Work Text:
Yuan Hong noticed the light before he noticed anything else.
It was not particularly remarkable. One yellow square beneath the narrow roof of his porch, warm against the blue-black evening, illuminating the steps and the edge of the path with the kind of ordinary domestic softness that should not have been capable of stopping a trained police captain in the middle of his own gate. And yet Yuan Hong stopped anyway, one gloved hand still resting against cold iron, his body reacting several seconds before his mind managed to assemble the facts into something useful. He had left that morning before sunrise. He distinctly remembered extinguishing every lamp before locking the door. There had been no reason to leave the porch light burning when he expected to return alone, because Yuan Hong had lived alone long enough to consider lighting an empty house for his own arrival a ridiculous waste of oil.
Someone was inside.
His hand moved automatically toward the gun beneath his coat.
Then he saw the shoes.
They had been abandoned beside the front step with the careless confidence of someone who apparently believed Yuan Hong's property had recently become public territory. Expensive leather, polished to a shine that had survived approximately half of Beijing before acquiring one particularly offensive streak of mud near the heel. Yuan Hong knew those shoes. More importantly, he knew the man who would take one look at that streak, complain about the condition of Beijing's streets, blame municipal administration, capitalism, weather, horses, and Yuan Hong personally, and then somehow persuade someone else to clean them.
Yuan Hong's hand moved away from his gun.
He stood there for another moment.
The sensible reaction would have been irritation.
Zhao Shaoshang had entered his house without permission.
Again.
There were rules regarding private property. There were rules regarding locked doors. There were, Yuan Hong felt with increasing certainty, rules regarding people who had somehow acquired a spare key without the owner remembering ever giving them one. He should probably investigate that particular matter. Confiscate the key. Demand an explanation. Establish boundaries before Shaoshang concluded that access to Yuan Hong's kitchen naturally included access to his study, bedroom, wardrobe, finances, future retirement plans, and perhaps eventually his surname.
From inside came the faint clatter of porcelain.
Yuan Hong looked at the glowing window.
Something warm and embarrassingly pleased unfurled beneath his ribs.
He opened the door.
The smell reached him first: ginger, sesame oil, something simmering in broth, and beneath it the faint sweetness of the cakes Shaoshang liked to pretend he purchased for other people. His coat had barely left his shoulders before a voice drifted from the kitchen.
"You're late."
Yuan Hong froze.
There were many things wrong with those two words.
Primarily, Zhao Shaoshang had no legitimate reason to know when Yuan Hong was supposed to return to Yuan Hong's own house.
Secondly, the accusation had been delivered with the aggrieved authority of a neglected spouse.
Thirdly—
Yuan Hong liked it.
That was clearly the most serious problem.
He hung his coat carefully because some instincts survived even psychological catastrophe and walked toward the kitchen, where the extent of the invasion became apparent.
Shaoshang had not merely entered his house.
Shaoshang had occupied it.
His fan lay across Yuan Hong's table beside several police documents he had apparently moved without permission. His outer coat had been thrown over the back of Yuan Hong's chair. There was a parcel from a bakery on the counter, another parcel containing tea that was almost certainly three times more expensive than anything Yuan Hong would willingly purchase, and one of Shaoshang's hair ornaments rested beside the basin as though it had always belonged there. The man himself stood before the stove with his sleeves tied back, one hand holding a spoon and the other planted indignantly against his hip.
Yuan Hong leaned against the doorway.
"You broke into my house."
Shaoshang looked offended.
"I have a key."
"That raises more questions."
"It should answer the only important one."
"I don't remember giving you a key."
"You didn't."
Yuan Hong waited.
Shaoshang stirred the soup.
Yuan Hong continued waiting.
Shaoshang tasted it, frowned thoughtfully, added salt, tasted it again, and finally glanced over his shoulder.
"What?"
"Where did you get the key?"
"Your mother."
Yuan Hong stared at him.
Shaoshang stared back.
There was a silence in which one of them possessed several pieces of information unavailable to the other, and Yuan Hong had the deeply uncomfortable impression that this had somehow become normal.
"My mother is dead."
"Yes."
"So."
"So?"
Yuan Hong narrowed his eyes.
Shaoshang smiled brilliantly.
It was the smile of a man who knew perfectly well that Yuan Hong would not get an answer and intended to enjoy every second of his frustration.
"You are impossible."
"And yet you keep letting me inside."
That was not entirely accurate.
Apparently Shaoshang had eliminated the need for Yuan Hong's participation in that process.
Yuan Hong crossed the kitchen and reached past him to lower the flame beneath the pot. Shaoshang did not move away. He rarely did anymore. Somewhere over the past months, the distance between them had diminished in increments too small to notice individually, until Yuan Hong could stand behind him with Shaoshang's back almost touching his chest and neither considered it unusual.
Almost.
Yuan Hong became painfully aware of the exposed strip of skin above Shaoshang's collar.
He looked at the soup.
The soup was safer.
"You used too much oil."
Shaoshang turned so quickly that Yuan Hong had to step back or allow their noses to collide.
"I did not."
"You did."
"I used exactly enough."
"You always use too much."
"Your mother says you complain about oil regardless of how much anyone uses."
Yuan Hong's expression went still.
Shaoshang's mouth twitched.
"You really need to stop saying that."
"Why? She agrees with me."
"My dead mother cannot agree with you."
"That sounds like a limitation on your part."
Yuan Hong stared at him for several seconds, wondering whether arresting a civilian consultant for being unbearably smug would constitute abuse of authority.
Probably.
Unfortunately.
Then Shaoshang reached up and loosened Yuan Hong's tie.
Every thought stopped.
It was not a dramatic gesture. That made it worse. Shaoshang simply hooked one finger beneath the knot and pulled, his attention already shifting toward Yuan Hong's collar as though this, too, belonged among the ordinary privileges he had granted himself: key, kitchen, chair, expensive tea, Yuan Hong.
"You've been wearing this since morning," Shaoshang muttered. "How do you breathe?"
"Normally."
"You say that because suffering has become part of your personality."
"My personality is fine."
"Your personality needs alterations."
Shaoshang tugged again.
Yuan Hong let him.
That was perhaps the most dangerous discovery of the evening.
Not that Shaoshang had somehow acquired a key. Not that he had taken possession of the kitchen. Not even that Yuan Hong had arrived home, seen a light waiting for him, and experienced an absurd rush of pleasure at the knowledge that someone was inside.
It was that Shaoshang touched him as though he expected to be allowed.
And Yuan Hong wanted to allow everything.
The realization settled low in his stomach, warm and heavy and decidedly less innocent than the soup bubbling behind them. Shaoshang's fingers brushed his throat while freeing the top button of his shirt, and Yuan Hong imagined—briefly, involuntarily—those same clever fingers undoing the rest. One button after another. Still talking, probably. Still complaining. Perhaps ordering Yuan Hong to sit down because he was incapable of taking care of himself properly.
Yuan Hong discovered, with some alarm, that the fantasy was extremely appealing.
Apparently his preferences were humiliatingly specific.
"Captain?"
Yuan Hong looked down.
Shaoshang was watching him.
There was curiosity in his eyes now, followed by the slow emergence of something wicked when he noticed exactly where Yuan Hong's attention had fallen.
"Oh."
"No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
Shaoshang's smile widened.
Yuan Hong caught his wrist before those fingers could retreat.
That changed the atmosphere.
Shaoshang went still—not frightened, never frightened of him, but suddenly attentive. Yuan Hong could feel his pulse beneath his thumb. Fast. Faster than his expression suggested.
Interesting.
Yuan Hong stepped closer.
"You arrive without permission."
Shaoshang lifted his chin.
"I have a key."
"You rearrange my kitchen."
"It was badly arranged."
"You move my documents."
"They were occupying my seat."
"Your seat."
"Yes."
"In my house."
"Correct."
"You turn on my lights."
"I wasn't going to cook in darkness."
"You buy food I didn't ask for."
"You would live on noodles and spite without supervision."
Yuan Hong's thumb moved once over the inside of Shaoshang's wrist.
The fan on the table remained perfectly still.
That, more than anything, told him he had won.
"And now," Yuan Hong said quietly, "you undress me."
Shaoshang's ears turned red.
Beautiful.
"I loosened your tie."
"Without permission."
"You didn't stop me."
"No."
Yuan Hong bent until his mouth was close enough to Shaoshang's ear that he felt the other man's breath catch.
"I didn't."
For once, Zhao Shaoshang had nothing to say.
Yuan Hong enjoyed this discovery far more than a respectable police captain should.
Then the soup boiled over.
Shaoshang made a strangled sound and tore himself free, spinning toward the stove.
"My soup!"
Yuan Hong laughed.
He genuinely laughed, quietly at first and then enough that Shaoshang turned around with the expression of a man witnessing an unforgivable betrayal.
"You distracted me!"
"You were the one undressing me."
"I loosened one button!"
"Two."
"That is not undressing!"
"Three would have been?"
Shaoshang pointed the spoon at him.
"Get out of my kitchen."
Yuan Hong looked around.
His kitchen.
His table.
His stove.
His house.
Shaoshang's coat over his chair, Shaoshang's fan beside his documents, Shaoshang's cakes beside his tea, Shaoshang standing in the middle of everything as though he had grown there naturally, some bright invasive thing taking root between floorboards Yuan Hong had never realized were empty.
Something inside him softened.
He could correct Shaoshang.
He could point out the obvious.
Instead Yuan Hong sat down in Shaoshang's claimed chair and watched him rescue dinner.
Later, he thought, he should ask about the key.
He should establish rules.
He should explain that one could not simply enter another person's home, rearrange his belongings, cook his dinner, loosen his clothes, and gradually occupy every neglected corner until the owner began to associate the sound of footsteps with relief.
He should probably do many things.
But when they finished eating and Shaoshang complained about the cold outside, Yuan Hong told him to stay.
When Shaoshang stole half the blanket on the sofa, Yuan Hong moved closer instead of taking it back.
And much later, when Shaoshang had fallen asleep against his shoulder with one hand still loosely curled around Yuan Hong's sleeve, Yuan Hong looked through the window toward the small pool of yellow light outside.
For years, he had returned to darkness and called it peace.
Tonight there had been light.
There had been noise from the kitchen. Shoes by his door. Someone waiting who had no permission to wait and apparently no intention of asking for it.
Yuan Hong looked down at Shaoshang.
Tomorrow, he decided, he would not ask for the key back.
He might, however, make him another copy.
Purely practical.
After all, Zhao Shaoshang had already taken possession of everything else.