Log -- Lan Zhan || Wei Ying ‣ WHO: Lan Zhan || Wei Ying ‣ WHAT: Late night visits ‣ WHEN: September 2nd, 2020. After this ‣ WHERE: Wei Ying's Apartment ‣ RATING | WARNINGS: Low || Mentions of dreams and potential spoilers ‣ STATUS: Complete || Log
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Lan Zhan & Wei Ying
Lan Zhan still did not feel comfortable imposing on Wei Ying at such a strange time of the morning, but waking Lan Huan was not an option, especially as he had no explanation for why his arm was cut so badly and bleeding so heavily. Quoting dreams was insanity. Or at least that is what his uncle would have said.
He was not as composed as he would have liked. His hair was in a lot more disarray, and he hadn't changed out of the sweat pants and baggy t-shirt that he had won to bed that night, but he did have enough semblance of rationality to grab his wallet, phone, keys and arrange an Uber to take him to Wei Ying's address.
If his Uber driver had questions about the bloody towel pressed against his right arm he said nothing. Wise, Lan Zhan would not have taken kindly to the unwanted attention. Upon arrival Lan Zhan buzzed Wei Ying's apartment number and as he was let in he took the stairs, ignoring the lift, he had little desire to encounter any other human being aside from the one he was intending to visit.
He used the hand that was not pressing the towel to his wound to open the door and as per the text messages it was open, so he was able to let himself in with no issue.
"Wei Ying?"
"In here," Wei Ying called. He, too, was dressed for bed though he was most definitely not sleeping and he hardly even looked tired. His hair - though less sleep mussed - was still a mess, like he had been pushing his hands through it as he waited for Lan Zhan to arrive.
The main lights came on and illuminated the open-plan apartment. Compared to the upscale home that Lan Zhan had, Wei Ying was worried that the other would hate it. It was definitely not in the most upscale of places, and crime often happened right outside the door, but he was not willing to take handouts from his family.
Dressed in an oversized t-shirt and boxer shorts, Wei Ying was sitting at the small table with a first aid kit already in hand. His eyes widened when he saw the blood-soaked towel. Unwillingly, his mind flashed back to a dream he'd had where he was hanging off a cliff edge, his own hand and arm soaked in the blood of a man who looked just like Lan Zhan, holding onto him desperately. Not the time for weird C-Drama dreams, he told himself.
"Come over here," he said instead. "Sit down, let me take a look."
Lan Zhan did feel bad for bothering Wei Ying so late. More so now that he had gotten a chance to lay eyes on the other man. It was clear that whilst he might not have been sleeping he had been relaxing. Honestly, he had not even noticed the layout of the apartment as his gaze had been fixed on locating Wei Ying.
Not at all for the reason that the man in his dream who looked like him had fallen from his grip and plunged to his death.
A breath he had not been aware of holding escaped his chest when Wei Ying spoke, and he was able to identify where the other man was. Out of habit he toed out of his loosely laced sneakers and padded over in his socked feet to join Wei Ying.
"I do not know how deep it is."
"Looks pretty deep," Wei Ying muttered, dragging the chair closer to the couch as Lan Zhan sat down, resolutely ignoring the way that he looked sleep-rumpled and adorable (if not bloody) in his informal attire, "if the bleeding is any indication."
He shivered a little, wondering what could have happened to Lan Zhan in the real world that would have caused such an injury. For it to have caused such an injury and for Lan Zhan not to have noticed. In his dream, there had been swords, great groups of people fighting over a smoking amulet that floated around a battlefield as dawn broke. He'd stood on the edge in his dream, right on the precipice and felt nothing but roaring grief and despair.
He sighed, gentle fingers taking the towel away and looking at the gash on Lan Zhan's upper arm with a visible wince. "It needs stitches. I can- I can do it for you, but since I do not have any, um... Mázuì."
He looked up, towel pressed against Lan Zhan's arm again and he lifted the man's hand to hold it in place as he pulled the table closer and started rifling through his first aid kit. "Will that be okay? It will hurt."
Lan Zhan was known for his intense gaze. The sort that would cut deep into the heart of anybody and identify their every flaw, weakness and highlight everything they might be trying to hide. His gaze tonight, however, was different. It was no less intense, but it seemed to be searching, checking over Wei Ying.
He, too, was recalling that same dream. A great battle, the clanging of sword against the sword, attackers with black eyes and a smoking amulet that most if not all clamored over. His interest in the dream had not been the amulet like so many others, but in the man who had been standing on the edge of a cliff. The man who looked like Wei Ying.
"It's fine," he assured Wei Ying. "I will be able to handle the pain."
He hissed ever so slightly as he reapplied the makeshift gauze to the wound.
Wei Ying spotted the intensity of Lan Zhan's gaze on him. Normally, he would preen and tease but tonight it made him feel naked. Exposed. He did not like it as much as he normally did, whenever Lan Zhan's focus was on him. "Do I have something on my face?" he asked, trying to lighten his own worry, to take some of the attention off of himself. For someone so loud, he often did not know how to handle being the focus of attention in the quiet stillness of someone's home.
"Have you ever had stitches put into your skin without being numbed first?" he asked, eyebrow arching. "It hurts. Please don't bite through your tongue."
After a moment, Wei Ying gently drew the towel away again and placed it on the table. Then, with a lazer-like focus, he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and started the process of cleaning up Lan Zhan's injury and the skin immediately around it. He chewed on the inside of his lower lip as he cleaned and moved with an alarming proficiency for someone who was not trained in medicine, as he located and threaded a surgical needle.
Meeting Lan Zhan's eyes, he just nodded his head once. "You should tell me about your dream," he said, "the one that ended with you being stabbed in the arm."
"Hm? Lan Zhan hummed quietly in response to the question. A quick blink followed and it was that movement that seemed to break him out of his intense stare, a shake of his head given in the next moment. "No, nothing. Apologies, I did not mean to stare." But he had, completely meant to stare, but if he did not need to explain it then all the better.
He marveled at the efficiency shown by the other man as he cleaned up the injury, frowning as teeth worried the inside of his lower lip, vivid recollection of blood from the mouth. Unable to stop himself he reached out with his other hand and freed Wei Ying's lip from the trappings of teeth. "You will hurt yourself if you keep doing that."
"I have not, but I have endured other pain."
He exhaled, breath shaky. "It was- I have never dreamt anything like it before. It felt like a scene from a movie, but it was real or as real as it was at that moment." His hand previously on Wei Ying's mouth had now dropped to catch and curl in the material of his sweatpants. "There was a battle, of swords and words, a number of people were present and all were fighting over this one thing."
At the brush of fingers against his mouth, Wei Ying nearly dropped the needle he was holding. It was only by reflex that he caught it. He glanced up, meeting Lan Zhan's eyes again, lips curling into a little smile. "Aiyo, I have hurt myself worse than a bitten lip," he reassured, but felt that it was not as effective as he might have hoped.
When the hand dropped away, he felt cold but it at least allowed him to focus on what was important: sewing up his friend and listening to his words. He gave a small countdown in Mandarin, sliding the needle in before he hit líng. His fingers moved quickly, carefully, and considering how messy his handwriting was, surprisingly neatly, like he was taking all of the care he needed to, to minimize any scarring.
"Dreams can feel very real," he offered, trying to ignore how his chest felt tight at the similarities in their dreams, "especially when they are so vivid."It must have been a very important small thing, for so many people to want it."
Wei Ying had been right. It did hurt. It hurt a lot, actually.
Thankfully Lan Zhan was in control of himself which meant the only indication that he was in pain was the slightest movement of eyebrow and one corner of his mouth. "It possessed a power that people wanted, a dark power, one that would guarantee superiority over others." He wet his lower lip and turned his head to watch the movement of needle and thread. "In the dream, I had no interest in it." None whatsoever.
"That to me was not the most important thing on the battlefield."
Wei Ying's eyes flicked up from where he was focused on carefully sewing the gash to Lan Zhan's arm, trying to blink the sensation of blood on his face and burning into his skin from his memory. He wet his lower lip, trying to sound less interested than he was as he asked, "Oh?"
"Mhm," Lan Zhan responded. "I was focused on a person, not a thing. This person, I-" He stopped, frowning. It felt impossible to put into words how he had felt about this person in the dream. It had been simply overwhelming, and he had awoken in such a state of grief, despair with a horrible sinking feeling of loss that he could be forgiven for not noticing the cut at first.
Tugging gently on the stitches, watching as the skin drew itself together closed, Wei Ying swallowed past the question on his lips. His grip on Lan Zhan's upper arm was firm, keeping him still as he finishes off the last of the stitching. The wound closed in a neat line.
"You what?" he asked, softly. His heart was in his throat: the person was him, he thought. He remembered letting himself fall, one final sad smile at the man in white who looked like Lan Zhan before closing his eyes and falling, swallowed by his own despair.
"I think I- I mean-" It was ridiculously difficult to get out in words just how he had felt in the dream. "Shīqù tā jiù xiàng shīqùle wǒ de lìng yībàn."
He swallowed, turning his head away, focusing his attention on a particular point on a nearby wall.
"I could not save him."
"He must have been very lucky, to own half of your soul like that," Wei Ying said quietly, feeling his chest tightening again, his throat closing up, suffocating him with the feelings he did not know how to process. The guilt was clear in the tension on Lan Zhan's face, even if it were not wrapped around the soft words he spoke. Wei Ying wanted to make him feel better.
He swallowed, cutting the loose suture thread and carefully placing a bandage over the cut. "I'm sure," he said, pulling off his gloves, "that you did everything in your power to save him."
He knew better than Lan Zhan that the man in the dreams, the one who fell, deemed himself beyond hope at that point, even if he did not fully understand why.
"It did not feel that way." Lan Zhan shook his head with a small frown causing his eyebrows to knit together. "But it was only a dream- I am struggling to understand how it felt so real and how this injury appeared."
He was also struggling with whether he should tell Wei Ying that the man he was referring to in the dream looked like him. Even moved and spoke the same way.
"There were faces that were familiar."
"Have you not looked on the network?" Wei Ying asked, brushing his thumb over the edge of the bandage before getting to his feet. The bleeding had stopped, for now, at least. So he felt confident cleaning up. "Many people seem to experience these real dreams."
He got to his feet and started collecting the bloodied bandages and gauzes to put them in the bin, grateful for the chance to be away from the haunted look on Lan Zhan's face, for the chance to pull himself together from the tides of his own dream that swept over him.
"A-jie says you are unable to make up faces," he said. "So any that you see in your dreams are of those people around you. But... it seems to be common that the paths of others cross in dreams in this place. Did you- The-"
He dumped the bloodied rags in the trash and then washed his hands. He usually did not keep tea in his apartment but since his first dream a few nights ago, he had purchased some. A light, jasmine blend. He boiled his kettle.
"Being unsettled by such a dream is nothing to be ashamed of, Lan Zhan. Not if you dreamed of violence and the loss of-" he stumbled over his words a little, because the person who fell was him and the soft affirmation of Lan Zhan feeling like his soul had been ripped from him was world-shakingly big. Devastatingly so. "-someone you care about."
Admittedly Lan Zhan had not paid much attention to the network so perhaps that was something for him to correct as soon as possible. He turned his head to regard the bandage now wrapped around his arm, a small frown as the entire length had begun to throb. Expected he supposed, he had been cut with a large sword after all.
He idly reached up to press the palm of his hand to his chest as whilst he had not been injured there it ached as if he had. He supposed it was due to the emotional trauma of watching that man - Wei Ying - fall to his death. He knew it would be too much to follow the other around his apartment just because he had dreamt about somebody that looked like him had died in his dream, but it did not stop him. It should have. It didn't.
"It was not enjoyable." His arms folded across his chest as he leaned a shoulder against a nearby doorway, head tipped to press his temple into the wood grain."It's strange. I feel... empty."
"Empty?" Wei Ying asked, tilting his head as he collected two cups from the cupboard. Honestly, he was really glad Yanli-jie insisted he had some china in case of guests that would drink more respectable things than coffee out of a bowl and monster energy drinks.
He chewed the inside of his lower lip and took a breath, turning to lean his hip against the counter. "Aiyo, you didn't need to come here: you could have just waited. You are hurt." His eyes were filled with worry, brow creased slightly.
The kettle was boiling, so he moved forward to gently take Lan Zhan's wrist with his hand, carefully pulling him into the kitchen and then with a firm touch to the taller man's hips, he guided him to lean against the counter. Wei Ying's kitchen was really narrow, there wasn't a lot of room to maneuver inside, so as he moved around, getting their tea ready, he kept gently jostling the other man with an apologetic smile.
"I suppose emptiness is the first response to shock and grief," he said softly, looking like he knew a little bit about that. "I am sure the feeling will pass, Lan Zhan. Here- you- please. Drink this."
It was telling that Lan Zhan allowed himself to be directed and more importantly touched. He settled, finally, against the kitchen counter with hands beside him and fingers curled around the edge. The whole time his eyes did not leave Wei Ying. It was as though he thought that if he took his eyes off him even for a second he would vanish.
He took the cup as it was offered, gratefully bowing his head in response. "I'm sorry," he finally said after gazing into his tea like it might hold all the answers that he was looking for. "I never thought how a topic like this might affect you."
Not much was known of Wei Ying's past but enough was known for Lan Zhan to understand the other's intimate familiarity with loss of loved ones.
"Ah, méiguānxì. It was a long time ago." Wei Ying waves his hand, letting his fingers linger against Lan Zhan's wrist for a moment, thumb brushing along the back of his hand briefly and then he lets go. "Did you dream of anything else, or just the end of the fight and the m- and watching" - me - "someone fall?"
He picked up his own tea and leaned against the opposite counter, his socked feet touching Lan Zhan's. "Is there nothing happy in the dream that you had?"
There had been electricity before when Wei Ying touched him in the past but ever since the dream, ever since feeling what he had in the dream, electricity didn't even begin to do it justice.
He exhaled a breath and lifted the cup to his lips to take his first taste of the jasmine tea. It was reassuring, settling, comforting.
"There was a positive." He looked at where their socked feet met and eventually looked at Wei Ying. "There was a small boy that I rescued from this dark place. He was very unwell, very frightened, and alone."
"That was good of you," Wei Ying said quietly, smiling a little. His knowledge from his dream was limited. He knew almost nothing, just the aching hole of hopelessness, betrayal, grief and guilt that continually stole his breath if he thought about it too deeply. "Saving the boy, I mean."
His lips curl up a little, sipping at his tea and talking to Lan Zhan over the rim of his cup. "Even in the dreams you are a good man, how is that fair?"
"I think he was the son of the man who fell." He flexed his fingers around the cup and took another sip, catching Wei Ying's gaze over the rim of his cup. "You know the belief that this life is not the first one that we have experienced. Perhaps some things are the same while other things are not?"
He was quiet and still until he simply reached out, clasping Wei Ying's forearm in his large hand, grip tightening.
"Xièxiè"
Wei Ying met Lan Zhan's eyes as he spoke, glancing away only to look down at the hand that clasped around his forearm. "No need for xièxiè between us, Lan Zhan," he said quietly, meeting his gaze and ignoring the tugging in his chest at the words. They felt familiar, like he'd said them numerous times before, heard someone else say them.
"But yes, I believe in reincarnation, if that is what you're suggesting. I think... there is too much living to be done for it to be all finished in one life."
One last final squeeze and Lan Zhan released Wei Ying, both hands moving to close around the cup once more. "I would not think that you would not live enough in this one life that you would need another one to make up for lost opportunity."
Wei Ying laughed, and in spite of the sadness still clinging to his chest, and the worry at the haunted look in his friend's eyes, it was bright and genuine.
"Maybe it would not be because I missed opportunities, then," he said, "but to fix mistakes."
With a sigh, he knocks Lan Zhan's ankle with his toes. "You should sit down. After you have finished your tea, I will put you to bed. You need to rest."
"I should not bother you any more than I have," Lan Zhan argued with a shake of his head. "I will finish my tea and the go home. I have taken enough of your time."
He was tired though, the dream had taken a lot out of him.
Too much. Honestly he had no idea how the man, how he in the dream, had kept going after that loss.
"Fuck that," Wei Ying said sternly, putting his tea down. He definitely didn't like it but Lan Zhan seemed to, so he would keep buying it. He would keep it stocked. "You can sleep here tonight. You are not going home right now."
His voice softened and he stepped forward, boldly, right into Lan Zhan's space. This close, he could smell the subtle hint of sandalwood that made something in his mind spin.
"You are not a bother, Zhan-ge, I told you that."
Lan Zhan sucked in a very sharp breath at the sudden unexpected invasion of his personal space. Quietly, silently, he admonished himself for his reaction and for letting it be so visceral. He put his tea down and cleared his throat, hoping it might steady his voice before he spoke.
"I feel bad," he explained slowly. "I am not good with- Not good with showing-" Weakness, vulnerability "Emotion."
This close he could see the small birthmark beneath Wei Ying's lower lip and for some reason he fixated there, enraptured. It took him a long time to drag his gaze up to the other man's eyes. "Wǒ huì liú xiàlái."
"Of course you're staying, Zhan-ge," Wei Ying said quietly, lips tugging into a soft smile. "You can't turn up at a guy's apartment in the middle of the night and not stay for breakfast."
On instinct, he reached out and patted Lan Zhan's chest, touch lingering for a moment. It took him a split second to pull his thoughts together, smile dimming slightly until he felt he was under control again.
"Luckily for you, I show plenty of emotions. Enough for the both of us, I think. Have you finished your tea?"
Lan Zhan almost reached up to catch and hold Wei Ying's wrist in his hand, but he didn't. He managed to stop himself. Apparently he was still capable of self-control.
"Yes, I have finished my tea."
"Okay," he said with a decisive nod. "Let's go to bed."
Taking Lan Zhan's wrist (of his uninjured arm, of course), Wei Ying tugged the taller man into the lounge and weaved through the apartment with ease, touch unyielding around Lan Zhan's wrist.
He nudged his bedroom door open with his foot. "Uh, sorry about the mess." It was less... messy and more disorganized. There were clothes on a desk chair, sketchbooks littering most flat surfaces including the bed. When he flicked the light on, there was an open sketchbook on the bed and he darted forward to close it, snapping it shut before Lan Zhan saw the image he had been doodling. Another one was open on the bedside table, which had an almost photo-realistic drawing of a pair of rabbits: one black and one white. He was busy trying to clear a path to his bed for Lan Zhan that he didn't notice that one was open.
"Come on, the sheets are clean, I promise."
Lan Zhan wondered if Wei Ying had any idea how improper that statement about going to bed sounded. He probably did, less likely to care. Neither did Lan Zhan which was strange. He wasn't going to think too much about it though.
As one sketchbook was hurriedly flipped shut Lan Zhan noted that there was another one, this one had gone unnoticed, and curiosity got the better of him. He padded over and reached out to lightly touch the page, fingertips resting beside the picture of two rabbits. It was good, better than good. It looked real, very real, and there was something about the rabbits that tugged on a thread he had yet to weave into a tapestry.
"This is very good." The compliment was warm, sincere and would not have been said if it was not honest.
"Aiyo! I am sorry," Wei Ying blurted out, flipping the sketchbook closed. In the light of the room, the bright flush on his cheeks was clearly visible and for the first time in their friendship he looked as though he had been caught off guard, that he was - however briefly - on the back foot. "I was sketching before you texted."
That would explain the pencils on the bed, too. The room was, in many ways, quintessentially Wei Ying.
"Okay, you can sleep here." He swept his hand demonstratively, like telling someone to sleep in his bed was absolutely normal.
Lan Zhan blinked and lifted his eyebrows at the sudden shutting of the sketchbook as well as the blush that filled the other man's cheeks. "Your drawings are very good," he assured Wei Ying. "You should not be embarrassed."
At the sweep of a hand towards the bed Lan Zhan grew confused.
"Where are you going to sleep?"
Wei Ying rubbed the back of his head, clearly not quite sure what to make of the compliment. He just shrugged and tucked his sketchbook under his arm, putting it with the others on the desk in the room.
"On the couch?" Wei Ying replied, looking just as confused.
"Bù, zhè bù huì." Lan Zhan shook his head, vigorously. "I am not taking your bed from you, Wei Ying. I will sleep on the couch." He was the one imposing after all.
"Bullshit," Wei Ying argued. "I am not bleeding, and exhausted from a horrible dream and I am not the guest in this house."
Despite arguing, there was a slight twinkle of mischief in Wei Ying's eyes as he said, with all the authority he could muster (which was not much as his lips were already twitched up into a devilish little grin), "Lan Zhan, get into my bed."
If it was possible for a human being to crash in the same way a computer did then that was in fact what happened with Lan Zhan when Wei Ying told him to get into his bed.
He pressed his lips into a thin line, worked tension from his jaw, ignored the sudden hot flush that he knew to be creeping up the sides of his neck and exhaled a short sharp breath.
"The bed is big enough. We can share."
Wei Ying's mischievous look vanished when he saw the way that Lan Zhan stiffened, the way his jaw tensed. He wondered if he had finally found the line and crossed it. There was a moment where he just waited, wincing half in readiness for some kind of sharp, snapped response that would result in the end of their friendship when Lan Zhan spoke again.
"You- Uh, okay. We can share."
Clearly, he had not been expecting that and looked thrown again for the second time in less than five minutes. His smile was sheepish this time, softer at the edges.
"Come on," he said, quietly, his hand resting on the curve of Lan Zhan's elbow now that he had put all of his things down. "You need to sleep."
Had Lan Zhan been thinking more clearly he would have taken no small amount of pleasure in the fact that he had managed to throw Wei Ying off balance in so many minutes.
He nodded as he briefly squeezed Wei Ying's wrist before he simply went around the bed, sitting on the edge before leaning down to remove his socks as he hated sleeping with anything on his feet.
Long fingers slipped into his hair and tugged it a little looser,he could feel a headache coming. Hoping the easing of tension there might help fend it off.
Wei Ying moved to head around the other side of the bed (as that was his side) but Lan Zhan had beaten him to it and he stood dumbly for a moment and then just knelt on the bed.
"Headache?" He asked, and then before Lan Zhan could answer, completely unbidden and without permission, he shifted and tugged the other man's hair fully loose, burying his fingers in the dark strands, fingertips applying light pressure along some key acupressure points to help relieve tension and pain. "Aiyo, Lan Zhan, these dreams are not good for you."
If Lan Zhan had known he had accidentally taken Wei Ying's side of the bed he would have given a hurried apology and immediately moved to the other side. He had already imposed so much without stealing the other's preferred side of the bed.
His mouth was half opened to form a reply but whatever words he might have spoken died between the back of his throat and on his tongue when Wei Ying's fingers sunk into his hair. Again, there was an uncomfortable flush of heat in places that there should not be and it took all of his self-control not to react too strongly.
He dropped his hands to his knee where his fingers curled in the cotton. "Apparently," he agreed. He was not known for using many words when a few would do, but he was even more reticent to speak given that he did not trust his voice.
When he was not told to stop, Wei Ying continued to push his fingers through the dark strands, keeping his touch firm and confident, fingers finding a few acupressure points behind Lan Zhan's ear, and then clever touch moving to the base of his skull, touch finding tension knots in the muscle and pressing into them with his thumbs.
He cleared his throat, wetting his lower lip and taking in a slow breath. "I hope we can find a way to help you sleep better, without such dreams. Is this helping?"
His eyes closed in response to the gentle but firm ministrations of Wei Ying's fingers, clearly skilled in the art of massage, and Lan Zhan does everything in his power not to fixate on the why and how.
"It is."
It did in fact feel really good, and he was breathing slowly, in and out, to stave off any inappropriate sounds.
Though he was not actually psychic, Wei Ying had never been comfortable in silence so he shifted a little closer, knees touching Lan Zhan's lower back as he kept his fingers moving in small, skillful circles.
"A-Jie used to get migraines," he said, "so I learned to massage them away before they got really bad." His touch slid down the back of Lan Zhan's neck, thumbs smoothing down the tense muscles on either side of his neck and the curves where his slender neck met his shoulders. He ignored the way he felt a thrill at being allowed to touch Lan Zhan like this because it was wrong. Lan Zhan was vulnerable right now, for Wei Ying to take pleasure in this intimacy was inappropriate.
He drew his lower lip between his teeth and bit down on it. It helped his thoughts deviate from the path they were trying to wander down. "You should consider paying someone to give you a massage more regularly, Zhan-ge," he murmured. "You are holding a lot of tension here."
There was a flicker, behind Lan Zhan's closed lids, and it wasn't long until they subtly opened, and he side-eyed the positioning of Wei Ying's knees. He was then distracted by the smoothing of thumbs and fingers along the sides of his neck, not at all relieved and in great part reassured by the solidness of the other man at his back.
"Hm, maybe. I do not enjoy being touched by strangers." Which was not a lie. He had very little love for touching in general and especially by those he did not know well. Handshakes were one thing, they were formal and didn't last long, but a massage struck him as something that might be more personal and take more than a few seconds.
"There would be a lot of touching if I did that."
"It would be worth it," Wei Ying pointed out. "To relax you. Besides, you let me touch you. I've been doing it since the day we've met."
His thumbs smoothed along the curve of Lan Zhan's shoulders, touch no longer against his skin, but no less seeking out tension in the muscles along the edge of his spine, towards his shoulder blades.
"Do you get a lot of headaches?" He swallowed, swaying forward slightly until when he breathed in and realized his face was almost touching Lan Zhan's hair. "I- um. Aiya, you should get some sleep. Hopefully your head feels better? I could do more but this is not the best- um- angle for a good head massage."
That should be an indicator of just how much trust there was, from Lan Zhan to Wei Ying, but he understood if it was not easy to interpret if you had not grown up with him.
"You are no stranger."
He swallowed, felt a lump, and repeated the movement of hands in sweatpants to control his reaction to the wandering attentions of Wei Ying's massage. "Mmm," he replied with the smallest of nods. Headaches were common and frequent for him. Possibly because he was so tense all the time and struggled to relax.
"It does, feel better," he turned his head to look at Wei Ying over his shoulder with a very soft expression. "Thank you."
"Aiyo no but I was very sure you hated me when we first met in Beijing," Wei Ying said. "And every time we met after that." Until quite recently, honestly.
His breath caught in his throat at the soft expression. He reluctantly dropped his hands from where they had been been against Lan Zhan's shoulder and he shuffled back a little bit.
"Oh- this is yours."
He pulled the hair tie off from where he had secured it around his wrist and held it out, with a little, earnest, smile on his lips.
Hate was a very strong word. It was not that Lan Zhan hated Wei Ying but more he did not know what to make of him, and he had unsettled him in many ways that others did not.
"I did not and I do not hate you."
He felt something give an uncomfortable twist in the middle of his chest at that soft earnest look on Wei Ying's face. "Thank you," he murmured as he took the hair tie and considered it. Rather than putting his hair up he slid the hair tie around his wrist and left his hair loose, he worried he might undo all of Wei Ying's good work.
"You should keep growing your hair out," Wei Ying said impulsively after a moment - though Lan Zhan's hair was not anywhere near as long as it was in the dreams it was still shoulder length - reaching out and pushing a few of the strands back behind his ear. "It looks nice."
His own was back in a messy bun, which he had no intention of letting down because it needed a brush.
"You need to get some sleep, Lan Zhan. Come on, lie down."
He backed away properly, then, to get Lan Zhan space to climb under the covers. He got to his feet, rubbing the back of his neck and padding over to turn off the light.
Lan Zhan's eyes fluttered ever so slightly at the unexpected touch to his hair and brush of his ears and he was so thankful that Wei Ying had moved away before he caught sight of his reaction.
Perhaps he would grow his hair longer.
He shifted to make himself comfortable and reached for the pillows that he pulled closer until he turned over onto his side, hoping and praying that he would not dream again.
Wei Ying watched Lan Zhan get settled. Turning the light out, he moved back over to the bed and climbed into his own side. It felt so wrong, he was on the wrong side of the bed. It was cold and normally covered in sketchbooks.
He lay on his back, then on his side facing Lan Zhan's back and then he wriggled to lie on his other side like that would help. He had not shared a bed with anyone in a long time.