Archive of Our Own

When the new case lands on Zhao Yunlan’s desk, for the first time in his life, it gets to him.

It’s just a missing person, in the way any case is just a case. A Dixingren girl, at the age of sixteen, was last seen leaving her new Haixing school. She and her mother had fled during Ye Zun’s war and found their way to a quiet two-bedroom apartment over a grocery shop about eight streets down from the SID headquarters. Zhao Yunlan takes his motorbike and finds the sobbing mother in the living room, her head buried in her hands and Guo Changcheng awkwardly patting her back and assuring her that everything will be alright.

It is not Zhao Yunlan’s first missing person case. It will certainly not even be his last. But as he paces the room and gazes at the few pictures, the scarce belongings, the torn wallpaper, the despairing mother—something twists in his stomach. He doesn’t realize what it is until he sees a pair of the teenage girl’s shoes kicked off by the door, well-worn sneakers with pink hearts drawn in marker along the bottom.

Zhao Yunlan is not a man who panics. He has faced horrible things and he has died and come back. Nothing scares him in a substantial way anymore, especially not now that the world feels mostly normal again.

But it is definitely panic crawling up the back of his throat. He looks at the embroidered pillows and the picture frames and he feels like he might choke on it. He thinks of a mother waiting in this room for her daughter forever and he can no longer stand it.

In a question of a fight, flight, or freeze response, Zhao Yunlan is mostly a fight. But in this moment, as he has in other valuable, horrible moments—he is frozen.

He has long learned how to detach himself from cases. He has been in his job a long time and seen so many awful things and faced so many evil people. Zhao Yunlan has thicker skin than this, but it doesn’t stop the pressure on his chest when he looks at this living room and thinks of another one, one with a blue rug and white curtains and stuffy, bitter air with every day that passed, every day Zhao Yunlan sat on that sofa and waited, watching the door, stomach twisting and chest hollow and his eyes stinging as he ran out of tears—

A hand comes down on his shoulder and he nearly jumps a mile. “Chief?”

Zhao Yunlan whirls around. Da Qing stares at him, eyes wide. The whole room is looking at him—Haixing police and Special Investigations alike, Chu Shuzhi’s eyebrows up, Guo Changcheng’s pen hovering over that journal he is always writing in. Zhao Yunlan blinks and feels like he is underwater. There is a brief, horrible moment where he thinks, if he opens his mouth, he might start screaming.

“Boss?” Da Qing asks again, more cautiously. He’s looking at Zhao Yunlan like he might blow. He’s looking at Zhao Yunlan like he did when Zhao Yunlan realized he was alive again, in those terrible days in the hospital where he choked on the smell of antiseptic and woke up every night screaming.

Zhao Yunlan blinks again, and the world rushes in. He realizes what they want from him and shoots them all a confident grin. He thinks he doesn’t pull it off, but he’s always had one hell of a mask. Maybe he still remembers how to wear it.

“We’re going to find her,” he tells the mother, and it’s the right thing. She sends him a shaky smile back, less confident but with a spark of hope, and he hopes it is enough. He hopes he can make this promise and mean it.

Da Qing is still looking at him sideways but Zhao Yunlan can only pretend for so long. He shoves a lollipop in his mouth and says around it, “I’ll check the school. Stay with Lao Chu and Xiao Guo and let me know if anything changes.”

For a moment, he thinks the cat is about to refuse, to ask a question Zhao Yunlan doesn’t know how to answer. And then he nods with a sigh, loyal to the very end, and Zhao Yunlan doesn’t so much as glance back at the others before he slips back out the door.

He nearly collapses down the rickety, thin stairs. He stumbles out onto the sidewalk and has to duck to the side to gag.

Zhao Yunlan is not a rookie. He has seen so much worse. No disappearance has ever bothered him before. Zhao Yunlan has never been shaken by a case, not like this.

She’s so young, he thinks, unbidden, and his mind helplessly supplies the victims he’s known, the innocent and the tragedies and the young people who have never gone back home. He thinks of the funerals and the way it felt to realize his mother was never coming back.

He slings one leg over his motorbike and starts it with shaking hands. He revs the engine and takes off fast down the road, too fast, fast enough he knows Shen Wei is going to yell at him if he finds out.

He makes it to the high school and goes another mile before he circles back.

~*~*~*~*~*~

After the lantern, when Shen Wei was weak and Zhao Yunlan’s life hung in the balance between here and the afterlife, he’d been taken to a hospital. It had been the best choice—he was still Haixingren and, if he took a turn for the worse, he wouldn’t have to rely on Shen Wei to stubbornly drag him back into the land of the living. Shen Wei had hated it but he’d found many excuses himself to curl up in the extra bed, or the chair, or the bench just outside of the room. In those first days, Shen Wei had never been far, and it had been a balm.

The doctors had been kind, if overwhelmed. Learning about Dixing had been an uproar and, by the time Zhao Yunlan was half-dragged limping through the front doors, they knew his face. They also knew Chu Shuzhi’s, who had been one of the people dragging him, and Zhao Yunlan distinctly remembered one of the nurses brandishing a stapler and threatening to call the police on him.

Zhao Yunlan doesn’t like to think of those days for a lot of reasons, and he had been unconscious for a good deal of the first and second. But on the third, he will never forget the doctor who sat at the chair beside his bed with a patient, sympathetic smile. He can still remember the exact cadence of her voice when she asked, calmly, if he would like to talk about his trauma with her.

He’d been surprised, comically so. He remembered a startled pause before he’d let out a bark of a laugh, only to realize that she was still waiting.

“I’m fine,” he’d told her, only a little impatiently. He was Lord Guardian, after all—he’d made it through to the other side and the war was over. What did it matter how he felt about it?

“It doesn’t have to be now,” she answered like she’d expected as much, and she had made a point of leaving her business card on his bedside table. “We all process things at a different rate, Chief Zhao. None of it is the wrong way—it’s just the way it is. And if you ever want to talk about it, I’m one of many options. Alright?”

He’d told her he would think about it, and tossed the business card in the bin an hour later.

He remembers his grade school teacher calling his father in after his mother died and asking if Zhao Yunlan has been to see a therapist. Zhao Yunlan remembers sitting in his chair, thinking he’d done something wrong, his father’s face flat in the seat next to him. He’d liked his teacher a lot but he had hated that conversation, feeling as if it was another failure of his to never be the son his father wanted.

He remembers his father telling her that children are resilient. Zhao Yunlan will be alright—it just takes some time to get there sometimes.

Zhao Yunlan remembered that, for the rest of the year, she used to sneak extra sweets into his cubby. He learned that was kindness, but he never bothered to tell the man who would have called it weakness.

Zhao Yunlan is not traumatized. He has come a long way from being the boy whose mother died. Zhao Yunlan is made of stronger stuff, forged out of the man his father wanted him to be and the man Zhao Yunlan became despite and because of him.

He has many scars. He refuses to let Ye Zun become one of them.

Zhao Yunlan doesn’t have to like the memory of Shen Wei getting devoured, or the heat of the lantern as it burned his life force away. He doesn’t have to cherish the memory of begging Ye Zun to kill him rather than living in a world without Shen Wei.

But Shen Wei didn’t die, and Zhao Yunlan didn’t die. Not all the way. Everyone lived happily ever after in this strange little story they made for themselves.

That’s the thing—everyone survived. It should feel like a success. Zhao Yunlan cannot fathom having to learn to live with the best possible outcome.

And yet.

And yet, they didn’t all survive, did they? When he first saw the projected body count, mostly civilians, Zhao Yunlan had nearly been sick. So much death, so many funerals. Zhao Yunlan tried to go to the cemetery in the early days and had to leave quickly when he saw hundreds of patches of freshly settled grave dirt.

He survived, but he didn’t. Shen Wei survived, but he didn’t. They’re alive because of a snafu of energy imbalance, a blip in the radar of extraterrestrial weirdness. Spooky action over a distance.

It is surreal to wake in the aftermath and know he should be dead. To know he was.

Zhao Yunlan is alive. That should be enough.

It isn’t.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He questions the teachers, the students. Lan Shu has no shortage of friends with good things to say, classmates who have welcomed her with kindness. Her teachers tell Zhao Yunlan she is a studious, lively girl. She sings in the school choir and talks often of her mother.

Da Qing shows up thirty minutes after him and Zhao Yunlan greets him with a roll of his eyes, but a part of him is pleased to have the company. The static under his skin hasn’t gone quiet yet but the cat brings a familiarity that helps calm it. Within minutes, it’s a little easier to breathe.

By the time they’ve run out of people to talk to, the sky is cooling. Zhao Yunlan leans against a pillar and watches the first touches of the sunset sink into the blue, rolling a lollipop between his teeth.

Da Qing slouches up next to him and sprawls on the ground as he says, “It’s a dead end.”

“She’s a normal young girl,” Zhao Yunlan verifies, except she isn’t. Normal people rarely go missing.

“Do you think they know she’s Dixingren?” the cat asks, peering up at him. Even though they’re not a secret anymore, the distrust and newness still lingers. A tentative welcome, rather than a warm one.

“No,” he says. “Some of her friends might, but not all.”

“Maybe her powers came through and it freaked her out,” the cat suggests, eyes closed and head turned into the sunlight. “It would probably feel life-ending to a girl who just wants to fit in.”

“Her and her mother seem to have a solid relationship,” Zhao Yunlan counters. “She would’ve gone to her, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. But kids don’t always confide in their parents, even when they trust them.”

Zhao Yunlan starts to respond before he notices the figure out of the corner of his eye, hovering uncertainly a handful of paces away. A young girl, one of Lan Shu’s many friends. A Yashou—Da Qing had identified the crow from several paces away, and once she’d seen Zhao Yunlan, she’d been forthcoming about it. There are many kinds of refugees in war.

“Fang Mei,” he greets, and she scuttles forward a few more uncertain steps. She has feathers braided into her hair, and they dance as the wind catches them.

“Lord Guardian,” she greets softly, eyes skittering to Da Qing. She goes to take another step, and then pulls away, shifting her weight onto the heels of her feet instead. “I just—there’s something I didn’t want to say. In front of the others.”

Zhao Yunlan raises his eyebrows. She hesitates only another moment before she takes a deep breath and steadies herself.

“Lan Shu met a boy,” she admits and Da Qing, from the ground, groans.

“It’s always a boy,” the cat sighs. “Haixingren?” 

She nods.

“Do you know his name?” Zhao Yunlan asks.

“No,” she says, “but she’s mentioned he’s a student at the university. I was nervous that he was so much older than her, getting her to sneak out and taking her to clubs and things, and we had a fight about it. She said she was just trying to have fun. She wants so badly to fit in.”

Zhao Yunlan had long guessed that—he had recognized the way people smiled when he mentioned her, how they worried but not too much, how they knew things about her but not a lot. At her age, he’d also found an escape in being the most liked person in a crowd. It had felt a little less lonely to know everyone knew his name, even if they hadn’t known much else about him.

He glances at Da Qing, who glances right back. The cat sends a quick message to the others as Zhao Yunlan tells her, “If you think of anything else, call me. Anything you remember might help us find her faster.”

“She told me she went to this club with him, once,” Fang Mei replies. “The Divide. I think it’s by the university.”

“That’s really helpful,” he tells her, and means it. “You’re a very good friend.”

“She hasn’t always wanted me to be,” Fang Mei responds, a little bitterly, but she smiles before she ducks away, her backpack thumping between her shoulders. Zhao Yunlan watches her lope toward the gates and turns away when Da Qing finally rises, brushing dirt off of his overalls.

“Guess you get a Professor Shen detour after all,” Da Qing comments, nudging him with an elbow and wagging his eyebrows suggestively. Zhao Yunlan slaps him upside the head, and Da Qing squawks in outrage.

“We’re on a case,” Zhao Yunlan replies, but he can’t deny the grin that crawls over his face. Stopping in unexpectedly to see Shen Wei is one of his favorite hobbies, and it’s only gotten better since Shen Wei lifted his office kissing ban. “And you are not invited.”

Da Qing boos him very loudly, and Zhao Yunlan makes a show of making a series of lewd gestures until the cat starts fake gagging instead. His useless deputy shoots him a disgusted look, but Zhao Yunlan has long seen the contentment in the cat since the moment Shen Wei had moved into Zhao Yunlan’s apartment. 

Even the cat can see it’s better now.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Zhao Yunlan posts up outside Shen Wei’s classroom and ducks in when the first of the students trickle out after the bell. Some of them recognize him, either as his title or as Shen Wei’s, and they head for the door when they spot him. Zhao Yunlan grins as he crosses the room, eyes on one person only.

Shen Wei doesn’t notice him at first. It’s rare for Zhao Yunlan to get the drop on him but Shen Wei is focused on the conversation he’s having with Jiajia about her thesis, dropping names of concepts and studies that go in one of Zhao Yunlan’s ears and directly out the other. He leans against a desk in the front row and watches Jiajia frantically note them down, Shen Wei so comfortable in his skin, and feels the goofy grin on his face.

It takes only another moment before Shen Wei looks up, sensing him. He sees Zhao Yunlan and smiles the way Shen Wei only ever smiles with him—open and sweet, loving in a way Zhao Yunlan has never before been loved. 

Jiajia quickly packs up her books and makes her excuses. She shoots Zhao Yunlan a smile before she slips through the door and leaves them alone, the lecture hall cavernous and calm with only two beating hearts.

“Yunlan,” Shen Wei greets, moving around his desk. “What are you doing here?”

“Stopped by to say hi,” Zhao Yunlan says and opens his arms. Shen Wei wastes no time in stepping into them, burying his head in Zhao Yunlan’s shoulder as they cling to each other. “How was class?”

“They’re my brightest,” Shen Wei answers, hands dipping under Zhao Yunlan’s shirt so his fingertips can dance along his bare skin. Zhao Yunlan bites back a shiver, burying his face in Shen Wei’s hair and breathing in the smell of his fancy shampoo, digging his fingertips into the hair at the nape of his neck.

They stand like that for a few precious, stolen moments before Shen Wei finally murmurs, softly, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Zhao Yunlan says, but adds, “There’s a new case. A missing teenage girl. Dixingren. She might’ve been dating a student at the university but otherwise there’s no leads.”

Shen Wei pulls back a little further, his brow furrowed adorably as he thinks deeply. It’s partly his problem too, Zhao Yunlan reminds himself—Shen Wei burdens himself with the welfare of Dixingren in the same way Zhao Yunlan holds Haixing on his shoulders. They’re a self-sacrificial pair, he thinks for not the first time, his stomach roiling at the reminder of what exactly they are both willing to give for their respective peoples.

He runs a hand down Shen Wei’s spine and murmurs, “You don’t need to worry about it.”

He knows Shen Wei will anyway, and it’s one of the many things he loves about the man. Shen Wei has so many times likened himself to a monstrous being but he is selfless and caring and kind. 

Shen Wei shifts to look up at him, big brown eyes and the slight tilt of his head, reading something on Zhao Yunlan’s face as if he can peel back the layers and see all the way into the depths of his soul. Shen Wei’s hands move until he’s holding onto Zhao Yunlan’s forearms like he thinks he’s going to make a run for it.

Quietly, so quiet Zhao Yunlan barely hears it over the buzz of the lights in the room, Shen Wei whispers, “What’s wrong?”

Zhao Yunlan knows his thoughts can be easy to read on his face. He has used it to his advantage more than once, playing into what people expect or want or need from him. He’s unlearned some of his worst habits, has long taught himself how to keep some things deeply packed away, but he hasn’t had to hide from Shen Wei in a long time. In the aftermath, after grief had merged with a horrifically sharp relief, Zhao Yunlan had known that there was no part of him that Shen Wei would not cherish and protect. If there is one person he can trust with the vulnerable pieces in his chest, it is Shen Wei.

He thinks that’s why it feels sharper than expected when he realizes Shen Wei sees this, too.

He swallows hard, that familiar bubble of panic too tight in his chest. He knows he doesn’t have to hide from Shen Wei but he wishes he could. He doesn’t know yet how to admit to this particular weakness.

His eyes dart toward the clock and find an escape route, and he knows he lays it on far too thick when he sighs, “Ah, Shen Wei, look—your next class should be here any moment.”

Shen Wei doesn’t look toward the clock, frown biting deeper into his face. Zhao Yunlan reaches out and touches the place his lips downturn and half-heartedly tries to force it up into a smile. Shen Wei huffs and rolls his eyes, and maybe it works for just a moment but then Shen Wei is looking at him again, dissecting the little mysteries in Zhao Yunlan’s most winning plastic smile.

Shen Wei has enough burdens, he reminds himself. It is not this man’s duty to shoulder all of Zhao Yunlan’s too.

Zhao Yunlan cups Shen Wei’s face and kisses his forehead, and he smiles in response to the heavy sigh that cuts between them. He steps away and Shen Wei watches him go, fixing his face into a reassuring smile, but Zhao Yunlan is better at reading him too and there is no mistaking the worry creasing the corners of his eyes.

When he sweeps from the room, it feels a bit like fleeing. Zhao Yunlan decides not to think too hard about it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The Divide is, as it turns out, a dive. Zhao Yunlan can tell just by looking at it that it’s meant for the young demographic of the new college students, a short walk away from campus, a nightclub only in that it clearly only opens at night and might occasionally have live music. Zhao Yunlan can hear and feel his shoes sticking to every single step he takes on the floors, the faint smell of tequila clinging to the walls.

The owner-slash-bartender, a man about Zhao Yunlan’s age named Meng Ran, lets him in and, once he hears Zhao Yunlan’s name and department, folds like a house of cards. 

“There are a lot of refugees trying to find their way through the city,” the Dixingren explains, nervously wiping at glasses on the counter like Zhao Yunlan is also a health inspector. “It was a weird couple of months before and after, and some people figured they’d rather take their chances above ground. But they, ah—they didn’t all have the papers.”

Zhao Yunlan waves a hand dismissively. “I don’t care if they’re here as long as no one is starting trouble. That paperwork is a whole lot of bullshit, anyway.”

The Dixingren looks so comically blown away that Zhao Yunlan is, for a moment, almost offended. And then the man’s shoulders relax like he’s been holding his breath, and he slumps against the counter.

Zhao Yunlan hops onto one of the barstools and leans onto the bar across from Meng Ran and tries again. “Look, I don’t mind whatever you’re doing here. If it’s not hurting anyone, then it’s none of my business. You have to help your people—you need that kind of community stuff when things feel this dicy, right?”

Meng Ran nods back but he’s still a little pale, relieved but not letting his guard all the way down. “If not for that, Lord Guardian, then why are you here?”

Zhao Yunlan slides Lan Shu’s picture across the bar and asks, “Have you ever seen her before?”

Meng Ran starts to shake his head, and then reconsiders, studying the picture. He finally admits, “I think I have—is she in trouble?”

“She’s missing,” Zhao Yunlan tells him, and there—the rest of the suspicion leaks out of him. “She’s sixteen and her mother is looking for her. She hasn’t been seen for about three days. Apparently she’s been here at least once before.”

“She does look familiar,” Meng Ran says, sliding the photo back. “I’m not completely sure but, if it’s the same girl I’m thinking of, she comes in with a regular, one of the boys from the university. Haixingren.”

“Describe him.”

Meng Ran does, without hesitation. Dark hair, a little on the long side. A little taller than Zhao Yunlan but lankier. Either nineteen or twenty years old. He usually comes in with a group of boys, possibly a club or team, but recently he’s been bringing a girl with him. Ever since, his friends have jokingly called him “lover boy”.

Zhao Yunlan fires the information off to the rest of his team. He thanks the man and turns to leave, but he only makes it two sticky steps before the man calls him back. Zhao Yunlan glances back.

The man is wringing his hands nervously but says, with unexpected determination, “We could use the ally, Lord Guardian. It’s never been easy for us, but I don’t think it’s getting much better. Not lately, at least.”

Zhao Yunlan nods slowly. A part of him wants to ask how much he has to give until the universe is convinced he has given enough. A part of him wants to say there isn’t much left of him to give. But he knows it’s not true, knows he’s a soldier and the aftermath is just another kind of battle, and, while he’s unwilling to give Meng Ran a promise, he shoots him a grin and a salute.

It’s not enough. But one battle is enough, and right now, Zhao Yunlan thinks that is the best he can do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lin Jing gets to work with the little information provided and decides to start with surveillance videos with Cang Bo, settling in for a very long night. Zhao Yunlan lets them do what they must and, restless with the impatience of no more leads to chase and at the nagging behest of Da Qing and Zhu Hong, he leaves the office early for once.

It’s too greedy to stop by the university for the second time in one day, and Shen Wei has class and office hours for the next few hours. Zhao Yunlan knows cases come with an ebb and a flow but he has always hated the lulls the most. It always feels like there is something more he could be doing, that waiting is a waste of time. He feels it worse for this case and he refuses to think of why.

Instead, he takes a detour through the winding neighborhood streets around the university side of town, suburbs hidden behind strategic trees to block the noise of the main roads. Zhao Yunlan had grown up in the outskirts of the city but he’s always found it fascinating how people hide their serenity just off of the beaten, well-worn paths. One wrong turn removed from the action.

The neighborhoods are calm and quiet. It is early enough that some people are only just getting out of work, the houses sitting empty, few cars parked in short drives or at the curbs. Zhao Yunlan’s motorbike is practically deafening, the sound bouncing and echoing through the spaces between buildings.

Zhao Yunlan follows the streets for a long time, desperate to shake that panicky feeling in his chest. He passes small green spaces and parks. He passes community gardens and thinks of Shen Wei and the ways he would love to make something of his own in the dirt of this place that matters so much to him.

He isn’t sure where he’s ended up until he sees the sign, and he drives another three houses before he decides to double back. He shuts off the bike and kicks down the stand, yanking off his helmet as he squints at the For Sale sign in the small front yard.

The house is understated, not too big and not too small. It’s painted a soft white that isn’t blinding, even with the sun out. Zhao Yunlan shoves a lollipop in his mouth and hesitates there on his bike, squinting at the steeple of the roof and the tidy rain gutters.

A quiet, uncertain voice in his head whispers that it wouldn’t hurt to look. Why not? He’s already here. And without another thought, Zhao Yunlan swings off of the bike.

He paces around the outside, through the grass that needs to be mowed. He peaks into a few of the windows and into the open, empty inside—large, spacious. A lot of windows, Zhao Yunlan thinks, noting that they would need plenty of curtains if they didn’t want to put on a show for the neighborhood. It’s got two stories and a backyard plenty big enough for a garden. There’s a tree on the back corner of the property Zhao Yunlan can already imagine the fat cat will try to climb, and he thinks the leaves would paint the yard with beautiful colors when the weather finally cools down.

This is a new feeling settling into his chest. Zhao Yunlan thinks it’s a little terrifying, but he thinks he likes it. He thinks looking forward feels a lot better than looking back.

Once, Zhao Yunlan would have clammed up at the thought of his future. He’d thought he had everything he needed—a roof over his head, food in the fridge sometimes, friends who had his back. Zhao Yunlan’s idea of a future had looked very different before Shen Wei had crashed into his life.

He hasn’t let himself think of a future for a long time. It hadn’t felt like there was a point—right when he thought he was ready for something new, everything began to go wrong. The world was ending and death was chasing at his heels and what had the point been to think of a future he might not even live to see?

After the war, it had been about surviving the aftermath. The present had enough problems to solve and Zhao Yunlan and his team were the select few who could solve a great deal of those problems. There had not been time to wonder. He had hit the ground running once he had recovered and Zhao Yunlan hasn’t really slowed down ever since.

Zhao Yunlan thought the future should feel daunting, but all he feels is relief. Like a breath he’s been holding that he can finally let go.

He can finally imagine a future with Shen Wei.

He can imagine moving from the apartment and into a place with a little more space for them to grow. He lets himself think of getting off of work and going home to Shen Wei grading papers at the table, looking up with a gummy grin when Zhao Yunlan walks through the door. He thinks of impossible things that feel closer than ever, things like golden rings, and his head spins at every path that opens at his feet.

It doesn’t have to be this home, but Zhao Yunlan thinks it would be a nice one. He knows which room Shen Wei would pick for his office and he knows what color he would want to paint the kitchen cabinets. He knows where he would park his motorbike and he knows the exact window the cat would sleep in.

It’s limitless. It’s more than he could have ever thought he deserved. Zhao Yunlan swallows hard against the onslaught and refuses to cry over something as ridiculous as a hazy possibility. 

Zhao Yunlan hasn’t had a home in a long time, not like this. He hasn’t known a peace so sweet since before his mother died.

He’d once hated the thought of settling down, of routine. But he was older now, and perhaps even a little wiser. His bones ache and he’s faced death too many times for how young he still is. He is tired in ways he wasn’t two or three years ago.

Zhao Yunlan had not realized how fucking tired he is.

He puts his head in his hands and tries to breathe through it. It’s too much, he thinks, staring down the barrel of a life he wants so desperately. It’s his for the taking, if he is willing to be brave.

He has never asked Shen Wei what he wants. He wonders if he would even know. Their lives have been so irregular that he doesn’t even know those simple things about the person he will love forever. Zhao Yunlan wonders how it took him so long to ask. He wonders why there’s a part of himself that still sees time as so horribly limited.

He doesn’t need this exact future, he thinks. But he wants it with a deep, howling yearning in his chest. He wants the peace of a lovely future more than he can breathe. He wants to wake up in a home he has built for himself and the people he loves most in the world.

He wants to put down roots. He wants forever. Zhao Yunlan has never wanted forever before.

When he can finally control the wild ache in his chest, Zhao Yunlan takes a flier from the box on the porch of this quiet home. Why not? It’s just research, he convinces himself. He can’t know what he wants unless he sees some of it for himself. He can’t grab for a future unless he knows the exact shape of it under his hands.

~*~*~*~*~*~

In the morning, there is a lead.

The student’s name is Tao Lian, a nineteen year old native to Dragon City. Chu Shuzhi and Guo Changcheng can’t find a trace of him, but they do track down his brother, older, who’s a fellow student at the university. Zhao Yunlan shows up as quickly as possible and finds them in an empty classroom in the Classics building.

Tao Hai is practically cowering under Chu Shuzhi’s stare, and he goes even paler when Zhao Yunlan strides in. He shrinks back when Zhao Yunlan sits down a table away, taking great care to obnoxiously scrape the chair across the linoleum floor, and he pops a lollipop in his mouth as he sits backward in the seat, laying his arms lazily along the back.

“Talk,” he tells Tao Hai, who does.

He’s two years older than his brother. He knows Lan Shu, and he knew she was younger but not how much younger. His brother gets good grades and never acts up. Tao Hai realized he was missing this morning and called Haixing police and was very surprised when it was Special Investigations who crashed through his door instead. He apparently had no idea Lan Shu is Dixingren, though he doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“My brother is a dipshit,” Tao Hai tells Zhao Yunlan with the fond sincerity only a sibling can channel, “but he’s not a bad guy, just a meathead. I really don’t know why they’d run away. Lan Shu is a sweet girl.”

“Why do you think they’d run away together?”

Tao Hai shakes his head but admits, “Knowing my brother, he probably thinks he’s doing this to help her. He’s got a big heart but he doesn’t always know how to use it.”

“Would your brother hurt her?” Chu Shuzhi demands, and Tao Hai gapes at him.

“No!” he cries, and then clears his throat when Chu Shuzhi narrows his eyes at him. “No, no, I don’t think—no. I’m sure this is some weird misunderstanding. I hope it is.”

Zhao Yunlan rubs the ache in his forehead and asks, “Do you know anywhere they could have gone?”

Tao Hai thinks about it and, eventually, prattles off a list of places—spots his brother likes, nature parks they’ve camped in, date favorites of Tao Lian’s and Lan Shu’s. Zhao Yunlan feels his eye twitch with every addition to the endless list, already delegating all of the hiking trails to literally anyone other than him.

He leaves Chu Shuzhi to ask follow up questions and sends Guo Changcheng and his diligent list ahead to SID to rally the others. Zhao Yunlan texts Shen Wei’s new-ish cell phone to tell him he’s gonna be home late tonight, and leaves him a voice message on his work phone with the same message just in case. 

He pops three painkillers for his headache and, if he pointlessly swings past the science building on his way off campus, that’s for him to know. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

They’re all a bust.

Zhao Yunlan’s team crawls through every damn corner of the city but there’s nothing to be found. They visit every place on Tao Hai’s list and throw in a couple other local haunts and neighborhoods for good measure, all for nothing. There’s no sign of either of the missing teens by the end of the day, and Zhao Yunlan is feeling increasingly like he would like to take a baseball bat to the nearest window.

He leaves Da Qing in charge and ducks out just before midnight. When he finally makes it through the door of his apartment, he’s surprised to find the lights on, but something warm moves in his chest when he sees Shen Wei blinking sleepily up at him from the sofa, still in his fancy vest and glasses.

“Did you find her?” Shen Wei asks sleepily, voice rough. 

Zhao Yunlan is so charmed that he’s not even that mad anymore when he crosses the room, pushing his fingers into Shen Wei’s hair, and murmurs, “No. Come to bed, Xiao Wei.”

Shen Wei is sleepy and pliant, letting Zhao Yunlan take care of him for once. He lets Zhao Yunlan strip him of his clothes, placing gentle kisses on the skin exposed by his ministrations. He rubs his hands obnoxiously through Shen Wei’s hair and smirks when he glares at him without any fire, too soft to what Shen Wei looks like when he’s rumpled. Shen Wei lets Zhao Yunlan deposit him into bed tucked into soft pajamas and watches as he follows suit, pausing only to turn the light out before climbing in around Shen Wei, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him into his chest.

There is a soft domesticity in doing sweet things again and again. Zhao Yunlan doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of going to bed with Shen Wei.

Shen Wei snuggles into Zhao Yunlan’s chest and tangles his hands in his sleep shirt with a pleased hum. Zhao Yunlan presses a kiss to the top of his head and then his forehead, holding him close.

Like last night, Shen Wei seems to know Zhao Yunlan is bothered. But, like last night, he isn’t forcing him to talk about it. He’s simply giving Zhao Yunlan the space to settle with it, loving him all the while and being loved in return. He knows Shen Wei would never want to be thanked for loving him but Zhao Yunlan almost wants to thank him anyway.

The room is dark and cool. The night is peaceful and calm. Zhao Yunlan thinks he can almost see the stars. Shen Wei waits, soft and sleepy, without judgment and with all the patience in the world, and Zhao Yunlan loves him.

So he whispers, cautiously, “Have you ever thought of the future?”

It’s not what Shen Wei expected, if his hum of surprise is any indication. Shen Wei rests his forehead against Zhao Yunlan’s chest and really thinks about it for a long moment before he finally looks up again, rumpled and sleepy and with those sweet, wide eyes Zhao Yunlan will never get enough of.

“Sometimes,” he admits quietly. “Why?”

“I’ve just—I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it.”

Shen Wei tries to hide his smile and fails—it creases around his eyes, fond and adoring and everything Zhao Yunlan has to remind himself he doesn’t have to deserve. “What exactly have you been thinking about?”

“All of it,” Zhao Yunlan admits and then, because he doesn’t know if Shen Wei knows what that means, he adds, “A house, maybe. Something close to the university with a backyard and a quiet street. A place just for us.”

“I’d like that,” Shen Wei tells him quietly, earnestly. “With a den for my books.”

“A bigger kitchen,” Zhao Yunlan agrees and, because he can’t take anything fully seriously, he jokingly adds, “And a bedroom door would be nice.”

Shen Wei snorts a laugh and rolls his eyes. He gazes up at Zhao Yunlan with a smile like he’s handing him the world in his hands, as if he’s done something more spectacular than look ahead. But maybe that is something to be excited about, Zhao Yunlan thinks, aching. Maybe Shen Wei has been waiting for permission to dream bigger. Maybe he’s been waiting until Zhao Yunlan caught up to him, the same way he waited thousands and thousands of years.

Even still, there is an aching doubt in his chest, a creaky and rusty thing, so he asks softly, “Is that something you want?”

“Yes,” Shen Wei says softly. “I want it all with you.”

Zhao Yunlan has cried enough for the past few days and he doesn’t have the tears to spare for a good moment, so he simply tucks Shen Wei’s head into his chest and runs his fingertips along the warm skin of his back, wondering if Shen Wei can hear the pounding of his heart.

They lie there together for long enough Zhao Yunlan thinks Shen Wei might have dropped back into sleep, long enough that he is warm and tired and feeling raw and real, and he is safe and loved and maybe that is why he whispers near-silently, as if the universe will hear him, “This case reminds me of my mom.”

Shen Wei is not asleep, as it turns out. He pulls away only enough to angle himself up to see Zhao Yunlan’s face through the darkness, his hand on Zhao Yunlan’s aching chest. He presses a soft kiss to Zhao Yunlan’s jaw, and it’s nearly enough to shatter him completely.

“I think it’s the way her mom is waiting for her to come home,” Zhao Yunlan admits softly and all at once, like he can’t keep it in anymore, as if this is the thing that is spilling out over the edges. “It reminds me of how it felt like to wait for my mom after she died, even when I knew she wouldn’t come back, and it makes me feel like a failure for not bringing her daughter home faster, even if I know these things can’t be rushed. I don’t want that mother to wait like I waited.”

Neither of them mention that this is not the first case Zhao Yunlan has had with a loved one waiting for someone to come home. They do not mention how, in many of those cases, there is no one to come home at all. 

Shen Wei doesn’t try to reassure him with empty things. He doesn’t try to tell him everything will work out because he too knows that it doesn’t always have a happy ending. But Shen Wei holds him tight, burying his head in Zhao Yunlan’s chest and stays there, safe and sound, and it’s enough.

Shen Wei falls asleep first. Zhao Yunlan spends a few more hours awake—but, this time, he spends most of it thinking about the future. He thinks that’s an improvement.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The trail goes cold and Zhao Yunlan feels it like acid eating away at his ribcage. 

He storms through the doors of SID and lets them slam into the walls. It’s a hazy dusk, the day drained away with false leads and dead ends. People rarely disappear because they want to be found, but it tastes sour like rage to know that two teenagers keep slipping between their fingers.

He stomps into the alleyway and kicks a trash bin as hard as he can, sending it toppling over. He looks around for anything else to hit but it’s only brick walls and, even then, his fists itch. He curls his hand tighter and swallows hard, holding his eyes closed so hard that black spots dance in his vision.

Shen Wei would kill him if he came home with broken fingers and busted knuckles from no one’s fault but his own. But there is a horrible clattering in his chest. That feeling dangerously like panic is back and Zhao Yunlan thinks he would like to outrace it to the ends of the world and back.

He sits down instead, past the dented bin and the mess he created, sliding down the bricks until they scrape at the small of his back. He puts his hands over his face as if that can block out the world, his quick breaths trapped behind his fingers.

It doesn’t even make sense. It has never made sense, really. Zhao Yunlan has worked dozens if not a hundred cases since the war—so why is this the one that lingers? Why does this one leave a sour taste, when he’s worked a million just like it?

He tips his head back and squints up at the twilight sky. Sunsets have always reminded him of Shen Wei, perhaps only because Zhao Yunlan isn’t known for getting up for the sunrise, but he thinks it works better this way—the bleeds of reds and oranges splashed across the sky, the nighttime creeping at the edges of the world. Darkness in the wings.

He slams his head back against the wall once. Twice.

He hears the footsteps and doesn’t bother to turn to greet them, not in the mood for company. He has a few guesses as to who would be stubborn enough to follow him out here, but there’s still a flash of surprise when he turns to find Zhu Hong sidestepping the wreckage, her arms crossed tight over her chest.

She stalks around the destruction and sits down primly at his side, far enough to give him some room to breathe but close enough that he can hear her breathing. He keeps his head tilted up to the sky but he closes his eyes like that will be enough to shut her out.

They sit for a moment in a crushing, strange silence. 

Of all people, Zhao Yunlan has the fuzziest relationship with Zhu Hong. She had wanted to be everything he wanted without realizing she never could be, blinded by her determination to love him in a way he didn’t want to be loved. He had done his best to sidestep those intentions but he played it too delicately, and in the end she was left with hurt feelings. Zhao Yunlan has always cared for her but never in the way she wanted.

In the year since the war, she’s pulled back from her duties at the SID due to her duty to the clans, and he thinks it’s a better look for her. She’s calmer now, more confident. She no longer walks softly. She commands a room with effortlessness that can only come from finding comfort in her own skin, and he thinks it suits her better than playing for his heart ever did.

They don’t usually talk about anything important. Zhao Yunlan is all too aware of what went down, and he has been trying to give her space. Zhu Hong has been busy balancing the new aspects of her life, and Zhao Yunlan had never been her confidant, anyway.

She sighs, but Zhao Yunlan doesn’t open his eyes. Her voice is softer than he expects when she asks, “What’s this about, boss?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how to, anyway. Zhao Yunlan’s not a stranger to lashing out in anger but he doesn’t know why it feels uncontrollable this time. 

She waits but, when no answer is forthcoming, she lets it go. That’s new about Zhu Hong, too—she’s learned how to live with silence, with no answers. Zhao Yunlan thinks they have all grown in unexpected ways since the war.

“What do you need me to do?” she asks him quietly. “Should I call Professor Shen?”

“No,” he replies a little too harshly. It cuts sharply through the alleyway, echoing back. He runs his hands over his face and sighs too.

Zhu Hong pulls her knees to her chest and rests her cheek on top of them, angled toward Zhao Yunlan. She looks younger like this, softer. He thinks this is a Zhu Hong he is especially grateful to know, a young woman who has grown into her bones and sees him as an equal.

He buries down the part of himself that doesn’t want to say a word, the one that wants to be angry, and tries to string together words that make sense. He ends up with, “It’s never been like this before.”

It doesn’t mean much of anything but Zhu Hong nods like it makes all the sense in the world.

“You’ve been at a constant pace since the war,” she says when he stays silent. “You’ve pushed yourself too hard, Zhao Yunlan.”

“This is my duty.”

“It is your job,” she replies, a correction. “The war is over.”

“I know.”

“You don’t act like it,” she tells him, firmly, not unkind, and he feels it like a knife to his ribs. “You think it’s your responsibility to do everything yourself and you’re stretched too thin. You haven’t figured out yet that it’s killing you.”

He regrets it before he says it but he still snaps, “And what do you know about me?”

He expects a barb but, instead, she leans over and pinches him so hard he yelps.

“Enough!” she snaps with enough ferocity he can only gape at her, watching her straighten her shoulders and shift into a force of nature. “You listen here, Zhao Yunlan—I’m sick and tired of watching you burn out, and I’m not afraid to hurt your feelings like your Professor Shen. If you keep going like this, you’re going to keep running on fumes the same way you were before the war when everything was going wrong, but there’s none of that anymore. We’re rebuilding and learning to live with it. But you’re still stuck in this useless, impossible spiral of trying to save everyone at the expense of yourself, and I would’ve thought you’d learned better. You don’t owe this world any more than what you’ve already given it.”

He stares at her, stunned. She’s flushed red with frustration but there’s an unerring fondness behind her eyes. She’s looking at him like she loves him, but not like that. Zhao Yunlan, who has spent so much of his life being liked but not loved, can barely breathe under the realization.

He swallows and it burns. The air is cooled and the sky is drained of color and Zhao Yunlan feels emptier than he has in a long, long time.

“I think it’s the other way around,” he tells her. “I owe Haixing more than I ever have.”

“You’re the only one that thinks that,” she replies, softly, fondly, furiously. “You’re the only one who can’t move on.”

He lets out a long, heavy breath. He thinks she might be right, in the way she usually is. He’s spent months waiting for the next shoe to drop, on edge for the tenuous peace they’ve found to fall apart. He is certain the hit will come the moment he lets down his guard. If no one else is ready, he must be.

It is a little unreasonable. It is a lot exhausting. Zhao Yunlan can’t remember what it feels like not to brace for impact.

“I don’t know why this case is different,” he says because that’s easier.

But it’s not, because Zhu Hong patiently replies, “That’s not how trauma works. It doesn’t have to be every time. It’s enough that it’s this time.”

Trauma. It’s too big of a word, too nebulous. Zhao Yunlan has never been very good at fighting his own demons, at assigning them names. 

It is sobering to realize everyone has moved on and Zhao Yunlan is the one left behind. 

Zhu Hong nudges his ankle with her foot before she leaves, retreating back to the bullpen and the cases waiting at their desks because the world doesn’t stop even when Zhao Yunlan wishes it would. 

Nevertheless, he waits outside for another few minutes, watching the last of the colors bleed from the sky. And then, he gets back to work.

~*~*~*~*~*~

An anonymous call hits the Haixing police department the next evening, claiming they’ve just seen Lan Shu in the north part of town.

Zhao Yunlan leads the race there, thundering through the streets in his truck. The call reported her in the same area they’ve been scouring since speaking to Tao Hai. Chu Shuzhi white-knuckles from the passenger seat as Guo Changcheng wails in terror from the back, but Zhao Yunlan only pushes harder, something inexplicable scratching underneath of his skin.

He will not be too late. He refuses to be.

And they’re not—Lan Shu is exactly where the call said she would be, leaning against the wall to a nightclub on a lively stretch of road. Tao Lian is smoking a cigarette at her side and, as Zhao Yunlan slams his car into park, she laughs at something he whispers to her as if it’s just another night out, as if the two of them have not been missing for days.

Zhao Yunlan storms over, Chu Shuzhi close on his heels. Lan Shu sees them first. She looks like her mother but with dark, curled hair pulled back around her face, and her eyes are sharp and clear when they land on them. She looks between them—and freezes, face trapped in an almost humorous mask of surprise and fear.

Tao Lian is turning toward them when Zhao Yunlan reaches them, but Zhao Yunlan doesn’t pay him even a moment of his attention before demanding of her, “Are you okay? Safe?”

Lan Shu stares at him like a deer in headlights. Tao Lian lets his cigarette fall to the ground, brow furrowing as he tries to step between them. As if Zhao Yunlan is the one who stole a girl away.

“Who the hell are you?” Tao Lian snaps, puffing himself up to look bigger, but Zhao Yunlan is not intimidated by a kid barely old enough to be an adult. Zhao Yunlan casts a look over him and dismisses him as a threat, turning back to Lan Shu as she puts the pieces together, her arms crossed like armor and her eyes betraying her uncertainty.

“I left of my own free will,” she tells them confidently, sure and practiced and indignant like only a person too young to know better could be. “You can’t just—”

“I can just,” Zhao Yunlan interrupts. He’s so angry he can barely keep his hands from shaking. He points between Lan Shu and Tao Lian and snaps, “You both should know better—”

“We just wanted to get out of our own lives for a few days,” Tao Lian counters, irritated. He throws his hands up and Chu Shuzhi, in the corner of Zhao Yunlan’s eye, stiffens, but Zhao Yunlan pays it no mind. 

“Disappearing is not a victimless crime,” he shouts at them. “You have people who care about you waiting for you to come home!”

Lan Shu tucks into herself a little tighter, gaze skittering away. Zhao Yunlan knows this is probably not the way to handle this situation but, now that he’s started, he doesn’t know how to stop. Now that all of the sticky, grimy things in his chest are starting to boil over, he doesn’t know how to bottle them back up again.

Zhao Yunlan rounds on the boyfriend, who is watching him with clear irritation. He’s nineteen, barely old enough to be in the bars they’re sneaking into, the same age as some of Shen Wei’s students. He’s nineteen and he looks it, cheeks still round with baby fat, swimming in the clothes he’s wearing to make him look older. Zhao Yunlan can remember being nineteen and foolish, just him against the world, and there is something to be said about hindsight. Zhao Yunlan has seen far too many terrible things to forgive easily anymore.

“What were you thinking?” he demands. He takes a step closer to Tao Lian and he’s a few inches taller, but lean enough that he hasn’t grown into his shoulders yet. “What, did you think the world would stop for you? Did you think you could take her away and no one would notice? That her mother wouldn’t be terrified?”

“She’s old enough to know what she wants,” Tao Lian snaps back. “Stop talking to us like we’re children.”

“You are children!” Zhao Yunlan thunders back.

“Chief,” Guo Changcheng says softly behind him, surprised and uncertain. Zhao Yunlan ignores him. He can tell the crowd outside the nightclub is looking at them, drawn by the spectacle. He wonders what they see. He wonders if he looks as frayed apart as he feels, his edges falling away and leaving little more than static behind.

“It’s one thing to feel trapped,” Zhao Yunlan allows, taking another step forward, “but she’s sixteen, a Dixingren whose powers can wake up at any moment if they haven’t already. Her mother thought she was dead, and haven’t they been through enough? Both of them? And you, spoiled and selfish—”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence before Tao Lian is pushing him, hard, and shouting, “You don’t get it!”

Zhao Yunlan grabs one of his wrists, aiming to use the leverage to restrain him. But Tao Lian is slippery, angry and young and bold—and, in a moment of great stupidity, he rears one hand back and punches Zhao Yunlan in the face.

He misses, for the most part, only managing to clip his jaw. But Zhao Yunlan sees red. Something snaps in his chest.

And when Zhao Yunlan punches back, he doesn’t miss.

Tao Lian curses, his hands flying to his nose. But Zhao Yunlan doesn’t hesitate this time—he grabs the kid and shoves him into the wall, hard enough that he winces. Lan Shu is saying something, quick and rambling like she’s upset, Guo Changcheng replying calmly. Tao Lian drops his hands and stares at Zhao Yunlan in astonishment, blood trailing from his nose to his top lip.

Zhao Yunlan yells, with a desperation he doesn’t recognize, “Haven’t we all given enough?”

He swears the whole street goes quiet, but maybe that’s just the noise in his mind. He is incredibly self-aware of his hands shaking, of the rough breaths ripping in and out of his lungs. There is a dull ache where Tao Lian’s punch landed and he knows it’s going to bruise but he almost wishes the kid had hit him just a little harder.

Zhao Yunlan feels half out of his mind when he steps forward, cornering Tao Lian against the building. Close enough to trap him. Zhao Yunlan has more to say and this kid is going to listen.

“You don’t know anything,” Zhao Yunlan snaps viciously. “Do you know how cruel it is, to make her mother wait for her to come home, wondering if she’ll ever come back? Have you ever had to stare at the door and realize someone is never going to come home? You think I’m the one who doesn’t get it?”

He grabs Tao Lian by the front of his shirt and holds him there against the wall, even as the kid stares at him, pale and more than a little terrified. But he’s finally paying attention.

“The things you do don’t just impact you. There is an entire world out there, and some of those people care about you. Life is cruel and it’s never fair—so what? So you want to pretend like those things don’t exist? So you want to act like they’ll fix themselves? Running from your problems doesn’t make them disappear.”

The tension in his chest pops. Zhao Yunlan nearly drops to the ground as his head starts to spin. He lets go of the kid as he takes a step back, reaching up and running a hand over his face. His knuckles ache. He feels like he’s drowning in the ocean with no way of knowing which way is up.

The whole street is staring at him. Tao Lian’s jaw is dropped and Lan Shu is pale. Zhao Yunlan doesn’t look at his friends because he already knows they’ll be staring at him like he’s lost his mind.

Maybe he has. Maybe Zhao Yunlan has been determinedly walking the path he paved for himself only to discover it leads off the edge of a cliff. Maybe he’s in the freefall, cursing all of the warning signs he ignored along the way, wondering if the impact at the bottom will be worse than the climb had been.

Zhao Yunlan has been moving forward at a merciless pace because he could not fathom how to fix the many ways in which he is broken. He has been looking over his shoulder because he is too afraid to look forward and face the many things he must fix if he wants the future he aches for so badly he can barely breathe.

This case bothers him because he cannot outrun himself. This case bothers him because a part of him is still the boy waiting for his mother to come home, long after she was put into the ground.

This case bothers him because he is alive, and he should not be.

He has been pushing down the extent of the damage but it’s become too big to carry. He’s been outrunning the flash of sharp, painful disappointment he felt when he woke up and realized he was alive. He’s been outrunning the trauma of Ye Zun’s games and the effortlessly self-sacrificial ways Shen Wei played them. He’s been outrunning the aches and pains of the things he gave to win a war he had been expected to fight all on his own, with only the people he cared about the most at his side to lose if he made one single mistake.

“Xiao Guo,” he says, suddenly exhausted, “make sure Lan Shu goes home to her mother. Lao Chu, handle the rest.”

He holds the car keys out to Chu Shuzhi, who shoots him a puzzled look before accepting them. Zhao Yunlan supplies no explanation as he stuffs his hands in his pockets and lopes away—past the stares of his team, past the whispers of the crowd and Lan Shu’s wide eyes and the bruise blooming on Tao Lian’s face—and trusts that, this time, someone else can shoulder the aftermath.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Zhao Yunlan goes to the one place he doesn’t think anyone would expect him to go and, when his father opens the door with his eyebrows up, looking at him like he’s lost his mind, he at least knows he was right.

“Yunlan,” his father greets, stern but curious. Zhao Yunlan can’t remember the last time he visited his father at home. He isn’t even sure he’s been back at all since he moved out.

“I have a question for you,” he says before he cuts his losses and just walks away. He knows he won’t find what he is looking for here but he has to ask anyway. Zhao Yunlan thinks it’s been long enough not knowing any answers.

“This couldn’t wait?” Zhao Xinci demands, impatient, and then sighs as if he is wildly inconvenienced that his son deigned to show up in person rather than leaving a message with his secretary. “Are you coming in?”

“No,” Zhao Yunlan says, biting back the embers of his temper. “It’s just one question.”

Zhao Xinci crosses his arms and leans against the doorway, waiting. He’s still wearing his dress shirt and slacks as if he simply moved from one office to another, burying himself in work the way he always has. Zhao Yunlan knows, if he looks behind his father, he’ll see the exact room where he waited for his mother. Where he waited for his father, too, he realizes, though he isn’t sure if Zhao Xinci is more or less of a ghost than the one Zhao Yunlan had been looking for.

There is a part of him that knows this is a foolish, pointless endeavor. Zhao Yunlan asks anyway.

“Why did you never put me in therapy after my mother died?”

Zhao Xinci looks blown away. He couldn’t know what Zhao Yunlan would ask him but he clearly didn’t expect anything like this. His father shifts, standing a little straighter, focusing his gaze on Zhao Yunlan as if he is a mystery to be solved and not the child he so failed.

Zhao Yunlan didn’t know how his father would answer but, somehow, he did not expect him to say, “You never needed it.”

He thinks of watching his mother die, and then those endless days of waiting. Of the denial and the grief. Of the loneliness and anger. Of the acceptance, eventually, though the acceptance still sometimes tastes like disbelief. 

He never needed it? Zhao Xinci had told that teacher that children always bounce back. Zhao Yunlan is well into adulthood but he is still waiting for that moment of recovery. He’s never learned how to let go of the things that hurt him.

He eyes his father, studies the stubborn irritation on his face and the defensive way he stands in the doorway of the house he filled with phantoms until there was no life left in the walls. Zhao Yunlan wonders if he’s still waiting, too.

He does not want to be like his father. He’s known this for a very long time but he keeps finding lessons to unlearn, habits that have lingered. This is just another one of them. 

Zhao Yunlan doesn’t want to live with ghosts anymore.

He will not keep on keeping on, using his own wellbeing as payment. He doesn’t want to work until his fingers bleed, until the stress piles up and he takes it out on everyone who’s ever loved him. He doesn’t want to be the bitter, lonely old man staring down his nose at the son who doesn’t even want to go inside of his childhood home.

Zhao Xinci has regularly and accidentally taught Zhao Yunlan exactly who he doesn’t want to be. And, because of that, Zhao Yunlan can face the future he knows he needs—one that is unrecognizable to the one he once had, one that doesn’t feel like survivor’s guilt, one that will be hard to shape until Zhao Yunlan lets go of the thing he has really been waiting for: for his father to act like one.

He laughs and shakes his head, shoving his hands into his pockets. It’s getting late, he realizes. He should be getting home to the future he’s finally ready to accept.

“Thank you,” Zhao Yunlan tells his father, and means it. 

Zhao Xinci blinks, startled and confused, but he won’t ask. He never has.

So Zhao Yunlan stops waiting for him to.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Just like every night for the last week, Shen Wei is waiting for him when he gets home. He smiles when the door opens but, when he sees the look on Zhao Yunlan’s face, it drops into worry as he stands. Zhao Yunlan, restless, peels off his jacket and tosses it onto the back of the sofa, kicking off his shoes as he begins to pace back and forth from one side of the tiny apartment to the other, heart beating wildly in his chest.

Shen Wei watches him for a few frenzied moments, his worry quiet and sweet, his patience soft and fond. Zhao Yunlan feels like a live wire.

After another few steps, he comes to a sudden stop and announces, “I want to buy a house.”

Shen Wei startles. Zhao Yunlan doesn’t give him the space to ask, rambling onwards with single-minded determination: “I’m buying a house. It’s by the university on a quiet street, and I think you’d really like it, and I want you to move into it with me. I want to start a new chapter because I feel like I’m trapped in the last one and, if I stay there, it’ll be like we never won the war at all. And I don’t know how to move on yet and I don’t know how to fix it, but I know what I want now.”

Zhao Yunlan crosses the room until he’s got Shen Wei’s arms under his hands, staring into his wide eyes. Shen Wei watches him in surprise, but the pleased curve of his mouth gives him away, as do the stars in his eyes. Zhao Yunlan doesn’t think anyone else has ever looked at him like that. He hopes no one else ever does.

He puts his hands on Shen Wei’s neck, cups his face between his palms. Shen Wei leans into him with quiet wonder, with effortless acceptance. Zhao Yunlan loves him.

His voice breaks when he finally, finally admits, “I don’t think I’ve been okay, Xiao Wei.”

“Yunlan—”

“Let me finish,” he whispers, and Shen Wei gives him this, as he gives him everything. Zhao Yunlan brushes his thumbs across Shen Wei’s cheeks as he admits, softly, “I feel guilty for having lived when so many people didn’t. And I—sometimes I wished I had stayed dead.”

Shen Wei shatters under his hands, eyes wide and sad, his hands coming up to grip Zhao Yunlan’s shirt like he thinks he is going to wither away before his eyes. There is real fear in his eyes Zhao Yunlan hasn’t seen in a long time and he hates that he’s the one that put it there, but he knows he needed to say it. He knows he cannot live with that burden in his chest anymore.

“Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei whispers his name like a prayer, holding him close. “You deserved to have a second chance. The world has taken enough from you. Many things aren’t fair but you do not need to be the one to tip the scales.”

“You don’t need to be, either,” he whispers back

Shen Wei—hesitates. And then deflates, tucking his head into the space where Zhao Yunlan’s neck curves, his hands tightening around Zhao Yunlan with a strength that might bruise. 

It needs to end, Zhao Yunlan accepts. The self-sacrificial bullshit they’ve lived with isn’t healthy, and it is certainly not sustainable for the future they want to build together. They cannot bring their anger and shame and guilt into the rest of their lives—there is no space for it. They will have to leave it behind, and they will have to learn to accept that they cannot save each other from the rest of the world anymore. It has only ever torn them apart to try.

They both have work to do.

They cannot let themselves drag each other down into something that feels like moving backward. They both deserve to learn closure. They will not become the sum of their worst habits, standing in the wake of their own self-destruction.

From the space he’s made for himself in Zhao Yunlan’s arms, Shen Wei asks, “Did you find the girl?”

Zhao Yunlan feels the last wound in his heart heal over. He ducks his head and hides it in Shen Wei’s hair, smiling so wide it makes his cheeks ache.

“Yeah, Xiao Wei,” he murmurs. “She’s finally home.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

They split the down payment for the house in half and move in six weeks after they sign the papers.

It was sad to leave his apartment. Zhao Yunlan hadn’t realized he clung to the nostalgia of the life he’d built there until he was staring at the bare, empty bones. He’d stood in the middle of the now-empty space he’d made for himself, his first home in years and years, and he’d spared a moment to quietly thank it. It is the first home he left behind with more good memories than bad.

They settled into the new space of their house with an ease Zhao Yunlan had only hoped for. It was a quiet new blank slate set up for them to frame and shape as they needed. As they wanted. The first night, Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei and Da Qing ate sitting on the floor of the empty kitchen and Shen Wei hadn’t been able to stop smiling.

It is still new. Sometimes Zhao Yunlan starts to drive to the wrong place until he doubles back, remembering. But Shen Wei is still waiting for him when he gets home, and the cat has a favorite window at the back of the house, and Zhao Yunlan feels the knot of anxiety loosen in his chest little by little.

A work in progress. Zhao Yunlan had never thought putting down roots would feel like relief.

The mornings are his favorite part. Zhao Yunlan has never been a morning person, but he can get used to this—Shen Wei sleepy and ruffled, plodding quietly around the kitchen as he puts on tea and makes breakfast. The windows are open, letting in the light and the early morning air. The cat is passed out in the garden but he’ll come in once the sun moves. For now, it’s just the two of them, and Zhao Yunlan hadn’t known such a simple peace could exist but he’s found it.

Shen Wei hands him a mug of tea and joins him, scooting his chair closer so he can hook his ankle around Zhao Yunlan’s, leaning his head on his shoulder. Zhao Yunlan looks out at the garden taking shape in the backyard, progress made under Shen Wei’s diligent hands, and he loves him.

“Xiao Wei,” he says, and waits until Shen Wei is looking up at him before he continues, “I’ve been thinking—have you ever taken a vacation?”

Shen Wei blinks comically before he shakes his head.

“We should go somewhere,” he says, with newfound conviction. “We can go during one of the school breaks, get out of the city.”

Shen Wei considers it, holding his mug between his palms. He hasn’t put on his glasses yet and he hasn’t combed his hair and he’s the most beautiful thing Zhao Yunlan has ever seen in his entire life. He ducks to steal a kiss and, when he pulls away, Shen Wei is smiling.

“Okay,” Shen Wei agrees easily, reaching up to push Zhao Yunlan’s bangs out of his face. “Where would you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” he muses, scooting closer. “The forest? The mountains? The beach? We could go anywhere we wanted to go, Xiao Wei. Just the two of us.”

“Together,” Shen Wei agrees with a sweet, bright smile, and Zhao Yunlan can’t help but to kiss him again.

Shen Wei leans back in his chair and takes a sip of his tea, wiggling his feet under Zhao Yunlan’s thighs like he does when he’s cold. Zhao Yunlan rolls his eyes, but shifts his legs to make room. Shen Wei smiles at him and settles down, content. Zhao Yunlan watches him with a bright, happy thing in his chest.

They watch the sun settle into the morning, sipping their tea in the home they’re creating with each other. Soon, Da Qing will wake and drag himself into the kitchen, whining about how hungry he is. Soon, they’ll all leave for work. And then, at the end of the day, they’ll come back to the little house on the quiet street, and they’ll start it all over again.

It is kind, and it is hopeful. It’s not an ending at all—it’s a beginning, and Zhao Yunlan finally knows he deserves it.