Chapter Text
Paperwork is the most important part of police work, as far as Lan Wangji is concerned. It isn’t as exciting as being out in the field, of course (although it doesn’t involve talking to anyone, which is a big point in paperwork’s favor); it doesn’t stimulate his mind the same way poring over evidence does, and it certainly isn’t as satisfying as that moment when a case cracks wide open and he knows he’ll be bringing someone to justice. Paperwork is a huge part of making sure that the criminals they apprehend actually answer for their crimes, though, and Wangji takes that seriously.
Plus, there’s something soothing about the meticulous collection and tracking of information, a tidiness to it that speaks to his orderly soul. He likes to get to work early and sit in the morning quiet, sipping his tea and filing his reports, so that his desk is pristine and his mind is clear and untroubled before his partner rolls in and stampedes over the rest of his day.
“Of course the second I get in the door the Captain is up my ass,” Nie Mingjue rumbles around a mouthful of blueberry muffin. Slinging his motorcycle helmet under his desk, he flops heavily down into his chair, which creaks alarmingly under his muscular bulk. “I didn’t even get my jacket off before he was talking in my ear.” He tosses a file onto Wangji’s immaculate desk, bypassing the in-tray and by extension negating the need for an in-tray. “New missing persons case. Yao’s being all squirrely about it.”
When Wangji passed the detective’s exam, he’d been less than thrilled to be partnered with his brother’s best friend from high school — he would have preferred a partner who didn’t remember him as a skinny orchestra nerd with braces. He and Nie Mingjue have turned out to be a surprisingly good team, though: Wangji’s sharp eye and meticulous nature are a good foil for Nie Mingjue’s killer instincts and take-charge attitude, and it turns out that Silent Cop/Scary Cop is a decent variation on Good Cop/Bad Cop. Despite all that, Wangji has never been able to suppress a twinge of irritation at his partner’s slovenly ways. He frowns at the offending folder. “Why?” he asks.
Nie Mingjue shrugs and pops open a Red Bull. “I guess the family’s raising a fuss.”
“Mn.” That probably means the family has connections; Captain Yao only goes out of his way if it means pleasing a powerful crony or two. He glances over at the Captain’s office door, but it’s shut. He can hear Yao shouting at someone inside.
There are blueberry muffin crumbs on the case folder. Sighing, Wangji brushes them off and flips it open.
His hands go cold.
The man in the picture is grinning, warm bright eyes crinkling at the camera, one hand shoved into his messy dark hair. The photo must be a few months old, Wangji thinks distantly — the last time he saw the man in this picture, his hair had been longer. The smile is the same.
Lan Zhan, are you going to arrest me?
“Ying Wuxian Wei, 28-year-old Asian male, last seen Monday afternoon at his place of work,” Nie Mingjue says, “wearing…” he checked his notes. “A red t-shirt advertising the band Twin Heroes, and black jeans.”
He knows that shirt. There’s a tiny hole where the collar is starting to come apart from the shoulder, and an oil stain under the “n” in “Twin.” Wangji isn’t breathing.
“Family officially reported him missing this morning. Apparently he was supposed to be at his sister’s house for dinner Monday night, never arrived. Missed work Tuesday and yesterday, they said he never called in, just didn’t show. Sister called Captain Yao yesterday evening on his direct line, wonder how she got that number,” Nie Mingjue says with a flourish of his eyebrows.
Wangji is turning to ice. He’s turning to stone. Wei Ying.
“Yao sent a uniform by his apartment last night to do a welfare check. Roommate stated she hadn’t seen him since Monday. Sister called again this morning, insisted we open a missing persons case. So here we go, one missing person, have fun with that.”
“I know him,” Wangji says quietly.
Nie Mingjue looks up in surprise. “You do?”
“He lives in my building. He’s…” Wangji swallows, his tongue feeling suddenly thick. “...A friend.”
“Are you shitting me?” Nie Mingjue asks, which is Nie Mingjue for Are you OK. “Do I need to tell Yao to give this to somebody else?”
On the one hand: yes, probably. Wangji’s sure that Wei Ying has a ton of people in his life who he’s closer to than he is to Wangji, but he is one of the very few people Wangji would consider a close friend. It’s a breach of ethics, and a conflict of interests, and probably a really bad idea for Wangji to investigate this case. The bottomless pit of anxiety that’s opened up in him at the thought of Wei Ying being missing only serves to confirm that. That’s not even considering the fact that Wangji has romantic feelings toward Wei Ying, which he wouldn’t have revealed to Nie Mingjue or the Captain under torture anyway, but certainly has the potential to cloud his judgment here.
On the other hand: It’s Wei Ying.
Wangji shakes his head. “No. It’s fine.”
“You sure?”
Why do you have to be a cop, Lan Zhan?
“It’s fine,” he says again. Like hell is anyone else investigating this case.
The door to the Captain’s office bursts open with a bang. Captain Yao leans out, looking harried. “Nie! Lan!” he barks. “Get in here, we need to discuss your new case.”
A red-faced man in Armani slacks is pacing erratically around Yao’s office. Wangji recognizes him as Jiang Cheng Wanyin, a detective he knows by sight and slightly by reputation. His father is Jiang Fengmian of the Jiang Microsystems Jiangs; Jiang Wanyin’s annual detective’s salary is probably less than they tip their household staff. Even if he wasn’t from a prominent family, Wangji would still be aware of him; he’s seen the man networking away at the few Asian-American Police Association events Xichen has badgered Nie Mingjue into dragging him to, but they’ve never spoken. By all accounts, Detective Jiang works hard and has a decent close rate, but is known around the precinct for being kind of high-strung. A reputation which, if his current clenched jaw and flaring nostrils are any indication, is entirely deserved.
Yao rubs his eyes. His toupee has taken on new levels of unconvincingness this morning; it has sort of a crispy aspect that Wangji knows he’s going to find particularly distracting. “You guys know Detective Jiang, I’m sure,” he says.
Wangji gives the detective a nod of acknowledgement. Nie Mingjue grunts and scowls at him.
“Captain,” Jiang Wanyin says, in a tone of voice Wangji would certainly never take with a work superior. “I should be the one working this case.”
“And I’ve told you,” Captain Yao grinds out through gritted teeth. “You can’t. You’re too close to it. I’m including you in this conversation as a courtesy to your family, but you’re not investigating this case.”
“It doesn’t make sense to put anyone else on it!” Jiang snaps.
“What’s the deal, Jiang, you know this guy or something?” Nie Mingjue asks, carefully avoiding looking at Wangji.
“You —” Jiang appears to somewhat gain control of himself through sheer force of will. “He’s my brother,” he growls.
Wangji blinks. He’d known that Wei Ying had a brother, but not that said brother is also a cop, let alone someone Wangji knows. If Wei Ying is related to the Jiangs, it explains why Yao is so worked up about the case, and probably also explains how Wei Ying’s sister got the Captain’s private work number, which would have only required calling in a favor or two — small potatoes for a family like the Jiangs.
Nie Mingjue regards Jiang skeptically. “Wei Ying Wuxian? Different family name?”
Jiang rolls his eyes. “My family adopted him after his parents died.” He turns back to the Captain. “Look, I appreciate you taking this seriously, but my sister is overreacting. She has a tendency to indulge him. Wei Wuxian is probably just on a bender somewhere or shacked up with a girlfriend or something.”
A part of Wangji sits up in indignant protest at shacked up with a girlfriend. He dismisses it, impatient with himself. So what if Wei Ying is off with some girl, at least that would mean he’s OK.
“He’ll probably turn up on his own in a day or two,” Jiang Wanyin continues, “and if not, I’m perfectly capable of tracking him down myself.” He sighs heavily. “My brother...does shit like this. He’s crazy and selfish and he doesn’t give a shit, he’s always pulling some stunt and leaving the rest of us to clean it up. I’m sorry you’re having to deal with it.”
This is so wildly out of sync with what Wangji knows about Wei Ying that it’s as though Jiang is talking about another person entirely. He takes in Jiang’s perfectly-tailored indigo silk shirt, his subtly-expensive wool slacks, his designer shoes; everything about the man is tastefully broadcasting extreme wealth. It’s the kind of thing Wangji is good at recognizing, having grown up around it. He thinks of Wei Ying’s threadbare t-shirts, the holes and patches in his jeans that are definitely there from wear and not fashion, the duct tape on his sneakers. Brothers they might be, but Wangji is guessing there’s a lot more to that story, and none of it is making him favorably inclined toward Jiang’s easy dismissal of Wei Ying’s disappearance.
Captain Yao is shaking his head. “Maybe you’re right. Hell, probably you’re right. But your sister filed the report, which means we can’t close it until someone at SPD lays eyes on the guy. And as a family member, you are not allowed to work this case. It’s department policy. You know this. I know you know this. Now go do your job, let Detectives Lan and Nie do their jobs, and if you’d like to still have a job, don’t fucking bust into my office like that ever again.”
Jiang Wanyin flushes an angry red. He clenches his hands into fists. “Yes sir,” he practically spits, turning on his heel and stalking out.
“Does he know I’m supposed to be the department hothead?” Nie Mingjue asks into the silence that follows.
Yao covers his face with his hands, presumably at the thought of a second Nie Mingjue.
“Captain,” Wangji says carefully, “I should disclose to you that I’ve met Wei Ying Wuxian.”
“Really?” Yao asks, not taking his face out of his hands. “Fucking fantastic.”
“He lives in my building, and I’ve eaten at the cafe where he works.” All of this is scrupulously true.
“Is he your fuckup adopted brother too?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t give a shit. Nie, if you can find the brother before Jiang winds up back in my office, I’ll buy you a bottle of scotch.”
“Not much of a case, really,” Nie Mingjue says once they were back at their desks. “Adult man goes four days without talking to his family.”
Wangji exhales a silent snort through his nose. Nie Mingjue would be tearing the city apart brick by brick if his brother hadn’t been seen in that long, but he’s not about to say that. “Under similar circumstances,” he says instead, “I would be quite concerned about Xichen.”
One day, Wangji swears to himself, he’ll have his phone ready to capture the soft, soppy look that comes over his partner’s face whenever the topic of Wangji’s brother Xichen comes up in conversation, and when that moment arrives, he’s making it his phone’s lock screen. “True,” Nie Mingjue grunts, a soft smile floating under his mustache. He stares moonily at his computer for a moment before appearing to get a grip. “I need to wrap a couple things up this morning,” he says, clearing his throat, “and then we can start in on this. I’m thinking his work first, since that was the last place he was seen, then the apartment? Nice easy commute home for you after that, if the guy’s your neighbor.”
A part of Wangji is screaming we have to go now, we have to find him right now, but Nie Mingjue’s request is reasonable, especially in light of the other cases they still have open, and insisting they leave immediately is exactly the kind of behavior that could get the case reassigned. If the Captain, or anyone else, had any idea how Wangji — how he and Wei Ying — well, the case is his now, and even if it wasn’t, he’d still be looking for Wei Ying.
He opens the Missing Persons file again. It’s odd, reviewing Wei Ying’s life and vital stats like this — too impersonal and too intimate at the same time. He’s had so many conversations with Wei Ying, about trivial things and serious things and everything in between; he would have said that he knew Wei Ying, really knew him, but the file is just a laundry list of things his friend has never told him about.
My birthday is Halloween, he imagines Wei Ying saying. My brother’s a cop. My sister lives in Medina. I was convicted of felony assault when I was 18 and sentenced to a year in prison, served 3 months, followed by a year of probation.
Wei Ying would never say these things, of course, because that isn’t how he talks: he evades, he makes jokes, he asks hypothetical questions, he says true things couched in such outrageous language that they sound false. It takes a careful ear to glean out what he’s really saying, even though Wei Ying rarely outright lies. It’s something Wangji has been getting good at.
He wonders if some of the things in Wei Ying’s file would have eventually come drifting out of his rambling speech, if they’d known each other for longer. He wonders if he really knows this man at all.
~*~
Even though the cafe is relatively close to his building, Wangji has never been there before. He doesn’t go out to eat much, and when he does, he tends to frequent the same places. Nie Huaisang calls him a stick in the mud, but he sees nothing wrong with being a creature of habit.
He is hungry, though, and work has kept him from getting in his usual grocery run this week. The cafe is a pretty standard hipster American-comfort-food-fusion place, the type that blankets the rest of the city and is now encroaching on the rapidly-gentrifying International District as well. It’s close, though, and it has decent Yelp reviews (“great sandwiches, tons of vegetarian options, at least one seriously cute waiter”), if nothing else.
The place is acceptable at first glance — clean, well-lit, music playing softly in the background instead of blaring at top volume like a lot of places. He chooses a seat, pulls a book out of his bag.
“Hi, how’s it going?”
Wangji looks up. The waiter’s about his age, tall and willowy, long hair in a messy pile on top of his head. He smiles, a natural, easy gesture, and his enormous catlike eyes crinkle up warmly.
This, then, must be the seriously cute waiter.
“First time in? I know I’d remember seeing you before,” the cute waiter says, his full lips curving suggestively around the words.
Wangji is quite aware that there are many, many people in the world who can make lively banter with the waitstaff. Probably some of those people can also handle being flirted with, without it feeling like someone’s dipped them in liquid nitrogen. He has no idea how those people manage it, but he’s aware that they exist. “Chrysanthemum tea,” he says stiffly.
The guy has an order pad shoved in a pocket of his apron, but doesn’t bother writing Wangji’s tea order down. Wangji tries not to feel stressed out about that. “Anything else? You want to see a food menu?”
“Yes.”
The guy’s already setting a menu down in front of him. “Hey, settle down,” the waiter says. “Don’t talk my ear off.”
Wangji is accustomed to people being uncomfortable with his taciturn nature, and he is beyond sick of people teasing him about it, but there’s no malice in the waiter’s remark, which is delivered with a wink and another friendly smile. Wangji doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He can feel his ears growing warm.
“Be right back with your tea.”
Wangji peruses the menu quickly and then focuses on his book, which makes some very interesting points about the role of social media in guerilla movements in the developing world. It’s difficult to concentrate, though, since in addition to being cute, the waiter appears to be the loudest person in the world. He stacks cups with a clatter, drops a bucket of forks on the floor and then laughs like a hyena while he’s picking them up, and keeps up a more or less nonstop stream of chat to the rest of the staff, sometimes calling across half the cafe to do so. Try as he might, Wangji can’t seem to tune it out; he’s uncomfortably aware, the noise a continuing assault on his senses. It’s starting to set his teeth a little on edge by the time the guy returns with his tea.
“Chrysanthemum tea!” the waiter says brightly, setting Wangji’s tea down with a flourish. “I’d give that another minute to steep. Did you get a chance to look at the menu? Any questions I can answer? Personally, I recommend the spicy chicken grain bowl, or the ghost pepper grilled cheese, or if you don’t like spicy, the turkey avocado sandwich is pretty good —”
“The butternut squash salad,” Wangji says, getting the sense that if he doesn’t interrupt, he’ll never order.
“Got it.” The waiter does actually write this down, for which Wangji is thankful. “And what else?”
“That is all.”
“You sure?” The waiter cocks a hip and looks up from his notepad. A wisp of hair has fallen down into his face, brushing his high cheekbone. “Our salads are pretty small, they’re really intended to be more of a side dish than a main course.”
“That will be fine,” Wangji says. His uncle had always insisted that several small meals throughout the day were healthier than three big ones, and that’s still how Wangji eats most of the time. Old habits die hard.
“Not a lot of protein in the butternut salad,” the waiter presses, like Wangji’s protein intake is any of his business at all. “If you want I could have them add a grilled chicken breast or some tofu, or some shrimp —”
“No.” Wangji’s voice comes out more forcefully than he intends it to. “Thank you,” he adds.
“You always eat like a rabbit?” the waiter laughs.
Wangji glowers at him. Unchastened, the waiter scrunches his nose up like a rabbit’s, wiggles it a couple times, and laughs again. “I’ll get that salad in for you,” he says, sauntering away.
“Ridiculous,” Wangji mutters, not caring if the guy hears him or not. It’s completely uncalled for to comment on what he’s having for lunch. Between that and the overall noise factor, he’s starting to think about leaving a stingy tip. He would never actually do that — he’s a scrupulous 25% tipper in just about every scenario — but thinking about it does serve to temporarily ease some of his irritation.
He glares at his book in silence, not really seeing the words on the page in front of him. Why is he so bothered by this? People have been commenting on his silences and his fastidious habits all his life, it’s just background noise at this point. He should be able to let this remark roll off his back like all the rest, but something about it has gotten under his skin. His tea is delicious, which is just adding insult to injury at this point.
“Here you go.” The waiter sets the salad down in front of him. He doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t move away, either, just kind of hovers next to the table. Wangji looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. What now?
“Hey. Um.” The waiter twists his hands together nervously. His fingers are long and dextrous; his fingernails are painted in alternating red and black. “I’m, uh, sorry about the whole. You know. Rabbit comment. I’m annoying, I talk too much, you should just ignore me, everyone does,” he continues in a rush. “I didn’t. Um. Mean anything by it.” He reaches out and touches Wangji’s shoulder; instinctively, Wangji stiffens and pulls away. The waiter draws back his hand, wincing. “Sorry. Again. Um. Anyway, I hope you like your salad! I had them make it extra good, just for you.” He smiles again, closed-lipped, bright-eyed, conciliatory. “Enjoy.”
A little stunned by the sudden outpouring of words and feelings and touching, Wangji can only gape at the waiter as he walks away. The waiter pauses at the counter to re-cinch his apron around his narrow waist, emphasizing his angular shoulders, the full, almost feminine curve to his hips. There’s a hole in his jeans just behind his left knee; the glimpse of skin there causes a bizarre almost-sadness to well up in Wangji’s throat. Wangji scowls down at his salad.
He is mercifully left alone for the rest of his meal. Wangji supposes that one advantage of being what he calls “naturally reserved” and Nie Huaisang calls “scary to everyone all the time for no reason” is that he’s usually left in peace, although peace is a relative term, since their interaction does not appear to have cowed the cute waiter into anything approaching silence; he continues his stream of chatter to his co-workers, who joke and tease him back.
Wangji’s check finally arrives. At the bottom, in the area that says “YOUR SERVER TODAY WAS,” the name “Wei Ying” is written in bold, messy Sharpie. Underneath it is a surprisingly lifelike and adorable sketch of a rabbit.
Wei Ying.
~*~
“Wei Ying,” Wangji murmurs to himself, looking through the file again like he could somehow will more information out of it. He’d last seen Wei Ying on Sunday night; Wei Ying had been, well, extremely drunk, but otherwise fine. What happened between then and Monday afternoon?
How do you know what’s the right thing, Lan Zhan?
He’s so deep in thought, he isn’t aware of Jiang’s approach until the man is standing right beside his desk, looking like he’s about to implode from stress.
“Lan,” Jiang says tightly. “A word? About your case?” He spits the word out like it tastes bad.
Wangji gestures for him to sit in the visitor’s chair next to his desk. He sets down Wei Ying’s file, folds his hands, and waits.
“My brother,” Jiang mutters. Absently, he picks up a pen off of Wangji’s desk and starts clicking it up and down. Click click. “He’s...had a rough time of it. You’ve seen his file.” Click.
Wangji favors him with the smallest hint of a nod.
Jiang scowls at the floor. Click. Click click. “Look, he’s a good person. He’s just...impulsive.” Click clickety click. “He tends to go off and do things without thinking about how they’ll impact other people.” Click. “He drinks a lot,” clickety click, “and he has a big mouth and a giant hero complex, which gets him into trouble.”
All of this more or less jibes with Wangji’s experience of Wei Ying, if put more unkindly than he ever would have. Maybe Jiang is right: maybe Wei Ying just followed a wild impulse somewhere and would be back in a few days, making fun of him for being so worried.
He keeps silent, waiting to see what Jiang will say next. Riding out a pause is a surprisingly effective interrogation technique, especially with someone like Jiang.
Jiang scowls again. He clicks the pen several times in rapid succession. Wangji reflects that he could almost certainly get away with murdering someone if he really put his mind to it, but probably not if he began by stabbing the man with a pen in the middle of the police station.
“The thing is.” Jiang finally puts the pen down. The tension drains out of him, and for the first time Wangji can see the worry behind it. Jiang looks up at him, meets his eyes, looks away. “Either everything’s fine, or something’s really wrong. There’s no in between. There never is, with him.” He blinks rapidly a few times, suddenly looking much younger. “I can’t just...not do anything.”
Wangji allows his attitude to defrost slightly. Despite the fact that Jiang Wanyin appears not to get his brother at all, it’s clear that he cares about him, which is at least something. “I understand.”
“Yeah?”
“Mn.” Wangji nods. “I cannot allow you to actively assist with the case. But I will keep you apprised of what we find.” He jots down his cell number on a Post-It, taking care to put the pen back out of Jiang’s reach. “Text me if you think of anything that might be helpful.” He wants to say I will find him, but that isn’t the kind of thing you’re supposed to say to the family in a missing persons case. He sees no reason to tell Jiang Wanyin that he knows Wei Ying personally.
Jiang slides the Post-It into his pocket and stands up. “Thank you,” he says formally.
Wangji dismisses him with a nod.
~*~
The cafe is just winding down from the breakfast rush by the time they arrive; the crowd has thinned out, but several tables still bear the remnants of breakfasts, lipstick-stained coffee cups, abandoned newspapers. A young blonde woman with a pink streak in her hair is loading dishes into an overloaded tub; Wangji recognizes her as Nicole, who often works the morning shift.
“Hey guys, welcome in, grab a seat anywhere,” she calls as they come in. “Oh, hey!” She brightens, recognizing Wangji. “Chrysanthemum tea? I can clear your usual spot if you give me a sec.”
He can see Nie Mingjue’s questioning glance out of the corner of his eye, but ignores it. “No.”
Nicole sets down her tub. “Hey,” she says again, lowering her voice slightly. “Have you heard from Wuxian? He’s not answering his phone.”
“That’s actually what we’re here to talk to you about, Miss…?” Nie Mingjue flips open his notepad and looked at her expectantly.
Her eyes grow wide. She wipes her hands on her apron. “Larsen,” she says. “What’s this about?”
“I’m Detective Nie, SPD; it sounds like you’ve met my partner Detective Lan already. Were you working here Monday afternoon, Miss Larsen?” Nie Mingjue asks.
“Y...yes?”
“Can you tell me about the last time you saw Ying Wuxian Wei?”
“Why?” She turns to Wangji. “Is he in trouble?”
“He’s been reported missing,” Wangji replies, managing to keep his voice expressionless.
“Holy shit!” Nicole covers her mouth with her hands. “I knew he hadn’t been at work, but I figured he just, I don’t know, got a better job or something. He’s missing?”
A bell dings in the back. “Order UP!” someone bellows.
“I’ll be right back,” Nicole apologizes. They wait by the door while she runs some food out to one table, refreshes another table’s coffee, and closes out a third table’s tab. “OK, sorry about that,” she says upon returning.
“When was the last time you saw Wuxian?” Nie Mingjue asks again.
“On Monday, I guess about 4:30? He ducked out a little early, he was trying to catch a bus out to the Eastside.”
“Did he say or do anything unusual?”
“No, not really? He was maybe a little quiet, but it was a busy day, I didn’t talk to him much.”
“Can you think of any reason he might have left town suddenly? Anywhere he might have gone?”
“I mean...he doesn’t even have a car. I guess he might have stayed at his sister’s?”
Wangji shakes his head. “He never arrived there.”
“Wow,” she says softly. “That’s...wow. I’m sorry, I just...have no idea what could have happened. He never misses work, I know he was actually trying to pick up some extra shifts.”
He thinks about Wei Ying dragging himself to work with colds and the flu, Wei Ying pale and quiet with exhaustion after working back-to-back double shifts. If I lose this job I’m so fucked, Lan Zhan, I’m so fucking fucked. She’s right; Wei Ying might project the image of a total flake, but he never misses work. Something really is wrong.
“Did he leave any belongings here?” Nie Mingjue asks.
She shrugs. “You could check his locker, in the back. Greg — that’s the GM — is back there, he can probably unlock it for you.”
Greg, a tired-looking white guy in his mid-40s, grumpily digs out a master key and opens Wei Ying’s locker for them. “When you find Wuxian,” he pronounces it woo-shawn, “tell him he’s fired.”
The anger is so sudden and so fierce, it steals Wangji’s breath for a moment. Greg must see something in his face, because he takes a half-step back.
My boss is an asshole, but everybody’s boss is an asshole, and I need the job.
Turning his back on the man, Wangji slips on a pair of gloves and bends to inspect the contents of the locker. Behind him, he can hear Nie Mingjue starting to run through the same questions they’d asked Nicole, but Wangji is already tuning them both out.
There isn’t much in there. A scattering of crumpled receipts and napkins. A discarded bus pass. A battered notebook filled with sketches, scribbled bits of computer code, and unintelligible notes, which Wangji slides into an evidence bag to look through in more detail later. He pulls out a wadded-up, tattered black hoodie, and the scent of Wei Ying’s skin rises up around him, making his stomach clench with fear and longing. He has to stop and hang on to himself, just to keep from burying his face in it.
In the hoodie’s left pocket, Wangji finds an envelope, just a standard office-type envelope, folded in half. The letterhead is from Nightless City, a club down in Belltown. Scrawled across the front is the message “XOXO XY” and a smiley face. It’s empty. He slides that into an evidence bag as well.
He straightens up just as Nie Mingjue is suggesting in his best casual-threatening voice that firing someone while they’re the subject of an active missing persons investigation is perhaps not the best look. “We’re done here,” Wangji says, not even bothering to look at Greg again as he walks out the door.
~*~
He’s finishing up some work before bed when he sees something moving on the building opposite his window. His and Xichen’s apartment is in a U-shaped building, surrounding a somewhat-dilapidated courtyard area on three sides, which means he has an uninspiring view of his neighbors’ windows from his home office. At first he thinks it’s just a shadow, but then he sees it’s a person, climbing out of a third-story window and pulling themselves up onto the roof. A break-in? No, the person’s not moving with any kind of urgency, and once they haul themselves onto the roof they just sit there, legs dangling off of the edge.
Great, he thinks, already getting up from his chair. One of his neighbors has decided to risk their neck on a lark, and now they’re going to plummet to their death and he’s going to have to be the first responder on the scene.
Xichen has a master key to the building, because he is a genuinely nice and good and decent person and people take advantage of that, which in this case means that the building’s property manager asks him to help out with things from time to time. Wangji snags the key from the bowl in their entryway and stomps upstairs to let himself onto the roof.
Perched there like a vampire bat, kicking his feet and drinking from a bottle of cheap whiskey, is the same guy from the cafe earlier that day. Because of course it is.
“You’re not supposed to be up here,” Wangji says in as stern a voice as he can manage.
The guy from the cafe — Wei Ying, Wangji’s traitorous brain helpfully supplies — glances over his shoulder with a sardonic look. Whatever retort he’d been about to make dies on his lips when he sees Wangji, though. His face brightens; he looks surprised, and, Wangji thinks, pleased to see him.
“Oh,” he says. “It’s you! Hey!” He waves, and laughs, a little dorkily. “What are you doing up here? Did you hippity-hop-hop on up?” He wiggles his nose in another rabbit impression.
Wangji gingerly sits down near him, close enough that he could theoretically reach out and grab the guy if he starts to topple off the edge.
“Do you live here?” Wei Ying asks.
“Mn.” Wangji nods.
“Well.” Wei Ying takes a sip from his bottle of whiskey. “Small world. Small town, anyway.”
In his time with Seattle PD, Wangji has dealt with a lot of drunk people. Wei Ying’s tone and posture are relaxed, his voice smooth and a little slow, but his eyes are bright and focused. Wangji cautiously revises the Rooftop Fall Threat Assessment down a level. “You’re not supposed to be up here,” he says again.
Wei Ying takes another long pull from his bottle, shadows from the streetlight collecting at the base of his throat. “Says who?”
“The law, among other things.”
“Oh, the law.” Wei Ying smirks. He looks around them with exaggeratedly wide eyes. “I don’t see any cops up here, do you?”
Wangji stares down at the pebbled surface of the roof, feeling stiff and awkward.
“Wait.” Wei Ying sits up, peering into his face. “Oh my God. You’re a cop, aren’t you.” He pushes Wangji playfully on the shoulder. “Aren’t you?”
Embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck, Wangji pulls out his badge and hands it to Wei Ying.
“Oh my GOD, you are! You’re a cop!” Wei Ying flops onto his back and laughs uproariously up at the sky. “Oh my God, of course you are. That is just…” he laughs again, a bright, vibrant sound. “That is just so my life, I can’t even describe to you. Well…” he reads Wangji’s badge aloud. “Well, Detective Zhan Wangji Lan. Lan Zhan, are you going to arrest me?” He gives a coquettish flutter of his long eyelashes.
Wangji doesn’t answer, just gently prises his badge from Wei Ying’s warm fingers and tucks it back in his pocket. He’s oddly unsurprised that this ridiculous man has immediately started calling him by his familiar name, just like he hadn’t been surprised that Wei Ying had introduced himself that way either. It seems fitting, somehow.
Wei Ying props himself up on one elbow and considers him. “Why are you up here, then, Lan Zhan? If it’s so illegal?” He pouts a little around the word illegal, to show how ridiculous he finds it.
“It would be unfortunate,” Wangji says, “If you fell.”
“I’m not going to fall,” Wei Ying scoffs. “But it’s nice of you to be concerned.”
He tips the bottle back up to his mouth. A drop of liquor runs down his chin and along the line of his jaw. Wangji has to look away.
“I only come up here to give my roommates some space,” Wei Ying says. “Really, if you think about it, it’s very civic-minded of me. I’m making life in this building more harmonious.”
“There are other places to drink,” Wangji points out.
“I like drinking up here. Oh sorry, do you want some?” Wei Ying holds out the bottle.
Wangji doesn’t answer. He stares out over the courtyard instead. He can hear distant music from the bars a couple blocks over.
Beside him, Wei Ying sits up. He scoots closer, his lean thigh brushing against Wangji’s knee. He’s radiating warmth. He smells like whiskey and fried food. He leans in to wave the bottle in front of Wangji’s face. “Lan Zhan. Do you want some?”
“No.” Lan Wangji automatically pulls away from the touch.
“More for me, then.” Wei Ying takes another swig.
He’s still close enough that Wangji can feel the heat of him. It’s the kind of thing that ordinarily makes Wangji uncomfortable, having another person in his space like this. He’s not comfortable, exactly, but he’s closer to it than he usually gets with someone he’s just met.
Wei Ying is looking at him. Wangji can feel the touch of his frank gaze. “You don’t like to be touched.”
It’s not a question, so Wangji feels no need to answer.
“And...you don’t drink?”
Wangji turns to look at him, glances down at the bottle in his hand. “No.”
“And all you eat is rabbit food.” Wei Ying laughs that dorky laugh, and Wangji feels that odd not-quite-sad feeling surging up in his chest again.
“I was raised in a very strict household.”
“Yeah? Me too.” He waits for Wangji to reply, and when no reply is forthcoming, he sighs. “Seemed like I was always in trouble for something, even when I tried to behave. After a while I just…” he gestures expansively with his whiskey bottle. “Stopped trying.”
“I…” Wangji isn’t sure how to put what he means into words. “I did not.”
“Stop trying?”
“Mn.”
“Well.” Wei Ying’s voice is warm and soft. “That’s hard, too.”
Wangji looks away again.
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying sighs, reclining back down on one elbow, “I’m afraid I’m going to be a terrible influence on you. I’m always touching people, and drinking, and eating garbage food at all hours of the night. It’s going to be very rough for you, being friends with me.” He prods Wangji’s knee with his shoe. “We are friends now, right? Or don’t you do that either?”
“I have friends,” Wangji says with as much dignity as he can manage.
“Of course you do,” Wei Ying says with a grin. “Just look at you.” He prods Wangji’s knee again, then sits up with a guilty expression. “Lan Zhan, I’ve already touched you again! I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t mean it. You see? I’m totally annoying. You should just tell me to piss off when I’m being annoying.”
Wangji is having trouble following what he means, but he’s not annoyed. “You are not. Annoying me.”
Wei Ying tips his head back and winks at him. “Just wait.”