#(the loquat hits the wall behind wwx)

[merakilyy]

Dire Straits

19. One person stopping a kiss to ask “Do you want to do this?”, only to have the other person answer with a deeper, more passionate kiss.

Hello there! I got a bit excited and this ended up 1700 words. Whoops. But here you go!

It says a lot about how dire Wei Wuxian’s situation is when he is going to Jiang Cheng for relationship advice. In which Wei Wuxian wants a kiss, Lan Wangji is happy to indulge, and Jiang Cheng needs more coffee.

Tags: Modern au, Wwx learns emotions, JC is traumatized by Wangxian, accidental third wheel JC

Send me a kiss prompt~~

~~~

“Jiang Cheng!” Wei Wuxian wails as he dramatically throws himself into Jiang Cheng’s lap.

He wasn’t aiming for Jiang Cheng’s lap. Wei Wuxian had intended to throw himself onto their stained, tacky floral couch to lament his sorrows. Jiang Cheng just happened to be in the way.

“Get off!” Jiang Cheng snaps, jabbing his elbow into Wei Wuxian’s back without care. “You’re about to owe me a month’s worth of coffee!”

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian whines again, burrowing his face into the armrest of their ratty old couch and barely avoiding a mysterious brown stain of dubious origin that had always been there.

(Nie Huaisang thinks the stain is fermented semen leftover from an ill-fated rendezvous between a 70s TV starlet and her married manager. Wen Ning says it’s probably just spilled soy sauce that someone had waited too long to clean up. Mianmian is convinced that Wei Wuxian spilled his ink pot on the cough and is too embarrassed to admit it.

Wen Qing simply threatens to have the couch declared a biohazard to be chemically exterminated and permanently expunged.)

Their couch is probably older than both of them combined, dated by its blindingly ugly floral print that saw its last usage in the 70s. They had picked it up beside a literal dumpster when they had been moving into their apartment, thinking it would be a temporary fix until they got around to buying a proper couch.

That had been before they began their first year of university and now, three and a half years later, they still have not replaced the couch.

Despite the potential health and safety violations, the couch has served them well. 

“Wei Wuxian! I was this close! Only the last turn was left!” Jiang Cheng roars, throwing his controller on the low coffee table and shoving Wei Wuxian off his lap. 

Landing with a loud thump on the ground, Wei Wuxian turns so he is lying on his stomach, limbs sprawled out all over their cheap laminate flooring.

The floor is long overdue for some thorough sweeping, but Wei Wuxian is preoccupied with his life falling apart.

“Jiang Cheng, how can you care about Rainbow Road at a time like this!? My life is over!” Wei Wuxian continues wailing, voice muffled by the floral cushion Jiang Cheng had ripped off the couch and was doing his best to suffocate Wei Wuxian with.

“Good!” Jiang Cheng moves so he is sitting cross-legged on Wei Wuxian’s back. “Because I’ll be the one ending it! Do you know how close I was to winning our bet!? One turn! I had one turn left on Rainbow Road and then you sabotaged me!”

“But it’s an emergency! Lan Zhan still hasn’t kissed me,” Wei Wuxian says, cheeks puffed out in a petulant pout that Jiang Cheng wanted to smack off his face.

“So you kiss him!” Jiang Cheng snaps from his vantage point on Wei Wuxian’s back. It was so very tempting, to simply reach over and smack some sense into Wei Wuxian, but they had promised Jiang Yanli that they would behave.

“I can’t do that! What if Lan Zhan doesn’t like me enough to kiss me?”

Deadpan, Jiang Cheng says flatly, “You’ve been together for five months.”

Rolling over and dislodging Jiang Cheng from his back and the cushion from his face, Wei Wuxian looks up from where he is still sprawled on the ground but now from his back. “Does it count if I didn’t know the first two weeks were supposed to be dates?”

“Literally everyone knew you were dating. Most people think you’ve been dating for years. Everyone thought Nie Huaisang’s party last month was going to be your engagement party.”

“What? Why?”

“You’ve spent the last three years introducing Lan Wangji to everyone as your boyfriend.”

“As a joke!”

Growling, Jiang Cheng can’t hold back the punch he lands on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. Ignoring the yelps of pain, Jiang Cheng says, “And you do realize that Lan Wangji let you introduce him to literally everyone as your boyfriend for three. Whole. Years!?”

(There is also the way Lan Wangji looks at Wei Wuxian, as if Wei Wuxian hung the sun in the sky and everyone else only exists in the periphery of Wei Wuxian’s brightness. But Jiang Cheng isn’t about to wax poetic about how his brother’s boyfriend looks at his brother.)

“Hmm,” Wei Wuxian pauses thoughtfully, brow furrowing in thought. The hand that had been rubbing his shoulder where Jiang Cheng punched him stills. “I guess that’s true…”

Before Jiang Cheng can celebrate having smoothed out his idiot brother’s relationship woes, Wei Wuxian opens his mouth again. “But Lan Zhan still hasn’t kissed me.”

“He literally kissed you this morning,” Jiang Cheng says, rubbing his temples. He knows because Jiang Cheng saw them this morning, as he does every morning, when Lan Wangji stops by their apartment to walk Wei Wuxian to class and greets him with a forehead kiss.

At this rate, he is going to have an aneurysm at the ripe old age of 22 and it will be all Wei Wuxian’s fault. 

“But he hasn’t kissed my lips yet! Jiang Cheng, I still haven’t had my first kiss!”

“How are you this stupid.” The words form a question but Jiang Cheng says it as a statement. “If you want to kiss Lan Wangji so badly, just go kiss him first.”

Pushing himself off the ground in a seated position, Wei Wuxian peruses Jiang Cheng’s words.

“Great. Problem solved,” Jiang Cheng sighs a lot more aggressively than necessary. “So you owe me coffee.”

“I do not! The deal was only if you win Rainbow Road without falling off. And you fell off,” Wei Wuxian adds, as if he is not the cause of Jiang Cheng’s toad cart running off the track in the first place.

Jiang Cheng reaches out to throttle Wei Wuxian with his own bare hands, but Wei Wuxian dances off into his bedroom and locks the door behind him before Jiang Cheng can do anything.

“I’m very busy, Jiang Cheng! I have a boyfriend to seduce!” Wei Wuxian’s voice rings out from behind his bedroom door.

If Wei Wuxian had been someone reasonable, Jiang Cheng may have yelled something about how a kiss on the lips is not even close to a seduction.

Instead, Jiang Cheng simply throws another cushion at Wei Wuxian’s locked door.

~~~

That evening, five minutes before 7, a crisp knock comes from their door.

“Coming, Lan Zhan! I’m here!” Wei Wuxian yells, stumbling out of his room and bumping into no less than three pieces of furniture before making it to the door.

From his vantage point on their couch, Jiang Cheng watches as his brother rips open the door. Both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji wince at the consequent rattling as the door rebounds off the wall, but Wei Wuxian is unperturbed.

With his single track mind, Wei Wuxian throws his arms around Lan Wangji and is already bringing his boyfriend down the precious few centimetres so that their lips can meet.

As Wei Wuxian is dragging Lan Wangji down, Jiang Cheng watches as Lan Wangji catches up to what is happening and wraps his arms around We Wuxian’s waist and pulls him in close. With Lan Wangji’s hands on his hips, Wei Wuxian’s waist is dwarfed by Lan Wangji’s long fingers.

At the last minute, Wei Wuxian seems to lose his bluster and suddenly slows down. Instead of the brazenly inappropriate make out session Jiang Cheng was prepared to interrupt, Wei Wuxian’s trajectory slows until all he does is leave a brief peck against Lan Wangji’s mouth.

Their lips just barely brush against one another.

A shame, because Jiang Cheng has already placed an entire bowl of loquats in his lap, ready for interrupting annoying brothers and shameless boyfriends.

Since there is nothing to interrupt, Jiang Cheng stares at the loquat in his hand before bringing it to his mouth. 

Taking a generous bite from his loquat, Jiang Cheng watches Wei Wuxian blush, already flustered even though that display barely even counts as a kiss.

“Hi,” Wei Wuxian whispers, a shy smile on his lips.

“Hello, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji returns. One of his hands leaves Wei Wuxian’s waist to brush back a stray lock of hair and settles on his cheek. The corner of his mouth is curved up in what even Jiang Cheng can recognize is a smile.

“I missed you,” Wei Wuxian says softly, just barely above a whisper.

Their apartment is tiny and Jiang Cheng can hear every word perfectly clearly. Still, he resists the urge to point out that Wei Wuxian literally saw Lan Wangji a few hours ago when Lan Wangji walked him home.

“Is that why you are so enthusiastic?” Lan Wangji responds just as softly. His words lead Wei Wuxian’s cheeks to flush.

“Lan Zhan is so mean,” Wei Wuxian pouts, “teasing me so ruthlessly.”

The moment is so tender that Jiang Cheng physically cannot bring himself to interrupt it. His limbs are frozen, eyes fixed on the scene before him.

“Would Wei Ying like me to fix it?” Lan Wangji’s grip on Wei Wuxian’s waist tightens as he strokes Wei Wuxian’s cheek.

With wide eyes, Wei Wuxian asks, “Do you want to do this?” 

Instead of speaking, Lan Wangji simply dips his head again and touches his lips to Wei Wuxian’s. Unlike their first, chaste peck that just barely meets the standards of a kiss, this kiss has clear intentions as their mouths move together and any residual shyness either of them may have had is long forgotten.

As soon as he sees a flash of Lan Wangji’s tongue brushing against Wei Wuxian’s lower lip, Jiang Cheng’s limbs all unfreeze. Throwing his half eaten loquat in Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji’s general direction, Jiang Cheng jumps off the couch and flees into his room before he sees Lan Wangji defile Wei Wuxian any more than he already has. 

He doesn’t bother to find out where his half eaten loquat lands.

Nothing matters so long as he never has to see Lan Wangji’s tongue again.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #lan wangji #wei wuxian #(the loquat hits the wall behind wwx) #(no one notices) #(poor Jiang Cheng is the one who has to clean it up) #my writing