#quadsuki

Had it been the pursuit of friendship that had sent him on the chase? He isn’t sure of that; his feet had taken him without even asking, without stopping to let him think. Even though he has few others with whom to compare the experience of friendship, after a press conference like that he doubts he would have even followed his own brother in the name of winning friendships with kindness. Wei Ying clearly isn’t convinced of this, either--at least not judging by the loud, sudden thud that can only have come from his side of the stall door. Lan Wangji starts. Tearing his gaze from the cracks in the tile to the door hiding Wei Ying behind it, he can see only one of Wei Ying’s black shoes visible now in the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. 

Of the possible explanations for the sudden noise, Wei Ying must have kicked it. 

Lan Wangji jerks forward. “Wei--”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Wei Ying’s voice is like the shattering of glass on the tile floor, harsh and broken. It freezes Lan Wangji in place, his hand held out awkwardly in front of him. “I’ve heard enough. What else could you want from me? Get lost.”

Lan Wangji licks his lips. He lowers his arm and tries again. “Wei Ying.”

There’s a brief silence. Then, the sharp click of the lock being slid back and an even briefer, wild moment of hope. Hope for what? Lan Wangji only just has time to ask himself, before the opposing plastic door slams again and Wei Ying’s face is scowling at him in its stead. 

“Isn’t it enough that you won today?” 

His eyes are bright, his makeup smudged across his eyelids and the corners of his face in smears of black and glittering red. Lan Wangji had been sitting next to him only minutes ago at a distance even closer than this, and he’d been able to admire the way the colors on Wei Ying’s face lit his smile even brighter. Now, however, there is no smile. Now the red on his eyes may not just be from powdered shadow, and the splotches on his cheeks are high and uneven. Lan Wangji thinks distantly that he might be staring; he sucks a cold breath between his teeth as Wei Ying presses his advantage, voice harsh and angry.

“You followed me all alone into the bathroom, just the two of us.”

Lan Wangji catches the implication flung at him. Not that he would ever--though it isn’t as though he wouldn’t like to-- 

“Well, at least that’ll give them something else to talk about when it comes to me.” Wei Ying clicks his tongue behind his teeth and flicks something invisible just over his shoulder. “What am I supposed to do now? Thank you? Great. Thanks. There’s still nothing else I want to say about it that I didn’t already tell them. So can you just leave me alone?”

Lan Wangji finds a point somewhere over Wei Ying’s shoulder where he cannot dwell on the colors of anyone’s eyeshadow. “Ridiculous,” he says, and he’s not quite sure whether he means it for Wei Ying or for himself. “I do not wish to speak to you about Jiang Yanli.” 

The first reporter to mention her name had been gifted with something unusual: the sight of Wei Ying, unable to speak for a good few seconds. Lan Wangji had seen the way his hands had slipped on his water bottle under the table before they’d curled, white-knuckled, around cold metal. He isn’t holding the bottle here, but the effect is the same. As hard as Lan Wangji tries to stay fixed on anything other than the man standing in front of him, his peripheral vision betrays him. In the same way he’d shuttered himself away before giving his blank-faced and clearly-rehearsed response to the press, Wei Ying’s jaw tightens and eyes narrow before his face smooths out entirely.

“You’re just rubbing it in, then? That’s bold of you, Lan er-gege. I wouldn’t have thought you were capable of such a thing.”

This is so far from the truth (and, frankly, unfair) that Lan Wangji opens his mouth to protest and forgets the point of not looking at Wei Ying. In doing so, he notices that Wei Ying is not meeting his eyes, either. Instead, Wei Ying is looking pointedly at something below Lan Wangji’s neck. His lips still parted in unvoiced defense, Lan Wangji looks down, following the direction of his gaze--and all at once is aware of the gold medal hanging, suddenly heavy, against his stomach. He swallows. In the post-press rush, Lan Wangji had entirely forgotten he’d been wearing it. He’d been too focused on Wei Ying’s long hair across his shoulders, dark against the white and red of his Chinese Skating Federation jacket as he’d disappeared into the crowds and Lan Wangji had called, “Wei Ying, Wei Ying, Wei Ying.”

His own hair isn’t quite long enough to reach his shoulders, but he binds it back anyway with a too-long white ribbon that, unlike Wei Ying’s hair, is barely noticeable against the official jacket colors. Lan Wangji’s fingers itch to grip the ends of it the way he used to do when it held his mother’s hair back instead; he curls them behind his back to prevent himself from following through with such a foolish, childish thought.

“I’m not here to talk to you about the results, either,” Lan Wangji says instead. But that means he should clarify why he is here, or what he does want to say. He realizes--before he even finishes speaking--that he doesn’t know why he followed Wei Ying into the bathroom at all. It had been impulsive, plain and simple. Now he’s left scrambling for the rest of the explanation so desperately that he’s left saying nothing at all.

The silence stretches awkwardly between them. Lan Wangji feels every discomfort in his muscles and his hair pulled against his scalp, the makeup he’s been wearing for hours now heavy on his eyes. Finally it’s broken, as it often is, by Wei Ying’s laughter. There isn’t much humor to it.

“Okay,” Wei Ying says. “Okay. Sure. You came to piss. So just take your piss and get lost, Lan Zhan.”

And this, the sound of his name, is enough for Lan Wangji to lift his head and meet Wei Ying’s gaze, overbright and dark and narrow.