loop, or flip, or axel, with his face lined with dissatisfaction and his smile empty.
“Surprising the audience is important to him,” says Jiang Cheng, slowly, because Wen Ning is increasingly looking like his head is hollow of anything but confusion behind his eyes. It’s not a lie, not exactly, but it isn’t the whole truth; Wei Wuxian cares about surprising the audience, keeping them guessing about just which standard he’ll set a new record for next, or which way he’ll tug their hearts and their minds until all they can think about is him.
But more than that, it’s about surprising himself . Outdoing himself. More than that, it’s the way that Wei Wuxian had stepped up to the podium during the last Grand Prix, the gold of his skates matching the shine of the gold of his medal, and Jiang Cheng had known that if he’d ripped off Wei Wuxian’s false smile there wouldn’t have been anything there at all.
Wei Wuxian ends his routine soon after he notices them both watching - it sends a shock of mild surprise through Jiang Cheng’s spine, that he’s not taking every opportunity to show off more - and makes his way off the ice towards them, unhurried and relaxed. Jiang Cheng can feel the white plaster of the dasher board beneath his palms, the grooves digging into his hand from how hard he’s gripping at the cap rail, and tries to force himself to the appearance of relaxation. Of lack of care. The same thing that Wei Wuxian is showing.
“Alright!” says Wei Wuxian, clapping his hands together with his skates against the barrier wall and a look which flickers across his face that Jiang Cheng knows far too well. Apparently, Wen Ning’s sister and grandmother had this rink closed to the public for a ‘private’ practice session, and so despite the swathes of press gathered outside, swarming the door like gnats, they’re alone.
“Finally remembered you have more obligations than smiling at the cameras outside?” Jiang Cheng spits, feeling Wen Ning stiffen at his side and not caring. Wei Wuxian’s smile doesn’t fade, projected onto his face - constant, wide, all-encompassing.
“Ah, ah, you know I’m the forgetful type! Silly me!” He reaches his hand behind his head to scratch at the back, shifting his long, messy ponytail away from his neck and over his right shoulder. Strands of his hair look like shadows against the light of the skating rink.
“And anyway, I’ve decided how we’re going to do this. A promise is a promise, after all, so! Tomorrow, I’m going to choreograph a short program for both of you, using the same music I’m using for my short program.”
“The same music as him ?” Wen Ning whispers, tone heavy with awe and weighted down with anxiety, but all Jiang Cheng can feel is the same hollow in his chest that he’s had since he was seven and a boy with shadowed eyes told him, you don’t matter unless you’re the very best.
“The same music as him?” Jiang Cheng demands, jerking a thumb at Wen Ning. Wei Wuxian’s smile doesn’t fade.
“No, this piece has several different arrangements. I was trying to decide which one to use, but now I have two lovely and willing test subjects right here!” Wei Wuxian leans an arm against Wen Ning, careless of the way the man turns bright red and squeaks at the contact, slotting against his side like a part of a set. It makes Jiang Cheng want to smash his fists into Wen Ning’s face until there’s nothing left, and then do the same to Wei Wuxian until he stops acting like-
“Who said I was willing?” asks Jiang Cheng, and he knows how bloody and cruel it sounds because Wei Wuxian finally focuses on him instead of looking through him.
For a second, Wei Wuxian’s eyes narrow. His shoulders tense. His posture stiffens, and his smile drops.
Then, he’s back to normal, and Jiang Cheng hates him for it.
“Aw, don’t be like that, Jiang Cheng! Don’t you think it’s a lovely idea? I’ll be obligated to do whatever the winner commands of me, of course - so if A-Ning wins, I stay here and coach him, but if you win, I go back to Beijing with you! Everyone is happy!”
Jiang Cheng’s jaw aches from the force of keeping it closed so tightly. He thinks he wants to say something like, that’s not it, and perhaps he might have managed to find the shape of the words on his tongue if Wei Wuxian hadn’t already moved on.
“I’ll think of a different program for each of you, of course, and present them to you in a week-” and he claps his hands, still smiling like the world is on fire and he doesn’t care, “-and you’ll compete to see who can surprise the audience more. Isn’t it great?”
Jiang Cheng wants to shake him. Instead, before he can fully digest the words, the implications, he starts laughing.
Wen Ning is spluttering somewhere nearby, words fluttery and thin with apprehension, but all Jiang Cheng can think of the new line drawn in the sand - as if Wei Wuxian is inviting him into exactly what he wants, swinging the gates wide open behind a wall of spikes and daring him to see if he can persist long enough to make his way inside.
I found you, Jiang Cheng thinks, and even when he manages to taper down his laughter enough to speak he can’t stop smiling, and now you’ll show me exactly why you left.
“Now, both of you listen to this and tell me what you think.”
The song that plays over the speakers is almost mournful, kind and sweet. Its notes drift through the air like a floral perfume, just subtle enough to draw attention. The song itself is so soft; like flower petals scattered in the morning air, thick with humidity and half candied from the way it echoes. Jiang Cheng tries to imagine skating to this, tries to imagine applying so little force as if walking over eggshells about to crack, and wants to hurl.
“Well?” asks Wei Wuxian, as the music stops.
“Great,” says Jiang Cheng, flatly, “I’ll just fucking float my way to winning the Grand Prix.”
Wei Wuxian tilts his head, the smile on his face not dulling once. Perhaps it’s simply dull already, enough that if you shaved it down further it would crack in half.
“Ah, well. A-Ning?”
The sound of Wen Ning’s voice - the very man he’s been determinedly ignoring at his side, the presence enough to send sickening disgust thrumming through his veins - makes Jiang Cheng want to break something.
“I-I liked it, Xian-ge!” Wen Ning straightens his back and lifts a finger as if he’s presenting a lecture to the class, ill-prepared and ill-suited for the topic. “It sounds innocent and sweet, like someone who isn’t sure yet what love is…”
“Good, good,” Wei Wuxian’s expression doesn’t change one bit. The glint of sunlight from the rink’s roof windows leave half his face shaded and the other lit in perfect detail, as if half hidden by a mask. “Alright, let’s try this one.”
The next song is quick. Bold, intense. Jiang Cheng can almost see the piece laid out in front of him, or at least the shape of it - something dynamic, damn near violent in the way it would draw someone in with the flick of wrists and the stolen breath that comes with the spins. When he licks his lips, he tastes spice - something like the chili flakes Wei Wuxian carries around with him everywhere to add to whatever he eats, like a damned freak.
“I want to skate to this one,” Jiang Cheng says, the second the music is gone. He ignores Wen Ning; he won’t matter in just a few days, anyway. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the man who matters; on the man who’s not smiling, now, but clicking his tongue, tilting his head in a way that seems almost assessing .
“Hmm? Well, that last piece was On Love: Agape ; unconditional love. And this one, just now, that Jiang Cheng seems to like so much…” and here his eyes trail over Jiang Cheng, the smile that flickers over his lips slow and keen , “that was On Love: Eros ; that theme is sexual love.”
And then he claps his hands, and his smile shatters back to a screen.
“So, here’s how I’m assigning them! A-Ning, you’ll be skating to Eros, and Jiang Cheng, you’ll skate to Agape!”
He’s fucking joking.
“What the fuck?!” Jiang Cheng spits, as Wen Ning whimpers like a kicked dog, stammering about being sexy or something. Whatever, who cares; all Jiang Cheng cares about is the way Wei Wuxian’s smile turns so damn condescending, as if he’s lecturing a small child.
“Switch them! This stupid piece isn’t me at all!”
“You have to do the opposite of what people expect, don’t you know? Or do you think that you’re so talented that if you just do the same thing, over and over, the world will never grow tired of you?”
Jiang Cheng can hear the grind of his teeth against one another, beneath the ringing of his ears that pulsates through his skull, constant and repetitive, at how casually Wei Wuxian says it. At how his hands are on his hips like a fucking schoolteacher, as if Jiang Cheng doesn’t already know what it means when someone grows tired of him without warning-
“Actually,” says Wei Wuxian, and his eyes are on them both but the stretch of his words is like the sting of a rubber band against the wrist and it feels as if he’s talking to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Cheng alone, “you’re both far more ordinary and mediocre than you seem to think… do you really think you’ll get to choose how the world sees you? What they come to decide about you?”
“What’s your fucking point,” Jiang Cheng says, and hopes it hurts.
Wei Wuxian just shakes his head, still smiling. “Oh, dear… from the audience’s perspective, right now, you know what you both are? Absolutely nothing! Why should I see you as any different?”
Stop it, Jiang Cheng wants to tell him, stop fucking around and tell me the goddamned truth, because you don’t fly across a country for nothing.
You don’t matter if you’re the very best. Don’t you know that?
If Jiang Cheng doesn’t matter, then there’s no possibility that Wen Ning does.
“If you’re not up to my standards by next week, I just won’t choreograph a program for either of you! Then again, you are both my fans - I’m certain you’ll be able to manage.”
Arrogant, thinks Jiang Cheng, bathed in acid with his vision green and narrowed.
Fucking asshole, thinks Jiang Cheng, and his palms have gone numb from how hard he’s pressing his fingernails to the flesh.
Fine, he thinks. Fine.
“Fine, I’ll fucking skate to Agape. That’s what you want to keep your damn promise, is it?”
Wei Wuxian just chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck. He looks sheepish, as if missing some dinner date or something, not as if he promised Jiang Cheng the world and left him without even rubble.
Jiang Cheng’s jaw aches. “Fine! I’ll skate to it, and you better give me a program that’ll let me win.”
Because when Jiang Cheng wins, Wei Wuxian is going to fucking look at him, with his eyes in full focus and his smile finally gone for something honest. Wei Wuxian is going to look at him and he’s going to tell him the fucking truth and Jiang Cheng will finally have found him, instead of only being able to watch as he slips further and further out of reach and not even knowing why.
I found you, Jiang Cheng thinks, and wants to laugh at himself. No, not yet. But he will. He’ll find him this time, and he’ll find him again and again until there’s no one to reach for and nothing to find.
Wei Wuxian folds his arms, raising an eyebrow. “It’s up to you whether you win or not… though if I skated the program, I’d win for sure.”
Fucking piece of shit, Jiang Cheng wants to snarl, and imagines marching over to him and clawing at that smirk until both the expression and the pedestal shielding it are gone.
Jiang Cheng remembers being seven years old. He remembers watching Wei Wuxian skating on television, and knowing, somewhere deep in both his soul and body, that was winning - that was what mattered, what made you matter. Victory was what filled the hollow that has been carved into Jiang Cheng since he was a child - since he was seven years old and knew, even then, exactly what he needed so that people would finally look at him.
Wei Wuxian’s whole body is seeping with challenge, and Jiang Cheng has never been able to resist a bet. Not with him.
“Then, after I win, you’re going to come back to Beijing with me, and you’ll coach me, through my senior debut, just like you promised. Got it?”
And are you?
Am I, what?
The very best.
Wei Wuxian’s face seems cast in gold, the way the light leaves it gleaming, near expressionless.
Of course I am.
“Sure,” he says, and for the first time all day, Jiang Cheng feels his lips twist into a smile.
“First up, Jiang Cheng’s On Love: Agape.” Wei Wuxian pauses. “Unconditional love. God’s love is unselfish; uncalculating, self sacrificing-”
“Get the hell on with it,” Jiang Cheng interrupts, and Wei Wuxian’s grin only grows wider as the music starts.
Just like the first time hearing it - saccharine and melancholy, like riverside evenings watching fireworks during a festival - the song is suffocating. Innocent in desire, wholehearted in affection - something entirely selfless. Wei Wuxian himself is skilled enough that the delicateness of the piece is clear, even despite how little Jiang Cheng would think it suits him - each movement floating by them as he skates, feathers in a breeze, his hair whipping around his face despite being tied back.
It looks tame. Mellow. Nothing like how Jiang Cheng usually skates.
He’s going to get this. He knows he can, and so he will. Wei Wuxian will coach him, will be truthful with him; because if Wei Wuxian can do this, so can he.
That’s all there is to it.
The music stops, and Wei Wuxian lowers his hands, twisting around to call out, “Kind of like that, what do you think?”
“Yeah, I got it,” confirms Jiang Cheng, rolling his eyes at Wen Ning’s gasp. Seriously, does this idiot need to be handheld through learning routines? If that’s what Wei Wuxian wanted, someone so hopeless he has to guide them like a blind man, then-
“Now: A-Ning’s On Love: Eros.” Wei Wuxian continues, his smile ticking up at Wen Ning’s squeak.
“Pleasure followed by pleasure; enough that one just… drowns in it.”
The music starts its beat, rapid and jarring in its suddenness, a jolt to the heart, through the chest to the body and down to the floor. Wei Wuxian’s movements are forceful, sharp and quick like the strikes of a whip; alluring in the way he pauses with his chest out for a split second before curling into the next axel, the way he lets his smirk embalm itself into the fabric of the piece as he skates. This one, Jiang Cheng thinks, this one - he can’t stop staring at Wei Wuxian at all, at the way his exposed collarbone looks damn near sinful, the small shifts of his hips when he moves his feet, the smile on his face that looks so damn tempting to smash his fist or his lips into until neither of them can breathe-
The music stops in the same breath that Jiang Cheng forces himself to let out, his lip curling as Wei Wuxian’s eyes meet his, so damned knowing, for a split second before he looks back at Wen Ning. Jiang Cheng scoffs; Wen Ning looks as if he’s about to pass out.
Jiang Cheng thinks it’s not even going to be a competition.
Wei Wuxian came here first, something hisses, as Wei Wuxian’s addressing Wen Ning about what quads he can land. Jiang Cheng tastes something bitter, sharp, like sulfur; swallows it down and keeps it behind his teeth. You had to follow him here, and even now, he’s still running away from you.
Asshole.
“I can land the toe loop! And… I can land the Salchow in practice, but never in competition… I-I think I can do it if I try!”
Running towards this? Of all things? Jiang Cheng doesn't even bother keeping the sneer off his face. If Wen Ning thinks he can compete with such subpar skills, a complete inability to withstand any pressure at all… it’s not even laughable. It’s almost disgusting, the audacity of it.
Wei Wuxian is willing to turn towards this?
“Alright, I’ll teach Jiang Cheng first! You can just practice the basics for now.” Jiang Cheng snorts. Wei Wuxian ignores him, but god, Wen Ning would not last a fucking minute under Lan Qiren’s tutelage if he wilts so easily. Not a fucking minute in any genuine championship, much less the cutthroat competition that people like Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian understand like the backs of their hands.
“I won’t teach you anything yet that you can’t do right now,” Wei Wuxian continues, voice dropping somewhere towards the end until it’s low, too low for Jiang Cheng to make out what he’s saying as he leans into Wen Ning’s red-tipped ears to speak, skating closer to the center of the rink and away from the middle.
Their bodies almost look like one, they’re so close, in the dimming light. Wei Wuxian’s ponytail nearly makes its way over Wen Ning’s shoulder. They’re so fucking close, so damned close- and is that the golden glint of Wei Wuxian’s skates, between Wen Ning’s feet? His leg between Wen Ning’s knees, which quiver like a reed in a river?
Jiang Cheng doesn’t slam his fist into Wen Ning’s stomach or Wei Wuxian’s face, nor does he skate over there himself and shove them apart so Wei Wuxian will stop blathering like an idiot and actually coach him. Asshole, he’s so fucking useless, needs Jiang Cheng to keep- keep time for everything.
He fucking hates him so much.
“Hey, Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng hollers, scowling whenWei Wuxian looks up and shoots him a wave. “Aren’t you gonna get the hell on with it, you bastard?!”
“Yeah, yeah!” calls Wei Wuxian, light, but he skates away from Wen Ning and towards Jiang Cheng without a second’s pause, and finally, something clicks into place in Jiang Cheng’s chest again.
It’s disjointed and aching with frustration later, after hours of repeating the routine over and over again until Wei Wuxian’s movements might as well be tattooed onto his skin. The man holds up a hand, almost blurry through the exhaustion, and his voice echoes when he speaks.
“Stop, stop! Hmm, something here isn’t quite right, ah…”
Jiang Cheng couldn’t moderate himself even if he cared to. “I’m doing like you showed me, aren’t I?” he spits, bent over and gasping with his hands clenching his knees. They feel damp from the sweat on his palms, legs sore and tense in a way that’s beyond familiar and yet has never felt more worthless than it does as Wei Wuxian looks over him, with that same, repeated decision that there’s just something missing in him.
“Ah, there- your greed, it’s too obvious.”
Jiang Cheng could kill him.
“What the fuck are you talking about?!”
Wei Wuxian turns his eyes to the sky, his tone clear, contemplative and far, far too fucking calm when Jiang Cheng feels as if he’s going to explode.
“ Agape, Jiang Cheng, isn’t greedy. It’s unconditional love; and there’s no sense of that as you’re performing right now… it’s good to be driven, to want - but this isn’t the place to show that off.”
Jiang Cheng is going to kill him.
“As if you’ve been skating with anything but desire this whole fucking time! What the hell is this agape to you, then?!”
Wei Wuxian tips his head back. The sunlight leaves him painted in yellow, as if an outline filled in with watercolor which all blends together away from his blinding smile.
“Ah, it’s a feeling, of course! How can I explain that? Aw, you bother thinking about such things when you skate, Jiang Cheng? I always keep telling you that you think about things too much…”
Jiang Cheng is going to skate over right the fuck now and kill him.
“Fuck’s sake, stop bullshitting me! Agape this, agape that, how the hell does it matter to help me win?!”
“And that’s your problem, Jiang Cheng, right there.” Wei Wuxian’s eyes meet his. Unimpressed. Bored.
“You’re looking at this conditionally. What must I do for this goal, what must I manage for that? Agape exists without restraints, limitations or longing; simply love, constant and pure.”
Without restraints. Without conditions. Without the understanding that unless something is met, it will be taken away.
What sort of love is that? It’s damn near senseless. A love like that, something as much of a given as the air you breath and the ground beneath your feet - it doesn’t exist. Certainly not for them.
Wei Wuxian lets out a breath, arms dropping from his pockets to swing at his sides casually as he skates towards the edge of the rink. Away from the light, his face looks softer - less carved out of metal or stone, and more out of flesh and bone.
“How about we take a break?”
Jiang Cheng is pretty certain that he breaks his teeth.
“Are you kidding me?”
Wei Wuxian spreads his arms wide and pouts, his bottom lip sticking out from the top. “Ah, come on now, there’s a lovely bar nearby I’ve been meaning to try! You’re still a little young for such things, I think, but you can use this time to think on agape, what it means.”
“You fucking- you’re just trying to get out of teaching me!”
“Of course not, of course not!” Wei Wuxian backs away from Jiang Cheng’s body, from his face, from the way he’s wound tight and everything is so indignant that he can barely think.
“Me teaching you anything else won’t matter right now, because your performance will still be completely average. Do you know that, Jiang Cheng?”
It would be easier if he sounded taunting. Instead, Wei Wuxian just sounds flat - as if reciting something from a book.
“Average, it’s your damned program! I’m doing-”
“Perfectly copied, absolutely no feeling.” Wei Wuxian sighs. “And your right foot is sloppy on that turn towards the end and your Salchow is a disgrace.”
“Fucking hell, then let me run it again, I’ll-”
Wei Wuxian just yawns. His face is smiling, wide and broad, but his eyes are cold.
“I’m going to go get a drink, Jiang Cheng. See, have some agape for your lovely senior, and love me even when I’ll get back drunk, will you?”
He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t even call back a final comment. He doesn’t do anything - he just walks away, if it’s so easy, as if he’s said all he has to say and what he has to say is nothing but baked with monotony at just the thought of Jiang Cheng, and-
“I don’t fucking love you right now !” Jiang Cheng snarls, but all that answers him is Wei Wuxian’s retreating form, his ponytail swaying behind his back as he turns away from the ice.
Agape. Unconditional love.
Jiang Cheng sits back against the stadium bleachers, the metal cool against his skin. He closes his eyes as he tips his head back, and even the thrum of the familiar, recognizable burn in his muscles, his arms to his legs, doesn’t feel satisfying when the routine that made it so is hollow.
Wei Wuxian had called it unselfish. Self sacrificing. Love without desire behind it; a lack of greed.
Unconditional.
Jiang Cheng’s fist slams against the bench, knuckles shot through with shock and the impact buzzing up to his wrist. It stings.
He scoffs to himself, wiping at his lips, the sound loud in the otherwise empty rink. It seems Wen Ning hadn’t deemed it important enough to practice as much as he did.
I found you, Jiang Cheng tries to remind himself, and it only rings empty and meaningless. He hasn’t found Wei Wuxian when the man escapes his grip like trying to grab a ray of light. He hasn’t found him when he’s still here, sitting uselessly instead of practicing until his callouses bleed because something is missing. He hasn’t found him at all.
You don’t matter unless you’re the very best. Don’t you know that?
Unconditional love. Fucking hell.
The rink is silent as he skates aside from his own voice, a background of metal against ice for cursing and harsh breaths as evening dips into night. A chill sweeps through the building, the wind brisk and whistling, but Jiang Cheng barely feels it over his bare arms - he’s sweating too much, face red and body burning, Wei Wuxian’s smiling face and dull eyes at the back of his mind like a spectre, brushing over his shoulders and his feet and pulsing whenever he fucks up, over and over again.
Agape, Wei Wuxian had said, there’s no sense of that in your performance.
What is it that’s still missing?
Unconditional, unselfish, self-sacrificing…
No skater is like that. Of course they're not; they’re all clawing at the same mountains and competing for the same medals, camaraderie in struggle and understanding and nothing to do with sacrifice. No one cares about sacrifice. All that does is leave you behind.
You don’t matter unless you’re the very best.
His sister would have scolded him, if she’d been here. He’s not sure what the time is, but night has long grasped the sky, a dark blanket above the grass and buildings all dotted about the landscape like uneven drips of paint. He’s been here since the early hours of the morning, when fog curled around steps and shoes, and has only stopped to drink water and eat when he felt like he was going to pass out.
Yanli had always been a worrier, like that. As a child she used to text him regular reminders to eat, every morning and every noon and every evening, and would call him if he didn’t respond, her voice like a salve, even fuzzy and blurred over the phone. He’d cried, at first, when he’d started living in Beijing; not because he’d missed his parents, but because he’d missed her.
The first time he’d ever won a medal, ten years old and still high off what it meant to win, when she’d called him he hadn’t been able to tell her about the other kids at the competition whose tears he’d rolled his eyes at, or the other skaters who, even then, had eyes only for Wei Wuxian and never for him. All he’d told her, huddled behind the restaurant they were all eating at, was: did you see me, Jie-jie? Did you see how I skated?
She hadn’t asked if he’d won. She’d told him, you were so lovely, A-Cheng. I’m so proud of you.
Agape is unconditional love. It exists without limitations, without greed. Agape is pure; a love that is as constant as the air that you breathe and the ground beneath your feet.
The day of the match between him and Wen Ning, camera flashes feel like staring into the sun, blinding and overwhelming in their force. The stands are filled; Wei Wuxian’s name draws people like moths to a flame, ants to sugar, clustering together and shoving for a taste.
None of it matters. Not the press, or the crowd, or Wen Ning’s family, shouting encouragement at their shrinking violet as he curls up on the bench in front, awaiting his turn. None of it matters, except the way that Wei Wuxian looks at him as he skates - eyes sharp, eyes full, focus on every twist of his body and bend of his legs as if the spotlight has finally shifted to him.
Agape. Unconditional love. His sister’s face flashes through his mind as he skates, the song the same peace that he feels whenever her hands meet his shoulders, the twinkle of her laugh sounds in his ears. His sister, who makes food to soothe pain without ever asking other people to do the same for her; who calls him after every time he competes, whether he medals or whether he fails, to congratulate him. His sister who had pushed him towards the other skaters that first day he had arrived at Lan Qiren’s facility, and who has never once, not once, resented him when victory matters too much to him to come back to her.
He’s going to make her proud. She’s watching, right now; he’ll make her proud. Wei Wuxian is watching, as well; it feels like stepping onto a pedestal after a competition, and not having to look up.
Jiang Cheng ends his routine to a tsunami of noise; clapping and cheering and screamed commentary. He feels like a mountain in a storm, utterly unmoved; the only thing that makes him smile as he finishes, skates away from the rink and back to the bench, is the nod that Wei Wuxian gives him.
Is that what you wanted? Jiang Cheng almost wants to laugh, I matched you. I understood what you told me. Will you finally turn back to me now and keep your promise? Have I finally reached you?
Have I finally found you?
“You owe me coaching in Beijing,” Jiang Cheng murmurs; near inaudible beneath the excitement which saturates the air, only building in sickening anticipation for the follow-up act. Wen Ning looks green; Jiang Cheng almost laughs. It fizzles to nothing, fades to dust, when he turns back to Wei Wuxian, because he’s no longer looking at Jiang Cheng at all.
“We’ll see,” Wei Wuxian says, as Wen Ning’s music starts.
For a second, a single, amazing second, the world feels wrong.
Wen Ning doesn’t skate at all like the times Jiang Cheng has watched him before. There’s no hesitation, no shyness, no fear. His movements look like a noblewoman; delicate in nature and just as alluring, force taken from a quieter pride which runs over his entire body. Jiang Cheng almost forgets; almost forgets who this man is, who he’s losing to him, why he hates him. He almost forgets, because the performance is eye-drawing and skilled and it’s good. Wen Ning pulls himself into a Salchow and lands it perfectly, his arms outstretched, and the crowd’s cheering barely registers as the movement sends a shock of something slowly unfurling to unpleasantness in Jiang Cheng’s stomach until he wants to throw up.
Wei Wuxian’s eyes are on him.
On Wen Ning - on this talented, charismatic performance that’s so different to how own, the same music and the same routine but the spirit of the choreography different enough it’s damn near unrecognizable and still, and still-
Wei Wuxian’s eyes had been on Jiang Cheng. For that split second, everything had been wrong in the world, and it had tasted like watching that television at seven years old and seeing himself in Wei Wuxian’s place.
Something screeches, unoiled as it jolts back into place. The world turns right again, and Wei Wuxian shines as he watches the man he left Jiang Cheng behind for, his eyes like spotlights of their own, and not a single bit of them trained on Jiang Cheng.
The aftertaste of his performance tastes like rot.
“That was amazing!” Wen Qing laughs, throwing her head back to chug a bottle of beer in a way that she probably shouldn’t be doing with little A-Yuan right at her side, cheering equally loudly. “Do you know how much money we made? Shit, I think this tripled our usual monthly earnings at least!”
“Language, dear,” says Wen-popo, but even she’s radiating satisfaction, patting her grandson on the head as Wen Ning squeaks and ducks his head down, face crimson. The sound grates against Jiang Cheng’s ears, and in his hand, the glass cup of water makes his palm ache with how hard he’s holding it. He should probably be more careful, so that it doesn’t shatter; the thing is that he doesn’t really care.
The image of Wen Ning on the ice, taking over a piece made by someone Jiang Cheng has only ever been able to reach for and never stand side by side with plays behind his eyes like a looping film reel, every detail in lifelike visibility. Out of the corner of his eyes he watches Wei Wuxian belt out a laugh to something that very man is saying, his face lit up and flushed red with wine, shoulders turned away from where Jiang Cheng is sitting, the only one not drinking and the only one not laughing.
Of course he is. Something familiar curdles his stomach - something born from childhood and fed with every failure which embeds itself in his bones and tastes like the apathy of his father’s eyes, once upon a time; like the absence where Wei Wuxian’s gaze used to be, now used up on someone else. The room is light, windows open and curtains blowing from the evening wind, the smell of dew on grass and hot food along the wooden table overwhelming. It's the type of scene that he and Wei Wuxian don’t fit in, too different from the sharp edges of competition pedestals and the careful calorie logs of everything eaten in a day they’re both supposed to live and breathe because you don’t matter unless you’re the very best and that’s all that matters. Except Wei Wuxian is right there, in the center, drinking and bright as if it means nothing and he isn’t fucking looking at Jiang Cheng at all.
He thinks about Wen Ning skating to Eros. He thinks about the way that Wei Wuxian’s eyes had looked when they’d been settled on him, satisfaction where monotony was supposed to have resided, and wants to throw his glass at the wall to shatter the cup and the joy and leave the shards scattered on the floor.
He doesn’t do that. He just watches, sitting apart in the shadows of the corner in the living room warmed with yellow light from the lamps and dripping orange from the candles. Even Wen-popo’s aged face spills content from every crease and wrinkle.
Even now, Wei Wuxian is the brightest spot of the room, a shock of the red ribbon holding up his hair and his red cheeks, and Jiang Cheng thinks, realizes, that he’s here again; frozen, watching the world go on around him, just like that first time he’d met Wei Wuxian and just like when Wei Wuxian had left him behind in Beijing for the same man he’s laughing with right now.
Wen Ning says something that makes Wei Wuxian throw his head back and let out a loud, full cackle. Wen Qing, nearby, rolls her eyes.
Wei Wuxian’s laughter tapers down slowly, fading into the evening breeze along with the remnants of the light outside. So does everyone else’s, but Jiang Cheng can’t say he cares about that when Wei Wuxian, even candid, is just so fucking magnetic. He stands up slowly, stretching out his arms above his head and ruffling little A-Yuan’s hair as he steps away from the warmth of the dinner table, all long limbs and relaxed shoulders as he opens the wooden sliding door to the night outside. The door slides shut behind him; the conversation starts up all over again, Wen Qing leaning forward to pinch her brother’s cheek, as if he hadn’t even left.
Jiang Cheng wants to scream. It aches to hold it back in his throat, pulsing like a second heart, too thick to swallow.
Instead, he stands up himself. His footsteps are harder than Wei Wuxian’s, more tense and less natural, and he knows himself enough to know that. Only Wen-popo looks over at him as he follows Wei Wuxian out the door; she affords him a single raised eyebrow, but nothing else, and then goes back to holding back A-Yuan from faceplanting into the fish curry on the table.
Outside of the dining room, the small deck is made of wooden poles. Jiang Cheng can feel where they’re knotted together, the spaces between them and the gaps where they don’t quite meet, through the soles of his slippers. The nighttime air is cool, fresh, and smells of wet grass and smoke from nearby lanterns; a soft rustling in the bushes just nearby the staircase down from the deck to the yard.
Wei Wuxian is illuminated by the flickering of his plastic lighter, hair whipping out from the wind and hands cupped to protect the wisps of an orange flame at the tip of his cigarette. It catches alight, the dull white flaring to life. He breathes in and then exhales, leaving grey smoke floating through the otherwise clear air; a taint on something pure.
Even like this, Wei Wuxian seems so much larger than life. So much brighter. Set alight by the flame of his lighter and left red along the edges with remnants of his presence floating in the wind to miles away from where he is. Jiang Cheng leans against the door frame, uncaring of how the metal digs into his shoulder, and when Wei Wuxian catches his eyes he sighs and exhales again, smoke trailing from his lips.
“You still haven’t gotten what you wanted?”
“What do you think?” Jiang Cheng grits out from between clenched teeth. His fingertips dig into the flesh of his upper arms, nails leaving indents where they press, stinging and sharp.
Wei Wuxian’s eyes trail over him lazily. Jiang Cheng almost feels like he’s on auction - judged and found flawed, found lacking, found traded for something like him that smiles and skates delicately and gently instead of with the force of all the anger build up and burning in him since he was seven years old and everyone in his life had let him know that nothing would matter unless he won.
You don’t matter unless you’re the very best.
“I think you did, and that’s what you’re angry about,” says Wei Wuxian, waving a hand to disperse the smoke around his face. It smells bitter, acrid, disgusting.
Jiang Cheng reaches over before his mind catches up with his body and snatches the cigarette from Wei Wuxian’s grip. He brings it to his lips and breathes in; it hurts going down and it hurts to hold his breath. He does, though, holds it and then breathes out, the darker shade of grey mixing with the lighter shade from Wei Wuxian’s drag, silhouetting the two of them beneath the fading deck lights.
“I thought you said you’d never destroy your lungs like that,” says Wei Wuxian, tone light. Jiang Cheng answers him by grabbing Wei Wuxian’s wrist and slamming the red-hot tip of the cigarette to his wrist and twisting, pressing, pressing the cigarette to his skin and his teeth to his own lips to draw blood and a hiss as Wei Wuxian pulls away, eyes wide and finally seeing.
Triumph is a sour thing, watered down and unsatisfying.
“Was that all it took?” Jiang Cheng asks, as Wei Wuxian pulls his wrist to his chest with his eyes meeting Jiang Cheng’s gaze. It hangs between them like birds on a wire, ready to flee at the slightest noise. Flighty, touching with thin feet and talons and leaving with marks left along their perch.
“You should go back inside,” says Wei Wuxian, “I haven’t seen you eat after that performance. Nutrition is important, you know!”
“You piece of shit,” says Jiang Cheng, stepping closer with wood creaking beneath his feet. Wei Wuxian’s lips curve up into something cutting and sweet, his hands at his sides as he waits, leaning against the railing with his elbows stuck behind him.
“You fucking piece of shit,” Jiang Cheng repeats, “you know exactly what I’m talking about. Wen Ning’s a good skater. There, I fucking said it. He’s pretty and delicate and sweet. Is that all it took for you? Is that all you wanted? Is that all you needed that-”
“So many questions,” Wei Wuxian muses, pushing himself up from the railing and leaning forward until his lips brush Jiang Cheng’s cheek for just a second before he pulls back. It sears when he leaves it behind.
“Maybe I was just bored, A-Cheng. There’s only so long you can be at the top before you start looking to fall, but no one’s managed that, and so maybe I was just bored. Does there need to be anything else to it?”
Jiang Cheng’s hands are gripping the fabric of Wei Wuxian’s collar in the same second he shakes him, shirt thin and rough in his palms and eyes heavy and wrong. “Fuck you. Fuck you. You know what else there is, you know what’s wrong, you-”
Something chokes his throat, strangling the words and leaving them to die.
You fucking promised me.
The world around them is tranquil, the still water of a lake, clear and cool. Jiang Cheng feels like a stone in the rapids at its side, thrown from side to side and smashing into anything it can to transfer the impact, staring into a waterfall and unable to do anything but get lost when he falls.
He hates Wei Wuxian. More than he’s ever hated anyone, and almost more than he hates himself.
“You know what your problem is, A-Cheng?” Wei Wuxian’s breath ghosts along the shell of his ear, acrid with cigarette smoke and hot. Jiang Cheng feels his hands unclench; his fingers fall from Wei Wuxian’s shirt, limp and crumpled up as his breath, ragged and wheezing. Wei Wuxian’s fingers press against the bottom of Jiang Cheng’s jaw, warm against the flush of his skin, and tilt his chin up, and Jiang Cheng feels the press of them right where his pulse beats, watches as Wei Wuxian’s dark eyes follow his Adam’s apple bobbing when he swallows.
“You want it too much.”
Lan Qiren is a harsh coach. The man seems cut from the same ice that he teaches on, his brow set eternally hard and voice dipped in the same criticism as Jiang Cheng’s mother, just more measured. When Jiang Cheng makes mistakes, he’s ruthless in pointing them out; when Jiang Cheng excels, Lan Qiren scolds him for that, too, lectures heaping one on top of the other about watching his developing body and managing himself in the long term. It makes Jiang Cheng want to roll his eyes whenever he starts on the latter; skaters have the lifespans of mayflies, flickering from life to death in the blink of an eye. There’s no point to skating unless he's the best, all the time - and that means doing everything in his power to get there.
His junior debut - his proper debut, that is, the one he has no choice but to win - is filled with endless practice, his every thought surrounding the gleam of gold in the distance of his vision. His life begins at 5am and ends at 10pm at the earliest, until even the coach himself is demanding he breathe, he calm down, he stop trying the type of quads which people five, ten years his senior have to strain themselves to manage.
Jiang Cheng’s an obedient student, follows every instruction to the letter until it’s burned into his muscles - enough that everyone else makes fun of him for it, even the older skaters.
It’s simply that he wants to win, and he knows damn well that being careful will only get him so far.
The Junior World Championships have a rink just as large as the practice rink in Beijing and ten times as crowded - the flash of cameras and spotlights leave the ice blinding, burning, every eye on him and every person stretching their necks forward to catch a single hint of a mistake. He can see Lan Qiren in the front of the bleachers, face hard and determined - remember your routine. Remember what you practiced. Remember what might as well be as natural to your body as breathing and keeping your heart beating.
Lan Qiren had choreographed a triple Salchow for him. Jiang Cheng remembers, from hours in the morning and hours in the evening when everyone else was gone, that he can do better.
His body feels like ice in the water, shocks in every limb keeping them so present he might as well only be moving one at a time. He can feel the air against his body, the spin in his legs and his arms, the way his eyes close, just for a second, to stop looking and feel his muscles in his legs, his arms, clench his stomach and close his fingers keep his ankles together-
See that, Coach? I told you I could manage it.
He barely feels the impact on his body when he lands, sliding back into the end of his routine like a hand into a glove, and the full rush of the excited cheers which rush over him from the crowd doesn’t process until after, when he’s sitting in the back of the championship stadium, Lan Qiren’s face red with his fury.
He’d landed a quadruple Salchow. He’d known he could do that. He’d known, and the look in the eyes of the crowd and - more importantly, the judges - makes him feel comfortable enough to just huff at his coach’s disapproval, tipping his head back to let water soothe his parched throat.
“You damned fool, I told you quads are off limits! Your body is developing, you want to do permanent damage to yourself all for the purposes of showing off?”
Jiang Cheng fights the urge to scowl with more water - he’s not stupid - and swallows to swallow back to urge to snarl back that it’s not about that.
He knows what he’s capable of. He knows what he’s practiced. He knows he can be better than everyone here, he has to be better than everyone here-
“Aiyah, Coach, you should praise him more!”
“Don’t get involved in this,” Lan Qiren snaps, turning his full-force scowl to the balcony above them - to the man who stands, leaning against the metal railing, form lit by the overhead lights and his eyes gleaming.
Wei Wuxian’s smile is cheeky, as if they’re sharing a secret. It sends something thrumming through Jiang Cheng’s body - at the thought of that something, that something they must share, that only the two of them could understand.
“I used to do that, too,” Wei Wuxian says, and when he tilts his head his ponytail falls over his shoulder. “Got my ass reamed for it - worse than you, even, ah!”
Lan Qiren shudders at the memory, his face twisted, but as he always does, Wei Wuxian draws all of Jiang Cheng’s attention - as if every bit of his background vision has faded, overcome by the sight his smile, his expression, as if he knows exactly what it is Jiang Cheng is aiming for.
“You can win, you know, even without quads. I’d even bet money on it - and I’m broke as shit. You can win the Junior World Championship.”
Jiang Cheng’s water glass crunches in his hands from how hard his fingers clench around it.
“And why the hell should I listen to you?”
Wei Wuxian tips his head back and laughs. It echoes through the room, through Jiang Cheng, through every hollow in his chest and sends him standing from his seat with his feet hard and rough against the ground, body wound tight and eyes narrowed.
Then he angles his head back forward, his eyes meeting Jiang Cheng’s, and he smiles.
“If you do, then I’ll coach you through your senior debut.”
The world doesn’t stop.
Instead, the world speeds up.
Lan Qiren spluttering behind him doesn’t matter. The crowds filtering out of the stadium don’t matter. The ache in his muscles and the flaking skin on his dried lips don't matter. All that matters is this - Wei Wuxian, standing above him, haloed by the light with that sure, confident smile on his face, as if anything he says is certain to be a truth.
“After you win the Junior World Championship, come see me,” he says, “and I’ll give you the best senior debut of all time.”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t feel his arm when he reaches out, reaches up. He doesn’t feel his feet when he steps forward, or his body when he stretches above him for Wei Wuxian, immortality falling from his lips as easy as breathing.
“You promise me that?”
Wei Wuxian’s smile changes. He might have even said it softens as he reaches back, reaches down, grasps Jiang Cheng’s hand in his own and shakes in once, firm.
His palm is calloused, thin and spindly. It feels like needles against Jiang Cheng’s palm, leaves his whole arm feeling so much it’s almost numb.
None of it matters. Nothing matters, compared to Wei Wuxian’s eyes and the worlds that fall from his lips.
“I promise.”
Wei Wuxian’s guest room is small and plain, white cotton bedsheets and a wooden frame. The lights are off when they stumble in through the door, strands of light floating their way through the half-open window at the other end of the room, leaving the room with just the faintest glow to see the outline of clothes along the floor, spares skates against the wall, a camera resting innocently on the desk, lens covered by a cap.
Wei Wuxian’s fingers are harsh and unrelenting, dragging over Jiang Cheng’s stomach and back like nails being pounded into wood. He digs his fingers beneath Jiang Cheng’s shirt and pulls it up over his head and for a second he can’t breathe until it’s off, and pulls down Jiang Cheng’s pants immediately, not caring for the zipper. The denim scrapes against his thighs, his ass, the same as Wei Wuxian’s hungry, fascinated gaze which only makes Jiang Cheng move to tear at the older man’s jacket with every bit of the same energy he has in his skating routines until it’s off. His eyes are dark in the black room, the same heat as a coal fire, and it burns along the blades of Jiang Cheng’s shoulders and down to his cock with enough intensity he shivers from it.
“Oh, A-Cheng, you silly boy, you’ve really got no idea how to use this, do you?” Wei Wuxian’s hand grips at his waist, fingers digging into his ass, and he pulls him to his body. Jiang Cheng clamps his hands at the back of his shirt, digging nails into skin.
“Shut the fuck up,” he snarls into Wei Wuxian’s neck, and his teeth find their way to the side and bite, a snake’s venom from a man’s mouth. His skin tastes like salt from sweat and smoke from his cigarettes.
Wei Wuxian sucks in a breath, gasping softly in a way that sends triumph curling with heat down Jiang Cheng’s body, and then he pulls back and stares at him with those deep eyes full of a desire that send victory exploding through Jiang Cheng’s being and his lips are on Jiang Cheng’s before he can protest.
Wei Wuxian has always left him gaping from behind, has always left him frozen in awe and too locked up to keep up with him. His kissing is the same - his tongue slips into Jiang Cheng’s mouth and his moan shivers through Jiang Cheng’s body until he’s moaning back, moaning so loudly his ears ring with it. He sounds like a whore in one of those videos Nie Huaisang started showing him a couple of years ago, and then Wei Wuxian’s hands slip to his thighs and he forces them against Wei Wuxian’s own waist, lifting Jiang Cheng up and slamming him into the bedroom wall hard enough he chokes into the kiss.
Wei Wuxian keeps kissing him. He keeps wanting him, as if trying to devour him piece by piece and it feels so fucking good. Jiang Cheng’s breath catches, forced out of his chest, and Wei Wuxian doesn’t let him get it back - his lips feel burning and his vision is swimming, the soft outlines of furniture and the sharp ones of Wei Wuxian’s body fading in and out for a second before he pulls back. Jiang Cheng gasps, almost coughs, but then Wei Wuxian’s teeth meet his nape and it’s all he can do to not moan louder at the sting that feels like the same rush of the first gold medal he had ever received, years ago with Wei Wuxian in the car after, his words teasing and his eyes fond.
“God, you’re so good for me, A-Cheng,” Wei Wuxian whispers. His breath feels like knives against his skin. Jiang Cheng tries to make his mouth work, tries to force his lips to form words and not just the shape leftover from Wei Wuxian’s, but Wei Wuxian’s fingers are forcing their way over his tongue before he can figure it out and then the man says, “There we go, suck on it like a good boy,” and he’s obeying before he can think.
“You’re so good at following instructions when you stop worrying so much,” Wei Wuxian muses, his eyes shifting and his smile almost gentle. His shirt falls away, revealing a lithe, muscled body, a scar running up the left side of it, pale in the moonlight. “There we go, just like that-”
Jiang Cheng makes himself pull away, away from the ripples of heat dancing beneath his tongue. Thin lines of drool like spiderwebs hang between his lips and Wei Wuxian’s fingers.
“You’re such an asshole,” he says, putting everything he can feel running through his body, every bit of force he can muster, enough that it hurts his throat, “you’ll coach me through fucking you, but you won’t bother to coach me skating?”
Does your promise mean nothing to you?
Wei Wuxian sighs, heavy - Jiang Cheng feels it where they’re pressed together, skin to skin, the way his chest rises and falls and the way his shoulders tense and then relax. His tongue swirls around Jiang Cheng’s nape, just beneath his ear - his lips meet the the skin there and suck, hard, enough that it feels like electricity thrumming beneath his skin, from where his fingers meet Wei Wuxian’s back to where his feet meet his waist to where Wei Wuxian’s lips and tongue and teeth meet his neck and bite like he owns it.
Jiang Cheng keens, a familiar spark fueling itself as he retaliates, dropping one arm down from Wei Wuxian’s shoulders to between his legs and stroking along the top part of his dick.
For a second, Wei Wuxian’s whole body locks up. His tongue stills, lips limp against Jiang Cheng’s skin, breath ragged and loud in the guest room lit only by moonlight.
Then he rasps, “Oh, even after all these years, you still haven’t grown up one bit, have you?”
Jiang Cheng grabs at his hair, tugging as hard as he can manage without leverage, and barely hears his own voice; “You’re one to talk, you immature, fucking bastard- ”
“So impatient,” says Wei Wuxian, tone dark and deep. He slams Jiang Cheng into the wall again; it’s rough and hard against his back, his ass, his head; his vision whites out and he chokes, breath gasping out of his lungs like water after drowning, and Wei Wuxian’s exhale against his shoulder feels like a knife wound.
“Still so greedy, so rude, A-Cheng. It’s polite to ask nicely for what you want, instead of acting like the same blindly ambitious child you’ve never stopped being.”
He can’t breathe, and he can’t breathe further as Wei Wuxian hoists Jiang Cheng’s legs up and his arms loop over the man’s neck. Bruising hands grip his waist, nails digging into his skin as he’s carried him away from the wall.
He uses the last bit of air he can grasp to wheeze out a snarled “ Fuck you,” before his face is enveloped in something soft, sweet-smelling, suffocating.
Wei Wuxian’s fingers tangle into his hair, ignoring the purple ribbon which holds it up in a bun to grip and tug until he’s gasping for air, held up from where his chest meets the bed with Wei Wuxian leaning over him, that same, bright smile on his face, as if god had made him alone to coast through the world with a talent no one else could match and he fucking knew it.
“If I’m ambitious,” Jiang Cheng spits, vision blurring, “you did it first. You did everything first.”
And isn’t that the crux of it?
No matter what he accomplishes, he’ll always be behind. He’ll always be second. He’ll always be second because Wei Wuxian had gotten there first, had reached for the stars and landed amongst them first , and all Jiang Cheng has is a path already walked to follow to reach for the scraps of fame that no one cares to mention.
You don’t matter unless you’re the very best.
But how can he be the very best when even that is a title already taken?
Wei Wuxian’s laugh rumbles through both their bodies - like an impact against a gong, echoing, loud, overwhelming. He leans down, one hand in Jiang Cheng’s hair, knees pinning both his shoulders to the soft cotton blanket. His breath is hot against Jiang Cheng’s back, against his cheek, against the crown on his head when his lips ghost over it, just the afterimage of a kiss.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs, “tell me to stop right now. If you don’t, if you say yes now - I won’t stop afterwards, even if you beg. Do you understand, A-Cheng? Can you do as you’re told? Say no, you silly boy. Tell me you don’t want this. Tell me you can’t handle this.”
Fury wells up in the same breath as arousal, a wave through every nerve in his body, down to his dick, practically already hard. Jiang Cheng growls again, but it’s soft; like those of the puppies Wei Wuxian hides from as if they’ll kill him. He doesn’t hide this time, though, not at all - instead he chuckles, eyes gentle and scolding, shaking his head.
“Oh, A-Cheng. Tell me you can’t handle this.”
He hates Wei Wuxian. He hates him almost as much as he hates himself.
Jiang Cheng drags his eyes up. They ache at the back, pulsing and sharp, all the way through to the back of his head where his hair is being pulled back.
“Try me,” he snarls, and Wei Wuxian’s eyes are ravenous when he smiles back.
Wei Wuxian coaches him through sex the same way he does anything else; impatient in the manner of someone used to getting things quickly, used to an experience that Jiang Cheng lacks. All crooning, light words as he slips a half-empty bottle of lube from the bedside drawer and opens him up, every single touch like a brand. Jiang Cheng claws at the back of his thighs and feels blood well up under his nails; it feels like winning when Wei Wuxian gasps out, slamming his head back into the bed until he’s choking and about to black out from the lack of air before he pulls him up again. He leans forward and whispers into Jiang Cheng’s ear, “Still so angry, so tense, just like how you skate no matter how many times I’ve scolded you for it. Loosen up, A-Cheng, or this will hurt - oh, I hope you’re better at doing what I tell you now than you are on the ice.”
“Kill yourself after you make me come,” manages Jiang Cheng, even as his voice sounds strained and not at all how it should; his eyes well up with tears against his will, his dick damn near painful already.
Wei Wuxian strokes himself to full hardness atop Jiang Cheng’s shoulder blades, his cock warm and thick against his flushed, sweaty skin. Jiang Cheng whines at his own unaddressed erection; Wei Wuxian laughs and says, “if you’re a good boy, just for me, I’ll get you off after.”
He enters him slowly, at first, and then quickly; it turns to the snap of his hips at a brutal, harsh pace before Jiang Cheng can blink, screaming insults with his voice shredded until Wei Wuxian stuffs something dry and warm into his mouth. He gags; moans through it; Wei Wuxian above him grunts into his neck, his breath scalding.
“Good boy,” he murmurs, “you’re so much better when you can’t make so much noise.”
His cock is lovely - veiny and just large enough that it burns through Jiang Cheng’s lower body in a way that leaves him unable to forget Wei Wuxian above him, inside of him, the way he leans forward and spits into Jiang Cheng’s open, gaping mouth, drool dripping over his bottom lip and his tongue. Unable to forget any of it; unable to forget that here, right now, there’s nothing but the two of them and this bed that he can suffocate in and the thrill of the victory in being wanted , being devoured, being all Wei Wuxian’s and nothing else at all.
Wei Wuxian comes with a loud, deep sigh, wrenching up Jiang Cheng’s head by his hair to kiss him as he moans. Jiang Cheng kisses back through the feeling of Wei Wuxian’s cum leaking between his legs, finally able to pull his arms up through the pins and needles and aching to grab at his neck as rough and as mean as he can to bite his lip as they do so.
Fireworks erupt at Jiang Cheng’s crotch; for a second he whites out, wailing into Wei Wuxian’s lips as the man’s hand strokes over his dick. If he wasn’t fully hard before; he’s unquestionably there now, flames licking over every inch of his skin and every single one tracing itself back to the grunt of satisfaction that Jiang Cheng feels in his mouth from Wei Wuxian’s own.
Wei Wuxian’s softening cock slips from his ass as his gaze pins Jiang Cheng down in the same breath as his hands pin his wrists, immovable; Jiang Cheng struggles and snarls and wails and he can feel it in his fucking chest as Wei Wuxian’s hand strokes him, too much, damn near too much, too much to be his and to have him inside of him and leaking from his ass so he’s laying in Wei Wuxian’s cum on the sheets as that same man leans down and tells him, deep, scorching, painful-
“Do you want to come, A-Cheng?”
“Piss off,” Jiang Cheng manages to rasp, instead of the yes, yes, god, please which strains against his clenched teeth as if they’re a battering ram.
Wei Wuxian smiles at him, and in the darkness, it might even look something like affection. “You’re so lucky I know what you want even when you’re so stubborn.”
No, you don’t, thinks Jiang Cheng, and it aches.
He comes with a shock; Wei Wuxian kisses him through his cries as waves of something blistering, full-body, something so so good overwhelm him until he’s left shivering in the aftermath. The air suddenly feels too cold, frigid atop his naked body as he lays there, his own cum mixing with Wei Wuxian’s, panting filling the air around them along with the smell of salt and sweat.
Wei Wuxian kisses at his neck. This one is slow, almost sweet, even; little nips and nibbles, something gentle in the way he whispers, “Oh, and now you know why I didn’t give you the Eros piece,” into his shoulder.
It should feel like winning, an admission like that. It should feel like winning, making his way above someone else and just a bit closer to the top. It just feels empty, and hollow; nothing like victory at all, and that might be why he hates Wei Wuxian the most.
Jiang Cheng’s breaths come down from their frantic pace, evening out into something tired and slow. Wei Wuxian sighs and drops to his back at his side; their arms touch, like a balm to the wound, soothing. When Jiang Cheng looks over, blinking his eyes open when the lashes stick together from sweat, Wei Wuxian even looks peaceful, eyes closed and lips upturned.
They say like that, side by side, on wet, stained sheets that stick to Jiang Cheng’s thighs and back as they cool. The sound of the night from outside the window is quiet; the soft buzzing of nighttime chatter and woodland animals, a faraway patting sound of raindrops, one after the other, atop the slanted roof. Jiang Cheng wonders if the camera is still on the desk, lens facing them as if in accusation of their figures mirrored in its glare, or if it had fallen during the sex, laying broken somewhere on the floor, the glass scattered across the wood and the camera body now empty of anything that made it useful.
He feels the warmth of Wei Wuxian’s arm leave his, a chill seeping into his skin, before he sees him go; stretching his arms up as he sits against the wall, yawning, facing away from Jiang Cheng all over again and not a single change in his body language. His feet hit the floor with a barely audible tap; the remaining feeling of his body next to Jiang Cheng’s, the lowering of where the mattress sinks with another body and the loss of body heat leaving everything empty, feels so familiar, so fucking familar, that Jiang Cheng wants to kill someone.
“Even after this,” he says, not getting up off the bed, “even now you’re not going to fucking stay here?”
Even now, will you not stay with me?
He can’t see Wei Wuxian’s face from where he’s lying, where he’s looking. He stares straight up at the roof, just a bit of light towards the bottom of his vision to outline the top of the window and nothing else. The blankets are damp beneath his skin; his head feels fuzzy, distant, and even then, disappointment is sharp, so present, and so-
Wei Wuxian clicks his tongue. Jiang Cheng doesn’t need to look at his expression to picture it, every detail laid out like the strokes of a brush painting.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Jiang Cheng,” says Wei Wuxian, his tone cheerful and jarring and all, completely wrong.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t get up off the bed. He doesn't get up as he hears Wei Wuxian pull his clothes back on over his body, cloth against skin, or when he hears the creak of the door opening, slowly; intentionally as quiet as he can be. As unnoticeable.
Wei Wuxian has never been good at being either one of those.
Jiang Cheng hates him so much. He almost hates him more than he hates himself.