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Shen Wei had become far used to the quirks of living with one Zhao Yunlan. Coming home every day meant a mess to clean in some form or another, usually a pile of dirty plates in the living room or carelessly tossed laundry on the floor. Other times, it meant each of them coming home at odd hours of the day. Whether this was because of work for the SID or a late night of drinking for Zhao Yunlan, both were equally likely. More often than not, these day-to-day occurrences led to Shen Wei hunting down his boyfriend and asking why he insisted on living like a slovenly bachelor in college. But even through all the peculiar behaviors and unusual habits of his new housemate, Shen Wei never once found any of it to be unpleasant. He got to see Zhao Yunlan’s smile every day and that more than made up for it.
Not to say that Zhao Yunlan didn’t in some way contribute to their life together. He was a very thoughtful person and constantly made gestures that set a genuine smile on Shen Wei’s lips. Whether it was a bouquet of flowers sent to his office at University or a rare book appearing mysteriously on his bedside table, Zhao Yunlan always managed to give him the best gifts.
When his growing collection of books had far exceeded the amount of space available in their storage, a large box had been delivered to their building with “IKEA” and “Zhao Yunlan” stamped on the top. Zhao Yunlan had insisted on pursuing a “solo project,” and though it took him several hours longer than it would have with help, Shen Wei ended up with a new favorite bookcase.
As time went on, the occasional home improvement project or new piece of furniture was commonplace in their apartment. It was because Shen Wei had become accustomed to the spontaneous nature of his new life that he didn’t think much of it when Zhao Yunlan installed a whiteboard in their bedroom. He had come home from a long day of lectures and conferences to the sound of a low thud and a muffled “ow” from the back of the apartment. Shen Wei forewent taking off his shoes at the door in favor of running to the bedroom with his briefcase.
He entered to see Zhao Yunlan crouching in front of the empty wall next to the door, a long box laying next to him, a metal-framed whiteboard propped in his hand.
“Yunlan?”
“Oh, hi,” said Zhao Yunlan, rubbing his toe and smiling at Shen Wei sheepishly around a lollipop in his mouth. “I definitely didn’t dent the wall, it’s fine. We can still get our deposit back.”
“I was going to ask you if you were hurt,” said Shen Wei, giving him a pointed look. “Are you?”
“No, I’m fine.” Zhao Yunlan got to his feet, hands on his hips. A yellow pencil was nestled in his right hand. “I just dropped the whiteboard on my foot when I was trying to measure where to hang it. It’s not heavy, it just slipped.”
“Good.” Shen Wei’s shoulders relaxed. He watched as his boyfriend picked up the whiteboard again and placed it against the wall. He leaned into the middle to support it with his weight, eyeing the left corner closely and marking the outline with his pencil. “Did you have trouble finding the tape measure? I can get it for you to mark the measurements.”
There was a pause in which Zhao Yunlan’s pencil didn’t move. Then, he stepped away from the wall, took the whiteboard in both hands, and let it drop in his grip until he could prop it up. “Professor Shen, you’ve done it again! You saved me with that beautiful brain of yours. You astound me with your brilliance every day.”
“…You didn’t think to measure it.”
Zhao Yunlan shrugged and tucked the pencil behind his ear. Then he sauntered over to the door, taking the lollipop out of his mouth. “It was an oversight on my part. I’ll adapt your strategy at once. Also,” stopping a moment, he grabbed Shen Wei by the tie and leaned close. Then, with a smile, he said “Welcome home” and pulled him into a brief kiss.
Shen Wei smiled as Zhao Yunlan left. He could taste artificial cherry on his lips. "Why have you suddenly decided to hang a whiteboard in our room, if you don’t mind my asking.”
There was the sound of drawers opening and the cacophonous clang of metal as Zhao Yunlan rummaged through the kitchen cabinets. Shen Wei made a mental note to reorganize them later. “I thought it would be nice to have one for work and organization. That way we can work on cases at home and you have a space to draft lesson plans away from the university. It’s convenient and we’ll be twice as productive this way… Aha!”
Zhao Yunlan came striding back into the bedroom, shaking the tape measure triumphantly in one hand. His lollipop was securely between his teeth once again.
“Working from home also means we’re more likely to be in the apartment at the same time. And the more I can see that pretty face of yours, the higher my quality of life. You do care for my health and wellbeing, don’t you?”
Shen Wei laughed, a small breath that caused his eyes to drop to the floor and bounce up again. “But why in the bedroom? Wouldn’t the living room make more sense?”
Zhao Yunlan hummed, studying the tape he had pulled across the top of the whiteboard. “Respectfully, I disagree.” He turned the board on its side and measured it again. “I assure you, Professor Shen, the bedroom is the perfect place for it.”
He let the blade snap back into its case, then turned to Shen Wei with a grin. “Would you mind standing back by the bed? I need help marking the wall so I hang it level, and you have impeccable eyesight.”
Shen Wei nodded, moving to stand at the foot of the bed with his briefcase still in his hands. He watched as Zhao Yunlan stretched the tape measure against the wall, the bottom edge just slightly above his head. He repositioned it a few times until Shen Wei gave his approval, then marked the wall with the scratch of his pencil at each end.
“What are you using to hang it?”
“Industrial adhesive strips,” said Zhao Yunlan, turning the measuring tape vertically so he could mark the bottom corners too. “It might pull up the paint a bit if we take it down, but the alternative is sticker hooks and screws. I don’t want it to bang against the wall and I can’t take a drill to it without the landlady threatening to murder me again. I’d prefer repainting the wall before she ever finds out.”
The comment made Shen Wei smile to himself.
Zhao Yunlan let the tape roll up, then placed it next to the box as he sat on the floor. “This shouldn’t take me too much longer. I was thinking we could get takeout for dinner? Whatever you’re in the mood for. You can use my card, my wallet’s in my jacket.”
Takeout sounded like a good idea to Shen Wei. It would save him a trip to the store, at any rate. “I’ll call an order in, then. Where’s your jacket?”
It was truly concerning that Zhao Yunlan had to stop and think about it for a moment. Then he said, “Probably on the couch.”
Shen Wei laughed, leaving his briefcase by the door and turning into the hallway with an amused smile. “Put a coatrack on your list of furniture to buy.”
“Right away, Professor Shen.”
The following days proceeded as normal, and Shen Wei almost forgot about the whiteboard. He and Zhao Yunlan were tied into work meetings and case investigations enough that they didn’t have much time to work at home. But as the sudden surge of student papers and Dixingian cases dwindled, they found themselves relaxing at home one Saturday, enjoying a late morning in bed together. Shen Wei was on his back, Zhao Yunlan curled around him with their legs tangled together. He could feel a warm hand bunched lightly in his shirt over his heart and watched as Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder rose and fell with his steady breathing. Shen Wei ran his hand through the head of black hair at his cheek, absently staring up at the ceiling as he felt the soft strands between his fingers.
He was just starting to think that Zhao Yunlan had fallen asleep again when a voice said, rather quietly, “You know, we haven’t used that thing yet.”
Shen Wei lifted his head, looking across the room to the space of wall next to the door. “The whiteboard?”
Zhao Yunlan hummed. “Bit of a shame, really. I worked so hard to install it and it’s just sitting there, still a virgin.”
Shen Wei refused to laugh at such vulgarity, but he couldn’t suppress a smile. “I should have time to use it now that midterms are over. I can start drafting lesson plans for next semester.”
“Mm, lesson plans are a bit of a bore to start out with, don’t you think?”
Shen Wei opened his mouth to insist that his lectures were, in fact, far from boring, but Zhao Yunlan was already moving, pushing himself to the edge of the bed and standing up. He took a moment to rummage through the drawer of his bedside table and pulled out a pack of dry-erase markers with a grin. Then, turning swiftly, he went up to the whiteboard and ripped the cardboard backing from the package. Green marker in his grasp, the cap came off between his teeth and a phone appeared in his free hand, the screen lighting up his face as he consulted it. There was a moment where he didn’t move, the felt tip of his marker poised over the board as he stared at his phone. Then, he began to write, the marker squeaking quietly with each stroke he made.
Shen Wei watched in mild confusion, wondering what he was doing and why he had a reference already pulled up.
A minute later, Zhao Yunlan turned off his phone and capped the marker.
“Shen Wei,” he began. He turned back to the room, his right hand smacking the marker to the board for emphasis. “Solve this equation.”
There was a moment where Shen Wei looked at him. He briefly wondered if Zhao Yunlan had turned to narcotics in his attempt to quit smoking when he wasn’t looking. “You do realize that I’m a professor in biology.”
Zhao Yunlan grinned and walked over to the bed, tossing his phone onto the covers and pointing at him with the tip of the marker. “Come now, Professor Shen. I know you can do it. You’ve been on this Earth for ten thousand years. You must have encountered a math problem or two in your time.”
Shen Wei didn’t move at first, just continued staring at the ridiculous man he had somehow come to love. He marveled at his own ability to fall for someone so wholly and unconditionally in the short span of twelve hours some ten thousand years ago.
Zhao Yunlan’s smile didn’t leave his face. He crossed his arms, the marker now clutched against his bicep. “Humor me.”
With a sigh, Shen Wei pushed the covers back and sat up. The cuffs of his blue pajama pants dropped to his ankles as he stood, and they flapped a little as he rounded the bed.
Zhao Yunlan’s smile widened a bit, turning into something more mischievous than playful, and unfolded his right arm to offer the marker. Shen Wei took it coolly and went to the board, Zhao Yunlan taking a seat at the foot of the bed, legs crossed. He sat patiently as Shen Wei fully absorbed the problem. It was calculus, and though it had been a long time since taking the class for his degree, he recognized that he had to evaluate the limit of the equation. So, uncapping the marker, he began to solve.
The room was quiet as Shen Wei worked, the only sounds coming from the marker tip as he crossed out values and wrote down variables. He could feel Zhao Yunlan’s eyes on his back, but paid him no mind until he had written the final line of his solution. Pausing, he reviewed his work and finally circled his answer. He capped the marker and placed it in the tray at the bottom of the board, then turned back to his captivated audience. Zhao Yunlan was looking at him, something far from innocent in his dark eyes.
“Satisfied?”
Zhao Yunlan sat forward, his hands folded on his knee—he liked to sleep without pants on, just in briefs and a t-shirt—and said, rather firmly “Wow, that’s hot.”
Shen Wei was struck with a large smile, though a confused one, as he glanced at the board and back at the beautiful man sitting on his bed. “You don’t even know if that’s the right answer. Or do you have the solution on your phone too?”
Zhao Yunlan grinned. “True, I don’t. But you know the right answer and that’s very sexy of you.”
It was Shen Wei’s turn to laugh, the sound bubbling gently in his throat. “Don’t tell me this is what the whiteboard was really for.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” said Zhao Yunlan, leaning back on his hands smugly. “If you really want to know, you better be prepared to interrogate me.”
Shen Wei continued to chuckle, and Zhao Yunlan looked at him with a fond smile. “Oh, I’ve conducted my fair share of interrogations.”
“Is that a challenge? Because I won’t talk, I can promise you that.”
Still smiling, Shen Wei crossed the room, pushed himself on top of a grinning Zhao Yunlan, and kissed him.
Once Shen Wei had learned the true purpose of the whiteboard, he found himself smiling every time he looked at it. The lengths Zhao Yunlan would go just to get what he wanted were truly astounding. He was an utterly shameless man, one that had no qualms with the wide range of methods he employed, whether that be regularly buying thousands of yuan worth of gifts or making overtly lewd gestures with his lollipop in the middle of an SID briefing. But after years of denial, Shen Wei had admitted this to be a rather charming, if ridiculous, part of Zhao Yunlan’s personality.
The whiteboard became a bit of a game after the first incident. Now that the metaphorical cat was out of the bag, Zhao Yunlan wasted no time in finding every possible excuse of using it.
One day, Zhao Yunlan rather casually asked how Shen Wei’s day had been and what his lectures had been like. As he began describing the intricacies of mutation and the ways it changed the genetic code, Zhao Yunlan stopped him and said, “Forgive me, professor, but this is a bit difficult to understand. I think it would help if I had a diagram to follow along with. Would you mind moving this to the bedroom?”
Later that week, as Shen Wei was marking down their expenses and budget for the month, Zhao Yunlan had stood behind him, leaning close with his hand pressed flat on the table.
“That’s a lot of complicated math, Shen Wei,” he said, trailing his fingers slowly up and down Shen Wei’s spine. The resulting tingle made him go very still. “I wish I could help. Maybe if you taught me how to do the calculations, I could make things go a little faster.”
To make the game even more interesting, there were a few times when Zhao Yunlan himself used the whiteboard. On more than one occasion, Shen Wei walked into their bedroom to see simplistic drawings of stickmen in various erotic positions. Zhao Yunlan would then helpfully explain “I was thinking about trying something new, what do you think?”
Another time, they were laying in bed, and Zhao Yunlan was talking about a crime scene he had been to that day. He had determined that the case wasn’t Dixingian-related, so his story was focused mostly on a hotel receptionist that had tried to make a pass at him.
Laughing, Zhao Yunlan had said, “He was cute, but not my type.” Pausing, he turned to look at Shen Wei, who had closed the book he was reading in his lap to pay proper attention to the story. “Here, let me show you a diagram of what I look for in a man.”
Getting up, he hurried to the board and grabbed the green marker from the tray. Then, with exaggerated strokes, he wrote “Shen Wei” in large, bold characters. Zhao Yunlan turned with a proud grin on his face, and Shen Wei cast his gaze to the opposite side of the room with a small laugh, unable to meet his eyes. His face suddenly felt very warm.
The games dwindled down a bit as the university began holding meetings about the coming classes for next semester. Shen Wei found he had less time to be at home as his department chair came to him with new classes to teach and younger professors in need of counseling. He spent most of his time in the office attending meetings and going through his files for old syllabi. Any time he spent at home was usually absorbed by research and scouring his extensive book collection for appropriate textbook recommendations.
One afternoon, after a long day of meetings, Shen Wei came home to a quiet apartment. He could see Zhao Yunlan’s leather jacket hung on the coatrack in the foyer and his keys were in the bowl in the hall, but he had yet to see the man himself. Suspicious, Shen Wei left his shoes by the door and immediately headed to the bedroom. As he thought, Zhao Yunlan was there, but he was covering the whiteboard in red marks and crime scene photos, placing them diligently with little gray magnets.
Seeing him come in, Zhao Yunlan glanced over with a smile. “I’m glad you caught me before I left. I was hoping to see you today.”
Staring at the board, Shen Wei came to stand next to him, perplexed. “A new case?”
“Brilliant deduction, professor. Yes, we had a new case come in today. I know you’re busy with your scholarly duties, so I thought I would provide updates here so you can stay in the loop without having to come all the way to the office.”
The various photographs of a bloodied, obviously dead body and a comprehensive list of evidence and potential murder suspects brought a smile to Shen Wei’s face. “Thank you, Yunlan. That’s very kind.”
Zhao Yunlan turned and winked at him. “Anything for you, gorgeous.”
Shen Wei was about to say something, but paused, his lips slightly parted. He had caught sight of an orange sticky note in the upper right corner. In Zhao Yunlan’s scrawl, there was a message that read “Don’t look, I’m not decent.” Out of sheer curiosity, Shen Wei used a finger to lift the bottom of the paper square, and underneath was a stick figure. It seemed normal at first glance, with simple lines for the body and a circle and smiley face for the head, but what struck Shen Wei as peculiar was the third, significantly shorter line between the legs. He was familiar enough with the human anatomy to hazard a guess at what that was meant to symbolize, but he just had to ask.
“Is that—?”
“Shen Wei, if you wanted to see me naked, you could’ve just asked,” said Zhao Yunlan, smiling and flapping his hand at the wrist as if to say “oh, you.”
Shen Wei pressed his lips into a thin line. He shouldn’t have found this stunt amusing. He was a college professor at the head of a revolutionary, scientific field. By all intents and purposes, he was a very mature and sophisticated man. But the longer he stared at the crude, elementary drawing, the less he could resist the urge to smile.
“You’re more childish than most of my students.”
“I don’t hear you complaining.” Zhao Yunlan leaned to place a kiss on Shen Wei’s cheek, then walked past him toward the door. “I wanted to leave you something to remember me by while I was gone. I just came to drop that off for you and grab some food before I met Da Qing. He’s tailing a suspect.”
“Should I join you?”
“No need, Brother Black, we can survive without you. The troubled youth of China, on the other hand, cannot.” Halfway out of the room, Zhao Yunlan gave one last smile. “I’ll text you with an update later. Don’t miss me too much.”
After he was gone, Shen Wei was left alone with a whiteboard full of crime scene photos. Looking at the collage of evidence and the handwritten notes and theories, he smiled again. Shen Wei loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar, deciding to take a look at what Zhao Yunlan had compiled for him before getting back to his own work. As he stepped forward, pulling the tie from around his neck, his eye once again caught on the orange note in the corner. Unable to help himself, Shen Wei peeked at the drawing one more time, and laughed.
As the week went on, Zhao Yunlan became increasingly busy with the SID’s new case, and they were less and less likely to see each other. He insisted that it wasn’t dangerous enough to require the Black Cloak Envoy’s help, it just required a lot of grunt work, so Shen Wei continued to focus on his academic responsibilities. The fact that he didn’t need sleep was helpful in letting him plow through his work rather quickly, but he was still left with little room to help the investigation.
One afternoon, as Shen Wei was at home and Zhao Yunlan was out of the apartment hunting down a witness, Shen Wei decided to use the whiteboard for its intended purpose for once. Bringing various books and lecture notes into the bedroom, he began to draft lesson plans for his classes. A blue marker in hand, he wrote out various topics he was thinking about covering, and became engrossed in a textbook on evolutionary theory.
He almost didn’t notice when Zhao Yunlan returned home, just heard the front door open and the faint jingle of keys on porcelain. Caught in the middle of a page, Shen Wei didn’t move, just stood there so he could at least finish the paragraph and find a good place to stop.
Briefly, he caught sight of a head poking around the doorframe.
“Oh, you’re working,” whispered Zhao Yunlan, and without saying anything else, he left.
Finding this a bit peculiar, Shen Wei glanced up, but quickly went back to his book. He had just determined that the material might be a good supplemental reading for one of his higher-level courses.
Shen Wei picked up the marker again and made a quick note of it. He was in the middle of writing the title and double-checking what edition he was using when Zhao Yunlan came back into the room. He was carrying a dining room chair in one hand, his other fiddling with a lollipop in his mouth.
Seeing him place the chair a close distance from the whiteboard was enough to distract the diligent professor. The arm holding his textbook lowered and Shen Wei watched Zhao Yunlan take a seat.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, nothing. Don’t mind me,” said Zhao Yunlan, waving a hand as he leaned back. He stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles, getting comfortable. “We haven’t spent much time together recently so I just wanted to watch you work. You can pretend that I’m one of your students, if that helps.”
Shen Wei tilted his head a little, his eyebrow raised.
Zhao Yunlan looked at him innocently, smiling as the stem of his lollipop moved from one corner of his mouth to another. “Pretend I’m not even here.”
A moment passed, and a part of Shen Wei doubted that his boyfriend had brought a chair across the apartment into their bedroom with pure intentions, but he chose to ignore it. Turning back to the whiteboard, Shen Wei finished the note on his readings. “I might workshop a lecture on you, if you’re offering. Tell me if I’m explaining the concepts clearly enough.”
“I am at your disposal, Professor Shen.”
So Shen Wei began his forming lecture on molecular chemistry. It was for a new class that the university had finally signed off on, and he was hoping to use the opportunity to explain the affects Earth’s periodic table had on the ever-evolving mutations of Dixingian biology.
He became completely absorbed in the lesson. With his book still in hand, he began to pace back and forth, muttering to himself as he practiced teaching. Occasionally, he would say something and pause, rethinking his words, then make a note for himself on the board and start over again. He only knew rather vaguely that he had an audience.
“Now that I’ve gone over the basics, can you explain the ways new genes are formed? If you can at least summarize one process, that will help me gauge how I can improve the lesson. I can go over the material again if you would prefer to tell me how well you understood.”
For a second, the room was quiet. Shen Wei stood waiting, skimming through the pages of his text to make sure he had covered everything. When he received no response, he looked up.
Zhao Yunlan was still leaning back in his chair, though he wasn’t looking at the board. He had one arm over his chest, his hand tucked under the opposite elbow. The other hand rolled the stem of his lollipop between his lips.
Shen Wei turned to better face him. “Zhao Yunlan.”
The lollipop stopped moving. “Yes.”
“Are you paying attention?”
“Of course.”
Shen Wei snapped his book shut, the spine balanced in his palm. “Then what is my lecture about?”
Zhao Yunlan pulled the candy out of his mouth, gesturing with it in his hand. “You know, biology. Evolution, the food chain, photosynthesis.”
Shen Wei closed his eyes. “If you were in my class, you’d get an F.”
“Is that an F for failure or for fuck?”
He opened his eyes again.
Zhao Yunlan now had a lecherous grin on his face, the lollipop stem between his teeth. His eyes flicked down Shen Wei’s body and back up again. “Personally, I prefer the second one.”
Shen Wei turned, determined not to make eye contact. His back to the room, he placed his book in the pile on the floor and began making more notations on the board.
“Or maybe I could convince you to curve my grade?” asked Zhao Yunlan, leaning over in his chair just a little. “Do you offer extra credit? Because I’m willing to work hard for that D.”
A smile was beginning to pull at Shen Wei’s lips, though he willed it not to form. Making one last note on the whiteboard, he determined that he had done enough for the time being and capped his marker. With a measured turn, he put it back in the tray and faced his waiting admirer.
Zhao Yunlan was watching him expectantly, a sparkle in his eye. Shen Wei began to walk toward him.
“I normally don’t assign extra credit.” As he came upon the chair, he nudged Zhao Yunlan’s ankle, and he immediately uncrossed his legs and sat up. Then Shen Wei settled into his lap, one knee on either side of him, his arms loose around his neck. Zhao Yunlan’s eyes never left him. “But maybe I could, just this once.”
“Professor Shen,” Zhao Yunlan gasped, his hands resting on Shen Wei’s hips. “Taking advantage of desperate students. What a scandal.”
Shen Wei’s hand came between them, grabbing the lollipop still in his mouth. He pulled it out by the stem, catching artificial green coloring on Zhao Yunlan’s tongue before tossing the candy across the room, where it landed squarely in the trashcan in the corner.
“No eating in my classroom.”
Zhao Yunlan laughed.
Shen Wei smiled as he leaned into him. He tasted like watermelon.
As the days went by, it was easy to see that the case was taking its toll on Zhao Yunlan’s sanity. The late nights and early mornings were starting to irritate him, and he became perpetually snappy and short-tempered. When he didn’t have the energy to blow a fuse, he would trudge around half-dead, powered by nothing but spite and his pride as chief. Most times, when Shen Wei came home, he would find Zhao Yunlan passed out on the couch, his things strewn haphazardly on the coffee table. When Shen Wei found the apartment empty, he stayed up and waited until Zhao Yunlan burst through the front door, either stumbling over in his exhaustion or ranting at high volume about his job. Shen Wei would do his best to tag along and help when he could, but the Chief of the SID could never avoid the stress that came with his high-risk investigations, no matter the number of employees on hand.
One night, Shen Wei was reading in bed when Zhao Yunlan kicked their front door in. Shen Wei winced at the echoing bang, hoping that the neighbors wouldn’t report them to the landlady again.
“Fucking useless!” said Zhao Yunlan, barging into their bedroom. He immediately went for the bathroom, stripping and tossing his clothes to the floor as he went. “My employees are absolute dumbasses, every one of them. I don’t know how we’ve lasted this long without dying or the MPS terminating the department, it’s fucking ridiculous.”
“What happened?” asked Shen Wei. He watched Zhao Yunlan slap the bathroom light on before he was out of sight.
“Oh, the usual.” The showerhead cut on sharply, the glass door shuddering. “Lin Jing slacks off and sleeps in the office, Xiao Guo pisses his pants at every possible opportunity. No one respects me. And I’m supposed to be Chief but ha, no, let’s just give Chief Zhao attitude because who gives a fuck, right? And this case keeps driving us in circles and we’re all going crazy. My dad keeps giving me shit about how long we’re taking, too, that asshole. Let’s see him try to fucking do it. At least I’m getting results, you old bastard!”
Shen Wei quietly slipped out of bed and crossed the room to pick the discarded clothes off the floor. “I’m sorry, can I do anything to help?”
Zhao Yunlan sighed heavily. “No. Thanks. I just need to blow off some steam. Give me a minute.”
Shen Wei stood in the doorway, a bundle of clothes in his arms. He could see Zhao Yunlan’s silhouette through the wavy glass, hands furiously scrubbing his face in the scorching sauna he had made for himself.
“I’ll be here if you need anything.”
Zhao Yunlan waved vaguely in his direction, then proceeded to pick up and drop the shampoo bottle with a booming thud.
Shen Wei left to give him some privacy and busied himself with the laundry. He brought Zhao Yunlan’s clothes with him to the washing machine and ran a cycle. Then he went into the kitchen to boil water for tea and, after some thought, heated leftovers in case Zhao Yunlan was hungry.
He came back with a tray between his hands, but as soon as he entered the room, an angry, incoherent scream sounded from the bathroom. Frowning, Shen Wei placed his tray neatly on Zhao Yunlan’s bedside table, thinking that his usual methods of calming him wouldn’t be enough.
He paused in thought, staring absently at the doorway into the bathroom. Then, without consciously meaning to, his gaze moved across the room and found the whiteboard, where one of Zhao Yunlan’s suggestive drawings remained in full view.
He glanced at the bathroom, then at the whiteboard again.
Another echoing thud and curse came from the shower. Shen Wei walked to the whiteboard and grabbed a marker.
Zhao Yunlan came out of the shower a few minutes later, his hair dripping wet, a towel tied loosely around his waist. There was still a fair amount of tension in his shoulders, but his rage had quieted to an agitated simmer. He had stopped screaming, at any rate, and was huffing as he walked over to the dresser to rummage for clothes.
“I swear those idiots are better when you come into work,” he said, pulling out a pair of underwear and shutting the drawer loudly. “Chu, especially. He practically worships the ground you walk on and you’re not even his boss. If only paying them was enough to get them to give me at least a quarter of that kind of respect. I’m tempted to cut all of their bonuses and then we’ll see what they think about work ethic or so help me.”
“Zhao Yunlan.”
“What?” he snapped, but stopped when he realized where Shen Wei was standing.
Shen Wei was beside the whiteboard, allowing a clear view of the diagram of linked circles and symbols now displayed there. He gestured at it with the tip of his marker. “This is a polypeptide chain.”
For a moment, Zhao Yunlan didn’t say anything, and Shen Wei watched him carefully, trying to gauge if he should go on.
But then Zhao Yunlan said “Please continue” and Shen Wei turned back to the board.
“Polypeptide chains are amino acids linked together with amine bonds. Amino acids are the base units of proteins, which are an integral constituent of cell structure that play a key function in biochemical pathways, and life itself. All enzymes are proteins, without which no reactions would take place, no metabolic pathways would be possible, and life as we know it would cease to exist.”
Shen Wei fell into one of his biochemical lectures like it was muscle memory, continuing to talk about the importance of proteins and how they formed in the body. With his marker, he pointed to different parts of the diagram, explaining the symbols he had written as Zhao Yunlan took a seat at the foot of the bed, still only covered with a towel. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes.
Eventually, Shen Wei’s lecture brought him to proteins in the blood.
“Hemoglobin is made up of four polypeptide chains. Two of these are α-globin molecules, each containing one hundred and forty-one amino acids, and the other two are globins of another type—”
“Shen Wei.”
Shen Wei paused, turned expectantly. “Yes?”
Zhao Yunlan was staring at him as he pointed to the carpet at his feet, eyebrows raised. “Get over here and take your clothes off.”
For a moment, Shen Wei just looked at him. Then he turned back to the whiteboard. “I haven’t finished my lecture.”
“Shen Wei,” Zhao Yunlan said again, insistently, though he was smiling now. “Don’t make me come over there.”
Shen Wei’s lips twitched into a smile. Obediently, he capped his marker and set it down, but his movements were deliberately slow, his eyes fixed on Zhao Yunlan’s.
“You sexy bastard.”
That made Shen Wei finally break and he laughed, grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it up over his head at a reasonable speed. He tossed the garment somewhere across the room, where he all but forgot about it for the rest of the night.
It was a few weeks later when the SID finally closed its latest case. The Black Cloak Envoy made his usual appearance at the final interrogation before delivering the culprit to Dixing for sentencing. Once he had found a suitable arrangement, he returned to Haixing and asked whether he should wait at the office or not. Zhao Yunlan insisted he go home, saying it would take him a while to finish up the remaining paperwork. Shen Wei made it to the apartment alone that night, where he cooked dinner and started grading papers he was falling a bit behind on. It was finals week, and while he would have loved to stay and help the SID’s filing go a little quicker, his primary job as a university professor currently left him with little room to do much else.
It was three in the morning when Zhao Yunlan finally came home, and it was not until the front door opened that Shen Wei realized what time it was.
“I’m home,” said Zhao Yunlan, though he sounded drunk with exhaustion as he deposited his keys and clumsily shook off his jacket.
This was one of the rare times Da Qing had decided to come home with him, as Shen Wei saw a bundle of black fur perched on Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder. The cat jumped down as soon as he was inside and landed in an ungraceful tumble on the floor. Wobbling, he made his way to the far side of the living room, where a small cat bed lay waiting for him, and quite literally fell asleep in it.
“Welcome back,” said Shen Wei, watching as Zhao Yunlan trudged into the living room and stood by the couch. “It’s late, did you manage to finish your paperwork?”
“I faxed it off to the MPS before I left,” he yawned, stifling the words behind his hand as he stretched. “It’ll finish processing in a few business days.”
“Would you like to sit down for a bit?” Shen Wei gestured to the empty stretch of couch next to him.
“If I sit there, I’m going to pass out immediately.” Zhao Yunlan held out his hand, palm up. “I would like to go to bed now, if you’re not too busy.”
Shen Wei gave a soft smile and moved the file of papers from his lap to the coffee table. “I would love to.”
Taking Zhao Yunlan’s hand, Shen Wei stood from the couch and was led out of the living room. He turned out the lights in the apartment as he went.
Once they were in the bedroom, Zhao Yunlan gestured toward the bed and began to tug his clothes off. Shen Wei settled under the covers, already in his pajamas.
“Don’t you want to shower first?” he asked, but Zhao Yunlan had already thrown his shirt on the floor and was sitting at the foot of the bed in a tank top, shaking his pant leg off.
“In the morning,” he mumbled, then crawled to his usual spot and settled under the blanket.
Shen Wei shifted a little closer to him, but Zhao Yunlan was already grabbing his wrist and pulling him. Legs tangled together and arm thrown over his waist, Zhao Yunlan nestled his head into Shen Wei’s chest and sighed.
“Goodnight, Xiao Wei,” he said. Then, after placing a kiss through his shirt, just below the amber pendant on his neck, he fell asleep.
Warmth began to spread through Shen Wei’s chest, a smile on his face. With the arm not trapped between them, he brushed Zhao Yunlan’s hair behind his ear and rested his hand on his bicep. “Goodnight, Yunlan.”
The next few hours came and went in peaceful silence. The occasional sound of a passing car whirred by the window, and when the clouds allowed it, rays of moonlight crept through the blinds to speckle the room with silver.
Shen Wei remembered when nighttime had been a rather solitary part of his life. During the day, he had always been Professor Shen, a man who was dedicated to his research and his students and took pride in his work. But after the sun set, when the life he had made for himself tucked into bed, he was left to his other duties, ones that involved underworld politics and becoming someone that made the people around him tremble at the slightest twitch of his finger. Either way, he made an effort to keep the world in check, to create a life that would not crumble apart and disappear in the blink of an eye. But at night, when he was alone, surrounded by shelves of books and artifacts he had collected to fill the empty space in his apartment, he often thought about how lonely it all was.
But now, he shared his life with someone else, his shelves filled with books that had been given to him, his nights spent in a bed that wasn’t empty. He could come home to someone waiting for him, to Zhao Yunlan’s smile. And now, when he wasn’t a professor or a black cloak, he was Shen Wei, the man Zhao Yunlan loved, and that was enough. Shen Wei could lay in bed for hours, doing nothing, feeling the warmth and weight of the body next to him, and knew that he wasn’t alone anymore. He would never be alone again.
As the night drew on, Shen Wei didn’t move, didn’t even think to. He merely watched the moonlight as it cast shadows across Zhao Yunlan’s face, how it caught in his hair and eyelashes as he turned over in his sleep.
When morning came, Shen Wei briefly thought about quitting his job so he could stay in bed all day, but thought better of it. Carefully removing his arm from around Zhao Yunlan’s waist, he got out of bed and quietly dressed for work.
As he was about to leave, Shen Wei saw the whiteboard, which still had a few marks left from the last time he had used it. He glanced at the bed, where Zhao Yunlan had moved into the empty spot he had once occupied, cocooned snuggly in the covers.
Picking up the eraser, Shen Wei wiped the board thoughtfully. Then, marker in hand, he wrote:
“One of the good things about not needing sleep is that I get to see how beautiful you are in the moonlight. –Shen Wei.”
Smiling to himself, he put the cap back on and returned the marker to the tray. He placed a kiss on Zhao Yunlan’s temple before he left.
As his day went on, Shen Wei got caught up in lectures and conferences and soon forgot about the note he had left on the whiteboard. He was about to take his lunch break when he received a text from “Yunlan.” The single message soon turned into a long chain.
It read:
“I finally woke up and saw your note
“You watch me in my sleep? Wow, that’s a little creepy ;)
“Also why did you sign it? Was I going to think Da Qing wrote me that? He’d more likely claw my eyes out
“And what does this say about me during the day? Am I ugly???”
For a moment, Shen Wei stared at his phone. He was somehow taken aback by this answer, though he shouldn’t have been. He smiled, resting his head in his hands, his elbows propped on his desk. Peeking through his fingers, he read the messages through one more time and laughed quietly.
He decided to pick up his phone and reply:
“I’m taking down that whiteboard when I get home.”
The response was almost immediate:
“WAIT
“Baby wait let’s talk about this
“Shen Wei
“I’m sorry. I loved the note, it was very sweet
“Don’t be mad.”
Shen Wei laughed and went about his day as normal, giving vague replies to Zhao Yunlan’s constant stream of messages throughout the day. He laughed again when he returned home and found Zhao Yunlan barricaded in their bedroom, refusing to come out until he promised not to take the board down. He hadn’t planned to in the first place, but thought it funny that Zhao Yunlan had considered it a possibility.
As the days went on, their lives slowly began to resemble normalcy once again. Finals at Dragon City University were over and the SID had gone back to being a quiet government office. Although, now that the New Year was right around the corner, they became a bit busier in their social lives. Shen Wei was invited to a New Year’s dinner party held by his department chair and the SID was having its annual soiree.
In preparation for the coming slew of social events, Zhao Yunlan sat in his office, signing off on a few things and compiling his yearly report to the MPS before the New Year deadline. He was just leafing through their accumulated complaints of city and government property damage for the year when Lin Jing barged in.
“Haven’t you heard of knocking?” asked Zhao Yunlan, though he didn’t look up from his reading.
Lin Jing didn’t answer, just went up to his desk and dropped a folder in the stack of a dozen others. “Here’s the report on science department expenses you asked for.”
“Great. You were awake long enough to type it out, I see.”
“I don’t sleep all the time, Chief Zhao,” Lin Jing insisted.
Zhao Yunlan rolled his eyes. “And Old Chu has worn a color that isn’t black. What else is new?”
For a moment, they stared at each other. Lin Jing’s lips were pressed into a thin line, and Zhao Yunlan gave him a pointed look, his eyebrows raised.
“Do you need anything else, Chief?”
“I do, actually,” said Zhao Yunlan, smirking. “What about your other report?”
With a sigh, Lin Jing reached into the satchel at his hip and pulled out another folder. “And here’s your monthly stint of math problems.”
Zhao Yunlan took the folder and saluted him with it. “Thank you, Comrade Lin Jing. You may go.”
“Do I have to keep doing this?” he groaned. “When can I stop enabling your kinky sex practices with that professor of yours? You saw him correct some calculations on the board in my lab one time and you’ve been harassing me ever since.”
The folder’s edge was pointed directly in his face, Zhao Yunlan’s eyes glaring at him over it. “Do you want your New Year’s bonus or not?”
Lin Jing paused, continuing to make eye contact with the chief for a considerable amount of time. Finally, he took a deep breath. In, then out. “Happy New Year, Chief Zhao.”
Satisfied, Zhao Yunlan opened his desk drawer and tucked the folder inside. “Happy New Year, indeed.”
Lin Jing left soon after, and Zhao Yunlan went back to his papers, smiling to himself. He really didn’t need the math problems anymore—Shen Wei was more than capable of finding a use for the whiteboard on his own—but it was nice to have a contingency plan.
He glanced at a framed picture on his desk, a candid photo of Shen Wei smiling that Zhao Yunlan had been lucky enough to capture on his phone during lunch one day. He thought about how lucky he was to be dating such an intelligent and beautiful man. Shen Wei was one of the few things to go right in his life and he was determined to treasure him at every possible opportunity.
He also thought about his chances of getting lucky when he got home later that night, but that was an entirely different train of thought. He hadn’t started dating the man for sex, but it was certainly a nice bonus. In fact, the physically intimate part of his relationship with Shen Wei had always been rather phenomenal. It was only made better by his recent attempts at home improvement, and Shen Wei seemed to more than agree.
Installing a whiteboard in his bedroom had certainly been the most productive decision Zhao Yunlan had ever made.