#i don't think he's quite SO 委屈 lol but hey. down draft of a scene. anything can happen in that kind of situation

[hidey-writes]

wip wednesday

Gu Yiran is still thinking about the dinner when he and Zheng Bei get back to Zheng Bei’s apartment, as they’re going through their nighttime routines.

The group’s conversation had turned, expectedly, to everyone’s plans after the case closed. Lao Jiu’s official retirement would be at the end of the month, and after that he had traveling plans with his granddaughter. Ding Guozhu and Zhao Xiaoguang were both traveling back to their respective hometowns for a week, and had spent a good portion of dinner fretting over how to avoid telling their parents about the more unsavory aspects of this case. Zhang Xueyao would take her parents out on holiday, had already bought the tickets and booked their first hotel.

Zheng Bei, Gu Yiran noticed, hadn’t volunteered anything about his own plans.

But the dinner conversation had slid right past him and refocused on Gu Yiran’s post-case plans, once he was back in Huazhou. Zheng Bei had inserted himself into the conversation then, and said, “Gu-laoshi, maybe we’ll all come visit you in Huazhou after this case closes. Even if there isn’t work for us to do together, we can all just go there for fun, right?”

Gu Yiran couldn’t imagine what Zheng Bei might find attractive about Huazhou, what might be there that he wanted to visit. Compared to Zheng Bei, there was so much less Gu Yiran could offer as a host — he doesn’t have a ready set of loyal and familiar teammates, or the warmth and welcome of a bustling family home. But it was easier to play along, to agree, to believe, just for that moment, that any of them would still remember or want to visit after this case ended and the immediate bonds of intense collaborative work had faded. And so, Gu Yiran had merely said, “Of course I’d be glad to have you all,” and smiled, and carefully had not met Zheng Bei’s eyes.

a slightly longer snippet from draft 3.5 (-_-) of the beiran fic bc alas i think this section is going to die in this round of revisions and i quite like it!