Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian (11:06): so im gonna see u tonight, right
Wei Wuxian (11:06): remember, you promised!
Jiang Cheng glares at his phone, hating both Wei Wuxian and himself—Wei Wuxian for being so insistent, and himself for finally giving in and saying yes. Maybe there’s still a way to back out of this, he rationalizes. He can still say no, right?
Jiang Cheng (11:06): I don’t think I’ll fit in at a drag show.
Wei Wuxian (11:07): good thing drag is about individuality, not fitting in ;)
The glare intensifies, and Jiang Yanli laughs quietly across the table. The laugh returns Jiang Cheng’s attention to his sister—and to their brunch laid out before them. Plates of steamed buns and stuffed eggplant come back into focus. Guiltily, he sets his phone face-down on the table.
“Talking to A-Xian?” she asks, resting her utensils on her plate.
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng grumbles. “He wants me to go to a… to a drag show tonight.”
“Oh, that sounds nice! The shows he and his friends put on are really good.”
“You’ve been?”
Jiang Yanli nods, smiling her sedately pleased smile. “A few times. They have a lot of great performers, and I always meet someone interesting.”
That is the last thing Jiang Cheng wants: meeting people. He loathes meeting people. He has exactly the number of people in his life that he desires, and he holds no interest in expanding his social sphere. Who needs friends when he’s kept so busy by family alone?
Jiang Yanli gives him that soft, hopeful look she always gets when it comes to her brothers’ fights. “It might be nice. Seeing him in his element,” she suggests in that far-too-gentle manner of hers. Jiang Cheng reads her meaning: this might help you make up.
Jiang Cheng still isn’t sure how much he wants to make up with Wei Wuxian, but he never could refuse his sister, so he relents.
“Okay, I’ll go. But I’m not going to have any fun.”
Jiang Yanli laughs quietly behind her hand, her cheeks scrunching her eyes into shimmering crescents. “Maybe you’ll surprise yourself.”
“I doubt it.”
“Zixuan didn’t think he would like them, either.”
Jiang Cheng just barely manages to keep his eyes from rolling, for his sister’s sake. “Is that supposed to convince me?”
Jiang Yanli smiles sweetly at him, like she knows something he doesn’t. That look would be infuriating on anyone else, but on her, it just makes Jiang Cheng wonder what he’s missing.
“Just keep an open mind, that’s all.”
On his way out of the restaurant, Jiang Cheng texts Wei Wuxian.
Jiang Cheng (11:29): Fine, I’ll be there.
Wei Wuxian (11:29): 🥳
Once he’s at home, Jiang Cheng has an ocean of time to regret agreeing to attend the drag show. He stands in front of his closet, stares at his clothes, and wonders what exactly he’s supposed to wear. What will other people be wearing? Obviously the drag queens will dress in, well, drag, but what about the audience? He draws his suddenly perspiring hands over the front of his jeans before pinching the bridge of his nose. He texts Wei Wuxian.
Jiang Cheng (19:10): I know nothing about drag shows. What should I expect?
Wei Wuxian (19:10): well the whole thing will be very genders
Jiang Cheng stares at the text. “Very genders?” he asks the empty air, hoping that maybe hearing it out loud will make the words make more sense. It does not.
Jiang Cheng (19:11): I have no idea what that means.
Wei Wuxian (19:11): hm… how do I explain this…..
Wei Wuxian (19:12): a lot of gender experimentation, people with gender expressions that don’t align with the binary or even other clearly defined terms, that kind of thing
Jiang Cheng pulls a face—not because he’s opposed to the idea, but because it sounds complicated and nuanced and he’s worried that his lack of experience with anything “very genders” will lead him to say something unintentionally and ignorantly offensive. He might not be nice , exactly, but he draws the line at being that kind of asshole. Luckily, he has someone he can ask for direction.
Jiang Cheng (19:12): How do I avoid offending anyone?
Wei Wuxian (19:12): LMAO. be polite? Hm wait thats prolly too hard for u lol.
Wei Wuxian (19:12): Be respectful! There we go
Wei Wuxian (19:12): If you’re not sure ab someone’s pronouns u can always ask, and if u fuck up just apologize and move on
Wei Wuxian (19:12): Just try not to make assumptions and don’t ask anything invasive and ull be good :)
Jiang Cheng nods to himself. He can do that. He’s gonna crush this straight-guy-at-a-drag-show thing.
Armed with knowledge and feeling a little more confident, he turns back to his closet, which prompts the realization that he still has yet to figure out what he should wear to this bar. He taps his index finger against his chin as a different flavor of anxiety takes root in the pit of his stomach. He pulls out his phone again. Maybe the internet will help him.
A Google search of "what do people wear to drag bars" yields him, unsurprisingly, a bunch of photos of people in drag.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” he says with a flat affectation, frowning at his phone screen. He shoves the phone back into his pocket and starts pulling clothes out of the closet, holding them up against himself in the mirror. He tosses the rejected articles of clothing onto the bed, amassing a pile nearly the size of a ten year old within four minutes. Shoving the heels of his palms into his eyes, Jiang Cheng groans.
“It’s fine,” he tells himself. “It’s fine, just… just dress like you always do, it’ll be fine.”
He pulls on a lilac button-down with intertwining snakes subtly patterned into the weave and sticks with the jeans he has on. He stares himself down in the mirror, then puts in the small, simple silver hoops that Jiang Yanli bought him for his birthday last year. He pulls at the hem of his shirt, straightening it, and then tucks it into the waistband of his jeans. Then he pulls it back out. Then he tucks in half of it, promptly decides it looks like he’s trying too hard, and tucks the shirt fully in again. He nods at himself.
He sweeps his hair up into a bun, then reconsiders. He lets it down and braids it. He unbraids it. He ransacks his hair with his hands and utters a stymied groan into the silence of his empty apartment.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he tells his reflection, which glares back out at him, hair sticking out at odd, rumpled angles. “No one is going to care what you’re wearing. And why do you care so much?”
Jiang Cheng’s reflection grants no answers and only looks back at him, accusatory, as if to say, “ Oh, you don’t know ?” Know what , reflection? What is he missing?
It doesn’t matter, he decides, and he walks away from his mirror and closet to sit in front of his television and mindlessly scroll through Netflix without ever picking anything to watch. Ten minutes before he needs to leave, he combs his hair and leaves it down. He does not look at his reflection as he does so, because he’s certain that he’ll second-guess his whole outfit if he looks at himself again.
He grabs a jacket off the hook by the door—a long, wine-colored thing that became his most frequently used jacket the moment he purchased it—and heads out his door, ignoring the mirror hanging in the hall. Once he’s in his car, he shoves down the growing tension in his stomach. There’s no reason to be this nervous. Other than the fact that it’s his first time ever setting foot in a gay bar. And that he’s going to have to watch a bunch of people do drag. And the fact that Jiang Cheng hates socializing at big events. And at small events. And...
And his relationship with his brother might ride on how this night goes.
But it’s fine, and everything is definitely going to be fine, and Jiang Cheng is fine .