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Lan Wangji is supposed to be impartial. At nine o’clock (or what they’ve all collectively decided to believe is nine o’clock, as the clocks reporting Cloud Recesses’ unfathomably distant rhythms are the only reliable sign that time is passing this far outside the Gusu System), he stands where regulation says he should and ports his terminal into the thread-cluster heart of Wangji.
Wangji’s automated diagnostics have already compiled the daily report, but Lan Wangji still checks each system in turn. This responsibility is a function of his commanding rank, not choice or aptitude. But it settles him all the same, as much as any of the skills that have been trained into his limbs and the impulses that control them. It’s peaceful, standing alone at the corded silk strings of his terminal, hands quiet and methodical as he calls up each sector note by note. Lights, oxygen, airflow, gravity. The overheads are fading from their warm daylight cycle to the muted blues of artificial night, the pinprick lines of emergency lights flickering to life along the walls of the darkened corridors. Vents for heat and oxygen seal themselves in the white-paneled daytime-use sectors and open in the sleeping bays for the night. Gravity holds.
He flies through each report with a clean, focused efficiency, ticking the same row of regulation boxes he ticks every night. The final box is for his seal: that he, Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, Hanguang-jun certifies that everything inessential has been laid to rest, and that the new day will begin in alignment with all four thousand of Cloud Recesses’ rules of civility and comportment. Like every other night, he seals the day’s log with his names.
Like every other night, he lies.
Well. It is not entirely a lie. An omission, perhaps, though the anomaly isn’t technically visible in any of the reports. When his uncle audits the ship’s record— and he will someday, Lan Wangji is not so arrogant or so reckless as to pretend that he has really and truly gotten away with anything — he will have plausible enough deniability for his uncle to call the results inconclusive. He is not proud of knowing this, of understanding exactly how close he is playing to the edge of the trust placed in him. But he has no use for illusions, least of all in the clear-eyed dark of his own mind. Not anymore. And though he has learned to calculate, to skim his hands over a rule until they snag on its loopholes, he will not lie to himself. In this, at least, he will be honest.
He will be truthful that he is deceiving, that he is betraying.
And yet: any shame he feels pales in the face of how overwhelmingly, incandescently happy he is.
He floats his latest deception off in a shower of blue sparks through the stars to the Gusu System and wraps his terminal securely for the night and doesn’t take the blue-lit corridor that would take him back to his bed and his allotted eight hours of sleep.
Instead, he shimmies down two decks and makes his way through the grainy near-dark labyrinth of the ship’s kitchens. At the far end, tucked between the massive, humming refrigeration unit and the pass-through to the communal dining area beyond, there is a small emergency access hatch for the windowless supply unit that grows and stores the ship’s root vegetables. It looks like any other access hatch aboard the ship: flush with the wall, painted an unobtrusive grey-green with IN CASE OF EMERGENCY in discreet orange lettering along the edge. There is no contraband light shining through an improperly fastened seal, no irregular heat signature indicating anything out of place.
But Lan Wangji knows better.
He cranks the handle, breaking his third regulation of the evening, and closes his eyes for a moment as he breathes in the sweet, rich smell of freshly tilled soil wafting from the open door. Then he closes his eyes, and steps into the dark.
The door creaks closed behind him. He holds still. He has waited all day. He can be patient for this much longer.
“Lan Zhan!” whisper-yells Wei Ying from somewhere nearby as soon as the latch clicks and the door reseals to its frame with a soft little squelch. “Ah fuck, hold on hold on,” and then the gold light of a talisman lamp flares to life and Wei Ying is beaming in Lan Zhan’s face, his night-vision googles loose around his neck and his hands creased with dirt and his crinkled eyes bright and soft all at once. “Nine oh five, Lan er-gege, you’re slipping! I was about to give up on you!”
Lan Wangji scoffs. Give up on you. As if such a thing were possible. He reaches for Wei Ying instead of answering and Wei Ying abandons his mock outrage at once. He flings his arms around Lan Wangji's neck instead and kisses him, a surprisingly gentle brush of his mouth. Lan Wangji hums, ducking after him like a pleased cat as Wei Ying nestles closer, pressing another kiss along his jaw, another to the soft ridge behind his ear, a third to the curve of his neck before he rests against him, slipping his arms down snug under Lan Wangji's arms and tucking his face into the hollow of his shoulder. Lan Wangji is ready for the full weight of him when it comes; he knows by now how to be the right kind of strong, braced and soft all at once. The kind that they both need most.
“Missed you,” Wei Ying murmurs into Lan Wangi’s neck, his hands gentle between Lan Wangji’s shoulder blades, his dear spiny elbows flat along Lan Wangji’s spine. Lan Wangji can’t help how he curls around him, a helpless enfolding, a grasp as reflexive as a baby’s around comfort and safety and this is mine to keep. And of course Wei Ying is, and he also isn’t, and the thick, complicated joy of it all rises in Lan Wangji like a wave every time he even sees Wei Ying, let alone holds him. Every time he turns to find him, still, after everything, within reach.
He noses a kiss into Wei Ying’s hair. He breathes Wei Ying in and lets his heart pull him out of his body and up into a fine and gauzy future where Wei Ying’s name has been cleared and they can stand beside each other as equals. Where his uncle accepts their explanations for their choices together without question, where Wei Ying is welcomed into the halls and gardens of his childhood. Where Wei Ying will have the chance to make his amends with the far-flung Jiang siblings and can take his rightful place between them once more. Where there is a child. No, children — sticky-fingered and spark-hearted and theirs. Where he will be there to notice the grey when it starts to streak in at Wei Ying’s temples, and where Wei Ying will be there to tease him about his own. Where they have as long as they like, for as long as they like, and the air always smells like it does right now: like life, and change, and all their many possibilities.
Wei Ying’s muffled sigh, contentment and exhaustion intertwined, brings him back to his body, the close and fragrant air of the supply unit, the sweet weight of the man in his arms. His old promise floats bright and free in his chest, and he seals it again, unspoken, with a kiss to the soft rim of Wei Ying’s ear. One day he will hold him in the broad light of the overheads and the cool regulation sheets of his bed. One day they will no longer need to hide. If not this ship, then the next, or the one after that, or any planet out there that will have them.