[曦澄 | XiCheng][MDZS Modern AU]: All The Things I Never Told You [~PART 1~]

〽️👁‍🗨 Chapter 44: Doubts.

- Rest, love.

Lan Xichen felt the slender boy clutching to him, still shivering lightly in his arms, but also  –  dozing off. It all had been quite overwhelming for both of them.

- Mmm... Huan... Mmmm...

One final kiss and he went back downstairs to work some more. Smiling faintly, he opened the laptop again, and impatiently opened the database that his law firm had access to  -   not the federal one, but the one the police used. As a rule, his own law firm had some limited accessibility by default, but he had his own ways to bypass the law, as gain more information, from deeper nooks and crannies, having paid the right amounts of money to the right kind of people inside the Force. The extended database was the same one he had used in order to check out on Wei Wuxian's past.

He typed the loved name, and frowned upon seeing the longish dossier file. 

Yes, there already was a file under that name.

He was reading, slowly, biting his lips. 

***

Jiang Wanyin had been nothing but  honest with him. 

Some of it was redacted; some factual details from the time when he had been underage, but the things he read after his 17th year were... concerning.

It wasn't his fault. Not really. If anything, it was Lan Huan's fault. How the hell did he fall so terribly for this pretty boy?  Why was it always head over heels in the beginning, with all his lovers, with all exes? He remembered Wangji's irritated remark: 

"What's with you and pretty boys, Huan!? Remember last year? Do you?! How bad it was?! "

Was this why Jiang Wanyin had tried to push him away in the beginning...? Now, today, he had absolutely no doubt about his feelings for him... Or... 

Or was it...

His biggest fear, the most awful doubt, crushing his heart. 

He was with him out of gratitude, because of the insignificant affair with the CCTV footage from... that night?

Or worse: he was with him for his money. Somehow.

He sighed. Alas. It was happening again and again, and it was getting proven right over and over again. His Di knew him best...

Was he really the fool in all of this? Was he the one who would be hurting in the end, just like always?

 ***

He shook his head sadly. 

Even so, what could he do? He was lost in his love, it was overpowering him every minute, every second, with every single heartbeat. He only felt truly, deeply happy when he felt the beautiful delicate young man in his arms...

Frowning still, he copied all the accessible info in a file and saved it on his desktop for later. He had to focus on the case. He had to make sense of all this senselessness, as the prime suspect wouldn't talk to anyone, but to a priest. And he couldn't convince the Warden to bring a priest (heavily wired, of course!)  to the maximum security prison for the world!

He sighed again, burying himself in all his work, checking sources online and hours of footage of past trials for a clue, for a trick, for a cheat. He knew too well that all three people on his team  –  no matter how different   –  worked hard, really hard, to achieving the same goal.

***

An hour passed, or maybe two, and Jiang Cheng approached him again, lazily and sleepily, sitting on the floor and forcing his way up to his thighs, so that he could place his head in Lan Xichen's lap, pushing the laptop to the side a little, begging for petting.