Work Text:
You Shulang should have known something was wrong the moment Fan Xiao said, with suspicious calm, “You have two choices.”
Fan Xiao did not believe in choices.
He believed in outcomes.
More specifically, he believed in arranging circumstances so thoroughly that whatever another person selected would eventually curl back toward the conclusion he had already chosen, like a river diverted around rocks and gardens and inconvenient little villages only to empty into the sea exactly where he wanted it. It was one of the qualities You Shulang found most infuriating about him. It was also, though he would rather have swallowed glass than admit it aloud, one of the qualities he had learned to recognize with an almost intimate accuracy.
Which was why he narrowed his eyes immediately.
They were standing in the lobby of his apartment building after dinner, the evening stretched warm and quiet around them. Fan Xiao had driven him home. That should have been the end of it. A normal ending, even. You Shulang went upstairs. Fan Xiao returned to his own place. They saw each other tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever Fan Xiao inevitably appeared somewhere he had no legitimate reason to be and acted as though coincidence had personally arranged the meeting for his convenience.
Instead, Fan Xiao remained beside him.
“You have two choices,” he repeated.
You Shulang folded his arms.
“I heard you.”
“And?”
“And every time you say something like that, I lose something.”
Fan Xiao’s mouth curved.
“Your patience?”
“My freedom.”
“That sounds dramatic.”
“You once had my schedule changed because you decided I was working too late.”
“You were working too late.”
“You are proving my point.”
“I’m correcting your exaggeration.”
“That is not better.”
Fan Xiao looked entirely unbothered. Worse, he looked pleased. Not openly pleased, because he was too proud for that, but there was a familiar gleam in his eyes, a quiet satisfaction that usually meant he had already moved three steps ahead and was now waiting for You Shulang to arrive at the trap voluntarily.
You Shulang hated that look.
He had also missed it.
That realization was irritating enough that he refused to examine it further.
“Fine,” he said. “What are my choices?”
Fan Xiao lifted one hand and held up a finger.
“Option one. You go upstairs.”
You Shulang stared at him.
“That’s it?”
“For the moment.”
“That is alarmingly reasonable.”
“I can be reasonable.”
“You can imitate it.”
Fan Xiao ignored that. “You go upstairs, shower, change, and try to sleep.”
“Try?”
“I know you won’t.”
The certainty in his voice made You Shulang’s eyebrows rise.
“And how exactly do you know that?”
“Because you drank coffee at dinner.”
“So?”
“So you’re sensitive to caffeine after eight.”
You Shulang went still.
It was not, objectively, a romantic fact. It should not have mattered that Fan Xiao knew it. Fan Xiao noticed things. Fan Xiao remembered things. Fan Xiao treated information about him as though every detail had been catalogued somewhere behind his eyes under the heading IMPORTANT, even while pretending not to care.
Still, something warm and traitorous shifted beneath You Shulang’s ribs.
He crushed it immediately.
“And then?”
“And then,” Fan Xiao continued, “you’ll lie awake for an hour, get annoyed, come downstairs because you’ll decide fresh air will help, and find me waiting.”
You Shulang blinked.
“Waiting.”
“Yes.”
“In the lobby.”
“Yes.”
“For an hour.”
“If necessary.”
“That is your first option?”
Fan Xiao nodded.
You Shulang stared at him in disbelief.
“Then what is option two?”
Fan Xiao held up a second finger.
“You skip the unnecessary hour, come home with me now, and sleep there.”
Silence.
Not a short silence, either.
The kind of silence that deserved furniture.
You Shulang looked at Fan Xiao, then toward the elevators, then back at Fan Xiao.
Finally he said, “Those are not two choices.”
“They are.”
“No. One is ‘come home with me now’ and the other is ‘waste an hour before coming home with me.’”
Fan Xiao considered this.
“Yes.”
“You cannot call that a choice.”
“You choose the timing.”
“That is not the important part.”
“It is to me.”
“Of course it is.”
You Shulang pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, trying very hard not to laugh, because laughter would encourage him, and Fan Xiao required very little encouragement in the first place.
The problem was that he could already see it.
He could go upstairs out of pure spite. He could shower, change, and get into bed. He could even turn off his phone and lie there determinedly with his eyes closed, refusing to prove Fan Xiao right.
And then he would know.
He would know Fan Xiao was downstairs.
Waiting.
Not impatiently, probably. Fan Xiao had terrifying patience when he wanted something badly enough. He would sit in the car or lean against it, check the time, perhaps answer messages, perhaps glare at anyone who came too close, and simply remain there with the absolute certainty that You Shulang would eventually appear.
The image should have made him furious.
Instead, to his horror, it made something inside him soften.
“You’re impossible,” he muttered.
Fan Xiao stepped closer.
You Shulang noticed because he always noticed. The change was only half a pace, barely enough to alter the distance between them, but Fan Xiao had always possessed a way of invading space without technically touching it. He could make proximity feel like possession, like a hand already resting at the back of You Shulang’s neck before his fingers had actually moved.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
“That is because I’m trying to understand how you can manipulate someone while being so obvious about it.”
Fan Xiao’s smile deepened.
“Maybe I don’t need to hide it from you.”
And there it was.
The irritating part.
The part You Shulang had no defense against.
Fan Xiao was not pretending anymore.
There had been a time when every calculation came wrapped in excuses, when every act of possessiveness had another explanation attached to it, when jealousy disguised itself as contempt and desire hid behind control. Now Fan Xiao simply looked at him and allowed the truth to remain visible.
I want you with me.
Not subtle.
Not healthy, perhaps.
Not remotely normal.
But honest.
You Shulang exhaled.
“You really planned both outcomes.”
“I planned more than two.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“You would have come downstairs.”
“Maybe I would have stayed upstairs specifically to prove you wrong.”
“I would have gone up.”
You Shulang stared.
Fan Xiao looked serene.
“You would not.”
“I know your door code.”
“I changed it.”
“I know.”
That startled a laugh out of him before he could stop it.
Fan Xiao’s expression changed instantly, softened by triumph so pure it was almost boyish.
You Shulang pointed at him.
“Don’t look so pleased.”
“You laughed.”
“That doesn’t mean you won.”
“You’re coming with me.”
“I haven’t said that.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m annoyed.”
“Either way.”
You Shulang hated those words.
Mostly because Fan Xiao was right.
He shook his head, stepped forward, and caught Fan Xiao lightly by the front of his coat.
“Fine.”
Fan Xiao’s hands settled immediately at his waist, as if they had been waiting there all evening.
“Fine?”
“I’ll come with you.”
“You chose option two.”
“No.” You Shulang leaned closer, irritated, amused, and far too satisfied by the way Fan Xiao’s attention sharpened entirely onto him. “I chose a third option.”
Fan Xiao’s brows lifted.
You Shulang kissed him.
It was brief, deliberately so, just enough to interrupt whatever smug reply had been forming.
When he pulled back, Fan Xiao followed automatically.
There.
That.
That was the real answer, wasn’t it?
Fan Xiao could build as many roads as he liked, curve every possibility toward the same destination, and place himself waiting at the end of each one.
You Shulang might complain every step of the way.
But, increasingly, disturbingly, wonderfully— he liked exactly where they led now.