Chapter Text
In the memory, Gu Yiran is young, just a couple months past eleven.
He’d left school earlier that day at lunchtime, lied to his teacher that he had a stomachache and walked home alone before she could call his parents. He didn’t want to know which of them she was going to try to call.
Now, in his bedroom with the curtains closed over his window and the blanket pulled over his head, the late November afternoon is pitch-dark. There’s not a hint of light, especially with his eyes squeezed shut. He doesn’t want to open them. He doesn’t want to wake up the rest of the way to reality.
Something aches in his chest, something that opened up two weeks ago after his mom’s car accident and will never stop hurting again, ever.
His cheeks are wet. He’d fallen asleep when he got home, and he’d dreamed his mom was back, that the ambulance had gotten her to the hospital in time. It had felt so real. He’d wanted it to be real so badly.
The thing he misses the most in that moment, nauseous with it, is the way she used to stroke his hair off of his forehead, brushing his bangs out of his face. There you are, she used to say, smiling, fingertips brushing against his ear even though his hair was never long enough to tuck behind it, There you are, Yiran.
The apartment is so quiet without his mom here.
It’s past the time his dad should have come home from work, but Gu Yiran can’t tell if he’s there or not. Before, Gu Yiran always knew when his dad was home, because his mom would talk more, would laugh more. Even if Gu Yiran was just in his room doing homework or reading he could hear the musical lilt of her asking a question, and the low rumble of his reply. Gu Yiran used to hear her singing sometimes as he got ready for bed, his parents doing the dishes together, and once he’d fallen asleep to his dad’s voice meeting hers in the melody: For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, we'll take a cup of kindness yet…
Without her here, Gu Yiran can’t hear him.
He doesn’t want to fall asleep again, but he listens to the uncertain silence outside his bedroom door for long enough that the ache in his chest swallows the rest of him, and then he’s crying again, as silently as he can, knuckling the tears away under his glasses, and eventually, the exhaustion of grief pulls him back into sleep.
When he wakes up again, it’s to the sound of his bedroom door opening. His cheeks are dry now. His blankets have been kicked to his waist. This time, he hadn’t dreamed of anything.
The light from the hall sweeps briefly over his face before his dad closes the door behind him. Gu Yiran doesn’t open his eyes. He can’t hear his dad’s footsteps over the carpet in his bedroom, but he feels the bed dip when his dad sits down, hears the familiar sound of his breathing, the particular way his dad clears his throat. Then, the light, callused touch of his dad’s hands, tilting his cheek up just enough to slide Gu Yiran’s glasses off his face, and the quiet click-click of their frame folding before his dad puts them down on the bedside table.
Gu Yiran feels the weight rising from his mattress, hears his dad grunt as he stands. Eyes still closed, his breath carefully even, Gu Yiran thinks: that’s it, then.
But then there’s a quiet exhale, more breath than sigh, and the rumble of his dad’s voice somewhere just above him, saying, “Yiran-ah,” so softly, more softly than he’s ever heard it. “I wish you’d waited for me to come pick you up instead of coming home alone.” The words are regretful, not chastising. “I’m still here, son.”
And then, a hand brushes hesitatingly over his forehead, clumsy and tentative at first and then more smoothly, pulling his fringe out of his eyes, fingertips brushing against the shell of his ear right before pulling away. “There’s dinner, whenever you want it. Don’t rush yourself.”
It’s not until his bedroom door closes again that Gu Yiran feels himself exhale, and finally opens his eyes.
—
Gu Yiran wakes up lying flat on his back.
His whole body is heavy, limp as dead weight. Breathing hurts. There’s a strange sense of distance between him and his limbs. With effort, Gu Yiran shifts an arm and registers fabric underneath his palm, and the tug of tape against a pinprick something in the back of his hand. He stops moving.
For a moment, he can’t tell where he is — it’s too warm to be Qin Yi’s factory hideout, and too quiet to be Zheng Bei’s apartment. There’s an amorphous, hard-to-grasp sense to his thoughts, too, his mind unusually empty, a sluggish trickle where there should be more. It’s the second time in as many weeks that he’s woken up somewhere he doesn’t recognize.
The last thing he remembers is — Zheng Bei. The way he’d burst into the factory room where Gu Yiran was being held like getting though that door was the only thing that mattered to him. The expression on his face when he saw Gu Yiran in the chair. The relief of his arrival had burned through Gu Yiran’s body. The last piece of memory Gu Yiran has is the shape of his own name in Zheng Bei’s mouth — not Gu-laoshi, for once, but Gu Yiran.
Zheng Bei had come for him. Zheng Bei wouldn’t leave him in danger.
Gu Yiran latches onto the thought and drags himself toward consciousness.
Sensation arrives in uneven bursts — the tight press of bandages around his chest when he inhales. Someone far away saying, ten milligrams of hydrocodone to start, and then. The close smell of antiseptic, and the sound of a door closing somewhere a hallway away. The feeling of sunlight yellow against the back of his eyelids.
There are two people talking in the room he’s in, low enough that they’re trying to be quiet. Gu Yiran catches a few snippets of conversation — his back after two nights in that hospital bed — time for breakfast, do you think she’ll bring some — before the voices resolve into Ding Guozhu and Zhao Xiaoguang. There’s a quiet metal sound of a thermos opening, and Ding Guozhu’s voice cuts out for a moment.
Zheng Bei’s voice isn’t there. And neither is Zhang Xueyao’s, Gu Yiran tells himself, and neither is Lao Jiu’s.
Except that it’s not Yaoyao’s face that Gu Yiran can’t stop thinking about, now that he’s awake. It’s not Lao Jiu’s name he remembers calling out, sheer relief battling against the blaze of pain in his chest, before everything had gone dark. By the time Zheng Bei came for him, Gu Yiran had long since stopped being able to look up at that doorway.
Across the room, Gu Yiran hears the door unlatch. Anticipation thrums in his chest. Ding Guozhu and Zhao Xiaoguang’s conversation quiets as the door swings open.
The first thing that comes through is Zhang Xueyao’s voice: “I bet you’re all starving! Lao Jiu made—” and then a set of footsteps coming toward Gu Yiran’s hospital bed, too light and quick to be Zheng Bei’s. There’s a hurried shushing that sounds like Ding Guozhu. The door closes too quickly to admit a second person.
Gu Yiran’s eyes are already opening. He’s already disappointed.
Zhang Xueyao, who had leaned in close to Gu Yiran’s face in the same moment he opened his eyes, jerks back with a yelp. “He’s awake! Gu-laoshi, how are you feeling?” She leans back in, and there’s a plastic rustle and thump that means she’s banged whatever breakfast is against the side of the bed. “Did you miss us? Isn’t it great for the first thing you see when you open your eyes to be the flower of the police bureau?”
“Be quiet, Yaoyao,” Ding Guozhu hisses over her chatter, “It’s good Ran-ge’s with us again, but you’re going to wake—”
“My god,” says a familiar voice, “Clearly the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the ceiling, Yaoyao. He’s been unconscious in a hospital bed for two days. Do you really think he cares about the bureau flower when he’s in that state?”
Gu Yiran’s mouth goes dry. He turns his head to look to his left.
“Give him some breathing room,” Zheng Bei is saying, right beside him. He’s in street clothes, sitting up stiffly in the adjacent hospital bed in the same tan overshirt that Gu Yiran remembers from the rescue. Zheng Bei’s blinking the way he does when he’s woken up without meaning to sleep in the first place, reaching a hand up to knuckle irritably at his eyes. “Yaoyao, quit bothering him. You’re knocking our breakfast around all over the place.”
“Zheng Bei,” Gu Yiran whispers. There’s a feeling in his stomach like he’s just been hit, that same abrupt instant of dizziness before the world resolves back into itself. Like his body wants to feel relief but already ran out after last time.
Zheng Bei’s gaze snaps over to Gu Yiran. In two steps, he’s out of the bed and at Gu Yiran’s bedside. This close, Gu Yiran can see Zheng Bei’s expression even without his glasses on, and for a split second there’s a intense desperation there that Gu Yiran doesn’t know what to do with. Zheng Bei’s hand comes to Gu Yiran’s shoulder, a welcome and anchoring pressure.
“Gu Yiran,” Zheng Bei says, and there’s the slightest tremble to the words. He’d stayed for two nights at Gu Yiran’s bedside without going home to change. The dark smears under his eyes imply he hadn’t spent much of either night sleeping.
Flat on his back in the hospital bed, Gu Yiran rasps, “You look like shit, Zheng Bei.”
“You—” Zheng Bei starts jerkily, reprimanding, but he can’t seem to finish his sentence. “Gu Yiran,” he says, voice rough, “You better know that you look a lot worse than me right now.”
Gu Yiran huffs a laugh. The motion pulls at a bandage across his temple that he hadn’t noticed yet. “Just a scrape,” he says, “you know how it is,” and feels gauze flex across his cheek as he speaks. Zheng Bei’s mouth flattens and the rest of the team snickers in the background.
Zheng Bei twitches at the sound, as if remembering that they aren’t alone in the room. The emotion wipes off his face, folded away again under the persona Zheng Bei had woken up into: Older Brother Zheng Bei, Task Force Captain Zheng Bei.
Gu Yiran wants it back. “You found me,” Gu Yiran hears himself say, squinting to bring Zheng Bei back into focus. “You really came after me. You really found me.” He means, you.
“It was a team effort,” Zheng Bei says, voice careful again. But his eyes keep flickering over Gu Yiran’s face — forehead, cheek, nose — the places where Gu Yiran can feel the pull of medical tape when he talks. “Of course we weren’t going to leave you, Gu-laoshi.”
“I looked at a map for a really long time,” Zhao Xiaoguang calls from across the room. Gu Yiran can’t see him well from this distance, but it sounds like he’s talking with his mouth full. “Ge had such a specific list of criteria for where to look after you called him. It’s making for a hell of an end-of-case report. That chemical you said, and all those landmarks you described, and then he figured out something about following the train tr—”
“Enough, Xiaoguang,” Zheng Bei says, voice reeled back in taut. “He just woke up, there’s no need to bother him with case details.” His hand leaves Gu Yiran’s shoulder cold, even as he’s saying, “Xiaoguang, come bring Gu-laoshi some food, it’s like none of you know how to properly treat a sick person.”
On the cusp of stepping away from Gu Yiran’s bedside, Zheng Bei hesitates, and for a moment Gu Yiran thinks Zheng Bei is going to reach back toward him, to brush Gu Yiran’s fringe out of his eyes with the same tender, feather-light touch he remembers from childhood.
But of course, Zheng Bei doesn’t.
Zheng Bei just moves out of the way as Zhao Xiaoguang approaches with porridge and a spoon, leaning over to say a few words to him as he passes. Those few steps take Zheng Bei past the edge of Gu Yiran’s vision, until he’s blurry even if Gu Yiran is squinting. By the time Gu Yiran manages to fumble his glasses on, Zheng Bei is waving to him from the hospital doorway with a half-eaten bun in his hand, in focus for the briefest of moments before he’s gone again, the door swinging shut behind him.
After that, Gu Yiran wakes and sleeps and wakes, for longer and longer periods of time as his body slowly knits itself back together. During the nights, he wakes only to the nurse coming in to take his vitals and to give him a round of mandatory painkillers that leave him foggy-headed. During the day, he sleeps longer than he means to but wakes always with someone from the team in a chair at his bedside.
Most mornings, it’s Zhao Xiaoguang frowning earnestly as he scrawls his way through an end-of-case report he won’t let Gu Yiran look at — It’s about you, Ran-ge. After you can stay awake long enough to give your statement, then you can read it. Bias, you know? Every other afternoon, it’s Zhang Xueyao, alternately eager to share the newest department gossip or boredly inventing the slowest possible way to eat a kernel of popcorn — I got to eight whole minutes one time, Ran-ge, do you want to see? Some evenings, it’s Ding Guozhu, knitting his way through a navy-and-maroon scarf, smiling sheepishly and saying, It’s nicer to do it here than alone in my apartment, you know? Putting a movie on in the background isn’t like having another person there. Lao Jiu doesn’t come by more than once in person — A lot of stairs on the way up here, Gu-laoshi, he says apologetically — but Zheng Bei seems to make up for it, showing up almost twice as often as anyone else, at all times of day.
When Zheng Bei’s there, it’s different.
Zheng Bei visits with an intensity of consideration that would be smothering from anyone else, but from Zheng Bei is just a reminder that he always takes too much personal responsibility for these things. But Gu Yiran can tolerate some hovering, if it lets Zheng Bei sleep properly at night.
For the moment, Gu Yiran is the only officer taking up a bed in the ward set aside for the Halan Public Security Bureau, so when he has visitors, they’re alone in the room. It’s only with Zheng Bei that he feels this with any intensity.
Zheng Bei never brings work with him to the hospital when he visits, though he must be swamped with it. And unlike the others, when Gu Yiran wakes, Zheng Bei is never out of the room getting water or stretching his legs or using the restroom. Instead, Gu Yiran comes awake to Zheng Bei beside him turning the page of a creased paperback, or talking quietly on the phone in the corner, or asleep in the chair with his arms crossed over his chest and his head tipped back, his mouth slightly open, startling awake with his gaze already turning toward Gu Yiran.
Just once, Gu Yiran wakes up to the sound of Zheng Bei’s footsteps snapping against the floor as he heads for the door, his phone pressed to his ear, saying, “Director Gao, I’m not at the precinct, I didn’t think I was needed,” and faintly, Director Gao’s reply, I know you’re worried about him, but as task force captain you really need to— before the door closes. That time, Gu Yiran waits up, but visiting hours end without Zheng Bei’s return. It doesn’t happen again.
When they’re both awake, they just talk. The first few times, Gu Yiran asks after the case, but Zheng Bei brushes him off with vague responses each time, something tight around his eyes, and eventually Gu Yiran stops asking. There’s no need to push. The case is hardly over yet. Instead, in the meantime, they have long and rambling conversations about nothing in particular, nothing too serious, and after each one, what Gu Yiran remembers most clearly is the sensation of Zheng Bei’s close and piercing attention.
Zheng Bei is there most often in the evenings, or late at night, when he comes by with dinner either from his parents or from Lao Jiu, who’s insisted more than once on cooking something special for Gu Yiran to make up for visiting less often than the rest. It becomes a kind of pattern: Gu Yiran will hear Zheng Bei’s tread in the hall before the door swings open, and Zheng Bei will come in with dinner, saying, “Gu’er, did you eat yet? Are you hungry? I brought dinner,” and every time Gu Yiran will say, already sitting up, “Yeah, I could eat.” And every meal is full of Zheng Bei’s warm teasing, Zheng Bei reaching over to move some choice morsel from his lunchbox to Gu Yiran’s, Zheng Bei’s hand brushing against Gu Yiran’s when he passes him a napkin.
It’s all a far cry from the way Zheng Bei had been, shouting, If you don’t like the way things are done here, then maybe you should go back to teaching in Huazhou. If Zheng Bei still thinks of that argument, he doesn’t bring it up. Gu Yiran, too, is content to leave it buried. He’s not worried anymore. The rescue had been enough.
Gu Yiran thinks often of the wish he’d made on his birthday, the team crowded around him and the cake, paper crown on his head and Zheng Bei pressed close beside him: Please let this last for longer than I expect it to. Please let me be surprised by how long I can have this.
There’s a cautious new thing between them, Gu Yiran thinks, something shifted since his rescue, that so far has only managed to live in this hospital room. He wants it to last longer than that, even if he knows it can’t last forever.
The weeks pass. The nurses take out Gu Yiran’s IV and swap him to a prescription for oral painkillers — take as needed, Gu-xiansheng — that he ignores. Gu Yiran’s fine motor skills improve to the point that he can sometimes manage chopsticks again. Zheng Bei gets busier at the precinct, swaps evening visits with Ding Guozhu more and more often, and hardly comes by anymore, even in the day.
Gu Yiran wakes from another nap one evening to Ding Guozhu at his bedside, quashes his now-reflexive disappointment and says, “Hi again, Guozhu.”
Ding Guozhu fumbles his knitting needles in surprise and says, wincing at something that he’s done to his scarf, “Ran-ge, hey.” When Ding Guozhu glances back up, there’s a look on his face like he’s steeling himself to say something. Gu Yiran sits up in preparation.
Ding Guozhu rummages around in his knitting bag and produces a blue folder, which he clutches to his chest as he says, “Bei-ge told us not to bother you too much with case details while you were still in the hospital.” Gu Yiran nods, and Ding Guozhu says, “But Director Gao gave me this as I was headed out today and told me to show it to you.”
Gu Yiran has been waiting to be let back into the case, and a summons from Director Gao by necessity overrides Zheng Bei’s well-meaning protectiveness. Gu Yiran puts his hand out for the folder. “Let me see.” What Zheng Bei doesn’t find out until later won’t hurt him. “What is it?”
He’s already flipping through the report as Ding Guozhu says, hesitantly, An analysis, I think? He had someone else do something you usually do, the picture on page four looked familiar. Inside the blue folder is a chemical composition analysis. It’s the same kind Gu Yiran has run on every meth sample they’ve picked up so far, used to determine what places are pushing Lucifer and what places are pushing some poor replica.
This one, from the summary, was a composition analysis run on a sample from Qin Yi’s hideout. Gu Yiran flips to the conclusions, skipping the page four diagram in favor of the words at the end that will say: not Lucifer. He can go through the methods more carefully afterward.
Except when he gets there, that’s not what the conclusions say. He flips back to frown at the page four diagram, and then pages slowly through the methods and analysis. Nothing looks amiss, even after he’s read over it all twice. He closes the folder.
“Director Gao gave you this?” Gu Yiran asks. “Did he say who did the analysis?” When Ding Guozhu shakes his head, Gu Yiran flips to the first page of the report, finds Director Gao’s stamp next to an unfamiliar signature that begins with Li.
Ding Guozhu is looking concernedly at him now. “Is there something wrong, Ran-ge?”
Gu Yiran closes the folder. “Hard to say.” It might be an inexperienced analyst. It might be a mislabeled sample. It might be something else. But his own instinct says, unmistakably, that Qin Yi’s hideout wouldn’t have had Lucifer in it. He’d prefer to confirm it himself. “How much longer do we have in the case, would you say?”
Ding Guozhu frowns, thinking. “Bei-ge hasn’t really said, but I think we should be close. Almost everything’s been filed away, and Xiaoguang’s been spending a lot of time playing Tetris on the new computer.” He shrugs. “Maybe there’s some bureaucratic thing holding us up. That happened to a case one of my old forensics teammates helped with, it took them almost a month to sort out, she said.”
Gu Yiran relaxes. A month is a long time, long enough for several re-analyses if they’re needed. Yesterday, the nurse had said he could be out of hospital as soon as next week, if things kept going the way they were going.
He pens a quick note on the back of the folder — Methods look fine but unusual conclusion. Worth a re-analysis when I get back. -GYR and hands the file back to Ding Guozhu. “I don’t think this conclusion is right, but the process looks perfectly fine. Keep this out of the other papers for now, and when I get back I’ll re-run the analysis or get someone to do it while I supervise.”
Ding Guozhu takes the file from him with a wide-eyed promise to pass the information back on to Director Gao, and apprehensively spends the rest of visiting hours adding eight inches to his scarf while Gu Yiran sits quietly and turns the contents of the analysis over in his mind.
The next night, by the time Zheng Bei arrives, Gu Yiran has already resolved not to mention the blue folder to him. There’s no need to put more on Zheng Bei when Gu Yiran can just talk to Director Gao when he gets back and sort it out himself.
“Gu Yiran,” Zheng Bei calls as the door opens, “did you eat yet? I brought dinner.” There’s a bag in his hand that smells like vermicelli and pork. He’s an hour later than normal.
“I could eat,” Gu Yiran says, but he’s watching Zheng Bei come in, the way he strides around to Gu Yiran’s bedside. He can’t put his finger on anything, and Zheng Bei isn’t behaving out of the ordinary, but Zheng Bei seems on edge, somehow. Distracted, almost, even as he asks his usual questions about how Gu Yiran is feeling.
Zheng Bei catches him looking. “I didn’t mean to be late, Director Gao wanted to talk to me after work.” There’s an unexpectedly bitter undertone to the words. His mouth is a tense line. In the hospital lights, the dark circles under his eyes are still there, even all these weeks later.
“Zheng Bei,” Gu Yiran asks, “Have you not been sleeping well?”
Zheng Bei glances at him. “Who sleeps well when one of their teammates is in the hospital?” He pulls a lunchbox out of the bag and hands it over. “Don’t worry about it too much.”
Gu Yiran lets Zheng Bei have the deflection. There’s half a chance Zheng Bei is telling the truth, and once Gu Yiran leaves his sleep really will improve. Instead, Gu Yiran says, “It won’t be much longer, fortunately. The nurse said yesterday that it should only be another week or so.”
Zheng Bei is looking at his bag of dinner. “What’s another week or so?”
Gu Yiran gives him an odd look. “My release from the hospital.”
Zheng Bei clacks the other lunchbox against the railing of the hospital bed and looks up at him, something tensely surprised to his expression. After a beat he says, as if just remembering to, “That’s good. That’s good news.”
But there’s a new stiffness to the way Zheng Bei sits down, the way he pulls his lunchbox toward him and opens it. Gu Yiran opens his own and waits for a moment, but Zheng Bei makes no move to take anything else out of the bag, and no move to start eating.
“Zheng Bei,” prompts Gu Yiran gently. “Utensils?”
Zheng Bei twitches, rummages for a moment and comes up empty. “Ah, look at me,” Zheng Bei says, but while his tone is light there’s a reproachful edge to his words that feels real. “I left them in the car.”
“It’s fine,” Gu Yiran starts to say, “I can ask the nurse—”
But Zheng Bei is already getting up, fishing for his car keys in his pocket, saying over his shoulder without looking at Gu Yiran, “I’ll be right back, I’m not going far.”
Gu Yiran watches him go, eyes on the momentary long stretch of Zheng Bei’s shadow between them when the hallway light hits, and feels uneasiness begin to simmer in the pit of his stomach.