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Sheng Shaoyou had finally discovered the fundamental problem with persuading Hua Yong to stop pretending to be someone he was not. Apparently, Hua Yong had taken the request as a personal challenge, approached it with the dedication of a man preparing a hostile corporate takeover, and decided that the most effective way to abandon his role as a sweet, docile Omega was to make Sheng Shaoyou bitterly regret ever opening his mouth. In hindsight, he should have noticed the warning signs much earlier. The suspiciously thoughtful silence after their last argument, the look Hua Yong had given him over breakfast, as though assessing the structural weaknesses of a building, and finally that extraordinary, almost alarming agreeableness throughout the morning. After all, he knew a man capable of smiling with the utmost innocence while plotting something utterly ridiculous. He should have been worried. Instead, he had felt pleased. He had asked for honesty so often that he had come to regard himself as its staunchest champion, although only now was he beginning to suspect that demanding trust was considerably easier than proving he could accept an answer he had never expected. He had imagined arguments, sharp comments about his wardrobe, perhaps even an end to the habit of letting him have the last word with a gentle smile. He had not anticipated that the disappearance of that smile might feel like standing on the threshold of a house whose layout he had never bothered to learn. Unfortunately, Sheng Shaoyou was in love, and love had apparently damaged his instinct for self-preservation beyond all hope of treatment.
“You've been staring at me for twenty minutes,” Hua Yong observed.
Sheng Shaoyou lowered his phone. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you're especially interesting today.”
Hua Yong glanced at the documents spread between them, then at Sheng Shaoyou, whose expression was so smug that even someone far less perceptive would have recognized a trap. “You recently told me to stop agreeing with everything you say.”
“I did.”
“And to say what I really think instead of worrying whether you'll like it.”
“Also true.”
“And to stop behaving as though I need your permission to have an opinion of my own.”
Sheng Shaoyou settled more comfortably into his chair, increasingly delighted by the direction of the conversation. “I'm glad you were listening.”
“I always listen especially carefully when you're talking nonsense.”
There it was. That was exactly what he meant. That sharpness, that effortless malice, the complete absence of the apologetic smile with which Hua Yong usually softened every remark whenever he suspected the truth might be inconvenient. Warmth spread beneath Sheng Shaoyou's ribs, along with an absurd sense of triumph. For weeks he had been trying to coax this version of his beloved into the open, and now it turned out all it had taken was the right combination of persistent affection and getting on his nerves. He suspected Hua Yong had been concealing an impressive reserve of cutting retorts. The thought alone was so exciting that he almost forgot about work. He could have taken that insult as proof that everything between them would be simple from now on, but somewhere beneath his delight lurked shame. How often had he mistaken the absence of objections for harmony? How many opinions had Hua Yong swallowed while he congratulated himself on being such an attentive partner? He put the thought aside for later, because the afternoon was beautiful, the documents were still waiting, and he had not yet proved quite as brave as he liked to imagine.
“See?” he said. “That wasn't difficult at all.”
Hua Yong smiled, and Sheng Shaoyou's instincts, which had been enjoying themselves immensely until that moment, suddenly stirred uneasily. The problem was not the smile itself. Hua Yong smiled often, and Sheng Shaoyou was so hopelessly susceptible to it that his beloved could probably convince him to hand over half his company simply by tilting his head and looking disappointed. This smile, however, was different. Too calm, too knowing, accompanied by the sort of stillness that usually heralded either an exceptionally elegant insult or a decision that would force Sheng Shaoyou to apologize to someone over dinner at an absurdly expensive restaurant.
“You're right,” Hua Yong replied. “Perhaps I should demonstrate.”
“Demonstrate what?”
“What I really want.”
Sheng Shaoyou opened his mouth. Hua Yong moved. For a man who had spent years diligently maintaining the impression of being a delicate, accommodating Omega, he possessed a frankly offensive degree of physical competence. Sheng Shaoyou barely had time to register his partner crossing the distance between them before one hand closed around his wrist, the other caught the fabric of his shirt, and the entire world tilted in a direction wholly incompatible with his idea of a peaceful afternoon. The backs of his knees struck the sofa, he lost his balance and fell onto the soft cushions; Hua Yong followed in one fluid, perfectly controlled movement, planting a knee beside his thigh and pinning both wrists above his head. There was no violence in it, only certainty of purpose, which unsettled Sheng Shaoyou more than any theatrical outburst of anger would have. Hua Yong knew precisely where to place his hands and how to shift his weight; he did not need to cause pain to prove his strength. His phone slid across the upholstery, the cushions yielded beneath his back, and the familiar living room—the documents, the polished wood, the shafts of sunlight across the carpet—seemed to rearrange itself around a truth that had been present all along. He had looked at this man for months and still failed to see the gulf between what Hua Yong allowed him to witness and what he was actually capable of. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Sheng Shaoyou burst out laughing.
He couldn't help himself. The sheer audacity of the situation was too wonderful. Hua Yong, who normally looked as though he would apologize to a chair for accidentally bumping into it, had just thrown him onto his own sofa with the confidence of a man who had spent years waiting for a suitable excuse. And the outrage now appearing on his face in response to Sheng Shaoyou's laughter made it even funnier.
“Oh my God,” Sheng Shaoyou managed between bursts of laughter. “Hua Yong, where have you been hiding all of this?”
Hua Yong's fingers tightened around his wrists.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You're literally laughing in my face.”
“I'm admiring you.”
“Sheng Shaoyou.”
There was a warning in his voice. A real one, not the familiar theatrical displeasure after which Hua Yong usually stole his dessert or threatened to replace all his ties with ones suitable for a funeral. Sheng Shaoyou heard it, even understood that he ought to take it seriously, and then made a catastrophic mistake: he gave him a broad smile.
“Again,” he requested.
Hua Yong went still. Sheng Shaoyou, who had never encountered a bad idea he couldn't make worse by speaking, lifted his chin encouragingly.
“Go on. You're trying to tell me that you can get whatever you want without the slightest difficulty. Here I am. You have my undivided attention.”
For one glorious second, Hua Yong looked as though he might smile. Then something changed. First, the scent. Sheng Shaoyou had grown accustomed to the carefully controlled sweetness of his pheromones, that familiar, gentle fragrance which over time had become so thoroughly intertwined with his idea of home that he could recognize it on his own shirt long after Hua Yong had left the room. He knew the subtle differences between his moods, the warmer notes that appeared when his beloved was sleepy, and the barely perceptible sharpness that betrayed irritation. He had even learned to distinguish the scent of genuine happiness from the one Hua Yong used to conceal sadness, a feat for which he had rewarded himself with several days of unbearable smugness, while his partner had retaliated with an unnecessary lecture on the right to emotional privacy. This, however, resembled none of the variations he knew.
The familiar sweetness did not so much disappear as give way to something much darker, deeper, incomparably more commanding. The new scent seemed to fill the entire room before Sheng Shaoyou could understand what he was feeling. The air grew thick. Every instinct in his body snapped to attention; his Alpha nature responded with a force that stole his breath and extinguished his amusement. This was no ordinary challenge from another Alpha, no familiar pressure from a rival trying to establish dominance. The sensation was fundamentally different, almost disturbingly alien, as though someone had reached beneath the foundations of the hierarchy upon which Sheng Shaoyou had built his entire life and decided to shift them without effort. It was not merely the intensity of the scent. Strength was too poor a word to describe the way the meaning of everything he had taken for granted was suddenly changing. His body recognized a command where his mind expected tenderness, and Sheng Shaoyou's first reaction was resentment at the contradiction. After all, he knew this man. He knew where to find his arm in the darkness, which cup he drank his tea from, and how even Hua Yong's smallest sadness could ruin an otherwise perfect day. Yet now Hua Yong was looking at him in a way that, for the first time, bore not the faintest trace of an Omega. Straight shoulders, lifted chin, a steady gaze that required nobody's approval. No hesitation, no smoothing down the sharp edges of his own personality to make himself easier to love. He looked at Sheng Shaoyou as though he had finally stopped asking himself whether he was allowed to want something and decided that the answer no longer mattered. Sheng Shaoyou's laughter died in his throat.
“Hua Yong?”
“Yes?”
The answer was perfectly ordinary, and that somehow made it worse. Sheng Shaoyou stared at him, desperately searching for an explanation that would allow the world to return to its former shape. Some medical anomaly? A reaction to suppressants? An unknown type of Alpha he had never heard of, despite liking to consider himself a man of considerable experience? Except he already knew the answer. He recognized it with the same immediate certainty with which he sensed the threat hidden beneath a carefully choreographed presentation during negotiations. Over the past several weeks he had noticed too many small inconsistencies not to put them together now, especially with the truth directly above him, holding his hands as though the question of physical superiority had been settled long ago. Enigma. The word appeared in his mind with the cold finality of a verdict. Hua Yong was an Enigma. His Hua Yong, the man with enormous, deceptively innocent eyes, who had spent months allowing him to believe that flashes of possessiveness were nothing more than an Omega's ordinary jealousy in love. The man who had calmly accepted every assumption Sheng Shaoyou made about his ideal partner. His Hua Yong, who had apparently been capable of effortlessly throwing him onto his back from the very beginning.
“Oh,” Sheng Shaoyou said.
Hua Yong's face hardened.
“Oh?” he repeated.
Sheng Shaoyou swallowed. “I'm trying to think of something intelligent to say.”
“And?”
“So far, I haven't found anything.”
“How unusual.”
Under other circumstances, Sheng Shaoyou would have laughed wholeheartedly. He would probably have found the retort so delightfully typical of his beloved that he would have pulled him down for a kiss and spent the rest of the afternoon congratulating himself on his good fortune. Now, however, the pressure of the pheromones kept building, and beneath it something unfamiliar stirred in his own instincts—a mixture of alarm, resistance, and unwilling fascination that left him unable to distinguish wounded pride from his body's reaction. Hua Yong was still pinning him down. Not as a joke, not theatrically, as though they were acting out some familiar, mutually agreed-upon scene. His fingers were steady, his weight distributed with a precision that betrayed absolute control over the pressure he exerted, and his gaze never wavered when Sheng Shaoyou shifted beneath him.
“Are you afraid?” Hua Yong asked.
Sheng Shaoyou's first impulse was to deny it. His second was to say something irritating about being an Alpha and having absolutely no reason to fear his own boyfriend, although even he recognized the idiocy of that argument before he could voice it. His third impulse, unfortunately, was to try sitting up. Hua Yong pressed him back into the cushions. Not hard enough to hurt. Just enough to get the message across. Sheng Shaoyou went still. Hua Yong's mouth tightened into a thin line.
“You keep telling me to show you who I am. To stop pretending, stop hiding what I want, and stop making myself smaller because I think you'll find it easier to love me if I never cause trouble. You say all these beautiful things, and every time I let myself believe you, even for a moment, you smile at me as though I've done something adorable.”
“Because you are adorable.”
“Sheng Shaoyou.”
“I'm sorry.”
“You're not sorry at all.”
“No,” Sheng Shaoyou admitted, deciding that a lie at this particular moment might cost him his life, or at least earn him a lifetime ban from his favorite sofa. “Not entirely.”
Hua Yong closed his eyes. For one terrible second, Sheng Shaoyou was certain he had gone too far. Then Hua Yong let out a short laugh without the slightest trace of amusement.
“Of course you're not.”
The sound struck Sheng Shaoyou harder than the discovery of his beloved's true nature. He had heard Hua Yong laugh thousands of times, seen him hide a smile behind a teacup, laugh softly with barely a movement of his shoulders, deliver remarks capable of destroying someone's self-esteem with perfect courtesy. But this was something else. The laughter of a man whose patience had finally run out, with the same old fear he had long been trying to escape waiting at the bottom of it. Hua Yong loosened one hand and looked at his own fingers, as though only now realizing what he was doing.
“I wanted you to see me,” he said quietly. “To look at me and understand that I'm not the person you thought I was. I wanted to know whether you would still want me if I stopped giving you the version of myself you like best.” Only then did Sheng Shaoyou understand that his requests for honesty had not been an invitation to make their relationship more interesting. Hua Yong had not simply wanted permission to be amusingly insufferable. He had been asking whether love could survive the disappearance of a carefully maintained mask. The loneliness hidden beneath that question was almost tangible. Seeing the exhaustion in his motionless hands, Sheng Shaoyou felt for the first time that the need to provide an immediate answer was not an expression of confidence, but another form of pressure.
Sheng Shaoyou's throat tightened painfully.
“And now?”
Hua Yong looked at him.
“Now I know I should never have asked in the first place.”
He released Sheng Shaoyou's wrists and began to pull away. The sudden absence of pressure should have brought relief; instead, it resembled the quiet sound of a closing door, something seemingly ordinary yet weighted with finality. Hua Yong had spent so long learning to accept disappointment without showing pain that he knew how to make retreat look dignified. He withdrew without shouting, without demanding explanations, granting nobody the satisfaction of knowing how badly he was hurting. Sheng Shaoyou had seen it before, when his partner hid behind a beautiful, unreadable smile whenever something became too important to dare ask for. Only now did he understand how much that smile frightened him.
“Hua Yong.”
“I think we should stop.”
He said it gently. That made it hurt even more. Sheng Shaoyou reached for his hand. Hua Yong glanced at their fingers, then at his partner's face, his expression so carefully blank that Sheng Shaoyou wanted to throw every rule of self-control he had ever learned out the window.
“Stop what?” he asked, though he knew the answer perfectly well.
“This.”
Hua Yong gestured toward the space between them; the almost dismissive movement nevertheless failed to conceal the tension in his fingers. “This game. Testing me. Whatever you think you're doing when you try to force me to show you something you're not ready to see.”
“But a moment ago you were ready to show me.”
“Because you pushed me into it.”
The accusation landed exactly where it should. Sheng Shaoyou had no defense—partly because it was true, and partly because only now did he see how often he had mistaken persistence for understanding. He wanted Hua Yong to abandon his role, yet had treated the whole process as a puzzle to solve, a negotiation in which the right combination of patience and pressure would eventually produce the desired result. He had been so delighted to discover cracks in his beloved's carefully cultivated sweetness that he had forgotten to consider what it meant to be on the other side of them. That did not erase the fact that Hua Yong had concealed the truth from him. Sheng Shaoyou had every right to feel shocked and hurt. But he could no longer pretend that his own demands came without expectations. He had wanted honesty delivered on the schedule of his curiosity, in a form that allowed him to reward his beloved for the answer. He had never truly asked himself how terrifying it must be to reveal one's real face for someone who had built their entire sense of safety on constantly fulfilling other people's expectations. He had encouraged Hua Yong to be honest. He had not checked whether he himself was ready for it.
“I'm sorry,” Sheng Shaoyou said.
Hua Yong's face did not change at all. And then Sheng Shaoyou understood that an apology alone would not be enough. Not because Hua Yong did not want to forgive him. Forgiveness had never been the heart of the matter. Hua Yong wanted to know whether the man he loved could look at him without trying to turn him into someone more convenient. Whether he could be difficult, possessive, frightening, unreasonable, and still be wanted. Whether love would survive the moment its recipient discovered that the gift had teeth. And Sheng Shaoyou, who had spent his whole life believing the ability to take control was inseparable from being an Alpha, lay on his own sofa with his heart beating desperately, having no idea how to make his beloved believe him. Hua Yong withdrew his hand. Sheng Shaoyou let him. It was the hardest thing he did all afternoon.
“Look at me,” he asked.
Hua Yong turned his gaze toward him, wary and tired.
“Not because I'm ordering you to. Or because you think you owe it to me. Just... please, Hua Yong. Look at me.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Finally, Hua Yong turned to face him fully.
Sheng Shaoyou drew a breath. “I'm afraid.”
Hua Yong went still.
“I'm also completely confused, my instincts are behaving like a pack of badly trained dogs, and I'll probably have to rethink everything I know about the world over the next few weeks.” He hesitated, because Hua Yong's face was becoming increasingly difficult to read, and he suspected that if he did not stop himself soon, he would accidentally deliver a speech the length of a shareholder presentation. “But I'm not afraid of you because I think you're dangerous. I'm afraid because I don't know what to do with the knowledge that you hid something so important from me. And because one exceptionally stupid part of me is still wondering whether I ought to be offended that you didn't tell me.”
Hua Yong looked away.
“Exactly,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Your pride.”
Sheng Shaoyou almost denied it. Then he remembered that he had spent the last several minutes lying beneath an Enigma, desperately trying to regain his balance through jokes, while Hua Yong could apparently read his emotions far more accurately than he could himself. Denial would be pointless and, worse, insulting.
“Yes,” he admitted. “My pride.”
Hua Yong's expression grew so distant that looking at him hurt.
Sheng Shaoyou took his hand again, carefully, leaving him free to pull away whenever he wanted. “But my pride doesn't decide whether I love you.”
Silence fell.
“I love you,” Sheng Shaoyou continued, much more quietly now. “I love you when you're sweet, and when you're so furious that you rearrange all the furniture in the house because it has apparently disappointed you personally. I love you when you make me tea and when you tell me my business strategy is idiotic—incidentally, you should have started doing that much earlier, because I've wasted a great deal of time defending ideas that really were terrible.” He made no attempt to turn the confession into some solemn declaration. Grand speeches came easily to men accustomed to commanding an entire room; sincere, imperfect truth spoken to someone who might reject it required far more courage. His hand remained loosely entwined with Hua Yong's fingers, his thumb moving almost imperceptibly. Even such a small gesture now demanded attention. A moment ago, he had mistaken possessing someone for making them feel safe. He did not intend to make that mistake again.
Hua Yong stared at him without speaking.
“I love you when you're gentle with me. When you're jealous. When you want something and can bring yourself to ask for it, and when you want something so badly that you become absolutely unbearable.” Sheng Shaoyou squeezed his fingers lightly. “And I love you now, when I'm discovering that the man I thought I knew is far more complicated than I believed. I don't yet know what that means for us. I don't know what I'll have to learn or what we'll have to change. But I do know that I don't want you to leave just because I need time to understand all of this.”
Hua Yong's fingers trembled. The movement was so small that Sheng Shaoyou would probably have missed it if he had not been holding his beloved's hand. The realization that Hua Yong was still afraid despite everything he had said caused him an almost physical pain that no further reassurances could erase.
“You should be angry,” Hua Yong whispered.
“I am.”
Hua Yong looked at him in surprise. Sheng Shaoyou sighed. “I'm angry that you didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth. That you genuinely believed you had to pretend to be someone else for years to deserve my love. I'm angry with myself for giving you reasons to think that, and because I can't turn back time to fix any of it.” He fell silent for a moment, then added with the resignation of a man who had discovered that his emotional intelligence urgently needed a complete overhaul: “I'm also a little angry that you can apparently throw me onto the sofa whenever you feel like it. I have a reputation to maintain, you know.” Hua Yong blinked. And then, against all expectations, he laughed. Quietly, uncertainly, more breath than voice, but genuinely. Sheng Shaoyou felt the atmosphere in the room shift. Neither tension nor fear disappeared, but something between them loosened enough for them both to breathe.
“Your reputation?” Hua Yong repeated.
“Yes.”
“You laughed.”
“I was surprised.”
“You told me to do it again.”
“I was encouraging you.”
“You encouraged me to dominate you.”
Sheng Shaoyou opened his mouth, closed it again, and concluded that there were battles a sensible man should not attempt to win while lying flat on his back.
“When you put it that way, it sounds much worse.”
“Because it was much worse.”
“I'm beginning to understand that.”
Hua Yong studied him for a long time, and Sheng Shaoyou could almost see the struggle unfolding behind those eyes: the desire to believe him wrestling with years of experience reminding him that promises were easiest to make before one had to live with their consequences. Sheng Shaoyou wanted to reach into his own chest, pull out every idiotic assumption he had ever made, and lay them before his beloved as proof that he finally understood something. Unfortunately, such a procedure would probably be medically difficult and emotionally rather unconvincing. So he did the only sensible thing. He waited.
Finally, Hua Yong asked, “What if I want to do it again?”
Sheng Shaoyou's heart gave a leap outrageously unworthy of a serious businessman.
“Then I'd like you to tell me what you intend to do.”
“And if you don't like it?”
“Then I'll tell you.”
“And if I don't like your answer?”
“Then we'll argue, because apparently that's how our relationship works.”
The corner of Hua Yong's mouth twitched.
Sheng Shaoyou seized the opportunity. “But we'll argue without convincing ourselves that I'll stop loving you if you're the one who wins.”
The smile vanished. For a moment, Hua Yong looked so young that Sheng Shaoyou felt a sudden rush of tenderness for every earlier version of him that had learned to hide. The boy who had decided that wanting something was dangerous. The young man who had turned discipline into a weapon against his own instincts. The lover who had spent years studying Sheng Shaoyou's preferences as though love were an exam that could be passed by memorizing the correct answers. Suddenly, he understood that this was not about whether Hua Yong could win an argument. He could prevail with a single look or deliberately concede, and neither outcome would reveal what it cost him to keep believing he was still worthy of love. What he needed was not another magnanimous permission to be difficult, but proof that the temperature in the room would not drop after a disagreement, that conflict did not mean affection would be withdrawn. Proof delivered slowly, through ordinary days, when neither of them could hide behind the drama of a great revelation. Sheng Shaoyou raised his hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles.
“You don't have to make yourself smaller for me,” he said. “But you don't have to make yourself bigger, either. I'm not asking you to become an Omega, an Enigma, or anyone else. I'm only asking you to be Hua Yong. And that's quite enough trouble for one lifetime all by itself.”
Hua Yong made an offended noise.
“That was almost romantic.”
“I can try harder.”
“Please don't.”
“There. Now I'm finally getting to know you.”
Hua Yong lowered his head. This time his laughter was warm. He leaned forward until their foreheads touched, and for several seconds they remained like that, sharing the quiet space between their breaths while the world beyond the apartment windows remained perfectly indifferent to the fact that Sheng Shaoyou's understanding of his own relationship had been dismantled and put back together in the course of a single afternoon. There was no force in the contact now, only care. Sheng Shaoyou listened to their breathing. The documents still lay nearby, an absurdly mundane trace of an afternoon they had planned to spend very differently. A car passed outside the window. To a stranger, nothing had changed, and yet the distance between them was no longer untouchable. It had not vanished by magic, had not been repaired by one confession, but for the first time they had both consciously chosen to cross it.
Then Hua Yong whispered, “I still want to dominate you.”
Sheng Shaoyou closed his eyes. Of course. Naturally. The man he loved had chosen this precise moment, immediately after an emotional reconciliation that had nearly brought Sheng Shaoyou to his knees, to announce that the matter of the sofa was still unresolved.
“All right,” Sheng Shaoyou replied cautiously. “We can talk about it.”
Hua Yong lifted his head.
“Talk about it?”
“Yes. Communication is very important.”
“Sheng Shaoyou.”
“What?”
“For years I pretended to be an Omega for you. I studied pheromone suppressants, scent blockers, expected behaviors, and the exact facial expression that makes you forget what you were saying halfway through an argument. I endured your dreadful ties, your appalling restaurant choices, and the fact that you apparently consider eating the last piece of someone else's dessert an acceptable form of psychological warfare.” Hua Yong leaned closer, his gaze growing sharper with every word. “I did all of that because I love you. And now that you finally know who I am, I'd like to do something that doesn't require another discussion about my feelings.”
Sheng Shaoyou stared at him, stunned, for a moment. Then he burst out laughing again, because there were limits to how much one man should be expected to endure in a single afternoon, and Hua Yong had apparently decided to test every last one of them.
“You're unbelievable.”
“I know.”
“You're absolutely impossible.”
“I know.”
“One day you'll be the death of me.”
Hua Yong smiled. This time there was nothing sweet or carefully rehearsed about it.
“Probably.”
Sheng Shaoyou raised a hand, cupped his face, and kissed him. Gently at first, as though trying to answer the uncertainty still lingering between them, but Hua Yong returned the kiss with an immediate intensity that stole his breath. There was no more waiting for permission, no cautious tempering of his desires to make them seem more acceptable. Hua Yong kissed him because he wanted him, as though desire were a fact rather than a question awaiting approval. Sheng Shaoyou smiled involuntarily against his mouth; discovering this uncompromising courage in his beloved was rapidly becoming one of the most dangerous pleasures he had ever allowed himself. This time he resisted the temptation to turn the kiss into a victory of his own. Hua Yong had not confessed the truth so that he could be defeated by comforting words, had not revealed his nature to become a fascinating novelty. Sheng Shaoyou therefore left room for him to answer on his own terms, followed instead of leading, and discovered with some surprise that relinquishing control did not diminish the pleasure; it only made it harder to bear. When they drew apart, Hua Yong studied him through narrowed eyes.
“Are you laughing again?”
“No.”
“You're smiling.”
“I'm allowed to smile.”
“Not like that.”
“Like what?”
“As though all of this is funny.”
Sheng Shaoyou brushed his thumb across his cheek. “I think you're beautiful.”
The confidence on Hua Yong's face faltered for a moment.
“And terrifying,” Sheng Shaoyou added.
“Sheng Shaoyou.”
“And a little unreasonable.”
Hua Yong pulled away, but Sheng Shaoyou caught his hand before he could retreat entirely and kissed his fingers with a quiet laugh. “I'm not finished yet. You're also the most infuriating man I've ever met, and I've negotiated with people who tried to sell me the same company twice under two different names. You make me question my judgment, my patience, and sometimes even my faith in the institution of marriage.”
“You've never proposed to me.”
“Because I'm waiting for the right moment.”
“You're a coward.”
“Apparently.”
Hua Yong looked at him for a while, and then his expression softened in a way that made Sheng Shaoyou's chest ache. He leaned forward and buried his face in the hollow of his neck, breathing in the familiar scent as his fingers gripped Sheng Shaoyou's shirt with their well-known possessiveness. Now that Sheng Shaoyou understood what lay behind it, the gesture seemed entirely different.
“I was afraid,” Hua Yong admitted. He spoke barely louder than their breathing. The confession cost him more than any display of strength, and Sheng Shaoyou could feel that cost in the fingers clutching desperately at the fabric of his shirt, tightening and loosening as though they had forgotten what a safe embrace felt like. He wanted to promise that fear would never return. Instead, he simply held his beloved. A promise of perfect certainty would only have been another beautiful lie.
Sheng Shaoyou wrapped his arms around him.
“I know.”
“I thought that once you found out, you wouldn't want me anymore.”
“I know.”
“And I thought that if I could make you fall in love with me first, maybe it wouldn't matter afterward.”
Sheng Shaoyou held him tighter.
“It matters,” he said honestly. “Not because you're an Enigma. Because you were afraid to tell me. And because I want us to be able to talk about the things that frighten us without pretending everything is fine.”
Hua Yong nodded without lifting his head from his shoulder.
“We'll have to figure out what all this means,” Sheng Shaoyou continued. “There'll be questions. Probably arguments, too. I might even have to do some reading.”
“Start with medical literature, not the nonsense you find online.”
“I was going to say couples therapy.”
Hua Yong fell silent. Sheng Shaoyou immediately regretted his words. Eventually, his beloved lifted his head and looked at him with such profound disbelief that Sheng Shaoyou knew with absolute certainty that he had just brought another problem down upon himself.
“You want to take me to couples therapy because I'm an Enigma?”
“No. I want us to go to therapy because you spent years pretending to be someone else, and apparently I was too stupid to notice how much it cost you.”
Hua Yong regarded him without a word, then leaned in and kissed him again, this time firmly enough to interrupt the next sentence Sheng Shaoyou had been preparing. It was probably for the best, since the sentence was going to include a particularly unflattering comparison concerning his emotional intelligence. When Hua Yong finally pulled away, his eyes were shining.
“I love you,” he said.
Sheng Shaoyou smiled.
“I know.”
Hua Yong narrowed his eyes.
“That wasn't an invitation to become arrogant.”
“Never in my life.”
“Liar.”
“Yes,” Sheng Shaoyou admitted, drawing him close again. “But your liar.”
Hua Yong laughed, and the sound settled in Sheng Shaoyou's chest with the quiet certainty of something that had finally found its proper place. They would have to learn each other all over again. He understood that now. There would be new instincts to recognize, old beliefs to take apart, and conversations neither of them would particularly want to have. There would be moments when Sheng Shaoyou's pride asserted itself out of habit, when Hua Yong's fear urged him to retreat behind his old mask, and both of them would have to choose, again and again, whether winning an argument mattered more than understanding the person on the other side. They would not solve all their problems with one brave conversation, just as one surprising afternoon could not erase habits formed over a lifetime. Sheng Shaoyou would still make jokes at the most inappropriate moments, and Hua Yong would still occasionally try to hide his hurt behind a mask of politeness. There would be misunderstandings they could not foresee, instinctive reactions they would both rather avoid, and truths that were easier to speak after a good night's sleep. But perhaps love did not require everything to come effortlessly. Perhaps the point was to recognize the effort and stop treating it as failure. It would not be simple. It would not always be comfortable. But when Hua Yong shifted in his arms and nestled even closer with the natural ease of a man who had finally allowed himself to breathe freely in his own body, Sheng Shaoyou felt the last of his resistance give way to something warm and almost embarrassingly tender. He loved Hua Yong. Not the Omega he had imagined. Not the carefully constructed persona who knew when to smile, when to yield, and when to pretend that the last piece of dessert had not mattered after all. Simply Hua Yong.
A man who, apparently, had been capable of throwing him onto the sofa all these years and had simply chosen never to do so. Sheng Shaoyou considered this for a moment, then sighed.
“My pride will never recover from this.”
Hua Yong lifted his head.
“Your pride?”
“Yes.”
“Should I apologize?”
Sheng Shaoyou looked at his beloved's innocent expression and felt the familiar, hopeless certainty that he was about to lose an argument he had not even realized existed yet.
“No,” he said. “I think you've suffered quite enough already.”
Hua Yong smiled. It was a terrible smile, downright dangerous. Sheng Shaoyou kissed him anyway.