Work Text:
Wei Wuxian applied early decision to Stanford. Berkeley would have been an option too, since his stated aim was just to stay local, but he preferred cardinal red to California gold. That was what he told people, anyway, who asked, flippant as was his habit. The truth was that he wanted to stay as close, truly as close, to his baby brother as possible, for as long as possible.
He even told Jiang Cheng himself the lie about the colors. “Wouldn’t Cal be better, with that rhetoric department you like?” Jiang Cheng had asked, fourteen. “Nah,” Wei Wuxian had replied, instead of saying, The hour’s distance from you is an hour too long. “Who knows, maybe I’ll end up majoring in Econ or CS.”
Fear the tree: he got in. Nine months later he moved into his freshman dorm with a minimum of stuff and fuss given that home was a ten-minute drive away. Freshman year became sophomore year. He declared CS (huh, he was a prophet), the school year ended, he spent the summer interning. Locally, of course, in the heart of Silicon Valley. (He wasn’t a prophet. He just hadn’t wanted to lose summers with Jiang Cheng.)
Junior year started for both of them, and Wei Wuxian essentially stayed living at home. He had a single on the Row and put in due face time with his friends, but home was where Jiang Cheng was. One early October evening, Friday night, autumn quarter not long begun, A-Die and A-Niang were out and Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng decided on Casablanca.
“Gege,” Jiang Cheng said midway through. “How do you know when you’re in love?”
Wei Wuxian, eyes still on the movie, was about to say I don’t know, I’ve never been in love, when some instinct, deep and pure, made him turn his head and meet his baby brother’s eyes. They were fine eyes, dark eyes, enormous and clear and simple as a doe’s, and Wei Wuxian’s heart—
Suddenly—
Seized.
He did know.
He’d never dated seriously. He’d kissed, he’d fucked, he’d played, but he’d never lost his heart—because his heart—he knew it, now, in this moment—had never been his to lose. The heartbreakingly beautiful sixteen-year-old boy sitting less than a foot away from him on the couch in the den they grew up in, watching cartoons when Jiang Cheng was little, graduating to classical Hollywood movies as Jiang Cheng grew, had held it in his hands since the day he was born. That day they’d been tiny-fingered perfect things. Now they were fine and long of bone and large of nail and not one whit less perfect.
“You know,” Wei Wuxian said, his voice thick with emotion and revelation, “because you would die for him: the person you love. But you’d do even more than that. You would live for him.”
Jiang Cheng listened solemnly, and nodded. Those doe eyes became, impossibly, even clearer, and he said, “Then I’m in love with a boy from school. He’s new this year. He’s perfect and cold and I’d die to have him.”
The shock of it forestalled devastation.
Perfectly naturally and lightly Wei Wuxian said, “And who is this lucky new boy at school? What’s his name? How does he treat you?”
“He doesn’t know I exist,” Jiang Cheng said. “His name is Lan Wangji. He’s in all my classes. Will you help me, Gege? Will you help me make him love me back?”
There was exactly zero doubt in Wei Wuxian’s mind that this Lan Wangji, this interloper, who must be coldly beautiful and beautifully cold because that had always been to Jiang Cheng’s taste, cold beauty and beautiful coldness, was already head over heels in love with him. With Wei Wuxian’s baby brother. Wei Wuxian knew it as if for fact. The poor boy just didn’t know what to do about it.
So am I, Wei Wuxian thought, head over heels in love. But unlike this boy at school I know what to do about it: nothing. I can’t have him, him who I love, because I can’t take him. I can’t take him for mine. Not him, not the baby brother I’ve more than half raised.
“Of course I’ll help you, Didi,” he said. What else could he say? “But first you have to convince me that this boy deserves you.”
Jiang Cheng did.
Wei Wuxian helped him.
Over the next days and weeks he helped, heart an aching thing, a devastated thing, until it was Thanksgiving and there Lan Wangji was at their family table.
When Jiang Cheng looked at him his eyes were stars.
After dinner Wei Wuxian went upstairs to take refuge in his room, refuge from heartbreak and lust and the urge to murder. But his room was across the hall from Jiang Cheng’s, and Lan Wangji had Jiang Cheng pressed against his closed door and was kissing him deeply, passionately, filthily, as if he would die to have him.
Wei Wuxian snapped.
“Get a fucking room,” he said. “It’s right fucking there,” and stomped into his own, and slammed the door shut.
He could count the number of times he’d lost his temper at his baby brother on the fingers of one hand, and they included all of Jiang Cheng’s terrible twos and his even more terrible twelves, which weren’t even supposed to be a thing, were they? But it was at later twelve that Jiang Cheng had seemed to blossom into personhood—and, even more precious, to turn his person’s eyes to Wei Wuxian, then sixteen, and to see him and start to love him as a person too, as well as his big brother.
I love you, Wei Wuxian thought, and sat, and stewed.
He heard a tentative knock.
He ignored it.
The door opened anyway, Jiang Cheng opened it anyway, because God knew the boy knew Wei Wuxian would never close the door to him—not the door of his open, broken heart.
“Gege,” Jiang Cheng said, and stepped in, and came to him. “What’s wrong? Something’s very wrong. I can tell. I think, looking back, that something’s been wrong for weeks. Please tell me.”
“I can’t,” Wei Wuxian said. “I really can’t. Please don’t ask me again.”
“If you really can’t, then I won’t. But let me stay with you. Let me stay with you right now. Lan Wangji had to go home.”
Wei Wuxian stared.
“You sent your boyfriend home? On Thanksgiving night? Because your gege threw a temper tantrum?”
“Yes,” Jiang Cheng said, simply. “I did.”
Wei Wuxian stared some more, until something in him—the same deep, pure something that had flared the night he found his heart—made him say, “Yes. Stay with me,” and made him add, “Let’s lie down. Like we used to.”
Jiang Cheng laughed. “I was little then. I’m not little now.”
“No,” Wei Wuxian said. “You’re not.”
You’re almost grown, he didn’t say. You’re grown beautiful, and luscious, and irresistible, and I want you even more than I love you. I’m going to take what I want. I’m not going to do what’s best for you. Rather, I’m going to do what you’ve driven me to, being beautiful and luscious and irresistible. I’m going to take you and make you mine.
They lay down, on Wei Wuxian’s red-sheeted bed.
They lay down, and Wei Wuxian wrapped an arm around his baby brother, who hummed his pleasure and turned toward him, his big brother. They stared into each other’s eyes. Jiang Cheng’s were enormous, and clear and simple as a doe’s. Wei Wuxian’s own were—he made them be—honest, for the first time in weeks. He put into them the whole of his open, broken heart. Jiang Cheng’s eyes, clear and simple as a doe’s, widened with sudden knowledge. Forced knowledge, Wei Wuxian thought, knowledge he should never have gained. What would he do with it?
What Jiang Cheng did with it was to move toward Wei Wuxian, slowly and sweetly, and to bring his lips to his brother’s, and to press a soft kiss, a kitten kiss, against them.
Wei Wuxian wanted to cry. He wanted to kiss back, he wanted to take what he wanted, what he had resolved would be his—but he held himself in check.
“Do you want me, Gege?” Jiang Cheng said. “Do you want to kiss me? Do you want to take me? Do you want to make me yours?”
“You know I do,” Wei Wuxian said. “You shouldn’t know I do.”
“It’s too late,” Jiang Cheng said. “You showed me. I know now, and so you’ll have what you want. I could never withhold from you what you want.”
“I want you to want it too,” Wei Wuxian said. “I want you to want me too.”
“Then I will,” Jiang Cheng said, simply again. “Make me. Teach me. Because—Gege—I’ve always been yours. And now I’ll always be yours. I would die for you, and more. I would live for you.”
“What about your boyfriend?” Wei Wuxian said helplessly, nothing between him and what he wanted but cloth and a matter of moments.
Jiang Cheng paused, thoughtful.
Then he smiled.
“What boyfriend?” he said. “There’s only ever been you. I know that now. Kiss me, Gege. Tell me you love me. Show me you want me.”
Wei Wuxian did.
Over the next hour, he did.
Passionately, he did.
“I love you,” he said at the moment of truth. “I’d die for you. I’ll live for you.”
“Yes,” Jiang Cheng said, and joined him in truth. “Forever. We’ll be together forever.”