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Wei Ying puts too much cayenne pepper in his green smoothies. Jiang Cheng likes spice, who doesn’t, but not this much of it, and not in a health drink. “Don’t be so picky, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Ying coaxes in that slippery way of his. His tongue is a weapon and he’s never been afraid to use it.
He’s left the blender on the kitchen counter, green pulp clumping against its walls. In an hour it’ll be impossible to rinse off. The blender is Jiang Cheng’s—3,000 RMB on sale, Jiang Cheng bought it right after New Year’s having set a price alert on it for over three months.
Before Jiang Cheng can continue Wei Ying puts a hand over his. It’s cunning, it makes Jiang Cheng squirm in his seat. They are sitting at the dining table in the apartment that they’ve shared for the last two years.
Most of their fights revolve around chores. Who’s doing them, who needs to do more, who even cares. “Let’s just hire someone,” Wei Ying always eventually yells, and Jiang Cheng yells back, “With whose money?” Living together is not easy, even if they did it as kids, but they had adults to clean up after them then. Jiang Cheng learned to keep his room clean and tidy after enough spankings but Wei Ying always seemed to get away with making a mess, if only because he got good grades.
It would be a lie to say some part of Jiang Cheng doesn’t still resent Wei Ying for being himself. Wei Ying doesn’t know how to not be—he is so loud, so present. He takes up too much space. The air contracts whenever he walks into a room. At parties people are always asking Jiang Cheng, where is Wei Ying? He is the one everyone sees and desires.
Jiang Cheng is not exempt.
It’s been two years since they moved in together and they still haven’t put a label on this weird thing between them. The truth is, sometimes Jiang Cheng likes it this way, the freedom of not having to choose. He likes going home to Wei Ying asleep on the couch, shirt ridden up to show the softness of his stomach, one hand still burrowed in a bag of chips. What a slob, Jiang Cheng thinks, sitting down next to him and pushing strands of hair away from his forehead. He still hides his smiles from Wei Ying, they feel too embarrassing to reveal.
Wei Ying takes over the whole bed when he’s in it. Many mornings Jiang Cheng wakes up to Wei Ying draped over him like a corpse, and he has to firmly push him off to slip out of bed. Wei Ying groans at the dip and release of the mattress. He speaks in his sleep. Sometimes he says things like, don’t leave me.
Wei Ying kissed him first. He would deny this later, claiming Jiang Cheng spent years hitting on him. “Don’t think I didn’t see you checking me out whenever we changed together,” Wei Ying says with a smirk that takes up his entire face, and Jiang Cheng scoffs, “What was there to see? You were even scrawnier back then.” The fact is, Wei Ying kissed him first, whether he’ll ever admit it or not. It happened quickly, when they were both brushing their teeth in the bathroom, fighting for ownership over the sink. “I have to go to work,” Jiang Cheng had argued, elbowing Wei Ying out of the way. “Why don’t you go use the kitchen sink?” And Wei Ying had squeezed his way back in, until they were pressed together side to side. “You’re always in a rush, Jiang Cheng,” he said, with the toothbrush dangling between his lips, and that’s when it happened, he leaned in and kissed him on the corner of his mouth.
The next few weeks were awkward. They dodged each other at the apartment, as if taking shifts. Finally, on a Friday, Jiang Cheng slumped down on the couch next to Wei Ying, who’d been scrolling through movies for the last fifteen minutes, and said, “Can we talk about it?”
They didn’t talk about it, in the end, but they cuddled, with Jiang Cheng as the little spoon, and it was nice.
After some time Jiang Cheng thought, maybe it was okay to not talk about it.
Kissing was also nice, touching was better. It was easy because they already lived together, and no one had to see them do it, it was their business and nobody else’s. He liked the idea of Wei Ying getting hard for him, the image of Wei Ying going down on him, his cock growing in Wei Ying’s mouth. He liked pushing into Wei Ying, watching his eyes roll back, he liked looking at Wei Ying when they fucked. It was then that he could be most honest with himself and admit this had been years in the making, Wei Ying was right after all.
Then there’s the other thing they sidestep, the unspoken truth. Jiang Cheng still thinks about his parents and Yanli every morning when he wakes up and every night before he succumbs to sleep. He carries them with him like a fresh wound, bleeding through the gauze. What he’s doing with Wei Ying—they wouldn’t have accepted.
It’s a betrayal, yes, but one that he is unable to help. He prays for their forgiveness. He knows he would continue even if they never gave it.
“Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if we—” Wei Ying asks, once, and Jiang Cheng says, immediately, “It would’ve been the same.”
Wei Ying lifts his head from where it was resting on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. His eyes are wide and expectant.
“We’d still end up like this,” Jiang Cheng says. He’s vague on purpose, because this is the language they use with each other, there is safety in it. He means this apartment, the hamper overflowing with dirty laundry, the unwashed dishes in the sink that he doesn’t have enough energy to be mad about. All the messes Wei Ying leaves and the imprints of him darkening on Jiang Cheng’s body. The slow weekend morning sex, the sound of Wei Ying grinding coffee beans in the kitchen afterwards. The whir of the blender. The smell of butter and bacon. The everything that’s too big for words.
When Wei Ying understands, it shows up in all of his face. He embodies the understanding like it’s a living thing. Jiang Cheng enjoys watching the moment something clicks in his mind, the blissed-out sigh he releases afterwards. He presses a kiss to Jiang Cheng’s cheek and says, smiling, “I’ll take your word for it.”