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gravitywonagain · 9 months ago

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Hot Tub Burn Out

(a Fresh Powder in the Pine Trees story)

The pavement is cold on Wei Ying’s bare feet as he steps out of the locker room toward the hot tubs. There’s days-old snow along the side of the path. Dirt and pine needles mar the white and it’s melted and iced so many times that it looks crunchy. The rough, white towel the resort provides is draped over his shoulders, but is too thin to provide much warmth against the cold conducting its way up his body from his toes.

He walks quickly, cursing himself for not bringing flip flops with him, but something stops him. There’s someone swimming in the Olympic lap pool. In winter. At night. He shifts his direction, accepting the toe-numbing cold for a little bit longer in order to satisfy his curiosity.

When he approaches the pool, Wei Ying finds that he isn’t even surprised. It’s Lan Zhan. He’s doing laps, actual laps -- the butterfly, if Wei Ying remembers his strokes right -- at 8pm on a weeknight in an outdoor pool surrounded by snow. Because of course he is.

Lan Zhan switches to freestyle, swimming away from Wei Ying, as Wei Ying steps up to the side. He must notice his audience at some point because, after the kickflip, he slows, coming to a stop fifteen feet from where Wei Ying is standing.

He treads water, looking like some kind of aquatic god, bathed in pale moonlight, water droplets like gems, adorning his skin next to his necklace. He reaches up to clear chlorine from his eyes and pushes his hair out of his face and Wei Ying forgets how to breathe.

Wei Ying swears he’s seeing in slow motion, and he’s not even stoned yet. It’s not fair! He wants to touch him so badly. Fuck. Why can’t he touch him, again?

He hears laughter from around the corner and remembers why he’s here. He allows the sheer ridiculousness of the situation to distract him from Lan Zhan’s arms (and chest and shoulders and neck and...).

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying starts calmly, “Why are you swimming in a non-heated pool? In the middle of winter?” He does not end calmly.

“It is heated,” says Lan Zhan, entirely apathetic, maybe a little sarcastic.

“Oh? How heated?”

“65 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Wei Ying takes a breath, watches it condense. Well, at least he can still pronounce Fahrenheit. “What the fuck, Lan Zhan?”

“It is. Calming.”

“‘It is calming,’” Wei Ying mocks, “It’s freezing!”

“It is not.”

He’s talking about the water temperature, because he’s witty like that. But Wei Ying isn’t about to let a technicality lose him an argument. He narrows his eyes to avoid rolling them.

“It is. It’s 21 degrees outside. Get your ass in the fucking hot tub, Wim Hof.”

Lan Zhan swims toward the side of the pool where his resort towel is laying (on! the! snow!) and Wei Ying thinks he can hear him mutter to himself, “There’s actually some very compelling medical research into Wim Hof’s methods.”

If Wei Ying wasn’t so distracted by the sight of Lan Zhan lifting himself out of the water, he might take it as a personal achievement that Lan Zhan is just doing what Wei Ying told him to do. Not to mention that he was actually muttering, out loud, to himself and Wei Ying.

But Wei Ying is very distracted. Lan Zhan is very close to naked, dripping wet, and glistening in the fucking moonlight. Whoever decided not to light the pool tonight made an excellent decision. Top marks for that person. Wei Ying should buy that person a beer.

Wei Ying can’t stop staring. He’s forgotten that he’s not supposed to. Not here, with the instructors just around the corner, and the whole of Cloud Recesses around them. None of that seems to register with Wei Ying right now. He just watches as Lan Zhan towels himself off, somehow not shivering in the frigid air, muscles flexing and relaxing with the easy motions. Wei Ying half expects to see ice crystals forming in his perfectly sculpted eyebrows.

And Lan Zhan… Lan Zhan is letting him look.

It’s so much more than seeing him shirtless in the backcountry. It’s… it’s everything. Arms and shoulders and abs and sexlines and thighs and calves. His shorts are not baggy, either, and his ass looks amaz--

It’s too much.

There are people here. Wei Ying is not allowed to jump Lan Zhan in the Cloud Recesses Village Swim and Fitness Center.

Wei Ying turns away from-- the everything of him, and starts back down the path to the hot tubs, hoping that Lan Zhan will follow and not use his embarrassment as an excuse to bail.

He could. Easily. It’s not even unlikely, really. Wei Ying’s efforts to force Lan Zhan to spend more time with the instructors have been going well, but he still has yet to seek them out on his own. Tonight serves as an obvious example.

“Fucking instructors are like twenty yards away,” Wei Ying mutters to himself, a distraction more than anything, “and here you are doing laps in a pool.”

It’s February. Wei Ying still has time to work on it.

In all fairness, it turns out that the only actual instructors there are him and Mianmian. But she’s Wei Ying’s boss, technically, too! And they’re sharing a joint in a hot tub. This is a ski resort. Who cares about management hierarchies? Lan Zhan, apparently.

When Lan Zhan does actually join them in the hot tub, Mianmian is already in fine form. She’s holding the joint Wei Ying just passed her and is partway into a new tangent, this time about... the Lion King? Wei Ying is pretty sure he’d heard something about Simba.

“Okay but, here’s the thing,” she says, “here’s the thing.”

She pauses to take a hit and pass it on to Wen Qing. When Wen Qing takes it, Mianmian, clearly already well into her happy place, stops and stares at where their fingers are touching. It’s endearing as fuck.

Nie Huaisang is, perhaps, less endeared and prompts her, “Go on.”

Mianmian looks up at him, confused, as she releases the smoke in her lungs. She’s completely lost the thread.

“So the Lion King,” says Wei Ying, trying not to laugh.

Lan Zhan steps down onto the cement bench next to him and Wei Ying suddenly has so much sympathy for Mianmian’s struggle.

“The Lion King,” Wen Qing confirms when Mianmian looks to her.

“They always want to fucking watch the Lion King,” says Mianmian, working her way back, spacey and slow.

Wei Ying laughs, “They do!”

“It’s never Space Jam,” she says softly, almost disbelieving her own words, “Why is it never Space Jam?”

“Terrible taste, those six year olds,” says Wen Ning, who is usually much too shy to make jokes around people. Wei Ying is so proud.

Lan Zhan’s fingers brush Wei Ying’s shoulder as he settles and Wei Ying is either not high enough or too high for this. Lan Zhan’s face is carefully blank.

“So, the Lion King,” Nie Huisang prompts, again, drawing Wei Ying’s attention back to Mianmian.

“Right,” she says, serious now that she seems to remember her original rant, “the Lion King. The beginning of the movie, right? We see happy little lion family doing happy lion family things like pouncing lessons and riding zebras.”

“Sure.”

“And then. And then.” Mianmian pauses, palms out like she’s about to drop some brand new information in a dramatic reveal, “Mufasa fucking dies.”

Nobody speaks for a minute, not sure if that was the reveal or not.

“Yes,” says Wen Qing, “we’ve seen it.”

Mianmian doesn’t seem to register that her words didn’t land like she thought they should. She just continues.

“But that’s the thing!” she cries, “He dies. All of these kids watch the father die. On screen. And they watch Simba, and they are Simba, and Mufasa is dead! And each and every one of them has a tiny moment where they are awakened to the idea of their own parents’ mortality.”

This time, when the silence settles over the bubbling of the hot tub jets, it’s tinged with that reality shifting stunned feeling that only happens when you’re stoned. Wen Ning takes a hit and passes the joint to Nie Huaisang who doesn’t even look at him when he takes it. He inhales only to realize that the cherry is out and that’s what finally breaks everyone’s quiet reverie.

“Holy shit, Mianmian,” says Wei Ying, because he can’t come up with anything better or more coherent.

“This is what I’m saying!”

“Okay, but, serious question: Why don’t they ever want to watch Space Jam?”

The night is cold and Wei Ying feels good. He hops up to sit on the edge of the hot tub every now and then both to cool off and to give Lan Zhan a taste of his own medicine. Lan Zhan had said that he likes looking at him, so now he can look. While they’re surrounded by people. While they’re at Cloud Recesses. Look but not touch.

He takes another hit, reaching to take the joint from Nie Huaisang over Lan Zhan’s head. If he stretches a little on purpose, nobody here will call him on it. Or, they might, but he doesn’t give a shit. He likes these people and they like him.

The smoke settles into his blood with that loose, heavy feeling that makes everything move just a little slower. His lungs burn, a satisfying sting, and he exhales, directing the cloud up and away from the hot tub with an easy jaw flex. He watches it catch the breeze and dissipate under the moon.

He passes it to Mianmian but she stops him from leaning back. She inhales and hands it back to him before drawing Wen Qing to her. She tilts her head and Wen Qing opens her mouth, a smile in her eyes, and matches their lips.

Wei Ying reaches across the tub to hand the joint to Wen Ning who looks like he very much wants a distraction from his sister’s… flirting? Sure. Wei Ying laughs and sits back. He will absolutely give Wen Qing shit about “not dating” Mianmian later.

He very determinedly does not think about shotgunning with Lan Zhan. But telling himself to not think about Lan Zhan works about as well now as it does when he’s sober, which is to say it doesn’t. At all. Now it’s all he can think about. Angling Lan Zhan’s head with his hand, sealing their lips together, sharing smoke and breath, watching Lan Zhan’s eyes glaze with the high, finding out if he smiles while stoned.

Wei Ying braces his hands on the cement and leans back. The moon has chased away a lot of the stars, but they’re still on a mountain outside of town. It’s more stars than he saw in the city anyway. It’s a beautiful distraction, and a good one. He has no idea what’s going on until he hears Nie Huaisang give voice to exactly the thing he’s trying to distract himself from.

“You wanna hit, Lan Zhan?” he says, incredibly chill, like he’s not obliterating Wei Ying’s carefully built mental containment wall. The mortar is still drying for fuck’s sake, give it a minute.

“No thank you,” says Lan Zhan. And then, “My recent experience of waking up in Jin Zixuan’s guest room with no memory of how I got there is enough for the month.”

Wei Ying is so impressed that he just… said that? Lan Zhan actually just offered up an experience that might be embarrassing for him to a group of people that he works with. That didn’t know that. That didn’t need to know that. But also didn’t need to not know that. Holy shit. Wei Ying is so proud. Is Lan Zhan contact high?

“Oh shit!” says Mianmian, apparently no longer attached to Wen Qing’s lips, “You know Jin Zixuan?”

Lan Zhan nods and leans forward to converse with Mianmian without Wei Ying. What the fuck? This is amazing! How is nobody else freaking out about this? No. It’s good that nobody is drawing any amount of attention to it, but holy fuck!

Nie Huaisang, probably taking advantage of Lan Zhan’s focus being somewhere else, sits up on the edge of the hot tub and leans over to Wei Ying. He’s not whispering, but he’s not exactly projecting so Wei Ying leans in, too.

“Is that why you guys left early?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

Nie Huaisang nods in something like understanding and disappointment. “Lans all have a notoriously low alcohol tolerance,” he says with a shrug, then adds, “Da-ge says Huan-ge’s a runner.”

Wei Ying tries not to laugh at that image. He really does. But Nie Mingjue chasing after a drunk Lan Huan as he runs away -- probably taunting as he goes, if he’s a secret bitch like his brother -- is just too much. His stifled laughter dissolves into full giggles and he lays back on the cold cement to let them bubble out of him.

Nie Huaisang disappears back into the water and Wei Ying loses track of time. He watches the stars move. Listens to his heart beat. Counts pine needles.

At some point Lan Zhan sits up on the edge next to him and leans back on his hands. He looks happy, like he’s actually enjoying this. Being around other people his age and just hanging out and talking. He’s almost smiling.

Wei Ying swings his feet, dragging his ankles through the hot water, feeling where it catches against his leg hair. He looks over and up at Lan Zhan. From this perspective, Wei Ying sees his brilliant profile, lit from below by the hot tub lights and outlined by the starry sky. He’s so beautiful. It should be illegal to be that beautiful in real life and not, like, a photoshopped celebrity or something.

Wei Ying watches a drop of -- water? sweat? -- drip from Lan Zhan’s temple down his cheek. It follows his jawline and Wei Ying is just stoned enough to let his eyes focus on it as it moves over perfectly smooth skin.

If the snow was softer, he might get out of the hot tub and go lay in it. He can feel himself getting out of control. Can feel his arousal lighting up his fucking fingertips. Feel it staticky in his hair. It’s frenetic.

He’s sure he’s being too obvious, but everyone here is a friend and also similarly stoned and none of them will give a fuck except, maybe, to laugh at him for it later. He can take that. He wishes Lan Zhan would look at him. Wants to do something to draw his attention. Something shameless. Something like biting his ears or maybe straddling his lap.

Maybe he should go jump in the “heated” pool. Apparently it’s “calming.”

Lan Zhan looks back at him. Down at him. At him.

And Wei Ying’s heart stops in his chest. His lungs freeze, his muscles tense. He feels like he’s about to have a panic attack.

Time stops, except that it doesn’t. Wei Ying can hear conversations continuing beyond his focus, he can feel the earth still rotating beneath him. But also those things don’t exist. The only real thing is the way he and Lan Zhan are looking at each other right now: hungry and trapped.

The moment stretches on like salt water taffy, pulling taut -- heart-pounding -- until gravity and weed-smoke warp it, make it droop downward, sticky and soft and salty-sweet.

Wei Ying wants to taste Lan Zhan’s skin. He wants to sit up and lick into his mouth, bite his nipple, leave marks all over his chest. He wants. He wants. And Lan Zhan’s eyes look overflowing with the same desires, the same urgency. A gooey kind of feedback loop that only seems to keep building between them the longer they stare at each other -- the marshmallow squished and kneaded between fingers until it created its own sugary tension.

It’s Nie Huaisang’s voice that finally breaks through. His voice and his hand as he reaches around Lan Zhan and taps Wei Ying’s knee.

“Hey, remember when we rented that cabin in South Lake for Spring Break junior year?”

It sounds like the continuation of a conversation that Wei Ying hasn’t even been tuning out so much as he forgot other people existed. But he sits up and joins in anyway.

“Fuck,” he says, with feeling, “I could kill for a deep powder cabin weekend. Weekday. Whatever.”

Nie Huaisang grins. It’s maybe a little sharp. “Don’t the Lans have a family cabin?” he asks Lan Zhan, and it’s very easy to see where this is going.

“Huaisang,” says Wei Ying, meaning it to sound like a warning. He’s not sure it does.

Lan Zhan looks over at Nie Huaisang and then back to Wei Ying, “We do.”

Nie Huaisang’s grin widens, the cutting edges of his teeth peeking over his bottom lip, as he begins to arrange a getaway at the Lan Cabin for the six of them sitting there.

Trust Nie Huaisang to always have an ulterior motive.

The sauna is empty when the three of them file in. Wen Ning immediately takes the spot in the corner and Nie Huaisang and Wei Ying lay out on the benches.

The arid heat settles in Wei Ying’s lungs and opens him up. He feels it mix with the smoke in his blood, relaxing him further and he spreads himself out -- arms wide, legs flat -- on the red cedar slats.

It’s a moment before anyone speaks. Each of them taking time to let the heat soak into their skin. But it’s Nie Huaisang who breaks the silence.

“Dude.”

“I know,” says Wei Ying, because he does.

“Dude,” says Nie Huaisang again, because it bears repeating.

“I knowwww.”

Wen Ning, catching on, says, “So are you and Mr. Lan like…”

“Nooooo.”

“That’s why he’s,” Nie Huaisang gestures vaguely to all of him, “like this, Wen Ning.”

“Rude.”

“Oh,” says Wen Ning. “Why not?”

Wei Ying sits up and shakes his head. “We can’t,” he says.

“Why?”

“Reasons?” Wei Ying drops his forehead into his hands. “I know there are reasons. Lan Zhan doesn’t want to. That’s a reason.”

That has Nie Huaisang sitting up, too. “What the fuck do you mean he doesn’t want to? I was in that hot tub.”

Wen Ning nods at both of them and Wei Ying sighs. It’s not like they’re wrong.

He says, a bit petulantly, “No. He wants to. But he has reasons. So he doesn’t want to.”

“So are you, like, waiting?” asks Wen Ning.

“Yes. And I hate it. But, fuck, Huaisang. Look at him. He’s perfect.”

Nie Huaisang rocks his head back and forth, considering, “For you, sure.”

“Yes for me. Me. Mine. He’s -- fuck!”

Wei Ying sprawls out on the bench again, tired and frustrated. He knows he can be better about this. About the waiting. It’s just been A Night and all he wants is to tuck his head into Lan Zhan’s neck and be held.

Well, that’s not all he wants. But it would be enough. It would be so good and so easy and Wei Ying knows that Lan Zhan has reasons and they’re probably even good reasons but he’s finding it so hard to care tonight.

He climbs up onto the high bench and stares up at the ceiling long after Nie Huaisang and Wen Ning have left. He lays down and lets his leg dangle off the side. The towel around his waist is rough against his skin and he focuses on that feeling. Lets his mind wander a little. Lets his high settle out his mood.

It’s easy to imagine a different ending to the night. A different night entirely. A night where Wei Ying teaches Lan Zhan about shotgunning. Where Lan Zhan is casual with his touches, like he was when he was drunk.

But that’s not fair. None of it is fair, but Lan Zhan’s reasons are his own and Wei Ying needs to respect them. Maybe he’ll be better about it tomorrow. Tonight is already lost.

He finally rolls off the high, red cedar slats, legs surprisingly steady for how much his mind is still spinning. He rewraps his towel tighter around his hips and moves toward the door, only for it to open into him and knock him entirely off balance. Before he can hit the floor, strong arms curl around his waist and haul him upright against a broad chest.

Lan Zhan’s breath is cold against Wei Ying’s overhot skin. He wonders if Lan Zhan jumped back into the swimming pool. To calm down. Or something.

Wei Ying steps back, valiantly pulling himself away from Lan Zhan’s arms. Those arms. He fixes his eyes to Lan Zhan’s face, like he’s not the most beautiful man Wei Ying has ever seen, and forces a laugh.

“We’re just one convenient towel slip away from the start of a bad porno.”

Almost immediately, Lan Zhan’s fingers find the roll holding Wei Ying’s towel on his hips. Wei Ying isn’t sure if they’re there to secure or remove. They don’t seem to have decided either.

He can feel Lan Zhan’s knuckles brushing against his hip bone and nothing else exists. It’s just the places where they’re touching. He’s not even sure the rest of his body is real. How can it be real if Lan Zhan isn’t touching it?

“You think it would be bad?” Lan Zhan’s voice is steady and calm, that gorgeous baritone that Wei Ying wants to hear broken and moaning.

“What?” asks Wei Ying. He has completely lost the thread. He has no idea what Lan Zhan is asking him.

“Our porn,” says Lan Zhan simply, voice low, like he knows what he’s doing.

“Our…” Wei Ying scoffs to keep from screaming, “Lan Zhan, we’re in a sauna. The lenses would all steam up. It would be terrible.”

“Hm.” Lan Zhan nods, “Production quality would be difficult to maintain.”

“Plus, this plot? Not the best, I gotta say.” Wei Ying tries to keep the frustration from his voice. He’s not sure how successful he is, but Lan Zhan doesn’t choose to acknowledge it.

“You don’t like delayed gratification?” he asks, keeping the tone heated and flirtatious.

“I like shorter time scales.”

Lan Zhan hums dismissively then says, “Stamina not up to the task?”

Wei Ying laughs at that. He laughs because he can’t do anything else, like shove Lan Zhan back into the door and stick his tongue down Lan Zhan’s throat.

“You’re so mean,” he says, and, “Why is that hot?”

“Hm.” Smug. He’s so smug.

He’s hot and mean and smug and Wei Ying is dying a little bit. He’s too good. He’s too much. He’s… he’s fucking ascetic is what he is. Too serene and disciplined. Wei Ying wants to push him to see what happens when that discipline is tested. Wants to feel it on his skin, under his tongue. He’s sure that Lan Zhan is just as attentive to his partners as he is to his own rigorous strictures. He probably does yoga.

Fuck!

Wei Ying meets the heat Lan Zhan’s eyes and he can’t fucking stand it.

“So are you going to rip my towel off and bend me over the benches or are you sticking with ‘delayed gratification?’”

Lan Zhan’s fingers tense, knuckles digging into Wei Ying’s hip as they grip the towel. The tension in the cotton, a circle that tightens like a zip tie, pulls Wei Ying even closer to Lan Zhan. The steam is cool on his skin as the sauna boils the water off Lan Zhan’s body.

He can feel the decision as it’s made. It solidifies in Lan Zhan’s eyes and Wei Ying wants to scream his frustration like the juniors do. He’s not six, so he doesn’t. He sighs as Lan Zhan releases him. It’s not mean or even angry, just resigned. This whole thing is stupid. But it’s important to Lan Zhan, so Wei Ying will respect it, even if he hates it.

Wei Ying clears his throat and nods to Lan Zhan, head down, avoiding his eyes, as he moves past him, through the door and into the locker room.

He bypasses his locker and heads straight to the shower stalls. He drops his towel and steps into the shower and turns it as cold as he can stand it. It doesn’t really help. He can feel the ghost of Lan Zhan’s hands on his hips, Lan Zhan’s breath on his shoulder. He drops his forehead against the tile and wills himself not to get hard in a locker room shower while his friends and coworkers are still getting dressed around him. It works… enough.

Wei Ying as he smacks his head against the shower walls: “Maybe Hell is just a sauna.” [x]

#wangxian #mdzs #the untamed #fanfiction #ski resort au #fpitpt #my writing #my boss at the kids lessons program i worked at dropped that lion king shit on us mid workday so #also don't be too mad at wwx! or at lwj! they're trying their best!!#also also if you don't know who wim hoff is (and really why would you) look him up. he's insane. but also one of my dad's idols so...

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