Chapter Text
Lan Zhan probably would have taken a full month--hell, a year, he could get away with a lot thanks to his previously spotless record--off of work, if Wei Ying had let him. And a big part of him wanted to wholeheartedly indulge his husband’s quiet clinginess, because, well. They had just gone through... kind of a huge shock. What with the whole--actually-an-alien (that was what Wei Ying was still going with, for lack of a better explanation) business.
But after two weeks, there was really no more benefit (beyond both of them having the usual desire to never be more than a few feet apart from each other, now ramped up higher than ever) to Lan Zhan keeping a constant watch over him. It had been long enough since Wei Ying’s traumatic... metamorphosis, or whatever one wanted to call that incident, that together they’d largely managed to catalog his new physical form’s basic needs and functions, to the extent that he didn’t need Lan Zhan around every minute in case something came up that needed a human who could go out and get something in public.
As far as needs went, Wei Ying seemed to have very few. As far as he could tell, he didn’t actually eat. Things that he stuffed up into the... void? that serviced as some sort of mid-body maw... just kind of vanished from existence, as far as he could tell. He never felt any different, whether he “ate” things or not; they seemed to not have any effect on him. Even when he accidentally vanished an electronic object, like the TV remote. He had yet to feel anything like hunger.
What he did need was water; lots of it. Or, well, any liquid seemed to work. Just like cleaning the blood out of the bathroom, he absorbed it through his skin--apparently the reason he’d had the urge to spend so much time in the shower or bath, before he “hatched.” He could manage about three hours without it, and then the overwhelming urge to shove himself back into the tub and soak would take over, no matter what else he was doing at the time. Somewhat entertainingly, he changed size according to how much water he absorbed--not drastically, but enough for him to notice.
He’d been worried, at first, that he was going to be restricted to tile floors because of the slime issue--the last thing he wanted to do was destroy every fabric surface in the house. Fortunately, it turned out to be no big deal. It was actually easy to wash out, when they tried to salvage Lan Zhan’s soaked clothes, and within two days Wei Ying had discovered that he could control how much of it he produced. Without a covering of slime, his skin had a weird silicone-rubber feel. His outer layer was apparently pretty durable, as well--thanks to still learning how his kinesthetic sense worked in a body that was made mostly of huge numbers of identical limbs, it was pretty common for him to accidentally close his tentacles in doors while going through cabinets. It still hurt, he still had sensations like he’d had when he was a human, but so far he’d never done himself any damage. The rubbery skin would pinch and stretch but then bounce back almost immediately, especially if he was freshly hydrated.
The purpose of the slime was definitely to keep him from needing water as often, by keeping the air off his skin. He defined his max three hours as when he was un-coated, because he wasn’t going to go soaking all the carpets. With the slime, he could probably double his time between soaking, but he got too bored just waiting out the clock while on the bathroom floor.
And, well. Because Lan Zhan was not about to be intimidated by anything, the slime definitely had other uses. They didn’t quite meet their every day for a bit, because both of them needed time to process what the hell had happened, and gain some distance from the grisly visuals--even knowing that Wei Ying was fine, seeing what had happened to his previous body was a nightmare that they both needed to recover from--but once they’d had a chance to get used to the idea that no one had been hurt and they were both okay... Well. Then there was a lot to be explored about being a literal tentacle monster.
And about the way whenever Wei Ying got a little too worked up to maintain a careful barrier between them, touching skin to skin involved immediate and overwhelming bleed-over of their emotional states. Which led to feedback loops that maybe ended in both of them passed the fuck out from what seemed to be some kind of synaptic overload where they got way too into each other, in multiple senses of the word. It was fun, but it was also a lot, and they needed to work on intimacy without going totally feral every time.
In general, keeping out of Lan Zhan’s head was something he clearly needed practice at. It was easy, way too easy, to accidentally drift too close to his personal thoughts--if they were touching at all, skin to skin with even the tip of one tendril, it could easily feel like there was no division between them whatsoever. It felt natural--like whatever Wei Ying was, this type of creature was meant to share thoughts and minds the same way humans had casual conversations. Wei Ying had read his share of science fiction; hive-mind aliens, telepathic and empathic aliens, collective consciousnesses--he was familiar with those as abstract concepts. It was a lot more difficult dealing with it for real, because Lan Zhan was not built for that sort of thing. It was prying, for one thing. It was really, really vulnerable for Wei Ying’s own privacy, for another. It was too easy to just let loose whatever he was thinking, all of it all at once, which was both badly overwhelming for his husband and really not in line with Wei Ying’s decisions of what to talk about and when. Also, no one else needed to be inflicted with whatever song was stuck on loop in his head at any given time. Wei Ying’s intrusive music was his own burden to bear.
So in that way, Lan Zhan returning to work--going back to life as usual--was a benefit. The time apart let him focus more, on trying to learn the ins and outs of how his own abilities worked. There was a lot of fun to it--discovering all the weird little crevices he could squeeze himself into was a particularly entertaining one--but mostly frustration, because he could tell that maintaining a wall around his own individual mind was against the instincts that came with this body, and he wasn’t sure how.
He was, at the time, trying meditation. It was something he’d once in a while do together with Lan Zhan, but he always got bored and drifted away long before his husband was finished. It had never really done much for him, focusing his thoughts--he thought he was probably doing something wrong, but even following Lan Zhan’s instructions to the letter, he found his brain wandering, jumping from topic to topic, spinning out random thoughts. Instead of being restful and focusing, the attempt at quiet mindfulness just seemed to make him way too aware of everything in the background of his own head, and it just didn’t work. The same, unfortunately, was true now--attempts to find peaceful equilibrium were quickly dissolving into long-winded internal monologues about almost literally nothing, as if his brain just had to fill the silence somehow.
It was just--there was always a distraction. Even if it was just inside his own head. Stupid shower-thoughts prodding at his brain, refusing to let him actually disengage enough to reach whatever sort of inner peace a person was supposed to get. And outside, now, too, a distraction--
Because as he tried to settle himself, tried to ground and balance and whatever the fuck, he was suddenly completely aware of everything outside the walls of his house.
He was... seeing it, sort of. Through the walls. Somehow. Which, he supposed if he was a telepathic alien, why not have some sort of extra supernatural sense? It wasn’t really... vision, but he had no frame of reference in his previously-human brain to compare it to. He could feel presences, vague shapes for things. Living things only, it seemed. Trees. Grass. Bugs. His neighbors, very distant blotches of alive, off in their own houses spaced quite well away from his own, blurred from the distance.
Every living thing glowed a little bit. Some kind of--energy signature, or presence, or whatever it was he was picking up. The simplest living things--the grass, the bugs--had almost none. Trees had a bit, standing out more. Animals were brighter than trees, and humans seemed to be the shiniest thing--even far away as his neighbors were, he could tell how much they outshone the birds hanging out in the trees. He didn’t know exactly what he was detecting, but it had his full attention now.
If he focused, this sense reached further. Spread out around him, letting him know what was moving around in his territory. His territory, huh? Another random instinct that bubbled up. Whatever he was, he was territorial. All right, then. Hopefully that wouldn’t turn into a problem. He wasn’t about to start getting into fights with his neighbors--but their presences didn’t seem to bother his instincts any. They were just... there. As inconsequential as a stray cat wandering past.
He expanded the range of his detection, trying to analyze exactly how it worked. Without his conscious thought, his tentacles were spreading as he did--stretching from end to end of the room. So the sense could ping off the very end of a tentacle, it seemed. Because he was decentralized, whatever passed for a nervous system in his alien body was spread equally through all parts of it, each arm passed also for a sensory branch. If he could get himself into a network of water pipes he could probably watch the whole city at once without a problem--
And then his attention was ripped solidly in one direction, thoughts scattered apart into nothing but alert, as something so much brighter than a human hit the edge of his detection. Not even aware of his own movements, he balled himself up against the wall in the direction of the bright spot. It was like a tiny star, burning brilliantly in his extra-vision, a silhouette that was shaped like a human but absolutely was not one--
An intruder, his instincts shrieked at him, flaring up wildly. It was one of his own kind. It was another being like him. He didn’t know how he knew, he just knew--knew this was another creature like himself, even if it was hiding somehow in a human form, and it was in his territory.
Whatever control he had on himself slipped. Like those first few moments when he’d hatched out of his own former body, he was gripped by drives far older and more primordial than his own existence, conscious thoughts overridden to follow his own natural order. Looking back on it, Wei Ying would have to thank every lucky star in existence that his instincts were not to go charging out and attack the interloper head-on, giving everyone the wild show of a tentacle monster rampaging across the neighborhood in broad daylight. No, physical combat was not, in fact, his specialty. It made sense, in retrospect, not that he had any thoughts in his head about that right then.
He latched hold of the intruder mentally instead, leashing his own will around theirs. Like his accidental feedback loops with Lan Zhan, except so, so much stronger--and with actual intent to harm, not just clumsy over-excitement. He felt them try to fight back, struggling against his mental hold--a voice shrieking back at him in defiance, meeting his challenge. Even though his body did not move, it was far more vicious than any fight he’d ever been in; the stranger was no pushover. They had experience where he had only raw instinct. They knew what they were doing and he did not.
Despite that, they were still roughly equal. Through the connection he’d forced between them, thrumming like a bolt of lightning arcing through the air, he bellowed a command--Here. If he was at all conscious, he’d wonder why the hell he was calling the intruder closer rather than sending them away. If he was defending his territory, shouldn’t the goal be to ship this other alien off so they left him alone? His instincts didn’t care what his human logic would have thought, of course, obeying a pattern that was--suitably--alien.
Fuck off! was the response, sharp and clear as a blade. Everything about the other mental voice was razor-edged and vicious, an acrid bite, a signature feel that identified this other person like a fingerprint. Full of thorns that were supposed to force Wei Ying to let go, to loosen his hold, so they could flee. He was not convinced to let go. He gripped tighter.
Here. Come here, he commanded again. Lan Zhan had described to him, the way his voice would multiply into a garbled, echoed mess over itself when he lost control--like he was a hundred people shouting at once. It seemed that this overwhelming cacophony of internal voices was intended as a weapon, because he could feel the other alien’s resistance crumbling, his own telepathic leash choking tighter around the intruder’s will.
They were closer. He was winning, dragging them to him, step by struggling step, all the way to his own front door. From there, Wei Ying could see his captive on the doorbell camera’s monitor, hung up next to the door itself for easy viewing--he’d stretched a few tentacles to the entryway without conscious thought, ready. Keeping his main body around a few corners, well out of reach, protected, his arms fanned out wide and prepared.
A young man dressed all in black, hair tied in a sloppy high ponytail, face set in a furious glower. He was lean, narrow, just as sharp as his mental voice, shaking in anger and possibly fear. Wei Ying flicked the lock, opened his front door. As soon as the intruder’s foot crossed the threshold, forced forward by another intense command of Come, Wei Ying’s tentacles seized him and dragged him into the depths of his home, slamming and locking the door behind him.
***
Lan Zhan did love being an instructor at a prestigious private academy. He did. He was responsible for two different courses at the moment--practical instrument instruction, as he was proficient with several, and history of world music--and both of them were truly fulfilling to oversee. Watching young people gain an appreciation for the arts, gain skill in an instrument, gain confidence in themselves--he could not fault any part of the actual classes he directly controlled. The young people taking his classes were not all exactly model citizens, but he could not truly complain in earnest about any of them.
The problems lie outside of that, things he was reminded of as he caught everything back up to speed after his prolonged absence. The frustration of knowing he would have rather moved into public education, where courses like these were far rarer and more restricted, lacking. Where funding was razor-thin and students struggled far harder for lack of resources. He’d gone into private academia out of family pressure to be attached to something prestigious--never stated in words, never laid down explicitly on paper, but he had been aware his entire life that involving himself with public education would be perceived as a true fall from grace.
Perhaps soon he would just do it. Cut ties with the world of the wealthy at last, and take his skills where they would be more sorely needed. He could afford the hit to his income. So long as Wei Ying was comfortably taken care of, Lan Zhan had all he needed as far as material goods. It was not money he was worried about, but the risk that it would finally snap the strained relationship he held with his uncle. He increasingly wondered if maintaining such a relationship was worth the emotional investment when it seemed like his efforts were not being equally met, but--to think about such breakage was far simpler than to actually perform it.
A knock on his office doorway drew him out of his heavy thoughts, and he lifted his head. He left the door partially open, to encourage students to talk to him if they needed it--he was aware that he seemed standoffish and uncommunicative to many, so any little gesture of openness tended to help make up for his misleadingly cold body language. The young woman who stepped inside of his office was entirely unfamiliar to him, perhaps someone who was thinking about taking his courses in the future. There was something very businesslike in her approach, her hands tucked behind her back. She wore a simple navy dress, not an academy uniform but similar enough as to not draw attention. Her eyes were a truly unique color, in that they were nigh-colorless, and challenging--fiery as they met his own.
“Lan-laoshi,” she addressed him, inclining her head. “I’m A-Qing. I’m part of a special group of people who deal with... unusual matters.” Her mouth pressed into a thin line, irritated. “We wanted a better opportunity to contact you, but there’s been an emergency. You need to come with us immediately.” Her expression cracked further into outright anger, some of her professionalism burning away as her eyes flashed. “A particular idiot we work with fucked up, and now Wei Ying has him captive.”
Lan Zhan burst to his feet, chair knocking backwards. His mind did not particular process a lot of her words--white noise covered his understanding. They knew about Wei Ying. They had been watching him. Wei Ying was not safe. A stranger was with him--
He pushed past her immediately, not caring at all what she thought or said further. He had to get home. He strode down the hallway with ground-eating steps, refusing to sprint--it would only draw more attention, he needed no attention--but letting the length of his legs carry him quickly enough that A-Qing scrambled to keep up.
“We’re here to help--” she was trying to impress upon him, and he did not care. He was out to the employee parking lot already, keyfob in hand to unlock his car as he went to it. Frustrated that he refused to listen to her, A-Qing jumped in front of him at the driver’s door, standing in his way and blocking him out of his car. “Hey!”
“Move,” he grated out, his voice ice-cold. She did not move, and for one split second he felt a twitch in his arm that might have led to him physically shoving her aside.
“Listen to me!” she shouted in turn. “Wei Ying is not in danger. It’s our guy who’s in trouble! It’s his own damn fault, mind you, but still--it’s probably better for everyone if your husband doesn’t kill him!”
Lan Zhan said nothing, just stared her down. Most of the things he had to say, he imagined were obvious--you should not have been spying, mainly. If Wei Ying felt the need to defend himself against this person, he would not question his husband’s actions.
“Listen,” A-Qing said again. “I’m coming with you. We all need to be there like, ten minutes ago, and de-escalate this.” And then she got out of his way, finally, moving around to the passenger side door. The fire in her eyes brooked no argument, as she grabbed the--still locked--door and waited for him to let her in.
“You will not harm Wei Ying,” he said, his voice as deadly as he could make it. A-Qing gave a snort.
“I’m telling you,” she said. “Nobody’s gonna hurt your husband. Listen--we know more than anyone else about what happened, and what he is. He’s not the first one we’ve met--not the first one we’ve helped. We’re not here to hurt anybody. But right now it’s looking like he’s gonna eat Xue Yang before we get there, so let’s go!”
Lan Zhan unlocked the passenger side door, and in only moments they were peeling out down the road to home.
***
Wei Ying actually didn’t know what to do.
He’d caught the intruder to his territory. The thin, angry young man was thoroughly restrained, bundled in a dense layer of tentacles--he could hardly even twitch his fingers, with how Wei Ying had him trussed up. Hanging from the ceiling, for good measure, so even if he did somehow squirm free, he’d drop to the kitchen tiles and crack his head open.
But now Wei Ying didn’t know what came next. Instinct had carried him this far, but now that the threat was safely neutralized, all the urgency that had made his course of action so clear was gone. In the wake of that rush, he felt sort of drained and uncertain. He’d plonked his main body into the kitchen sink, because he had no idea how long he’d be holding onto this interloper--until Lan Zhan came home from work?
Also, the guy was talking. The realization hit Wei Ying suddenly. He hadn’t been listening, all his focus turned to his other senses, tuning out audio entirely. How long had the guy been talking? Out loud, not into his head, which. If he could disguise as human, it stood to reason that he could make noises like one too, but it somehow caught Wei Ying off guard. He felt a bit like he was coming out of a dissociative episode, everything muffled and strange, very gradually becoming real again.
“--and fuck you guys, I swear I knew what I was doing,” the other alien was saying. Oh, he wasn’t talking to Wei Ying. Who was he talking to--oh, a Bluetooth earpiece. Talking to other people. ...Fuck. That was bad. Wei Ying sort of needed for no one to know about him, and now he’d fucked up and just dragged someone right into his house-- “No, no, it’s fine. He’s not doing anything now. I think he checked out once he decided I wasn’t dangerous anymore.”
Gradually, the entire sequence of events of what he’d just done caught up with Wei Ying. He’d just forced someone, via some sort of psychic compulsion, to come to him. For reasons he didn’t know, but apparently made sense to his alien instincts, if only they had clued him in at all. What the fuck had he done. Defended his territory--how was pulling the intruder right into the heart of his domain in any way defending his territory? Had he been about to do something else? Was he going to--
--If he hadn’t snapped out of it, would Wei Ying have killed this stranger?
The thought struck him hard, and he flinched, almost dropping his captive for one awkward, fumbling moment. Then he lowered the young man to the floor--still kept his grip on him, though, because. He didn’t know what to do, but he definitely couldn’t let him go, so--
“Hey. Hey, you awake? You back?” the stranger said. He twitched a little, then grunted when Wei Ying unconsciously, automatically tightened a tentacle around his chest in response. “Okay. Guess I won’t fuckin’ move, then.”
With his grasp locked around the stranger like this, Wei Ying could feel how not-human he actually was. His disguise was visually perfect--would fool anyone looking at him, even up close. But when Wei Ying squeezed--there were no bones inside the man. He was like a water-filled doll, a liquid core wrapped in a layer of dense rubber. Temperature almost the same as the room around him, no pulse, wrong texture wherever Wei Ying’s tendrils touched skin.
“Sooo, while we’re hangin’ out. Hi, by the way. I’m Xue Yang,” the young man said, lolling his head to the side--despite his statement that he wouldn’t move--and grinning wide. The part of Wei Ying’s brain that was always taken off on crow-flights of curiosity wondered how the hell he’d done teeth as part of the disguise, having no bones and all. Would they feel like rubber too?
He resisted the impulsive urge to jam a tentacle into Xue Yang’s mouth and find out.
You’re like me, he said instead. From Xue Yang’s immediate wince, he had failed to control his volume again. He felt shaky as hell, so that was no big surprise.
“Yup, ah-huh. Not exactly, we’re definitely different sub-types,” he replied. “Never met one that can just fuckin’ mind-control people before, gotta say. Scary.”
I don’t... know what I did, Wei Ying admitted. Everything from his frenzied burst was rather hazy, and he wasn’t sure what it had felt like, what the process had been, to leash Xue Yang’s will under his own and force obedience. He did not want to go doing that again, but if he didn’t even know what had happened, it might be hard to prevent--
“Eh, you flipped out a little. It happens to all of us in the early days,” Xue Yang said dismissively, even daring to shrug his shoulders a little. Wei Ying didn’t squeeze him in response this time. “Frankly, we were surprised as fuck that you hadn’t killed anybody. Those first couple days tend to be a ride.”
Wei Ying wanted to argue that of course he wouldn’t kill anyone, but--well, he wasn’t sure what his intentions had been towards Xue Yang. If he hadn’t come out of his instinct-controlled state when he did--or if he’d been discovered by a human instead, if he’d been threatened by somebody who wasn’t as tough--
“Yeah, he’s talking now,” Xue Yang said, obviously directed to whoever was on the other end of the earpiece. “Think we’re good. You good?” That was to Wei Ying.
I. I guess so. He still didn’t let go, however. He didn’t know what Xue Yang might do when he was freed. Although, realistically--if Xue Yang’s actual shape was like Wei Ying’s, he was probably just letting himself be bound. If he transformed, or whatever, and he was also just a mass of tentacles--that would be a lot harder to keep tied up.
“Great, cool, great. We got your hubby on the way home, so he’ll be here any minute,” Xue Yang said. Reflexively upon mention of his husband, Wei Ying’s grip snapped tight again--tight enough to dent Xue Yang’s weird disguise form inward unnaturally, squeezing him brutally around the middle. Instinct tried to rear up again. He would protect Lan Zhan, if they had done anything to him--
He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine, Xue Yang’s mental voice broke into his defensive haze. He’s with A-Qing, she’s tiny, she can’t do anything to him. He’s fucking fine, holy fuck let go.
His tentacles finally slid free, letting loose entirely. Xue Yang slumped onto the ground with a growl, taking a second--apparently, however he was stuffed into the weird disguise did not take well to being squished so hard.
“Right, fuck,” he said, his voice strained and wet. He coughed once, and a trickle of thick, grayish liquid ran from the corner of his mouth before he wiped it away with his sleeve. “Okay, lesson learned everybody. they are definitely bonded. Do not fuck with that.”
Then the front door opened, Lan Zhan rushing through, following Wei Ying’s trailing tentacles that were spread throughout the house. Someone was following him, but Wei Ying really did not care--
Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan! He launched himself from the sink and into his husband’s arms, twining around the man, draping himself all over him to reassure himself that he was fine. In the background, some tiny girl was berating Xue Yang, something about coming way too close to an unknown sub-type, and he was just lucky he hadn’t been devoured. Wei Ying shut them out, just pressed himself tighter into Lan Zhan’s chest and hung onto him.