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“I am not reading this to you,” Dan Heng says, and his eyes flicker over the title of a book that he easily identifies as medical in topic, but that brings up no image or association as he echoes its outlandish title. From under the covers of Dan Heng’s bed on the floor of the archives, Dan Feng sharply stares up at him with disapproval.
There is none of the regular loftiness in the fine contours of Dan Feng’s sickly pale face, which usually enhances his words and draws others into a compelling lull of ready agreement. Yet with bleary eyes unfocused in the daze of a fatigue that has plagued him for two days straight, Dan Feng remains remarkably assertive. His chapped lips quiver, and his face, flushed from fever, falls markedly at Dan Heng’s refusal to yield.
By dusk of the second day of entertaining a sick Dan Feng’s ludicrous demands, Dan Heng will have no more of that distinctively flavoured art of persuasive drama. He narrows his eyes in his own best pretence of intimidation towards one who cannot be intimidated. Dan Feng’s delivery, undergone centuries of refinement, builds up to a whine, feigning earnest distress, “But—”
“No exertion is what Miss Bailu said. This is not a bedtime story,” Dan Heng says with renewed determination. An idea strikes him, and a scheme unfurls slowly in his mind. He buys time by distractingly waving the medical text in the space between them, drawing Den Feng’s attention. “You don’t need a bedtime story, Dan Feng: just sleep.”
And just like that, Dan Heng nonchalantly catapults the book onto the desk where it slides over the polished surface until it hits the back wall with a dull thud. Dan Feng’s gaze follows the book like a protective mother would her dear child, but Dan Heng pays his garbled noises of feeble protest no mind. Dan Feng must rest, unfamiliar as he is with falling ill, unwilling as he is to bow to weakness and to submit to the well-meaning counsel of the people who have begun to hold him dear.
In the face of a force of nature as overwhelming and incalculably moody as Dan Feng, the element of surprise is Dan Heng’s one reliable advantage. Dan Heng cannot help the telling, self-sufficient smile that twists his lips at a plan well executed. He places his hands on the floor and leans forward, his smile brightening in satisfaction under Dan Feng’s pinched gaze, which holds lingering resentment for the gruff treatment towards his bedtime readable. What Dan Heng can do to keep Dan Feng in favourable suspense is hold to silence. His palms slap soundly on the floor as he moves forward on all fours. He executes his movements with all the grace of a smiling panda and crawls over the length of Dan Feng’s body.
Dan Feng’s eyes widen visibly when Dan Heng’s face comes to a stop right above his own. From the airy grunt that makes it past Dan Feng’s lips, right before he securely presses them together, Dan Heng can tell that he is noticeably unprepared for when Dan Heng’s body slams into his.
Dan Heng flops down with what little gentleness he can muster in his exasperation over a patient that he will ensure goes down in the daily datalogs as the Nameless’ worst. He rests his head on his palm and watches Dan Feng avoiding his eyes, shifting and trying to get comfortable under Dan Heng’s lighter, cooler frame.
“Go to sleep,” Dan Heng says, tries and knows as the demand leaves his mouth that no words can hope to command Dan Feng.
On the contrary, clammy fingers dig into the sides of his spine, and Dan Heng gasps, as he is further pressed down against Dan Feng’s too hot body, tail snaking snuggly over the back of his thighs to enhance the shackling.
The excessive moisture of Dan Feng’s sweaty palms soaks through the back of Dan Heng’s shirt in moments and makes it stick grossly to his back. It’s disgusting, but an easy escape is beyond him, and Dan Feng knows it.
“Stay,” Dan Feng begins with a heavy tongue, pauses, and leaves it at that. Dan Heng is tired with him. Tired with his demands. He briefly entertains the idea of escaping into the realm of dreams, well before Dan Feng finds to sleep, because dealing with a nightmarish conjuring of Ren is something that comes easier to him in some moments still than dealing with Dan Feng. Especially now that Dan Feng is sick, and cranky, and unwilling to adhere to a simple prescription of bedrest.
Dan Feng’s traitorous arms around him exert enough strength to trap him in the unwanted embrace, unless they brawl, and Dan Heng almost wants that book back to revengefully smack Dan Feng’s relaxed, peaceful face for the scarcely convincing façade that it must be. Because poorly veiled smugness over having turned the situation upside down is what Dan Feng’s expression usually is, at every turn that Dan Heng tries to surprise and dominate him, before he prematurely falls to Dan Feng’s responding schemes.
How, in the face of this little victory, Dan Feng isn’t wearing that trademark smirk that most times seems to be reserved solely for him, Dan Heng doesn’t know. Not until he pushes down the building storm in him along with his disappointment at another failed plan and focuses on Dan Feng’s pale face.
There is no smirk, no satisfaction, none of the usual tackiness that Dan Heng has learnt to expect. What he sees in Dan Feng’s face is different this time. His brows, previously drawn tight with the exhaustion of this morning’s chills and by tonight’s excessive complaints and many demands, gradually relax. Dan Feng’s breaths lengthen tellingly, and all the exasperated retorts that Dan Heng usually spits, when he has been bullied into capitulation, suddenly melt on his tongue. Dan Heng holds still because Dan Feng is falling asleep.
An hour or two, three at most, is what Dan Heng tells himself that he’ll give to Dan Feng, as he, too, dozes off. Because no way is he going to spend the entire night lying pressed up against Dan Feng’s hard, sweaty body just to keep him happy and comfortable. Is he?