#lanlan rural vet au

[goldencorecrunches]

LanLan Rural Vet/Animal Sanctuary AU ~ from the LanLan discord --

It was the rain that made Lan Xichen start laughing. "Oh, I'm sorry. Oh dear," he said, one hand pressed to his chest in the passenger seat, the corners of his mouth helplessly turned upward. Thunder boomed, heaven's drums arguing from far away: Lan Xichen bent forward and laughed harder, cupping the back of his head. Song Lan didn't feel the urge to laugh himself, but he could appreciate the sheer ridiculousness of the bad luck that kept finding them today. First Wen Qing, his tech, had come in sneezing like an elephant with a head cold and so he'd sent her home with stern instructions not to return until she was better. Then he'd gotten a call from the farmer who'd dug the ancestral plow farthest up the farthest mountain to come quick because his best cow was in labor, and having trouble with it-- the cow Song Lan had not been told was pregnant. 

Then his car had refused to start, and he'd had to bargain with the grumpy auntie who delivered the post for the use of her shuddering pickup truck, a behemoth half rusted through that definitely hadn't seen the wet side of a sponge for many a long-toothed year. Then Lan Xichen, the director of the backcountry vet-and-sanctuary, had come rushing out as he'd pulled onto the gravel road, begging to come with so he could escape for a few hours his visiting uncle. (That part hadn't been so bad-- driving with Lan Xichen up the winding country road, the valley unfolding out beneath them, summer trees vibrant and lush on either side. Auntie's truck had no air conditioning, of course, so they'd rolled down the windows with the grating hand cranks and the short pieces of hair that had come loose from Lan Xichen's ponytail had blown around his face, his smiling eyes.)

(When Song Lan had taken this job, a year ago come June, he had not expected the pre-existing half of the administration to be the most beautiful man he had ever seen. "Zichen," Xingchen had said to him over video call that night, teasing, "you're such a hopeless romantic. Talk to him! Get to know each other! What could go so terribly wrong?" "He could drag me halfway across the world with only a backpack and a single change of clothes," Song Lan had signed back, biting the mirth into the side of his cheek, and Xingchen had blushed, pretty pink up to their hairline. Song Lan missed them. Of course. They were coming in fall, a hard-wrestled break in their schedule that they guarded against teenage fervency and staid official alike, and Song Lan couldn't tally the days until then without breaking his own heart.)

Up the mountain, the cow had not been giving birth to anything but her own insides. The farmer was not pleased when Song Lan through Lan Xichen told him this, elbow-deep, as if Song Lan had come all the way out there from some cattle-themed plot of revenge. He likely wouldn't call Song Lan again even if the situation was dire, which meant his animals would go untreated; the knowledge of it itched under Song Lan's skin, making him have to grimace apologetically at Lan Xichen when on the drive back he realized his own company was less than engaging. And then Auntie's truck had made a noise like a steel chain through a meat grinder and stopped in the middle of the road. And then it had started raining. Lan Xichen's laughter was running up the wrong side of hysteria. Seeing the rain start to darken the shirt over his shoulder, feeling the damp on his own, Song Lan reached around Lan Xichen's back and dragged at the handle until the window began to close. One perk of old trucks-- when they broke down on you, you could still work the windows. He repeated the process on his own side, focusing furiously on not being weird about the heat of Lan Xichen's body he'd felt press against his own arm and chest leaning over. The air inside the cab immediately became sticky and stale. "It's just-- I was supposed to take my uncle out for dinner tonight-- he's going to be so annoyed--" Gently, feeling a nervous spark in his belly at the presumption, Song Lan laid a hand on the sleeve of Lan Xichen's collared shirt. To his great relief Lan Xichen leaned into the pressure. It seemed to give him the wherewithal to swallow his frantic giggling, his shoulders shaking as he hiccuped; Song Lan tapped his thumb in the crook of Lan Xichen's elbow in a manner he hoped was comforting. (People were always surprised, either when they found out he was a veterinarian, or when they found out he was, as one receptionist had put it, a "clean freak;" they didn't go together in public consciousness. Usually Song Lan lacked the energy to explain that it was about where dirtiness belonged. An exam table should be sterile. The animal upon it should not be: if it was, it would be dead. Humans were the difficult ones, because they ought to wash their hands more than they usually did.) (Besides, it wasn't like he didn't wear gloves.) Finally taking a deep, shaky breath, Lan Xichen sat upright and let his hands fall into his lap. He peeked at Song Lan from the corner of his eye. "I'm...well. In control again, I suppose. Oh, that was embarrassing." His arm jumped under Song Lan's palm, but he did not pull away.

"This is certainly...an adventure," Song Lan signed with his free hand. Lan Xichen's smile went wide for a moment, lopsided, and Song Lan felt the victory like a hot drink on a cold day. "It has been," Lan Xichen agreed. He fidgeted with the denim over his knees. Well: tried to. It was tight denim. There wasn't a lot to fidget with.  "I should call the clinic and tell them we're stranded. If we'll get any reception up here, and with the rain." He sounded reluctant. Song Lan, personally, wanted to get back to his own house and get under Xingchen's knitted blanket and tell the world to go fuck itself dry, but he didn't have an...uncle, waiting for him. Creeping over him was the unshakeable sense that he had been gifted something precious, in Lan Xichen's vulnerability. Despite his easy manner and his compassion, Lan Xichen was, Song Lan had decided during several months of study, terribly lonely, and unsure how to stop. He held himself apart without seeming to, diverting questions back to shared interests, breezily finding an excuse every time their little mob of vet-techs and animal-enthusiasts invited him to join them after hours; and it did not help that to an individual they all viewed him with something of awe. When you were that good-looking, and that kind, it came with the territory. So Song Lan pushed down the irritation at being stuck in the oxidizing shell of what had once been a functional vehicle and unbuckled his seatbelt. Struggling a little in the confined space, he shucked his sturdy flannel and held it out. Lan Xichen stared at him, mouth open ever so slightly. His eyes were shining; Song Lan could feel the back of his neck heat up. "You take a nap under this," he signed, awkward. "Let me call. My phone's got better range anyway." "Because it's not a fancy bit of overpriced nonsense?" Despite himself Song Lan snorted; he and Lan Xichen had antagonistic views towards personal technology. "Exactly." "It's soft," Lan Xichen murmured, as his fingers closed over the dark green plaid. Song Lan tried to pretend he wasn't flushing thoroughly. (When they were rescued, three hours later, by Wen Qing's younger brother in his mountain-tire-fitted jeep, Song Lan had to touch Lan Xichen's shoulder to shake him awake. In the grey light from the overcast sky he seemed to blur, at the edges, soft and precious as a rabbit's underbelly. Song Lan swallowed thickly and looked away. "Keep it," he signed, when Lan Xichen tried to hand back the flannel. It was chilly in just his t-shirt, but that was all right. He'd survive. "It suits you better than it does me." "I don't think I agree with that," Lan Xichen said, and by the time Song Lan had recovered from his subsequent heart attack Lan Xichen was meters away, climbing up his own porch with Song Lan's shirt wrapped around him, pulled tight against the cool post-storm crispness.)

[goldencorecrunches]

(More LanLan rural vet AU) -- It had been a great idea.

"Look at it this way, at least you'll know we've gotten most of them," Luo Qingyang, their tiny clinic's only full-time nurse, told him. She was visibly trying to keep a straight face. Song Lan glared at her. He couldn't reply with words, because his hands were full of squirming, six-week old puppies. Also his arms, and his shoulders, and from the German Shepherd tugging at his scrub pants, soon his lap as well. 

Song Lan had known, moving from the city to the rural countryside, that there would be some measure of culture shock. When one of the farmers had casually dropped that he didn't vaccinate his puppies, because there were, according to him, "Too many of 'em too fast to bother driving 'em out all that way, before you showed up," he had nearly broken his strict policy of sobriety during work hours.

"They're all going to die of distemper," he had told Wen Qing after the man had left, vaguely aware he was making his Strict Veterinarian Face (it was Lan Xichen who had given it a name, which made Song Lan warm all over, on top of the flush from anger) from the way his temples had started aching. "They're not even on heartworm medication. I'm surprised so many of them survive to get killed by the combine harvester." "Just 'combine,' you sound like you're city folk," Wen Qing had said, ignoring Song Lan's mouthed protestation that he was, which was why he was used to people who kept Lucky and Xiao mi's shots up to date. "Look, these people-- they don't have time, and they don't have money. They're going to focus on the livestock animals they need to keep themselves afloat. It's not cruelly meant. They're doing the best they can." "I know that," Song Lan said, somewhat abashed. He peeled his gloves into the bin by the sink and set about washing his hands as he thought. As always, he had to hunch over the sink, built for a much shorter DVM. Wen Qing's girlfriend had sent her some kind of fancy floral soap, and Wen Qing had delighted in placing it in both exam rooms and the surgery. It was a bit stronger to the nose that Song Lan would've preferred, but he wasn't going to argue with Wen Qing when it came to her girlfriend. The antiseptic covered it up, anyway. "What about a vaccination fair? Or just a day," he said when he had finished drying off. "We used to do them at my old clinic. Bring in your pets, get them up to date. Pass out flyers about common infections. Gets the kids involved, too." "Hm," Wen Qing had said. She'd begun gathering up the used sterile packaging and dumping it in the trash, neatly detouring the needles to the sharps container. "That's certainly an idea." She'd argued him down from all pets to just dogs, and had him separate out areas based on the weeks since puppy birth, to for the older dogs the year or the five-year mark. Song Lan had thought it overly complicated-- he could just ask the humans involved as they came up-- but had acquiesced so as not to cause trouble. He was still learning how to fit in, here. Country folk were a lot more standoffish than city folk, for all they were initially nicer. 

He was very glad now that he'd listened.

"You look busy," said a cheerful voice from behind him. Song Lan finished administering the Bordetella shot to the Border Collie mix Luo Qingyang was holding, giving the pup a scratch behind the ears and juggling the bag of chicken jerky underneath his armpit to keep the mutt-who-definitely-had-Bulldog-in-there-somewhere who was crawling across his shoulders from snatching an unearned reward. He turned, stumbling as the German Shepherd shoved her nose enthusiastically into his muddy shoe laces, and tried to keep his scowl affixed for Lan Xichen's teasing. It was a pointless endeavor; as soon as he caught sight of Lan Xichen's face, glowing in the midday heat, he could feel his mouth pulling up at the corner. He occupied himself boosting the puppy under his left arm higher, propping his waggling tail on his hipbone, to keep his own dopey smile to a minimum. "Shh," he told the puppy, when he yipped and started trying to eat Song Lan's scrubs. The puppy looked up, top canine caught in the loop the brand name tag had once hung from, before Song Lan had cut it off. He was not helping the dopiness meter. "Mister Lan!" Luo Qingyang said, handing the Collie mix back to a child with worried arms outstretched (the dog, unperturbed, began licking every freckle on the child's face). "I'm glad you were able to make it! You brought us-- oh, you didn't have to, put that down. Here, you take this one." She plucked the heavy, stainless-steel carafe from his hand and replaced it with a black-and-tan puppy she summoned from nowhere. Automatically Lan Xichen brought his other hand up to support the puppy's hind legs. The puppy sniffed the pens in the crisply ironed breast pocket and did not find them suitable. Song Lan realized he'd been staring and shuffled his furry passengers away from the jerky again.

"I didn't think to make it cold. It's a warm day, I hope it won't be too hot for you," Lan Xichen was saying, apologetic. The edge of the shadow from the extremely garishly striped outdoor tent Song Lan and Wen Ning had set up cut him right across his handsome face, one eye in the shade, the other squinting into the sunlight. As a teenager, Song Lan had had a movie poster where the actor was highlighted in similar fashion. He had hung the poster on the ceiling above his bed. This is not the time for this was becoming a common repetition in Song Lan's inner monologue when it came to Lan Xichen. "If it has caffeine in it, we'll love you whatever temperature it is," Luo Qingyang assured him, passing Lan Xichen another puppy; nearly identical to the first, but with one black ear instead of two. "This is his sister, they're getting their ten week vaccinations. A bit late, but don't tell their mother that. Do you know how to hold them?" "I'm not entirely useless," Lan Xichen said dryly. He smiled at Song Lan. Song Lan nearly tripped over the German Shepherd again. "Ten weeks, that's...Influenza, Bordetella, Lyme…." "DHAPP," Luo Qingyang confirmed, ponytail bouncing as she nodded. "I'm going over to help Wen Qing with the older dogs, you stay and hold puppies for Doctor Song, yeah?" She patted the male puppy on the head, blew a kiss to the female, and leapt over the barricade of folding chairs to rush to the other side of the tent. A queue was already forming there as Wen Qing argued with a woman in overalls, gesturing angrily. Luo Qingyang slid neatly between them and took the three-legged hound from the woman's arms the same way she had taken charge of Lan Xichen's tea carafe. "You've got a criminal," Lan Xichen said pleasantly, pointing with his chin. Song Lan blinked, and then mentally swore, kneeling so he could free one hand to extricate the Pitbull mix from the open ziplock seal on OL' GRANDAD'S AUTHENTIC CHICKIN STRIPS (Reduced Fat). He pressed the hinge of the puppy's jaw to tug the pilfered treat free, tapping his nose when he tried to whine sadly. Song Lan hadn't gotten his certification yesterday. "Can you hold them while I give the injections?" he asked, waiting for Lan Xichen's acquiescence before struggling to his feet again. Half-way up he felt a pull at his knee. He looked down and saw the German Shepherd, tired of being ignored, had a mouthful of his pants. "No," Song Lan signed; but the dog hadn't been trained in sign language, so she growled playfully up at him, ears pricked. Song Lan reached to do the same trick he'd done on the Pitbull mutt, but he'd not accounted that the other set-down dogs would be investigating the other side of his newly-sniffable legs. With a grassy skid, and a very undignified shout, Song Lan went down. The dirt seemed a lot more solid when he was testing it with his nose and chin. Three of the puppies leapt on his face and began a series of scientific experiments as to whether he was dead or just playing. One slobbery tongue went into his ear. "Are you all right?" Lan Xichen's voice was above him: Song Lan was never, ever going to live this down. He groaned and rolled onto his back, throwing an arm across his eyes and letting the puppies pounce on his hair and ankles. The German Shepherd, looking delighted with herself, sat her ass down on Song Lan's stomach and examined his face, tongue lolling. Despite himself, Song Lan smiled and reached up to rub at her belly. She flopped onto her side (oof) and threw her front paws up so he could gain better access. Her tail beat wildly at the ground beside Song Lan's leg.

"Just…dangle them over my chest," Song Lan signed up at Lan Xichen's looming figure. He was tall. Was this what he looked like to everyone else at the clinic? "I'll do them like this."

"Of course, Doctor Song," Lan Xichen said, carefully solemn.

They looked at each other.

The girl puppy swatted her brother in the nose. Immediately he started crying.

"Shall I get you a cup of tea too, then?" Lan Xichen asked, and Song Lan couldn't help it; he laughed out loud.

"I suppose 'buried in dogs' isn't a terrible way to go," he signed, as Lan Xichen, finally abandoning his masterful attempt, let his grin take over his face. It was blinding. "Yes, if you've got a funnel to pour it through?"