Work Text:
For three days, Zhao Yunlan had been tracking something that, according to Da Qing, smelled like rotten fish, wet earth, and “that one cabinet in the fridge nobody opens because Chu Shuzhi once said he’d kill anyone who touched it,” and according to Lin Jing should not have existed at all, because the amount of slime it left at the crime scenes violated at least two laws of biology, one of chemistry, and the most basic sense of decency. Zhao Yunlan personally thought they were both being dramatic, though his opinion might have had something to do with the fact that after twelve years working for SID, his scale for what deserved to be called “disgusting” had undergone certain irreversible changes. A man who had once watched a creature feed on other people’s memories and later spit them out as gelatinous little balls that had to be collected if they wanted to restore those memories to the victims really stopped caring about a bit of slime. So the problem was not that the monster was disgusting. The problem was that it was careful, fast, and apparently intelligent enough to realize after the first body that they had started looking for it. After the second, Zhao Yunlan stopped sleeping more than four hours a night. After the third, he stopped pretending he was not taking the case personally.
The victims had almost nothing in common. A man coming home from work at night, a student who had left the library late, and an elderly woman who ran a small shop on the outskirts of Dragon City. Different ages, different districts, different times. No mutual acquaintances. No connections to Dixing, at least none they had been able to find. Only the same dark residue around the wounds, small amounts of foreign organic material, and the distinctive deep cuts that looked almost as though something had first seized its victim with several hooked limbs and then tried to drag them closer. In front of Zhao Yunlan was a board covered in photographs, maps, and notes, an ashtray far too full for one in the afternoon, and a cup of coffee Guo Changcheng had placed by his hand some two hours earlier and which he still had not touched. Not because he did not want it. It was simply that somewhere between trying to connect the attack sites to public transport routes, checking reports of energy anomalies, and having yet another discussion with Lin Jing about whether slime could “migrate,” coffee had stopped ranking very high on his list of problems.
That was precisely why he did not immediately notice that the office had grown quieter.
It was a particular achievement, considering the people he managed. SID was rarely truly quiet. If Zhu Hong was not arguing with Da Qing, Lin Jing was hammering at his keyboard as though he intended to personally punish every key for crimes committed in a previous life, and even if all of them happened to be silent, Guo Changcheng possessed an extraordinary talent for knocking something over at the exact moment the silence became noticeable. This time, however, nothing fell. No one swore. Da Qing, who only a moment ago had been complaining from the windowsill about the quality of today’s lunch, abruptly stopped talking.
Zhao Yunlan looked up.
Shen Wei was standing by the entrance.
The sight alone was enough to make something in Zhao Yunlan’s shoulders, tense for hours, loosen slightly. Not completely. Not enough for anyone except Shen Wei to notice, and perhaps not even he should have been able to see it, if Zhao Yunlan had had any say in the matter of his own dignity. The problem was that Shen Wei always noticed things he should not. Whether Zhao Yunlan had eaten. Whether he had slept. Whether his old injury hurt. Whether he had coughed one time too many. Whether, over the past three hours, his right hand had clenched too often around the edge of his desk. It was one of those irritating Professor Shen traits that Zhao Yunlan considered absolutely unbearable and would miss after approximately five minutes if they ever disappeared.
Today, however, Shen Wei had not come carrying a thermos.
Nor did he have a bag of food, which would have been the second most likely possibility given that Zhao Yunlan had very obviously forgotten lunch and Shen Wei possessed some kind of supernatural sense that allowed him to detect skipped meals from several kilometers away.
Instead, he was holding a small transparent container.
Zhao Yunlan narrowed his eyes.
Da Qing jumped down from the windowsill, took two steps forward, then immediately one step back.
“No.”
Shen Wei stopped.
“What?”
“I don’t know what’s in there, but I don’t like it.”
Lin Jing leaned his head around the side of his monitor. His face lit up in that particular way which, with him, meant either a scientific discovery or a disaster that was about to become a scientific discovery.
“Professor Shen, is that a sample?”
Shen Wei looked at Zhao Yunlan before answering, and that single movement was enough to give Zhao Yunlan the familiar flicker of satisfaction he had absolutely no intention of analyzing. Shen Wei had walked into a room full of people, Lin Jing was practically bouncing with curiosity, Da Qing was acting as though the container intended to attack him personally, and yet Shen Wei looked first and foremost at him. Always at him first.
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?” Zhao Yunlan repeated, pushing away from his desk. “Xiao Wei, you’re definitely spending too much time with me. Give it a few more months and you’ll learn how to answer simple questions in a way completely devoid of any informational value.”
Something so slight appeared at the corner of Shen Wei’s mouth that most people might have mistaken it for an accidental twitch of muscle.
Zhao Yunlan, of course, knew better.
He stepped closer.
Only then did he see what was inside the container.
For a solid three seconds, he said nothing.
Not because he was at a loss for words. Zhao Yunlan very rarely suffered from a lack of words. It was more that his brain needed a few moments to properly classify what he was looking at. Inside lay a fragment of something that might once have served as a limb, though calling it an “arm” would have been an insult to the entire concept of anatomy. It was about twenty centimeters long, with dark, semitransparent skin beneath which the last glimmers of violet light were still moving, and three hooked protrusions ending in something that resembled black claws. The severed end was ragged, wet, and slowly oozing a thick liquid into the bottom of the container in a shade Zhao Yunlan would have described as “swamp-ghost vomit” if anyone had asked him.
Behind him, Da Qing made a sound of deep, personal offense.
“I’m eating here.”
“You’re not.”
“But I could have been.”
Zhao Yunlan ignored him. He looked at the container. Then at Shen Wei. Then back at the container.
The exhaustion that had been settling somewhere behind his eyes for three days suddenly gave way to something warm and strangely light.
“Is that from it?”
Shen Wei nodded.
“Probably. I found it near the western side of the university. Earlier, I noticed traces similar to the ones you described. The creature was trying to hide in the drainage system.”
Lin Jing stood up so abruptly that his chair rolled backward.
“You encountered it?”
Shen Wei was silent one second too long.
Zhao Yunlan immediately stopped looking at the container.
“Xiao Wei.”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t an answer to my question.”
“I encountered it.”
“And?”
This time Shen Wei looked somewhere past his shoulder, which in Professor Shen’s language meant roughly the same thing as an ordinary criminal slowly backing toward an open window.
Zhao Yunlan sighed.
“And its arm just happened to fall off?”
“I’m not sure it’s an arm.”
“Shen Wei.”
“It tried to attack me.”
Zhao Yunlan felt something in his chest clamp down sharply, without bothering to ask permission. It was absurd. Rationally, he knew who Shen Wei was. Better than anyone in this room, he knew what Shen Wei could handle. A creature capable of murdering three ordinary people might be dangerous to him, to Guo Changcheng, probably to half of Dragon City, but to Shen Wei… No. That did not change the fact that the words it tried to attack me always struck some primitive place in his mind that had no interest whatsoever in logic and reacted with only one thought: who? where? show me, and I’ll personally explain why that was the last mistake of its life.
His gaze swept over Shen Wei from head to toe. Immaculate coat. Shirt. Glasses. No blood. No visible injury.
Shen Wei sighed almost imperceptibly.
“I really am fine.”
“Show me your hands.”
“Yunlan.”
“Hands.”
Behind him, Lin Jing was very carefully pretending not to listen. Zhu Hong did not even bother.
Shen Wei, a man capable of inspiring fear in beings whose very appearance deprived ordinary humans of the ability to think logically, obediently held out both hands.
Zhao Yunlan examined them, turned one by the wrist, then the other, and when he found nothing beyond a small smudge on the cuff, the tightness in his chest began to slowly ease.
“Good.”
Shen Wei tried to pull his hand back.
Zhao Yunlan did not let go immediately.
Their eyes met for a moment, and something soft passed across Shen Wei’s face—too fleeting for Zhao Yunlan to call it a smile, too warm to mistake for anything else. And that was precisely when Zhao Yunlan remembered again the plastic container holding a mangled piece of a murderous creature.
He released Shen Wei and took the box.
“So you saw something suspicious, recognized the description of the creature, followed it, cut a piece off when it attacked you, and then brought it straight to me?”
Shen Wei apparently sensed the danger only now.
“…Yes.”
Zhao Yunlan looked at the revolting limb.
Then at Shen Wei.
His smile widened slowly.
“Xiao Wei.”
Shen Wei straightened almost imperceptibly.
“Hm?”
“This is so romantic.”
The silence was absolute.
Not ordinary silence. Not silence born from a lack of conversation. It was a silence filled with the collective conviction that something had just happened which none of them knew how to process.
Lin Jing was the first to lower his gaze to the container.
Then he looked at Zhao Yunlan.
Da Qing stopped even pretending to be disgusted.
Zhu Hong very slowly put down the document she was holding.
Shen Wei, meanwhile, simply stared.
Zhao Yunlan knew that face well enough to see the catastrophe unfolding beneath its perfectly calm surface. First, incomprehension. Then an attempt to determine whether Zhao Yunlan was joking. Next, probably a rapid analysis of every possible meaning of the word “romantic,” as though Shen Wei suspected that at some point during the tens of thousands of years of his existence, human language had changed the definition without informing him first.
At last, he frowned.
“Romantic?”
Zhao Yunlan lifted the container between them.
“Obviously.”
Shen Wei looked at the piece of monster.
Something almost helpless appeared on his face.
“This is a fragment of a limb from a creature that killed three people.”
“I know.”
“It is still secreting toxic slime.”
“Lin Jing will be thrilled.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
Shen Wei fell silent.
There was something absurdly adorable about watching a man who could face an army without blinking now be utterly defeated by his boyfriend calling a severed limb a romantic gift.
“I don’t understand how this is supposed to be romantic.”
Zhao Yunlan looked at him in genuine disbelief.
“Shen Wei, I should be offended.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re clearly failing to appreciate your own gesture.”
Shen Wei looked at the container again, as though hoping that this time he might see a bouquet of roses inside.
“Yunlan.”
“Think about it. You knew I’d been looking for this thing for three days. You knew I’d barely been sleeping because of this case. You saw the monster and your first thought was: Zhao Yunlan would like a piece of that.”
Lin Jing made a choking sound.
Zhao Yunlan did not even turn around.
“That was not exactly my first thought.”
“But it was one of the first.”
“I wanted to obtain a sample that would allow us to identify it.”
“For me.”
“For the investigation.”
“My investigation.”
“SID is conducting the investigation.”
“And who runs SID?”
Shen Wei looked at him for a long moment.
Zhao Yunlan smiled wider.
“Exactly.”
Shen Wei’s face remained serious for another two seconds. Then his gaze drifted toward the container for the third time in the last few minutes, and at last something in him changed. Not laughter—Shen Wei rarely gave him that much so easily—but his lips twitched, and that quiet amusement reserved almost exclusively for Zhao Yunlan appeared in his eyes.
“You are very strange.”
Zhao Yunlan went still.
Then he pointed at him, still holding the piece of monster in his other hand.
“No. Don’t try to turn this around on me now. You’re the one who walked into my office carrying a severed limb.”
“Because you needed it.”
“Exactly!”
Shen Wei blinked.
Zhao Yunlan spread his arms in the gesture of a man whose argument had just been indisputably proven by the opposing side.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!”
“Talking about what?”
“Romance!”
This time Da Qing groaned loudly.
“I can’t believe I’m witnessing this conversation.”
Zhao Yunlan turned his head.
“No one is keeping you here.”
“This is my workplace.”
“You’re a cat. You don’t have a workplace.”
“I have a contract.”
“Which you stole out of my drawer yourself.”
“Details.”
Zhao Yunlan waved a hand and focused on Shen Wei again, because in his opinion there was still an extremely important point here that required clarification. Shen Wei looked less confused now and more like a man who had accepted that the logic of this world would never be entirely compatible with Zhao Yunlan’s logic and, for some reason, had decided it was still worth staying.
“You know, normal people buy flowers.”
“I can buy you flowers.”
The answer came immediately.
Something stupidly warm bloomed in Zhao Yunlan’s chest.
“I know.”
“Or something else.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to receive pieces of dangerous creatures in order to…”
“Hey.” His voice softened before he could plan it. “I’m not saying I want dead monsters for every holiday.”
Lin Jing muttered under his breath:
“Pity.”
Zhao Yunlan ignored him with all the dignity befitting the director of a special investigations unit.
“I’m only saying that you thought of me.”
Shen Wei stopped smiling, but only because he suddenly became very still, almost frozen as though trapped in time.
And that was exactly where Zhao Yunlan had been going, even if he had started with a joke, even if the easiest thing for him was to cover the real things with a layer of absurd words and a careless smile. Shen Wei had a habit of doing things for him as naturally as though he did not realize that every one of them settled somewhere in Zhao Yunlan’s heart. He remembered his meals. He brought him an umbrella before it started raining. He adjusted the collar of his coat when it was cold. He left a light on when he knew Zhao Yunlan would be home late. And apparently, if he happened to run into a creature in a drain that Zhao Yunlan had been trying to find for three days, his mind immediately formed the same simple chain: Yunlan needs this. I’ll take it to Yunlan.
To Shen Wei, it might have been practical.
To Zhao Yunlan, practicality had long since become one of the most romantic languages in the world.
“You could have just chased it away,” he said more quietly. “You could have gone back to what you were doing. You could have called. Instead, you remembered exactly what we were looking for, got a sample, and came here in person.”
Shen Wei looked at him.
“Of course I remembered.”
And that was the worst of it.
Zhao Yunlan exhaled through his nose and looked up, as though the ceiling might offer him some assistance.
“See? You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Being romantic without knowing you’re being romantic.”
The faintest trace of color appeared on Shen Wei’s cheeks.
Zhao Yunlan was absolutely delighted.
“Professor Shen, are you blushing?”
“No.”
“Da Qing?”
“He’s blushing.”
“Da Qing.”
This time the warning came from Shen Wei, and the cat immediately decided there were boundaries even he should not cross.
Zhao Yunlan, on the other hand, possessed no comparable instinct for self-preservation.
He moved a little closer.
“Don’t worry. I like it.”
Shen Wei looked at him from behind his glasses, still wearing that same faint shadow of embarrassment that Zhao Yunlan mentally stored in the place reserved for his most precious memories.
“It still isn’t a romantic gift.”
“Maybe not to you.”
“Not to anyone.”
“It is to me.”
“It’s only a sample.”
“My sample.”
“SID’s.”
“Shen Wei.”
“Zhao Yunlan.”
For a moment they stared at one another with equal seriousness, standing in the middle of the office between the board covered in photographs of the victims and a table buried beneath reports, while in Zhao Yunlan’s hand was a slime-dripping fragment of something that would probably lead them to the killer before the evening was over.
Zhao Yunlan was the first to lose.
He laughed.
Not briefly, not under his breath, but truly laughed, until the tension of the past three days flowed out of him with it, while Shen Wei watched him first in surprise and then with increasing softness. And somewhere between one breath and the next, Zhao Yunlan realized that this was exactly why he had called the gesture romantic. Not because of the monster. Not because of the sample. Not even because it might help them solve the case.
It was because Shen Wei had shown up.
As always.
In the middle of his worst day, with a calm face and a solution held in his hands. Sometimes in a thermos in the form of nourishing soup. Sometimes in a paper bag containing lunch. And sometimes, apparently, in a plastic box with a severed piece of monster inside.
Zhao Yunlan rubbed the corner of his eye with his thumb.
“All right. Lin Jing, take my romantic monster to the lab.”
“Please never call it that again.”
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
Lin Jing accepted the container with a suspiciously wide smile and almost immediately disappeared toward the laboratory, dragging Guo Changcheng with him, who looked horrified and fascinated in equal measure. Zhu Hong returned to her paperwork. Da Qing jumped onto the desk, apparently deciding the show was over.
Shen Wei was still standing beside Zhao Yunlan.
“You haven’t eaten.”
Zhao Yunlan looked at him.
“Really? After that entire conversation, this is what we’re moving on to?”
“Your coffee seems to have gone cold as well.”
“Xiao Wei.”
“Hm?”
Zhao Yunlan slipped his hands into his pockets and tilted his head, studying him for a moment. He wanted to say something stupid. It was his natural reflex whenever Shen Wei looked at him too gently and something beneath his ribs grew too soft. He could say that after a gift like that, he expected dinner. He could ask whether next time he would get the whole monster. He could point out that a bouquet would have been less practical because you could not run DNA analysis on it.
Instead, he reached out and smoothed a nonexistent crease from Shen Wei’s sleeve.
“Thank you.”
Shen Wei froze for a fraction of a second.
Then his gaze softened.
“You’re welcome.”
“But next time something tries to attack you, you’ll call.”
“If it’s necessary.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Yunlan…”
“Shen Wei.”
A sigh.
“Fine.”
Zhao Yunlan smiled triumphantly.
“See? We can have healthy communication.”
Da Qing snorted.
“That was coercion.”
“Nobody asked you.”
Shen Wei lowered his gaze, hiding a smile.
Zhao Yunlan noticed immediately.
Of course he did.
“And now,” he said, lightly catching Shen Wei by the wrist and steering him toward the exit, “because you brought me a present, I’ll let you buy me lunch.”
Shen Wei allowed himself to be led for all of two steps.
“I’m the one paying?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Zhao Yunlan turned to him with an expression of absolute seriousness.
“Because you already spent your entire romance budget on the monster.”
Shen Wei stared at him for a long moment.
Then he shook his head.
“You really are very strange.”
Zhao Yunlan bared his teeth in a grin.
“And yet you bring me body parts.”
This time Shen Wei actually laughed.
Quietly, briefly, almost immediately trying to hide it behind lowered eyes, but it was already too late. Zhao Yunlan heard it. He kept the memory. Added it to the list of things he intended to remember for far longer than was reasonable.
And if, later that evening, they solved the case thanks to the tissue Shen Wei had brought him in a plastic box, if Lin Jing found a distinctive compound in the sample that allowed them to locate the creature’s nest, and if Zhao Yunlan spent the next three months telling anyone who would and would not listen that Professor Shen was a man so romantic he brought his beloved evidence instead of flowers—well.
That was an entirely different story.
Although Zhao Yunlan personally thought flowers were overrated.
Shen Wei’s gift helped catch a murderer.
And if that was not romantic, he had no idea what was.