Chapter Text
Shen Wei didn’t try to be deliberately suspicious. At least the first few times he suddenly stumbled into an SID investigation were honestly a coincidence. He didn’t mind as much as he should have, though – it was such a good opportunity to see them all at work, observe the way they handled cases, treated the Dixingren they found, a good opportunity to see what the younger Chief Zhao was really made of.
And then?
Well.
Then he started to like what he saw.
At first he wasn’t quite sure how much of it was real, how much of what he felt was actually for that man in front of him, scruffy hair and jacket and hideous car and all, and how much of it was really for Kunlun, sharpened like a knife on dredged-up memories every time Shen Wei looked into the Chief’s eyes. Maybe he’d never really know – but he couldn’t deny the way his heartbeat sped up every time Chief Zhao stepped into his office, in a way that probably didn’t have everything to do with those age-old feelings…
… And even if they had, they were alluring enough that Shen Wei couldn’t be bothered to resist.
He knew he was being suspicious, of course he knew – but it was hard to resist the temptation when it brought Zhao Yunlan into his office so regularly, surprisingly polite despite his clearly mounting suspicions. It was hard to watch him, his mannerisms were so close to Kunlun’s that it clawed at his heart, dredged up half-buried memories and polished them to a new, thorny sheen… but it was harder not to watch him.
Shen Wei had always prided himself on his work ethic – stalwart, focused, reliable, efficient – but now he found himself distracted, both by the Chief’s presence and his absence, his thoughts hung up on clever lips around caramel lollipops, that knowing smirk whenever the Chief found another clue, drew another connection.
Yunlan’s attention was intoxicating. Not healthy, no, but he craved it nonetheless.
And then, Yunlan started involving him in cases, all by himself. Shen Wei had to double-check that he wasn’t inadvertently influencing the chief somehow, but no, he was really just… what – valuing his help, or just trying to keep an eye on him any way he could? Either way, it worked, even if it took him just a little closer to the edge every time Zhao Yunlan stepped through the office door and all Shen Wei could see was his lost love, but wrong, colder, sharper.
He hadn’t expected Zhao Yunlan this morning; as far as he had been aware, everything should be calm in Dragon City. And yet here he was, leaning against the doorjamb like he belonged there before stepping inside and closing the door behind him with a well-calculated flick of his wrist.
“Professor,” he said in greeting and stepped closer, “we have four Haixingren and one plant Yashou in a coma that show traces of dark energy, and we need to get to the bottom of this before someone dies. How about you forget about grading tests for the day and come with us to maybe save some lives instead?”
“A good day to you, too,” Shen Wei replied, just a little pointedly.
If he’d known what was good for him, he’d have claimed he was busy (it wouldn’t have been a lie, anyway); every time he went out there and put himself in dangerous situations along with Zhao Yunlan, he risked his greatest secret. He knew that, he knew what a disaster it would be if anyone found out, but he found himself too drawn to the Chief to deny him his help – and himself the chance to bask in his presence.
He’d never had a choice, really.
“Tell me what this is about,” he prompted.
It was probably all just wishful thinking, but he thought he could see Zhao Yunlan relax ever so slightly as he sauntered over and melted into the visitor chair.
“It’s as I said,'' he replied and leaned forward across Wei’s desk. “Five victims. Four Haixingren, one Yashou, all of them currently in a coma at TK. They collapsed several miles apart from each other, over a span of three and a half days. They live in completely different areas of the city and don’t have any shared acquaintances that we’re aware of, but none of them had any valuables on them.”
“A robbery?” Shen Wei asked and began to put his paperwork back into its folders – he wouldn’t get back to it today anyway.
“Maybe,” Zhao Yunlan said. “We’re not sure who would have done it, though, or how - all we know is that Lin Jing's dark energy sensor spiked around them, so there have to be Dixingren powers involved somehow. We were hoping you’d be able to tell us more, actually.”
Not too long ago, that would have been an accusation, but now it almost seemed like… Well, like Zhao Yunlan has made his way over to the university solely to slouch onto his desk and angle for advice – and maybe even companionship.
Shen Wei would have helped anyway, accusation or not; it was his duty after all, whether the SID was aware of it or not. Maybe it would’ve been better if that was all it had been; a constant cycle of Shen Wei wrapped up in one case after another in the unlikeliest series of circumstances imaginable and trying to clear his name – but no, Zhao Yunlan just had to complicate things with wry grins and almost-suggestive lines that couldn’t mean what he was implying, but which were more than enough to string him along like a little wooden duckling on wheels, helplessly tethered to this man with the face and the mannerisms of his long-lost love.
“C’mon,” Zhao Yunlan said and kicked up his feet, resting them on the other chair (for all of Shen Wei’s affection and goodwill, if Yunlan had followed what was clearly his first impulse and put them up on the desk, he might have had to throttle him, just a little) and lacing his fingers together behind his head, throwing Shen Wei a sharp smile somewhere between alluring and dangerous, “let’s play hooky and look at the victims.”
Shen Wei refrained from reminding Zhao Yunlan that only one of them would be playing hooky in this situation and simply continued putting away his things, slow and measured and while keeping eye contact. It was supposed to be mildly reproachful, but Zhao Yunlan’s expression of quiet glee was a pretty good indication that he wasn’t really getting his point across.
His time would’ve been better spent paying attention to the task at hand instead of the man sitting across from him – the sharp pain in his fingertip barely even caught his attention at first, but then he noticed a red smear on the next paper he touched, and it wasn’t his correcting ink.
“Hey, are you alright?” Yunlan asked when he noticed his hesitation, saw the way he raised his hand and gave his finger a quizzical once-over, staring at the papercut marring his skin, red beading along the thin line.
Shen Wei raised his head, smiled politely, purely on reflex.
“Yes, I’m quite alright,” he said. A drop of blood was beginning to run down his pointer finger.
Zhao Yunlan was standing up and leaning over his desk faster than Shen Wei could lower his hand, catching his wrist.
“Alright?” he said. “Bullshit, let me look at that.”
Shen Wei froze.
With some luck Chief Zhao didn’t notice, too wrapped up in his inspection of that pitiful little cut, but even that didn’t change that he froze, like a deer in the headlights, just because Zhao Yunlan had his fingers around his wrist and they were strong and warm and just a little calloused and felt like home in a way that nearly made him flinch.
“Do you have a first-aid kit?” Zhao Yunlan asked. Shen Wei didn’t reply at first, too taken aback to really listen, but then his reeling mind finally caught up and he nodded. He knew he must’ve looked a mess, he could see it in Yunlan’s eyes, in that quizzical, concerned expression.
He tried to reach over, trying to fish the little box from his desk drawer, and abruptly realized that Zhao Yunlan was still holding his hand, fingers still wrapped around his wrist, his thumb gently moving against the outside of his palm.
“The, uh. The first aid kit,” he stammered out, “it’s in my desk drawer.”
A faint moment of hesitation that Shen Wei knew he’d read too much into this night, before Zhao Yunlan let go.
They both realized their mistake the moment Shen Wei left a smear of blood on his desk drawer and hissed as the wood caught on the damaged skin.
Zhao Yunlan rounded his desk in a flash, and suddenly his fingers were around Shen Wei’s again, gently holding his hand while he rummaged around the desk drawer for the first aid kit with the other.
“It’s just a papercut,” Shen Wei feebly protested while Yunlan pulled the rubber band holding the box together off with his teeth, which was almost certainly unhygienic, but he couldn’t do anything but sit there and watch. He was in awe at being treated like he was going to fall apart from this, the almost cathartic burn at his fingertip, the tiny smear of blood. He’d braved things a hundred times more painful without as much as a flinch. He’d been expected to.
Zhao Yunlan’s stern dedication as he cleaned the tiny wound and then carefully, gently wrapped the band-aid around his finger came a lot closer to breaking him than any pain he’d ever endured. He wasn’t used to it, to being treated like he was something fragile.
“Ah, Shen Wei, Shen Wei…” Zhao Yunlan said as he packed up the first aid kit, “I really don’t know what you’d do without me…”
His mischievous smirk made it pretty clear he was joking – mostly, anyway – but Shen Wei knew perfectly well that he was right.
He stood up and straightened his waistcoat, doing his best to hide his emotional turmoil and hoping desperately that he was succeeding.
“I have a class to teach in three hours,” he said. “If you want to look at the victims, we should hurry.”
Zhao Yunlan’s look turned from faintly amused to pensive, and Shen Wei had the sudden hunch that the Chief was on to him.
He could feel the other man sneaking quizzical glances all the way to the hospital, until he was almost tempted to tell him to please keep his eyes on the road.
-
Shen Wei had hoped that being at the hospital would be enough to chase the thought of Zhao Yunlan’s hands around his wrist from his mind – but no such luck.
They’d put all the affected people in one room, probably following the SID’s gentle suggestion. Either way, it saved them quite a bit of time.
It also didn’t tell them nearly as much as Shen Wei would have hoped. All of them were showing signs of something affecting them, and Shen Wei readily concurred that it had to do with some kind of Dixing power, but that only slightly narrowed it down, and combined with the additional facts Chief Zhao had provided him… well, nothing immediately stuck out.
And even if it would have, it had probably gotten hopelessly drowned in the endless litany of he held my hand, he held my hand, warm, real fingers around mine–
“... Wei?”
The other man’s voice abruptly pulled him back into reality.
“Shen Wei?”
“Mmmh?”
He hadn’t been listening.
“Sorry to interrupt your daydreams, but does any of this mean anything to you?” Zhao Yunlan asked with a broad gesture indicating the unfortunate victims in their hospital beds, monitors beeping away.
“Not as much as we’d hoped,” Shen Wei said and adjusted his glasses to hide some of his disorientation. “There’s a selection of powers that could potentially cause something like this – some kind of dark energy toxin, mind control, hypnosis, a variety of sleep-related powers… it’s impossible to say precisely, at least until one of them wakes up.”
Zhao Yunlan tilted his head.
“Could any of these become active with some sort of a delay?” he asked.
“All of them, in theory,” Shen Wei replied. “I’d be least surprised about something akin to a toxin acting like that – or hypnotic powers.”
The Chief nodded.
“Alright, we’re done here for now – except…”
Shen Wei knew by his gesture and expression what he was about to say, could tell by the raised finger alone, and he glared at Zhao Yunlan, partially for even thinking of suggesting that he should get a papercut looked at at a hospital, partially because he’d just managed to at least sort of tamp down those pesky, pesky emotions about the man for the moment, and now they were all back again.
At least Zhao Yunlan took the hint, dropped his finger and closed his mouth, and that was the last anyone said about that.
The drive back to the university went a lot more quietly than usual, the Chief clearly mulling over his current case, and Shen Wei lost in his own thoughts, going round and round in circles.
Zhao Yunlan’s concern had felt good, that was the worst of it. It had been such a small little thing, unimportant, just a papercut, nothing that’d make him less useful even in the short term, and yet Zhao Yunlan had been concerned, however slightly, had taken the time to make sure he was going to be okay even when there had been no need to.
This was new – or at least not something he’d experienced for thousands of years – and he hated how much he loved it.
—
For a few days, that was the last Shen Wei heard of him or the case. He’d almost been tempted to just call and ask himself – and that, given his distaste for modern technology, said quite a lot – when the door to his office opened one early afternoon, and Zhao Yunlan blundered in.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” he said and let himself fall into one of the chairs in front of Shen Wei’s desk like he owned the place.
“Oh?” Shen Wei asked and peered over the top of his glasses with a raised eyebrow. “Bad news first?”
“Aw,” Zhao Yunlan leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “But it won’t make any sense that way.”
Shen Wei’s gentle smile was full of unending patience; positively saintly, really.
“Do it your way, then,” he said.
Maybe it would’ve been easier to keep his traitorous emotions under control if Zhao Yunlan would stop grinning like that, but that stupid smirk of his was always captivating. Had been on Kunlun, too, and maybe that was the only reason he was so susceptible to it, but he doubted it.
“Alright! Good news first, then!” Zhao Yunlan said. “Our victims woke up, there seems to be no permanent harm done, and they could give us some valuable hints – apparently the one thing they all had in common was that they all stopped by the same bakery over the course of their day and all bought the same kind of muffin, so it does look like there’s some kind of dark energy poison involved.”
That made sense, Shen Wei figured.
“And the bad news?”
“We haven’t managed to catch the responsible Dixingren yet. Seems like the poison takes a good long while to take effect; we think the Dixingren was trailing their victims until it kicked in and then robbed them if they were in a convenient location for it – but that’s made it pretty difficult to actually pinpoint our perp. They’re clever and surprisingly sneaky.”
Shen Wei grimaced.
“We’ll get them soon enough,” Zhao Yunlan hurried to reassure him, almost as if he was worried that he had disappointed him, but it didn’t help – it wasn’t really the SID’s lack of results that was bothering him, it was that he’d let something like that slip under his radar. If not for Zhao Yunlan, he might’ve never noticed the Dixingren systematically poisoning and robbing innocent people, seemingly just for their personal gain, and that stung more than he would’ve liked to admit.
He could hardly tell Zhao Yunlan that.
Instead, he merely forced a smile that he hoped looked more natural than it felt, and nodded.
“I know you will,” he said. “Your SID seems rather effective in their duties.”
“Of course they are,” Zhao Yunlan replied, doing his best to seem casual about it, but Shen Wei wasn’t so bad at reading people that he’d miss the pride the chief was practically glowing with. He nodded to himself and got up. “Alright, Professor, I better get going. Might keep you updated if I can.”
“I appreciate it,” Shen Wei said.
Not that Zhao Yunlan needed to, he thought as he watched the Chief leave. Even if it wouldn’t inevitably fall to him to drag the perpetrator back to Dixing, he was intent on doing his own investigating.
Someone poisoning Haixingren right under his nose without him noticing was nothing short of unacceptable, and he couldn’t stand by without trying to figure out how they’d done it.
He’d just have to avoid running into the SID while he was doing so.
Whatever could possibly go wrong?
—-
The traces of dark energy around the little bakery were faint enough that Shen Wei’d had a genuinely hard time tracking them down – something that didn’t happen very often. Whoever was abusing their powers so callously, they were good at it. Subtle. Precise. Efficient. Very intentional.
As much as he loathed to admit it, Shen Wei had his soft moments. He knew perfectly well that a lot of the Dixingren he had to take back down underground were simply struggling to survive – but this one smacked of something more nefarious. In a way, he appreciated it; it made his job a lot easier when he didn’t have to worry about doing the right thing. It also meant he’d have to be careful. He’d better get to the bottom of this before the SID did and put themselves in serious danger.
It took him a while to pick up on the trail of dark energy leading away from the bakery, but he was well-attuned to the subtle, almost oily note that lay in the air, something between earthen and ozone – it was too subtle to be a Dixingren actively using their powers, and that, in itself, was worrying. It could only mean one thing: their mysterious robber had marked their next victim.
If he hurried – really hurried – he hoped he might be able to catch up to them before they ate that accursed muffin.
–
The trace of dark energy led him a good mile or so away from the bakery, through the endless streets of Dragon City, until he found himself at the entrance to a small park – it was barely more than a glorified flowerbed, really; just an empty plot overgrown with trees, the small path through it haphazardly maintained. A disheveled children’s playground peeked through the leaves on the far side.
He could feel the dark energy traces getting denser, like the person affected had been lingering, and a sinking feeling overcame him that he might already be too late. He sped up, rounded a hedge–
Zhao Yunlan lay unconscious on the patchy grass next to the path, a brown paper bag next to him, that accursed bakery’s logo proudly displayed on the front.
Shen Wei didn’t think – he just ran, bolted over there like his life depended on it, because Yunlan’s really might, coming to a rough, skidding halt on his knees. His trembling hands found Zhao Yunlan’s pulse point at the side of his neck, and–
He knew he had made a terrible mistake the moment Zhao Yunlan opened his eyes and hissed a quiet breath.
“Get out,” he snapped quietly.
Shen Wei didn’t understand what was happening, his thought processes had ground to a screeching halt the moment he’d seen Zhao Yunlan on the floor–
“Get out,” the Chief repeated, “I’m bait, I’m just pretending–”
Oh.
OH.
Shen Wei scrambled back onto his feet, ready to vanish like he’d never even been there–
A sharp cracking noise.
Shouting.
“Watch out!” he heard. Was that Xiao Guo?
He never found out, as all hell broke loose.
Zhao Yunlan was jumping to his feet next to him, while in the same moment, a shadowy figure burst through the hedges. Paused, hesitated–
Shen Wei could feel the dark energy gathering around their hands, nearly moved to retaliate before he realized that he couldn’t, not without revealing his best-kept secret, but he had to do something, anything to keep those poison hands from touching Zhao Yunlan.
The Dixingren leapt forward in the same instance as Shen Wei and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground – but so was his attacker, hitting the grass with a high-pitched, furious shriek.
By the time he’d struggled upright again, the Dixingren had been well and truly subdued: Handcuffed, gloved, wrapped up in Lao Chu’s strings, and Xiao Guo was sitting on her – and for all her seething rage, the woman was too small and slight to throw him off. Her poison powers had clearly served her well.
Shen Wei figured it was safe to ignore her for now; instead he turned to Zhao Yunlan, intending to double-check that the Chief was alright before subtly vanishing and making room for the Envoy to spirit her away to Dixing.
At least, that was the oh-so-clever plan.
Zhao Yunlan was standing next to him, looking perfectly alright, albeit more than a little dismayed, and Shen Wei figured he’d be in for a very stern talk, and a justified one at that–
and then, the Chief’s expression suddenly changed.
“Shen Wei…?” he asked, his sudden concern palpable. “Are you– are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m–”
The pain was as sudden as it was fierce, his veins on fire, his very energy pulsing in agony.
He must’ve made a noise, he figured, maybe, as his field of vision dimmed and the ground came up to meet him, which was really very undignified–
The hard landing he’d expected never happened.
Instead, there were arms around him now, warm and steady as the world was tipping this way and that, whirling around him as he was trying to get his bearings, the grass cool against his back.
“Shit,” he heard Zhao Yunlan, barely understandable over the blood rushing through his ears, and his own pained gasps. “She must’ve got him–”
Muffled voices, not Yunlan’s, not important.
“I dunno,” the Chief piped up again. “Hospital, I guess–”
Blank, bloody panic welling up, adding to his distress. He’d probably be fine, he knew, it was unlikely somebody’d catch on, his true nature was well-masked, but maybe, just maybe–
“No,” he gasped. “No hospital.”
“What?” Zhao Yunlan asked. “But–”
“They can– can’t do more than watch,” he tried to explain, “and I can’t– please don’t– I’ll be fine–”
“The other victims were in a coma for days,” Chief Zhao said. “I don’t think you’ll be fine.”
He could have been, if he’d caught the attack early and healed himself before anyone could notice, could have been if Lin Jing’s energy detector hadn’t been pointed roughly in his direction this entire time. He was pretty sure he’d be able to fend off the effects of the poison until he could get a chance to heal, at least enough to keep him going–
“Not the hospital,” he repeated, and even he could tell that he sounded awful, his voice quivering, barely above a whisper…
To his surprise, Zhao Yunlan relented; sharp brown eyes found his own, holding his gaze like the Chief was searching for something in there, and then he simply sighed.
“I’m bringing you home then,” he decided, “and staying with you. But as soon as you get any worse, you’re off to the hospital, you understand?”
There were at least half a dozen glaring problems with that, but the ground just wouldn’t stop spinning and the pain was overwhelming, so he just nodded and immediately regretted it as the world around him swam completely out of focus.
“The Envoy still hasn’t shown up!” one of the others exclaimed.
“Nevermind that,” Zhao Yunlan shot back, “just take the perp into custody, I gotta get Professor Shen home and keep an eye on him. Lao Chu, take your car and bring in our Little Miss Poison; I’ll be at the apartment building if you need me.”
“You’re just gonna leave?” Da Qing’s accusatory voice cut through the heartbeat pounding in Shen Wei’s ears.
“You’ll do just fine,” the Chief said. He sounded terse, unusually so, and he wouldn’t take his hand off of Shen Wei’s shoulder.
“If anything goes wrong, it’ll be on your head,” Da Qing noted.
“Don’t worry about that,” Zhao Yunlan replied. “Just do your job, damn cat.”
He gently tightened his grip on Shen Wei’s shoulder.
“Let’s get you to the car. Think you can walk?”
The quite honest answer would have been ‘no’, but that was not an option, so Shen Wei simply nodded, closing his eyes tightly against the swirling mess around him, and started to struggle to his feet.
The hand at his elbow, the arm around his back – it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, he figured, but it still was. It had been so long, and he’d gotten so used to doing everything by himself that the idea of being helped hadn’t even occurred to him.
Maybe he could do this after all.
Leaning on Zhao Yunlan so heavily once he was back on his own feet seemed decadent, like an indulgence unearned. He should’ve been able to walk on his own. He probably would have been, and yet here he was, half-propped-up by the Chief, hands so tight around Shen Wei’s upper arms it was almost painful, but wonderfully grounding all the same.
He was so wrapped up in the sensations and his conflicting thoughts he barely even registered their slow, limping walk back to Zhao Yunlan’s bright red jeep, parked in a side street near the park. He was sure they would have had an easier time of it if the world would just stop spinning around him already, but thinking about it too hard just made it worse – without that steady arm around his shoulders, he was sure he would’ve fallen.
The Chief held on tightly even as he unlocked the car and carefully poured Shen Wei’s shivering form into the passenger seat, before carefully closing the door. Shen Wei made a weak, clumsy attempt at buckling in, but his hands didn’t work quite right, and he couldn’t grip the seatbelt tightly enough to pull it down, the slick gray fabric sliding through his trembling fingers.
“Stop that.”
Gentle hands prying his own from the seatbelt, the soft click of the buckle closing. The rumbling of the engine resonating at the edge of his mind.
Shen Wei could feel himself drift closer to unconsciousness and he knew he’d miscalculated – he had to do something about the poison after all, before it took over and knocked him out for long enough to scare Zhao Yunlan into dragging him to the hospital after all.
It would be risky, but not as risky as it had been when Lin Jing’s detector had been pointed his way – at least he hoped so, even though Zhao Yunlan’s watchful eyes on him whenever the road allowed it told a different story entirely.
That was the catch, really – how would he explain suddenly feeling better? The chief was already suspicious enough of him as it was, and this wouldn’t help his case at all; he simply couldn’t risk it.
He couldn’t stay like this either.
He didn’t like the options that left him.
Regardless, he gathered his strength and felt for the foreign dark energy coursing through his veins.
He could feel it collecting at his fingertips, managed to pry open his eyes looking around for something, anything to give it a way out.
The papercut.
It had long since scabbed over, almost healed, but the dedicated application of a fingernail had blood beading along it, and it didn’t take much to draw the poisonous energy into it. There hadn’t been all that much of it, really, it had just been potent, potent enough to still make him feel it even though it was all dripping onto the floor now – the fire coursing through his veins was gone, replaced by a deep, hollow ache that had him slumping to the side before righting himself, exhausted and sore.
Maybe pretending to still be poisoned wouldn’t be all that difficult after all.
Speaking of – Zhao Yunlan didn’t seem to have noticed that anything was amiss at all, despite the watchful eye he kept on him whenever he could.
Shen Wei’s shaky breath of relief drew his attention for a moment, but still there was no suspicion in his gaze.
-
A few minutes later they arrived at their shared apartment building – just in time, since he had been precariously close to nodding off.
“Shen Wei?” the Chief asked quietly. “Can I have your apartment keys?”
He barely managed to free the keys from his pocket, but in the end he did it, handed the key to the Chief with shaking, clammy fingers. Despite everything, he still felt awful.
“Can you walk if I help you?” Zhao Yunlan asked as he opened the passenger door, his concern even more evident now that his entire focus rested squarely on Shen Wei.
Shen Wei nodded. In truth, he probably could have made his way up to his apartment entirely on his own, but the Chief was already suspicious enough, he didn’t need to add to that by getting suddenly and mysteriously so much better than he’d been mere minutes ago.
Or at least, that was what he kept telling himself.
Zhao Yunlan’s arm was warm around his back as he helped him up, oh so carefully, making sure he was steady on his feet before reaching over and closing the car door.
They made their way up to Shen Wei’s apartment agonizingly slowly, much more so than necessary, but it was Yunlan who set the pace, and Shen Wei wasn’t one to rush.
Especially not with the Chief’s steady arm around him offering support he didn’t need and shouldn’t want – and yet. He hadn’t been touched like that in ages – maybe never, really – and as incidental as it might have been, it felt good. He hated how good it felt. He didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve any of this, but he wanted it
He didn’t resist as Yunlan carefully led him through his own front door, through the apartment and into the bedroom, before oh-so-gently depositing him on his bed, pushing aside the carefully-folded blanket, his token protests as the other man knelt down in front of him to pull off his shoes going swiftly ignored.
This image – Zhao Yunlan on his knees in front of him, eyes soft with concern – was going to stick with him until the day he died, he was sure of it… he just had to hope that the Chief never found out the truth about his current predicament, or that day would surely arrive a lot more swiftly than expected.
Still, it would’ve been worth it.
Zhao Yunlan’s touch was almost painfully gentle as he guided Shen Wei down onto the mattress, and maybe it would have been easier to stand if he’d actually needed the support, if he hadn’t lied and cheated his way into it, but as it were, he found himself shaking with more than just the exhaustion and lingering pain of having been poisoned. He couldn’t quite stifle the shaky breath that escaped him as the Chief oh-so-very-gently reached for the blanket and draped it over him like he was going to shatter if the soft fabric touched him a little too roughly.
Maybe he should have been surprised that Zhao Yunlan – Zhao Yunlan of all people – would be capable of such simple kindness, despite his family’s terrible track record, despite his own rough-and-tumble facade… and yet it simply made sense.
He still didn’t deserve any of it, no matter how much he wished otherwise, he knew that. But right now… well, right now he was exhausted and sore and perfectly content to leave that conundrum to his future self just this once. He’d always have tomorrow to atone for his deception.