Chapter Text
That evening, Gao Tu sat on his couch and held the folded paper in both hands without opening it.
His apartment was quiet the way it always was not unpleasantly so, just the particular quiet of a person who lived alone and had made his peace with it. The TV was on but muted. Some cooking programme, people plating food very carefully. He watched it without seeing it.
He'd said yes.
He'd said it fast. Too fast without hesitation, without even pretending to think it over, the way you agree to something when the decision was already made somewhere underneath the thinking part of your brain long before the question was ever asked.
He was, genuinely, such an idiot.
He unfolded the paper and read it again. Wenlang's handwriting neat, no wasted strokes, very him. The talking points were thorough. How they met: work. How long: he'd left a blank, which meant Gao Tu was supposed to fill it in. Favourite things about each other, one or two each, in case she asked.
Gao Tu looked at Wenlang's entry under favourite things about Gao Tu.
It said: Reliable. Anticipates problems before they happen.
He stared at that for a while.
Then he folded the paper back up and went to the bathroom. Second shelf. Mint tin. He counted the pills enough for three weeks, maybe a little less if things got stressful. He moved his refill appointment up on his phone calendar by two weeks. Just in case.
Extended proximity to a strong Alpha shortened the window. He knew this the way he knew his own heartbeat not something he thought about, just something that was true, that he'd built his whole life around managing.
He'd been managing it fine for three years.
Two weeks is nothing, he told himself.
He put the tin back and turned off the bathroom light.
The next morning, everything was exactly normal.
Gao Tu arrived at 7:45. Coffee. Emails. He caught a discrepancy in a supplier invoice, flagged it, had it resolved before Wenlang arrived. He printed two reports and left them in the right order on the desk Wenlang always read the shorter one first to warm up, never the other way around, and he'd stopped consciously registering that he knew this.
Wenlang arrived at 8:10. Took his coffee. Read his schedule.
Neither of them mentioned the closed-door conversation. Neither of them brought up the paper or the plan or the word grandmother or any of it. They moved through the morning in the same rhythm they always had Gao Tu in and out with files and calls and logistics, Wenlang steady at his desk, working in long focused stretches that were only broken when Gao Tu appeared in the doorway.
At noon Gao Tu brought lunch from the corner place. The one Wenlang ordered from on Wednesdays not because anyone told him to, but because he'd noticed, months ago, that Wenlang's shoulders sat differently on Wednesday afternoons when he'd eaten from there, versus the other days when he just had whatever was convenient. It was a small thing. Probably meaningless.
He set it on the desk and turned to go.
"Gao Tu."
He stopped. Turned back.
Wenlang was looking at him with that expression again the unnameable one, the one that felt like being weighed by something careful and unhurried. "You didn't have to do that."
"You skipped breakfast again. You get a headache by two when you skip." Gao Tu kept his voice easy. Light. "It's not a big deal."
"You track that?"
"I notice things. It's my job." He nodded at the food. "Eat before the ten o'clock runs over."
He left before Wenlang could say anything else. Back at his desk he sat down, pulled up the next task on his list, and did not allow himself to think about the look on Wenlang's face when he'd said you track that like the idea of being noticed that closely was something he didn't quite know what to do with.
Gao Tu knew the feeling.
That evening, his phone lit up. Wenlang almost never texted outside work hours. Almost never.
Her name is Chen Yulan. Chrysanthemum tea. Allergic to shellfish. I should have mentioned earlier.
Gao Tu looked at the message for a moment. Wenlang had gone home, sat down somewhere in that very clean, very quiet apartment of his, and thought: I forgot to tell him something.And then he'd texted. Just like that.
He typed back: Noted. What does she like to eat?
A pause. Longer than it took to think of an answer. Then:
*Braised pork. Tofu dishes. She says she doesn't like dessert but she always finishes the whole tray.*
Gao Tu read that twice. Then he typed: Sounds like someone else I know.
He sent it before he'd fully decided to. Then he sat there, phone in hand, mildly regretting it.
Another pause. Longer this time.
Don't push it, Gao Tu.
He laughed. Out loud, alone, in his apartment a real one, surprised out of him, the kind that happened before you could decide whether it was appropriate. He pressed his hand over his mouth like that would help and laughed anyway, quietly, into his palm.
He typed: I'll find a restaurant she'll like. Goodnight, Director Shen.
The reply came quickly. Two characters.
晚安.
Goodnight.
Gao Tu set his phone face-down on the cushion and looked at the ceiling. The muted cooking programme had moved on to someone making soup. The apartment was quiet. The mint tin was on its shelf in the bathroom.
Two weeks, he told himself.
He'd said yes to two weeks.
He closed his eyes.
You're so stupid, he thought, without any real heat behind it. Almost fondly. The way you think it about yourself when the stupid thing feels, quietly and against all better judgment, completely worth it.
He didn't sleep for a long time.