Work Text:
Outside in the hallway, Shen Wei adjusts his glasses, like he always does when he has something to hide. He gives himself a moment to collect his bearings (you’ll come up with something; you always have), and then he enters the room.
Zhao Yunlan is sitting alone on the couch, legs crossed and hands folded neatly in his lap. His eyes are distant, thoughts clearly elsewhere, and it takes a second longer than normal for him to notice Shen Wei’s presence.
He looks up, but he doesn’t smile like he usually would at the sight of Shen Wei. The look in his gaze, while not cold, is devoid of all mirth as he lightly says, “What’s up?”
“I…” Shen Wei can already feel the shred of collectedness he had gathered just moments ago begin to dissipate. He decides to answer with a question, hoping it’ll take Zhao Yunlan’s penetrating stare off of him for just a little while. “Did I bring you a lot of trouble?”
Unexpectedly, Zhao Yunlan laughs. “Shen Wei,” he says, sounding tired and gentle, “if you were the trouble, I would take more of you to trouble me for the rest of my life.”
They look at each other. Slightly made astonished by his words, Shen Wei can only hold his gaze in stunned silence. His heart, against all reason, begins to thump traitorously in his chest.
This...he wasn’t expecting this. Disappointment, yes; displeasure, yes; anger, yes; but not this. Not accepting, kind words that he most definitely does not deserve.
Because Shen Wei knows he’s trouble. He knows all he does is bring fear and hurt wherever he goes. It’s why he doesn’t get close to others. How could he stand to let them be dragged into the chaos he is inevitably going to be a part of?
If you were the trouble, I would take more of you to trouble me for the rest of my life.
It was said so softly—warmth flooding into the words despite his cold outward demeanor. He meant it.
That frightens Shen Wei more than anything else.
(Being cared for, despite the blackness of his heart.)
He wants to say something—anything—but now there’s a lump in his throat that won’t let him. It seems no part of him will do what he wants it to today. Just like his lies, he is slowly falling apart.
When Shen Wei doesn’t respond, Zhao Yunlan sighs and says, “Well, anyway, there’s been a lot more Dixingren activity here on Haixing recently. I’m sure incidents similar to the scale of what occurred today will be happening more frequently now. You know that we can’t handle it all on our own, don’t you?”
Shen Wei looks down. In some ways, Zhao Yunlan is right: it would be a lot easier for him if they could work together without the need for him to have to conceal his identity. And they do need his help, more than ever, if what he fears will come to pass does.
But the selfish part of him—the part less concerned with saving the world—doesn’t want Zhao Yunlan to ever find out about his other identity. He just wants to stay the kind, mild-mannered Professor Shen that Zhao Yunlan has grown comfortable with for as long as possible. He doesn’t want the one person who doesn’t fear him to put a distance between them once it’s revealed that he’s the formidable Hei Pao Shi too.
(Kunlun knew, and he wasn’t scared, the little flame of hope within him says. Ah, comes the counter, but you didn’t lie to Kunlun. You didn’t betray his trust.
And Zhao Yunlan isn’t Kunlun. You don’t forget that often, but still sometimes you do.)
One day he’ll know—that, Shen Wei is certain of. There was no hint of surprise in Kunlun’s eyes (only warmth and affection and an attentiveness that made Shen Wei‘s heart stutter in his chest) when he removed his mask on the night of their first meeting. What he doesn’t know is if Zhao Yunlan is supposed to know now. Shen Wei is afraid of doing anything that could possibly jeopardize the future. He wants that future, their shared future, and Zhao Yunlan to be safe.
So will Zhao Yunlan be safer if he knows or if he doesn’t?
Shen Wei can’t be sure, and he’s too afraid to make the wrong decision. He can’t lose him again.
“I’m not someone who likes to force people to tell me their secrets,” continues Zhao Yunlan, seemingly not too perturbed by Shen Wei’s silence. With his eyes still pinned to the floor, Shen Wei hears him stand up and slowly approach. “I’ve never wanted to make you uncomfortable. I’ve pretended not to notice things and avoided obviously touchy subjects for that reason.” He stops in front of him. There’s a rustle of a candy wrapper. “But I’m done playing dumb, Professor Shen.”
Shen Wei’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. There’s doubt ringing in that “Professor Shen”, almost like a challenge. Zhao Yunlan is so close, he’s so close to the truth, and Shen Wei needs to stop him (he thinks), he needs to stop him before it goes too far. But he still finds he cannot say a single thing. He just stands there, frozen, desperately hoping that if maybe he doesn’t engage, Zhao Yunlan will drop the whole thing and never ask The Question.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Zhao Yunlan unwrap a lollipop—oh, Shen Wei is going to lose his mind—and puts it in his mouth. He swirls it around for a minute, waiting. Shen Wei can feel his intense, coldly burning eyes boring into his face. He tries not to think about how close Zhao Yunlan is standing next to him, or that goddamn lollipop, or the fact that he is so close to breaking, to giving in, because no matter what, he has to keep it a secret.
Zhao Yunlan scoffs low when he still gets no response. “Well, from the looks of it,” he says, tilting his head—and now he’s even leaning in closer, his warm breath brushing against Shen Wei’s neck as his voice drops to a whisper, “it seems that I got played by you.”
Shen Wei’s eyes quickly move up to meet Zhao Yunlan’s, in which he briefly sees a spark of something in them. Then he catches sight of the lollipop, and his breath hitches in his throat—embarrassed, he turns his head away. “I...um…” He’s aware that he’s blinking too much and too fast, but he can’t help it when he’s floundering for a response. “I didn’t do it on purpose,” he says, trying to come up with any kind of explanation for why he, an unassuming professor, would be here at the crime scene, at a wedding he was not invited to. “It’s just—”
“—coincidence,” Zhao Yunlan interrupts, his tone flat and slightly accusing. He leans back on his heels and spreads out his arms. “That’s what you were going to say, right? That’s what you always say.”
Shen Wei stares into his face and finally sees the anger and frustration in him bubbling to the surface. He wishes he could somehow reassure him, but he knows that there’s nothing he can do now to convince him that he hasn’t been lied to and manipulated for months.
“Somehow, it’s a coincidence. Every. Time.” Zhao Yunlan puts extra emphasis on the final words. “You’re always at the crime scene. You’re always involved with the victims. You’re always there, wherever I go, wherever there’s trouble.”
Shen Wei waits for it—waits for The Question. The one Zhao Yunlan has been wanting to ask for a long time, it seems. He braces himself for it. It’s all he can do now.
“You know, Minister Gao said something funny...” Zhao Yunlan says slowly. “He told me that you were able to defeat so many all by yourself, completely alone.” He pops the lollipop out of his mouth and raises his eyebrows. “Can you explain that?”
That was...not the question Shen Wei was expecting. Perhaps he should have been; after all, it is rather suspicious for him to have been able to do so. Normally, he wouldn’t have displayed so much of his power, but his hand had been forced. Of course such a thing hadn’t gone unnoticed by this infuriatingly attractive and perceptive man.
Caught off guard, he instinctively looks away again. “I…I...” he stutters, barely audible. He forces himself to look back at Zhao Yunlan’s face and blinks a few more times. “I just...exercise regularly.”
It’s a feeble excuse and honestly half-hearted. He doesn’t know what to say anymore. He doesn’t know what he can say. Zhao Yunlan has already lost all trust in him. There’s nothing he can do to protect that anymore.
At that, Zhao Yunlan just laughs, letting his head fall back as he does. Then he sighs loud, his eyes focused on the ceiling before falling back on Shen Wei. “So you can’t even make up an excuse now.”
Shen Wei can’t meet his gaze. His hands feel sweaty; they’ve never felt sweaty before. Any moment now, he’ll ask. He’ll ask, and Shen Wei won’t be able to deny it. And then it’ll all be over. There’ll be no more of those warm smiles thrown in his direction or the light teasing of a hand brushing against his arm.
Zhao Yunlan inhales.
Shen Wei’s hands clench into fists at his side.
With a low voice and a fiery intensity in his eyes, Zhao Yunlan starts to say, “Are you actually—”
And then, out of pure panic and completely on accident, Shen Wei stops time.
For a few moments, Shen Wei just stands there as if he were frozen in time as well. His hands remain clenched, his eyes still fixed on the floor. When nothing happens, and the eeriness of timelessness becomes too loud, Shen Wei realizes what he’s done.
Still as stiff as before, he slowly lifts up his head to look at Zhao Yunlan. For the first time during this entire conversation, he finally looks at him properly. He sees the soft tiredness around his eyes, the sagging shoulders of begrudging, unwilling acceptance. He sees the lingering, aching affection now frozen in the depths of his expression.
Shen Wei looks; and then, he breaks.
The mask slips from his face, shattering at his feet, and he knows every emotion whirling within him at this moment is now clear in his expression.
What a thing it would be to witness, if anyone could.
Because it’s finally only him, suspended alone in time. There is no one there watching him and no need to pretend. Here, he is just Shen Wei, and Shen Wei is not an expressionless mask guarded with politeness or coldness—Shen Wei feels.
(Devotion and anguish and terror and longing—so much longing, so much so that it nearly kills him.)
He doesn’t even know what he’s doing until he does it; he doesn’t even think at all.
Shaking hands reach up to gently cradle Zhao Yunlan’s still face. Shen Wei inhales sharply as his fingers touch his soft skin; even just that little bit of contact is almost enough to overwhelm him. They hesitate, at first, before wrapping around Zhao Yunlan’s face more firmly. He knows how to hold this face—knows how his hands settle perfectly around it. It’s such a familiar feeling that he feels the sting of tears in the back of his eyes. Shen Wei has wanted to hold his face for so, so long. Just to feel the warmth brimming beneath his fingertips, just to feel that he’s really there.
Shen Wei spent so many years waiting for a man he began to believe might never come. This is the first time that he’s felt so sure that he’s actually here before him and not some dream he’s conjured up in his aching loneliness.
He can fully see the hurt in Zhao Yunlan’s eyes now. There’s anger there too, of course, but it almost seems like it just partly serves as a way to channel that hurt. Shen Wei hates to see that look, even more so since it’s because of him.
He lets out a shaky breath. “Yunlan,” he says, letting the name fall from his tongue, sweet and reverent. “Yunlan,” he says, warm and fond, as he rests his forehead against his. “Yunlan…Yunlan,” he says, breaking, as the name catches in his throat and burns him. His hands hold Zhao Yunlan’s face just a little more tightly, like he’s afraid he could vanish at any moment.
All sense of composure is gone as Shen Wei calls his name over and over in a broken whisper. There are a hundred wishes and apologies in them, collected within the cadence of his name. He says them all with tenderness and care, even the bitter and aching ones. He knows they’re just as important as the sweet.
And then he says the words that have been trapped beneath his tongue from the moment he met Zhao Yunlan—the ones he can never say to him, not until he’s ready.
“I love you,” he says, simply.
There is no hidden meaning to those words; it’s just the truth. But he can only say it here, where time has ceased to move. Only here, where Zhao Yunlan will never hear it.
“Do you know that?”
He brushes against the upper side of Zhao Yunlan’s cheek with his thumb.
“I love you, Yunlan.”
He closes his eyes, relishing in every point of contact that they share.
“I always have. And I always will. I’ll wait for you, I promise. I’ll wait. I’ll wait another 10,000 years if I have to so I can tell you those words properly.”
Then, Shen Wei softly presses his lips against Zhao Yunlan’s forehead. When he eventually pulls away, he smiles, and the corners of his eyes crinkle with a deep fondness.
His grasp on time is slowly beginning to slip. Soon it will be moving again, flowing onwards as it is meant to.
Shen Wei lingers for a moment more, and then his hands reluctantly fall away from Zhao Yunlan’s face and he takes a step back.
“Yunlan,” he says one final time, “I’m sorry.”
He’ll hide the truth for as long as he can.
The moment time starts again, Zhao Yunlan’s cell phone begins to ring. Zhao Yunlan’s words die on his lips, and he stares, exasperated, at Shen Wei, who won’t meet his gaze. Finally, he pulls out his phone and answers.
“What?” he snaps, moving away from Shen Wei’s side.
Shen Wei can’t help but breathe a small sigh of relief as he does. He brings his slightly trembling hands behind his back and clasps them together in an attempt to steady them. The warmth from Zhao Yunlan’s skin is still there, reminding him of all that he has to lose. He doesn’t know if the phone call will be enough to distract Zhao Yunlan, but, for once, he’s grateful not to have his eyes fixed on him.
Zhao Yunlan hangs up. Then he slowly turns around and meets Shen Wei’s gaze. The anger has faded from his eyes, leaving only a lingering look of disappointment and resignation.
And no matter how much he wants to, Shen Wei can do nothing to soothe that. He makes his face as expressionless as possible. Behind his back, he keeps his hands firmly gripped together, lest they foolishly try to reach out for Zhao Yunlan again.
In the end, Zhao Yunlan doesn’t say anything—just scoffs once and quickly leaves the room.
Shen Wei’s heart feels icy cold. Gradually, he releases his hands, letting them fall back to his side. The warmth has faded from his fingertips. Whatever was done and said in that short span of timelessness has now become nothing more than a memory that only he remembers.
He may have won another day for his secret remaining hidden, but it does not feel like a victory.
In the hallway, Zhao Yunlan stops walking the second he’s out of Shen Wei’s sight. With his eyebrows slightly furrowed, he touches the middle of his forehead. He ponders it, then lets out a heavy sigh and starts walking again.
For a brief moment, he thought he could feel the cool, ghostly brush of someone’s touch on his skin.