Work Text:
Shen Wei isn’t really very clear on what Zhao Yunlan and his colleagues do with the majority of their time. Obviously some of it is spent on investigations, and presumably the paperwork that comes of them. Some must be spent on training, and miscellaneous administrative details. But beyond that, he really has no sense of their professional lifestyle. Partially, this is because when they’re together, Zhao Yunlan doesn’t want to talk about work. Often he’s tired, sometimes hurt, and Shen Wei focuses on the health of both his soul and his body with hearty warming meals and the reassurance his own body can offer pressed to Zhao Yunlan’s.
Now that they’re practically living together, Shen Wei sees Zhao Yunlan most days. That closeness is a treasure, a gift he never expected to be given. No matter how long and tedious his day – or, alternately, how draining and depressing his night – he can come home to Zhao Yunlan.
Except this week. On Monday a van full of school children on an outing disappears. There are no signs of anything supernatural about it – on the contrary, it is clearly a political crime. Nevertheless, every unit of the police is stood up to deal with it. Including SID, who if nothing else can be boots on the ground.
The first night, Shen Wei stops by Zhao Yunlan’s apartment and isn’t surprised to find the lights off and his bed empty and cold. The second night, he finds the same. The next morning he makes a large bian dang full of food that is easily microwavable, and leaves it in the fridge with a note to Zhao Yunlan.
When he returns at the end of the day the note is still there, untouched. As is the bian dang. Shen Wei frowns.
The next day he gets up early to make another bian dang, and takes a cab to 4 Bright Avenue. The light’s on over the door, and inside the building is warm and smells of incense and, just faintly, burnt underworld money, as it always does. Shen Wei, against all sense, finds it homey. But when he goes upstairs to the offices, only Wang Zheng is there. She looks up at him and gives him a soft smile.
“I’m sorry, Shen-jiaoshou. Zhao-chu and the others have been moved into the main building for the duration of the case, so they can more seamlessly fit into the investigation. Last I heard it would probably be over soon. But I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait for the case to be closed.”
“I see,” says Shen Wei. And then, instinctively, “Thank you.”
He takes the lunch box into his office to give to Jiajia and her friends.
It’s Friday afternoon before he hears the news – a radio update. The children have been found, injured but alive. Two adults have been killed, and a third taken into custody. The politicians are lining up to make speeches.
Shen Wei is already snapping shut the paper he was grading when his phone rings. “Shen-jiaoshou?”
It’s Da Qing, sounding unusually colourless.
“Yes. Is –”
“I think we’d all appreciate it,” says Da Qing, “if you’d come by and make a pick-up.”
“I’m on my way,” says Shen Wei.
***
When he arrives at 4 Bright Avenue, it’s almost as quiet as it was a few days ago. The SID staff are mostly absent, their desks empty. But Da Qing is there, dozing in a ball atop the long conference table. And Zhao Yunlan is there, clothes rumpled and circles under his eyes like a racoon, standing behind Wang Zheng and commenting on something she’s typing.
“No,” he’s saying, voice low and rough, as if he’s been chain smoking again. “I want double the usual bonuses for all SID staff. I don’t care what the form allows. Write it in by hand if you have to. I’ll sign it off.”
“Zhao-chu…”
They both break off as Shen Wei’s boots tap on the old wooden floor. Zhao Yunlan looks up and catches sight of him. For a moment, it’s like he can’t believe his eyes. The look of longing and relief that washes over his face makes Shen Wei’s heart fold inwards, tender and aching. Zhao Yunlan steps forward to meet him, eyes suddenly watery. He envelops him in a bearhug, burying his face against Shen Wei’s neck. He smells of sweat, and blood, and – yes – cigarette smoke.
“Are you hurt?” asks Shen Wei, quietly, cupping the back of his head with one hand and catching him around the waist with the other.
“No. Not my blood. Xiao Wei…” He sighs, relaxing against Shen Wei. Shen Wei can hear the exhaustion in his voice, can feel it in the weight of his lover’s body against him. He’s hanging on by a string, feels hollow as a paper lantern whose candle has blown out.
“I’m here. A-Lan. You can let go now.”
He puts only the tiniest hint of power into his tone, just a single smoky curl of command. Zhao Yunlan exhales, and collapses against Shen Wei in a dead faint. Shen Wei holds him against his body for a moment before slowly lowering him to the floor, where he cradles him in his arms. Zhao Yunlan’s skin is milk-pale, his lips the same colour as his face. His beard is scruffy, his hair mussed with grease.
“Da Qing?” Shen Wei explores his lover’s face minutely before looking up. The cat’s jade-green eyes are open now, although he hasn’t moved otherwise. “Can you drive us home?”
Da Qing uncurls and stretches. Jumping off the table, he shifts form, and disappears into Zhao Yunlan’s office. A moment later he’s back with his master’s coat in one hand, the car keys in the other. He jingles them like a cat toy.
Shen Wei leans down, eyes slanting to slivers, and presses a tender kiss to the crown of Zhao Yunlan’s head. Then, straightening, he slips his arms beneath his back and knees, and lifts him. With Da Qing running in front of him, they make their way out of the building.
***
On the drive home, Zhao Yunlan in the front seat because the chair is more comfortable, Shen Wei in the back with both hands clamped to the seat just beneath Zhao Yunlan’s shoulders, Da Qing tells him about the investigation. How the brass insisted SID must have some special talents to share for all their secrets and strange ways and bountiful budget. How Zhao Yunlan had been working 20 hour days with the rest of the team not far behind, most of it hard grudging work pounding the pavement.
How Lin Jing had tracked the bus, finally, using some of his fancy toys, and Zhao Yunlan and Da Qing had been among the party that found the children, locked in a tiny cement room in appalling condition.
“I thought he was going to kill someone,” Da Qing says, looking straight ahead. “He went all icy, cold and dead. I’ve never seen him like that. You know him. He would joke with his executioner. It was awful.”
“I understand two of the suspects died.”
Da Qing snorts. “That was incompetence from the regular bureau. Nothing to do with us. But… it wasn’t good for him, this case. He doesn’t do well with ordinary, human evil.”
Shen Wei smooths his fingertips over the curve of Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder. “No,” he agrees.
***
At the apartment building, Shen Wei carries Zhao Yunlan the three storeys to his apartment. Da Qing opens the door for him and Shen Wei passes through carefully, crossing to the bed and lowering Zhao Yunlan to rest atop the duvet. He takes off his boots, his sharp nose smelling blood and urine, and puts them aside to be cleaned later.
“Order some food for him, please,” Shen Wei asks the 10,000 year-old cat. While Da Qing is on his phone, Shen Wei boils water and buffs the kitchen counters until they sparkle, before producing a cup he cleaned a week ago and mixing Zhao Yunlan’s medicine. He almost certainly hasn’t been taking it.
By the time the food arrives, the water is merely hot. Shen Wei takes it over to the bed and rests his hand on Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder. “A-Lan? You need to eat.”
Zhao Yunlan mumbles something unintelligible and turns away, burying his face in his pillow. Shen Wei sits the cup down on the bedside table and sinks to sit on the edge of the bed. Leaning over he catches hold of Zhao Yunlan and pulls him up to lean in against his side as if he weighed no more than the duvet. Zhao Yunlan screws his eyes closed and worms in against Shen Wei’s side.
“A-Lan, please. You can go back to sleep in a few minutes.”
Zhao Yunlan pulls in a breath, then cracks his eyes open. Looking up he spots Shen Wei. His face lights up in naked happiness, something pure and uncomplicated. “Xiao Wei. You’re here. I –” He looks around and frowns, clearly realising he doesn’t remember coming home. “What’s happened? I’m supposed to be –”
“Here, resting,” says Shen Wei, firmly. “You’re exhausted. You need food, and sleep.”
Zhao Yunlan appears to consider this. Then he closes his eyes and curls in closer to Shen Wei, fitting himself against the shape of his body with an almost feline kind of languid bonelessness. “Need xiao Wei,” he murmurs.
Shen Wei lets his eyes slant closed for a moment, committing this feeling – honeyed love, sunlit joy, just a prickle of concern – to memory. Then he reaches out and grabs the glass, bringing it to Zhao Yunlan’s lips. “Drink,” he says. And, quieter, his free palm pressed tight to Zhao Yunlan’s flank, “I’m not going anywhere, Yunlan.”
***
Zhao Yunlan eats a bowl of noodles in rich bone broth. Shen Wei knows he’s exhausted beyond endurance because he doesn’t tease Shen Wei about being allowed to eat in bed. He merely leans up against his lover, plastic bowl resting on a cloth atop the duvet, and slowly slurps up noodles. Half of then slip away from the loose grip of his chopsticks to slide back into the broth; it takes him longer than it should to finish the dish.
Shen Wei puts the bowl on the far side of the bedside table and stands so he can help Zhao Yunlan snuggle back in beneath the covers. But when he tries to pull free to take away the used glass and bowl, he finds warm fingers wrapped around his wrist. Zhao Yunlan’s head is rolled to one side of the pillow, his dark hair pooled on its white surface. “Stay,” he whispers. “You said you would.”
At another time, in other circumstances, Shen Wei would shake off his lover’s hand and perhaps make some easy statement about not falling victim to Zhao Yunlan’s laziness. Now, though, he merely pulls off his own boots and pushes off his jacket, folding it over the foot of the bed. In one long-legged move he passes over Zhao Yunlan, and pulls the blankets back so he can slide into bed beside him in just his shirtsleeves. It goes against the grain to get in under the covers still wearing his street clothes, but right now Zhao Yunlan is soft and defenseless and needy, and he can’t bear to make him suffer even a moment of uncertainty for something as petty as clothes.
As soon as Shen Wei is in the bed with him, Zhao Yunlan shuffles back to curl up against him. Shen Wei would love to bathe him, to run a steaming bath for his lover and fill it with scented oils – citrus and cedar, perhaps. To submerge Zhao Yunlan in the hot water and rinse his body clean with a soft flannel. To wet his hair and massage cleansing soaps into it and rinse the sudsy film down his back. But he knows Zhao Yunlan doesn’t value cleanliness as highly as sleep, and for the moment he can align himself with Zhao Yunlan’s needs. So he wraps his arms around Zhao Yunlan and holds him close, pressing gentle kisses to the nape of his neck to soothe them both.
“Xiao Wei?” murmurs Zhao Yunlan.
“Mm?” Shen Wei rests his chin atop Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder, so he can feel the thrum of his voice. He shivers a little, and wriggles back deeper into the circle of Shen Wei’s embrace.
“Missed you.”
He knows, in this moment, that Zhao Yunlan will never say anything more about just how awful the past week has been, about the things he imagined and the things he saw, about how poorly he was treated and how coldly furious he was. Just as Shen Wei can read all of those things in his tiny, whispered admission.
“And I, you. I’m glad you’re home, a-Lan. Stay as long as you need to.” He wishes he could make it a command. But that’s an order he knows Zhao Yunlan would never accept. The Guardian’s sense of duty, after all, runs just as deep as the Envoy’s.
At the foot of the bed a heavy weight suddenly appears. A moment later Da Qing curls up by Zhao Yunlan’s feet, and starts to purr sleepily.
Shen Wei waves a hand, and the lights in the apartment go out. Zhao Yunlan is already asleep against him, smelling of cigarettes and death. Shen Wei sighs, and presses one more kiss to his neck. Then, closing his eyes, he settles in to sleep.
END