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An unnerving numbness is the first thing he registers in the blank hollowness overtaking mind.
Mo Ran distantly feels himself scrabbling at what his returning senses tell him are scratchy sheets, trying and failing to find sensation in the all-encompassing blackness. Dark. Why is it so dark? Something unpleasant wells up within him. Darkness, darkness everywhere, why—
Oh, he has eyelids. Yes, that is convenient. Perhaps that’ll get rid of the dark.
Mo Ran opens his eyes…and immediately slams them back shut.
Fuck, now there’s light. Too much light. The endless nothingness is gone, but now—even with his eyes tightly closed—he can see the taunting brightness of sunlight, beckoning him to consciousness.
He gives himself a few minutes to adjust. He tentatively squints his eyes open once more, finding it far more bearable. Instead of feeling like someone blasted fireworks directly towards his face, now it feels like someone threw a sparkler at his face, which is quite a fair upgrade in Mo Ran’s book.
Blearily, Mo Ran studies his surroundings.
He’s in a dull white room reeking of antiseptics, in a mattress that feels far too small for his physique; there's a potted plant in the corner wilting sadly at the edges, sheer curtains doing nothing to block the stupidly sunny sun, a person’s head resting on his bed—
He pauses. Blinks. Once, twice, thrice.
His jaw drops.
Holy fucking shit, the tiny working remnant of his brain squeaks, there’s a god in my room, before it, too, fizzes into static in face of this divine being.
From this angle, Mo Ran can see long hair flowing down elegantly over a smooth nape, dark ebony a harsh but welcome contrast to the blank canvas of the mattress. The man’s face is only partially in view—tucked away in the crooks of his arms—but Mo Ran can make out a graceful air of serenity, unblemished by the gloomy clinicality of the room, resonating from the man. The only irregularity is a worried crease between the man’s brows that Mo Ran resists reaching out to and smoothing out. The sliver of exposed, pale skin on his neck is terribly enticing, simply inviting Mo Ran to desecrate this celestial being.
Apparently, he had made some sort of strangled noise, because the man’s eyelashes flutter delicately, brows furrowing further in themselves. Mo Ran watches those misted eyes become clearer with every second that passes, holding his breath when those piercing phoenix eyes finally land on him.
There’s a second of utter silence, one where Mo Ran stares unabashedly starstruck (he hopes he isn’t drooling) and the man stares back at a loss, processing.
Then, the man shoots up in his seat and seems to be… relieved? Mo Ran can’t really tell, distracted as he is feasting upon the breathtaking sight of the immortal at his bedside.
Even before the…the god had woken up, and most of him had been covered by rumpled sheets, Mo Ran was in awe. But now, with the soft light of the sun caressing the smooth slope of his nose; those bottomless, honey-shaded eyes on him; sword-like eyebrows; and, fuck , those soft, slightly parted pink lips, Mo Ran could barely breathe.
“Mo Ran, you’re awake,” the beauty sighs, voice lilting and lingering pleasantly in the quiet room (and, hell , what a fucking voice). His lips quirk up into a little, happy smile.
Mo Ran nearly swoons.
Before he can open his mouth to worship him, the god tentatively settles his hand on Mo Ran’s (touching him!) and probes, “Do you feel anything? Any pain? Shi Mingjing said you shouldn’t, but…” His face does this cute tiny scrunch that makes Mo Ran want to cry. He’s dreaming, surely.
In a brilliant flash of suavity, Mo Ran blurts, “‘m I dead?”
The god stares at him in concern, probably uncomprehending of his words, hoarse and garbled as they are.
Mo Ran continues, voice slurring, “No, tha’s n’t it… I wou’dn’t—end up in h’ven if I died. Wh’re am I? Who‘re you?”
Again, the god stares at him, bemused. He opens his mouth, closes it, swallows. To Mo Ran’s woozy despair, the soft hand on his own retracts, now hidden in the man’s lap.
He says, carefully—like he thinks Mo Ran is messing with him—, “You’re in the hospital. You just had heart valve surgery.” Pauses. Then, unsure, “You don’t…know who I am?”
Mo Ran, still mourning the loss of warmth on his hand, answers sorrowfully, “A god?”
If the man was confused before, he’s completely baffled now. “What? No–I, no. I’m your…” trailing off, he shakes his head. “Nevermind. I think you need water.” Rudely ignoring Mo Ran’s disbelief, he grabs a pre-filled glass from the bedside table with much more force than necessary and the water sloshes precariously.
“Y’re not? A god? But—!” and is forced to shut up when the not-god shoves the glass of water towards his lips.
Begrudgingly accepting the relief of something to soothe his throat, Mo Ran looks at the man from over the glass in a strange blend of betrayal and reverence. The man only stops when the glass empties and places the cup back onto the table.
A trickle of water dribbles from the corner of Mo Ran’s mouth, but he doesn’t get a chance to wipe it when the man turns towards him. He glances critically at the trickling liquid before tilting his body towards Mo Ran’s.
Mo Ran stills, astonished, as the man raises a hand to dab gently at his chin with the corner of his sleeve, an action so naturally executed that Mo Ran doubts he’s conscious of what he’s doing. He looks on with bated breath, transfixed by the man’s intensity for something so mundane.
I wonder how intense he is when doing not-so mundane things, Mo Ran muses dreamily.
Upon noticing Mo Ran’s blatant gaze, the man widens his eyes, making to lurch back. Mo Ran, however, summons all the force he can into his useless limbs, grabbing at the man’s hand before it can retract and clasping it between his palms as if in prayer.
Mo Ran is suddenly very grateful for the much-needed hydration mitigating the muddling of his speech. He declares solemnly, “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Please tell me your name.”
Mo Ran watches delightedly as a pink flush dances its way onto the man’s scandalized countenance. Face deliciously rose-tinted, he sputters indignantly and wrenches his hand away, which is decidedly less delightful.
“You—! Even like this, you still…!”
The admonishment is incredibly difficult to take seriously when the celestial’s cheeks are colored such a tantalizing red, a sight that Mo Ran thinks artists would die to paint and preserve for eternity—if they could paint well enough to do the god justice, that is.
Mo Ran feels fondly, nonsensically smug as he watches the beauty grapple for composure.
The man clears his throat after a few seconds under Mo Ran’s loving scrutiny and resolutely does not look to meet his eyes. Mo Ran sympathizes with the poor, innocent potted plant in the corner that droops even more under the man’s glare. From his peripheral, Mo Ran can see the man’s slender fingers twisting anxiously in his lap.
Voice deceptively steady, the man mutters, “Chu Wanning.” When Mo Ran blinks, uncomprehending, he adds, “My name.”
Mo Ran blinks a few more times, hazy, but soon feels a giddy grin tugging incessantly at his lips. His fuzzy mind ruminates over the name. Chu Wanning. Wanning…
“Wanning,” he says outwardly, reverently, and nods in satisfaction at how natural it feels on his tongue. His smile grows wider when Chu Wanning instinctively looks up at his call, and basks in the attention.
Chu Wanning looks away again as if blinded. The tips of his ears are a lovely shade of red as he huffs and frowns —pouts— and Mo Ran almost weeps at how adorable this man is.
“Wanning is so adorable,” he says wetly. Ah, maybe he’s already weeping.
The aforementioned Wanning squawks, turning his head back to glare aggrievedly at Mo Ran. Upon noticing his glassy eyes, however, Chu Wanning’s frigid glare shrivels into an expression of vague horror.
“Mo Ran? What’s wrong?” Chu Wanning frets with his arms frantically waving around, alarmed. Even his panicking is cute , Mo Ran bemoans. “Does it hurt after all? Shi Mei—ah, the doctor will be here soon.”
Mo Ran doesn’t reply. He catches one of those flailing hands and presses it against his own face, sighing contentedly. For effect, though, he gives a dramatic sniffle.
Chu Wanning gawps at him, face splattered with a flush that Mo Ran—much to his satisfaction—is beginning to think will never go away in front of him. “You—! What are you doing?”
Mo Ran, in lieu of response, keeps nuzzling away at his hand. It’s a very nice hand: small and slender, dainty but with light scars indicative of clumsy mishaps. Oddly enough, Mo Ran has a faint feeling that he is well acquainted with these hands.
Huh, he realizes belatedly, Chu Wanning had known his name without it being given.
He frowns in contemplation. “Wanning, do I know you?”
He feels more than sees when Chu Wanning tenses, the way he makes a weak but futile attempt to tug his hand away.
Mo Ran gazes at him expectantly. Chu Wanning slumps, acquiescing.
“...Yes,” he finally says, wary. He holds himself like a spooked stray, ready to skitter away at a moment’s pause.
Mo Ran perks up, squeezing tighter to the hand rubbed pink from aggressive affection. “Are we—?”
“We’re,” Chu Wanning interrupts sharply. Falters. Then he says, quieter and hesitant, “...friends.”
“...” Mo Ran stares at him blankly. “Friends.”
“Yes. Friends,” Chu Wanning echoes, stilted. But Mo Ran doesn’t notice the strange expression on Chu Wanning's face in his own affront.
Friends… Friends? Mo Ran has this divine man by his side and hasn’t swept him off his feet and dressed him in white or slid a ring on his finger yet? Impossible. He is going to kill dumb sober Mo Ran, then possess his body and marry Chu Wanning himself!
With this thought in mind, Mo Ran starts. His wild gaze whips to the hand in his grasp, Chu Wanning’s left hand. Blinking rapidly, he moves the hand, looks at it in every angle possible, in different lights, turning it left, right, up, down.
The intricate silver band on Chu Wanning’s ring finger doesn’t disappear.
His lips wobble. “Wanning…Wanning’s married?”
Chu Wanning jolts, looking at him incredulously. His hand falls limp when Mo Ran’s arms flop back onto the bed, defeated.
Mo Ran stares at him with wide eyes, shimmering in their heartbreak like a dog left abandoned by its owner.
Chu Wanning is frozen. “I…”
Mo Ran doesn’t let him finish. He seizes the slackened hand and yanks, pulling Chu Wanning towards him with a strength belying his drug-addled state. Chu Wanning doesn’t seem to resist and ends up halfway on the mattress, stunned.
Mo Ran trembles slightly, distressed. “Do…Do they treat you well? No, even if they do, I could treat you so much better! I–I’d cook for you everyday—I’m really good at cooking, baobei, trust me—and, and I promise I’d respect you and cherish you and love you and fuck y—”
“Mo Ran!” Chu Wanning hisses, mortified and red up to the roots of his hair.
“Wanning,” Mo Ran whines in response, rather pitifully. He can’t believe this. Why does someone else have the blessing of Chu Wanning’s smiles, flusters, his love—
“ No , no, Mo Ran you don’t have to—we’re actually—you—” Chu Wanning grits his teeth in frustration, and whether it's frustration with Mo Ran or himself, Mo Ran doesn’t know.
Mo Ran doesn’t get to ask him to elaborate because a voice cuts in from what he presumes is the doorway. He doesn’t care enough to look, anyway, too busy wallowing in misery.
“Chu-xiansheng, sorry for the wait.” The doctor walks in carrying a clipboard (Shi Mei, he heard Wanning say?). Greeted with the sight of his patient burrowing himself into the sheets, eyes rimmed red and clutching Chu Wanning’s hand in a death grip, Shi Mei pauses. “Um. Is…he okay?”
Chu Wanning himself wears a strained expression, half leaned over Mo Ran from when he was pulled.
“That’s what you’re supposed to be telling me,” he says, irritated and embarrassed.
Shi Mei plasters on a smile. “Yes, my apologies. It’s just, ah, been a while since I’ve seen him cry like that.” Clearing his throat, he glances at the wedding ring that Mo Ran does not notice on his own finger. “Well, the drugs are likely still present in his system and he will thus temporarily forget certain matters for a few hours. He’ll be discharged when he’s sobered up a bit more in a few hours.” Unclipping a few sheets of paper, he sets them on the table closest to the door.
And drops a bombshell.
“As Mo Ran’s spouse,” Shi Mei says casually. He pointedly does not react when Chu Wanning winces or to Mo Ran’s sudden stillness and resumes, “we’ll have you fill this on his behalf.”
Mo Ran shoots up so quickly and violently that he narrowly avoids giving Chu Wanning a concussion. He feels not unlike what he had felt when he first woke up: dumbfounded, jaw dropped.
Shi Mei glances at both of them—one who looks like his mouth is catching flies, one with his head in his hand—and conceals his mirth behind his sleeve.
“Then, if you’ll excuse me,” and leaves the catastrophic couple to their own shenanigans.
Silence.
“...Spouse?” Mo Ran parrots, eyes shimmering for an entirely different reason.
“Mo Ran…”
“Husband? Wanning is my husband? I’m Wanning’s husband? We’re married? Wanning is married to me? I'm married to Wanning?” His voice rises in pitch and volume with every question, face beaming brighter than the sun. He laughs, giddy if not a touch hysterical, “I get to cook for Wanning? Cherish him? Love him? Fuck him?”
Chu Wanning gets redder and redder after each word. It’s very endearing. Mo Ran almost expects steam to come out of his ears. “Mo Weiyu, please—!”
“There’s no way,” Mo Ran says, too lost in this world-changing discovery that he almost doesn’t notice Chu Wanning suddenly shrinking on himself at this comment.
He feels Chu Wanning trying valiantly to escape the tight hold Mo Ran has on his hand, but Mo Ran refuses to let him go. “I know that it’s hard to believe but—”
His baobei sounds —ashamed of himself. And Mo Ran will not be having that. He cuts in.
“ Wanning, what’s hard to believe is that you’re here with…with me of all people. Baobei, love, husband, how did I manage to win you over? You ? The most beautiful being to grace this world?” Mo Ran marvels, both elated and struck with the ingrained need to dredge away his beloved’s insecurities. His eyes gain a wet sheen. “I don’t know what I could've done in my past life to be deserving of this. Not that anyone else deserves you, no. Wanning is too good for them.”
Unable to shut his mouth now that the floodgates have opened, Mo Ran blabbers helplessly, passionately, “Wanning is the best, best, bestest husband ever and he’s the most prettiest and cutest and adorable-est and goodest and the best thing to happen to a fool like me and holy fuck he’s my husband—!” He almost chokes on his words, chest heaving. Mo Ran feels like the little strength he had maintained during this whole exchange has been stripped by this confession, yet finds absolutely no regret within himself. "Wanning is my husband," he whispers to himself, like a broken record. The revelation washes through him in waves, crashing harder and harder each time to the point that it floods his every sense and thought.
Chu Wanning, for his part, looks peculiarly stricken. Like he had already been told this over and over but could never bring himself to fully believe it, like Mo Ran hadn’t been gushing over him from the moment he opened his eyes.
He lowers his gaze, staring wide-eyed at his own lap, and Mo Ran’s heart aches with the vulnerability of the action.
Finally, with a shaky exhale, Chu Wanning opens his mouth. “You… you didn’t have to. Win me over, I mean. I,” he swallows, voice trembling, “have loved you from the start. You are. Also, the best thing that has happened to me, Mo Ran.”
And Mo Ran’s tears and heart spill over.
He leaps up—energy miraculously replenished—and tugs Chu Wanning over in a tight embrace, blubbering pathetically into his husband (husband!) ’s shoulder, “Wanning, Wanning, Wanning, I love you, I love you so much!”
He peeks up and is met with Chu Wanning’s uninhibited smile, face glowing a bewitching pink. His eyes are bright and Mo Ran stares and stares and stares, breathless with affection. “Baobei, can I kiss you?”
Chu Wanning squirms, embarrassed, but eventually bobs his head in a timid nod. Mo Ran grins, radiant, and pulls his lover down to the bed.
Sitting up, with Chu Wanning straddling his lap and blushing like they weren’t married (married!), Mo Ran leans in to capture his mouth.
To Mo Ran’s ever-increasing glee, Chu Wanning immediately cedes to him, lush lips parting on instinct and Mo Ran very nearly starts crying again at the sensation of his husband shyly licking into his mouth. Instead, he redirects the building energy of his tears into kissing Chu Wanning mindless.
Hands roaming up and down Chu Wanning’s sides, Mo Ran nibbles on Chu Wanning’s bottom lip and soothes the abused area with a sweep of his tongue, pulling a soft sound from his husband that zings pleasantly through his body. His exploring hands ultimately rest on his husband’s waist, wrapping around almost completely. Meanwhile, Chu Wanning clutches onto his shoulders like they’re his lifeline, thighs squeezing around Mo Ran’s delectably.
Mo Ran thinks he could die like this. Truly, he’d have no regrets; he’s accomplished what any man can only dream of doing.
As if I’d let their dirty paws anywhere near my Wanning, he thinks viciously. They can be stuck with their cheap imaginations. He’ll hog the real thing, thank you very much.
After a few minutes, the kiss grows lazier and languid as the lull of drug-induced drowsiness overtakes him. Still, Mo Ran fights valiantly to pepper his husband’s forehead, nose, mouth, cheeks, anywhere he can get his mouth on, with affectionate pecks.
Pulling away to lay back down, he murmurs, sluggish in exhaustion and bliss, “Wanning…when we get home, I’ll make you some osmanthus cakes…”
He’s rewarded with an exasperated huff and a press of warmth on his forehead. “Mm. I’ll be looking forward to it then. Sleep, Mo Ran.”
Mo Ran smiles dopily and allows himself to be consumed by darkness once again. This time, it isn’t so bad.
~~~
On the way home…
(“Wanning, what was our wedding night like?”
“Mo Ran!”
“Indulge your ill husband. Please?”
“Absolutely not! Shameless!”
“ Wanning, pretty please?”
“...”
“Baobei?”
“It—You were very…enthusiastic.”
“Haha, Wanning is all red again.”
“...Shut your mouth.”
“But, baobei, since, for me, this is our first day married, we’d have to consummate again, right?”
“Mo Weiyu, that is not how this works!”)