Chapter Text
It’s a Tuesday, and Cao Guangyan’s shift interning at the hospital has just finished. He changes out of his coat and sits on the bench by the doors to wait for his colleagues and classmates to gather. Somewhat reluctantly, he’s agreed to go to dinner with a group of them this evening, instead of his usual pattern of going straight home. They had insisted, because today is his 21st birthday.
The restaurant is a little stuffy - the air conditioning doesn’t seem to be quite up to the number of people who are crowded around the hotpot tables. The conversation flows around him, but he’s finding it hard to follow along. Song Yawen nudges his arm gently as everyone laughs at a joke that Cao Guangyan missed. “Guangyan, everything okay? You seem a bit…”
Yang Weiting, a fourth year student sitting to his left, joins in. “We hardly see you any more. At least allow us to celebrate you.” He smiles and dishes some more vegetables from the hotpot onto Guangyan’s plate.
“Sorry,” Guangyan says, bowing his head a bit. “I’m fine. I’m just— a little tired. You know, that project in microbiology…”
There’s a chorus of sympathy from around the table, and the conversation moves on from there.
What else can he say in his own defense? It’s true that he’s been scarce around the university’s social scene these days. His classmates aren’t bad people, actually - it’s just that he increasingly feels he has little to say to them, and that they wouldn’t understand him if he did. It is nice of them to still want to celebrate with him, to remember his birthday, despite how he’s been lately. He tries to focus on that.
They bring out a cake for him at the end of the meal. Everyone claps as he blows out the single candle, and Yang Weiting cuts him a slice before passing them around to all the others. It’s a white cream cake, a little dry.
“Oh, Guangyan, do you mind if Shuhui has the last slice?” Yawen says cheerfully, clearly not expecting any objection. She’s already moving to pick it up.
“Yes,” he says. “Sorry. I need to take it.” She slowly retracts her hands, and the chatter around the table dulls. People are glancing at each other. There’s been more of these awkward moments lately, but it’s hard to find the energy to care right now. “Actually, I think I’ll take it now. Thank you, everyone, for the dinner. I’m really grateful.”
He wraps the slice in a napkin and holds it very carefully in his lap on the bus. At home he lifts it up under Pu Yiyong's nose. “You missed my birthday,” he tells him. “But I still brought this for you. I know you don’t like sweet things very much, but it’s my birthday cake. You should at least try it, right? I can't give you any like this, though, or you'll choke. You'll just have to wake up."
Basically any moment that he’s not in class or at the hospital, all that time that his classmates were complaining about, is spent here. He hardly even goes to the library any more. Pu Yiyong’s room is the perfect place to study. He explains the material out loud to Pu Yiyong’s silent face, balances flashcards against his unmoving arm. Pu Yiyong’s blood on his hands, the barely-there feeling of his heartbeat, had made him feel, for the first time, the true weight of his profession. At university, he tries to attend every optional seminar and do every extra task he can manage. Forensics, brain trauma, emergency medicine… “I haven’t decided on my specialization yet,” he tells Pu Yiyong after getting home late from a special workshop on post-operation recovery and monitoring. “So it’s good to be well rounded.” The paramedics had told him that the CPR he administered might have saved Pu Yiyong’s life, but more than once he’s lain awake at night haunted by the thought that if he’d been a real doctor already, a better one…
And he has work to do here too. He’s been helping maintain the range of motion in Pu Yiyong’s limbs, changing his IV, checking his feeding tube and the monitoring equipment. Around a week ago, Ye Baosheng had come in just as he’d been finishing manipulating Yiyong’s arms, and watched him for a minute with an unreadable expression. She’d said, “Guangyan, come sit with me for a second.”
“What is it, Aunt Ye?” he said once he was seated at the kitchen table with a soda.
“You don’t have to do that kind of thing. The doctors and I can look after him,” she started slowly.
“Oh, it’s okay. I’m a medical student, after all. It’s my job.” It’s not quite true; usually at the hospital these kinds of things are done by the nurses. But taking care of Pu Yiyong is kind of his job.
“I know you’re worried about him,” she continued. “That’s admirable. I’m glad he has such a good friend. But you’re young. You ought to have your own life. You’re here every day. Honestly, I don’t like seeing you like this. I don’t think you should keep coming here all the time.”
He looked down at his hands, took a sip of his soda. “Okay, Aunt Ye,” he said politely. “I understand. I don’t want to bother you.”
That night, once his father’s bar stall had closed down and the street had finally grown quiet, he’d climbed over the balcony into Pu Yiyong’s room. It was only a little terrifying. Before he’d gone home earlier, he’d managed to sneak back upstairs with the excuse of gathering a notebook he’d left behind, and slipped a piece of paper into the window so that it wouldn’t lock properly. Ye Baosheng had put away the blanket and pillow that he usually sleeps on, and he didn’t want to make a racket looking for them in the dark, so he just curled up on the ground next to Pu Yiyong’s bed.
The floor wasn’t physically comfortable, but it was so much worse to sleep alone in his room where he couldn’t look over and be reassured by Pu Yiyong’s quiet breathing when he woke up from a nightmare. He understood where Aunt Ye was coming from. But spending his time with Pu Yiyong wasn’t weighing him down. Some days it felt like the only thing propping him up.
In the morning Ye Baosheng came in earlier than usual, which meant that she was perfectly timed to see Cao Guangyan perched with one leg on the desk, half out of the window.
They stared at each other for a minute. Then she sighed. “Don’t fall and… just don’t fall. You might as well use the front door.”
Since then, she hasn’t tried again to stop him from seeing Pu Yiyong, but it was partly for the sake of appeasing her that he’d agreed to go out with his classmates. She had looked noticeably cheered at the news that he wouldn’t be back until late for non-work reasons. He resolved after that to keep up a minimum dosage of social outings to maintain his access to Pu Yiyong’s room. Or at least to lie about it.
———
A few days after his actual birthday, Chuying comes over with a bag full of beers, bottled tea, and snacks, and a small stationery kit as a present for Guangyan. They sit on the floor next to Yiyong’s bed to drink through them.
“The guy had all these pill bottles stuffed into his coat, way more than you would ever think! But he was still so fast!” Chuying is gesturing so much telling them the story of her latest case that he’s a bit afraid she’ll hit Yiyong, or spill beer on him. “Just this lumpy jerk running all over the housing estate! And then he jumped out of a window into a dumpster, but he couldn’t get back out - so that’s where we caught him! But you can’t imagine the stink! and we had to take them back and process all these disgusting bottles of pills!”
Guangyan laughs. The way she talks to Yiyong - so directly and unfussily - makes something held tight in his lungs unclench. She doesn’t avoid looking at him, or look at him with too much worry and sadness, the way Guangyan is sometimes afraid he himself does. It feels so much more real than the dinner at the hotpot restaurant, just the three of them in here, like the world’s colors are in-focus again.
An alarm rings out from his phone and he hurriedly swipes to silence it. "Oh, just a second. I have to change his IV fluids.”
After he gets the bag from downstairs, he puts on gloves, and unwraps and checks the new bag for leaks. Chuying pokes Yiyong in the arm as she looks on from the floor. “Yah, see how this guy’s been working hard for you. You better come back soon so you don’t owe him too much.”
“He doesn’t owe me.” He’d been aiming for lighthearted, but it lands wrong, sounds at once too stiff and too sincere. He presses his mouth shut and focuses on his task. The new tubing slots into place, and he unclamps the line. There. All set.
With his task finished, he can allow himself some alcohol, so he pulls out a beer from the pile, busies himself with opening it.
Chuying sighs. It’s loud in the still room. "What are you gonna do first when he wakes up?" she asks.
His next inhale feels effortful. "I don't know," he says, more honest than he’d be with anyone else. "Just say hi, I guess."
She looks over at Yiyong thoughtfully and waves her can at him again. “Well, for my part, when you wake up, I'll only yell at you a little. For making us all worry like this. Then I'll buy you all the beer you missed out on this year."
Guangyan has recovered himself enough to say, "All?"
"Not all!"
"You're the one who said it."
"I was speaking metaphorically! I'm only a humble policewoman, I can't afford that."
There are still things neither of them can talk about. The fear. The guilt. But there’s something almost nice about being around someone who’s not saying all the same things that are stuck inside Guangyan somewhere.
On her way out she pauses in the doorway, then gives him an awkward hug. "Happy birthday, Guangyan.”
"Thanks."
"Don't worry too much. I'm sure it's going to be soon." When he doesn't respond, she squeezes his arm and gives him a slight smile. "I'll come by next week, okay? As long as no more dumpster-jumping thieves are running around our district."
“Okay. See you soon.”
He looks down from the window as she goes out, and she turns around and waves at him exuberantly from the street. He waves back. Maybe they’re overcompensating on the cheerfulness a little. But it kind of helps, anyway.
———
The next Monday morning, Guangyan opens his eyes to the blare of his alarm and immediately is made to regret it when he starts coughing uncontrollably. His head is pounding. He staggers downstairs to get a glass of water and tell his father he’s staying home from class, and makes his way right back to bed.
Being sick is miserably boring. He doesn’t have the energy to do much, but he isn’t sleeping well either. After two days he’s able at least to throw on a mask and go to a few lectures, which is some relief. Out of an abundance of caution, he keeps himself away from Pu Yiyong for longer than is probably necessary. Getting ill, even with a cold, could be very dangerous for him. But it's hard. He resents the distance, himself, whoever gave him the cold, the very concept of germs. At night as he tosses and turns in his own room, he considers asking Aunt Ye if she would set up a video call for him with Yiyong. But he hesitates. He’s not sure she would agree, firstly. And she might not know they used to do that. He sort of wants to keep that for himself.
Stuck in his house in the evenings, he busies himself with some domestic tasks he’s been neglecting when he’s got enough energy to be upright. As he’s dusting the living room, his eyes catch on a family picture. His dad is smiling at his mom, and she’s holding a toddler Guangyan, who looks grumpy and chubby on her lap.
Less than a year after that photo, she was dead. He barely remembers her. He knows he got her nose. And that she was serious, and stubborn, but she liked to laugh.
A child’s focus is selfish, is on how it feels to grow up without a mother. But it must have been awful for his father. He hadn’t been truly able to conceptualize it, when he was younger: what it must have been like to lose the person you loved.
Over breakfast the next day his dad is humming slightly as he dishes out their food. Guangyan’s appetite has started to return a bit, but the next bite he swallows goes down badly, and he starts coughing hard. When he finally manages to get himself back under control, his father is looking at him with concern.
“Are you still planning to go to the university today?”
“Yeah.” Unlike Aunt Ye, his father has never been one to interfere much in his decisions. But Guangyan still feels the need to reassure him. “Just to my two lectures, then I’ll come back home. We have an exam soon in anatomy.”
“If you’re sure.” His father sets down his chopsticks into their holder on the table. “What will your friend think if he wakes up and you’ve run yourself ragged?”
His first instinct is to bristle. Everyone gets sick sometimes, it’s not his fault. He’s managing himself perfectly fine.
From where Guangyan is sitting, he can almost, but not quite, see his mother’s eyes in the living room photo. So he doesn’t argue. He just nods and gets up to get some more rice from the kitchen counter.
———
“Cao Guangyan! Wait a moment,” Yang Weiting says, catching at his sleeve, as Guangyan is walking toward the university gates.
Guangyan pulls his arm back, annoyed, but he tries to smile through it. "What is it?"
“Are you heading north? I’m going that way too, I’ll walk with you a bit.”
Inasmuch as Guangyan has been paying attention, he has never seen Yang Weiting leave in this direction, but he doesn’t say anything.
“You’ve been working with Dr. Wen at the hospital, right? Do you think you’re going to choose internal medicine for your clinical internship, then?”
“Oh, yes, just for now. Dr. Wen needed some help in her department, and she suggested that I get some experience there. I’m not sure yet what I’ll choose.” He’s trying to figure out where this is going. Yang Weiting is older and already decided, so it’s not like he could possibly be seeking Guangyan’s advice.
“Then maybe I can still entice you over to oncology? We need some more clever people like you there.”
“I don’t think oncology is for me,” Guangyan says, as politely as he can muster.
“Our loss,” Yang Weiting smiles at him, showing his teeth. “And lucky for internal medicine. Or wherever you end up.”
The familiarity in his tone strikes Guangyan in a weird way. They’ve had conversations in the canteen, at group dinners, but they’re not especially close. It’s a few seconds before he realizes that Yang Weiting has come to a stop behind him, and Guangyan turns to face him.
“Guangyan, am I wrong in thinking you’re the same type as me?”
“…the oncology type?”
He laughs. “I’ve enjoyed getting to know you here at the hospital. You’re good-looking and smart,” he says, and oh, he’s holding out a card, a dark blue envelope, it’s classy, and this is unmistakably - “I hope you can accept my sincere affection.”
Guangyan stares dumbly down at the card and doesn’t move to take it at all. It’s not the first time he’s been confessed to, not even the first time he’s been confessed to by a guy. So why can’t he force a single word out of his mouth?
“I can’t,” he finally manages.
“You… can’t?” Yang Weiting’s affable expression is starting to strain, though he’s still technically smiling.
“I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize… you’re seeing someone?”
“No, I’m…” Is he really going to stand here and make them argue about this? “Look, I - have to go.”
Yang Weiting’s annoyance is starting to break through. “Really? That’s all you’re going to say? You don’t have to say yes, but you’re too good to even give me a reason?”
With an effort, more effort than it seems like it should require, Guangyan tries to pull himself together. “I’m flattered. But I just can’t, um, return your sincerity right now. I’m… focusing on my studies.”
Yang Weiting still seems frustrated, but he just tucks the note into Guangyan’s bag and watches him leave.
He walks home slowly, feeling strange and off-balance. It’s happened before, this kind of thing, so why is he finding it so shocking? Why did he handle it so poorly? As he turns it over, he realizes that he had thought, really thought, that his colleagues and classmates recognized that he was not just uninterested but unavailable. That he’s beholden to someone.
But wasn't that just his own delusion? What had ever happened, beyond a series of wrenching realizations on Guangyan's part - that if you looked past the scowling, Pu Yiyong was sensitive and kind, not to mention handsome and well proportioned; that he’d never had so much fun with anyone else; that helping Pu Yiyong with the obsessions gave a sense of purpose to Guangyuan’s life that made all his previous struggles over grades seem empty; that Pu Yiyong was the best friend he’d ever had -
He doesn't even know if Pu Yiyong considers them especially close. He might not want much to do with Cao Guangyan when he wakes up.
His father looks surprised when Guangyan trudges past his bar-stall into their own house. “Guangyan?”, he calls out, but Guangyan doesn’t respond, just kicks off his shoes inside the door, keeps going up the stairs and lays down face-first on his bed.
The door to his room opens. When he cracks an eye, a can of lemon soda from the bar has appeared on his nightstand. His shoulder receives a pat.
“Dad,” Guangyan blurts out, as his father starts to move away.
He pauses in the doorway. But Guangyan doesn’t know what he wanted, or it’s useless to ask for it. “Never mind.”
His father crosses back slowly and sits down on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to make congee tomorrow for breakfast, so don’t forget to make time for it before your class.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“It won’t be like this forever.”
There’s a lump in his chest, suddenly, something twisting and spiky. He’s grateful for the pillow to bury his face against.
“I know.”
His shoulder gets another pat before his father returns downstairs. It’s a quiet evening, a weeknight. But he still keeps the window shut.
———
Guangyan sets down his book on the floor of Pu Yiyong’s room. He’s now read through and made notes on all the readings for the upcoming week; and he’s even gone through most of the professor’s suggested extra tutorials. He rolls out his shoulders; he could keep working, but he’s been trying dutifully to take a break every now and again, to reassure his father, even in absentia.
He’s already read all the manhua in here, and he likes to save rereading Pu Yiyong’s manhua for just before he falls asleep, one chapter every night, on a loop. His eyes fall on some pens on the side of Pu Yiyong’s desk. Maybe he could have a try at drawing something himself? Just doodling is boring; but Guangyan has a cooperative subject at hand, doesn’t he? And so for the next half hour he makes a very sincere attempt at drawing Pu Yiyong. When he’s more or less finished, he holds up his work next to Pu Yiyong’s face and surveys the results.
It’s… really bad. You can’t even call it amateurish. It barely resembles a person.
Without any warning, even from the quiet barometer of his own heart, he bursts into gales of tears.
“I made you look like a potato,” he sobs out. He moves to rip it up, but his hand curls in the air a few centimeters from the page. As stupid as it is, it's still meant to be a drawing of Pu Yiyong. He can't destroy it. This only makes him cry harder.
“Yiyong, I miss you.” His voice is raw, and it cracks. “I miss you. I’m sorry.” He doesn’t even know what the apology is for - his terrible drawing, his deficiencies as a friend, as a doctor, his wretched selfishness in wanting Pu Yiyong back. What if he’s comfortable, like this? What if he’s resting? But Guangyan can’t help it. There’s nothing else he wants more. “I’m sorry, but you still have to come back.”
He stuffs the drawing in between the pages of one of Pu Yiyong’s least favorite manhua and throws his things into his bag. Ye Baosheng and his father both give him nearly identical looks of concern, one after the other, as he runs down the stairs and back up into his own room.
That night, when he finally manages to drop into a restless sleep, he dreams that Pu Yiyong has transformed into an egg, and Guangyan, turning, catches the edge of a table and knocks him onto the ground. And he tries and tries to pick up all of egg-Yiyong from the floor, but he keeps breaking Yiyong’s shell even worse in his efforts, or losing pieces of him. Some of his yolk is absorbing into the ground. He wakes up shaking at four in the morning, heart pounding, and he doesn’t try to fall asleep again.
———
His back and shoulders hurt. Even his eyes kind of hurt. For the past two hours - more than two hours? - Cao Guangyan has been processing samples for his mentor in one of the hospital’s sterile rooms. It’s not that it’s difficult, but it requires concentration; he has to lean over the sample trays, and the air in the lab is stifling and close. He’s so absorbed in trying to get the reagents exactly right that he almost knocks his current sample over when Dr. Wen pops her head back in the room.
“Cao Guangyan, how is it going? Oh, you’re done with this many already? Why don’t you take these ones over to the lab so they can start working?”
It’s nice to have a little reprieve, a chance to stretch his legs a bit. When his phone rings while he’s on the way back, he picks it up without looking at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
On the other end, Ye Baosheng breathes in heavily. Like she’s been crying.
The world stops. His legs lose strength; he falls against the wall and starts to slide down it. There’s a scream building in his throat that’s going to tear him apart when it comes out.
It’s not more than a few seconds, but it feels like an age before she pulls herself together and says, "Come see him when you can. He’s woken up."