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Chu Wanning’s broken watch face tells him it’s just a few minutes past 4AM when Mo Ran asks, "If I was bitten, what would you do?"
They’re barricaded deep inside the abandoned mall, graffitied shutters pulled down to the floor, looted shelves shoved against the steel for extra defense. In the morning the infected will be slamming themselves against the barricades, clawing with their festering fingers, rotting nails. Wailing, demanding to be let in.
When they had discovered this mall two months ago, half a year after the whole crisis started, they’d stripped it of anything left that could be consumed: cans of food, advertisements on the walls, lighters, even some magazines and books by the register as fuel for fire. It made a part of Chu Wanning’s heart hurt to watch all these books go to waste without even any regard for all the work inked into the pages. The foolish sentiment of an ex-literary professor.
But Mo Ran had caught it anyway and insisted that Chu Wanning keep one last book for himself.
“All I can give you are scraps of happiness,” Mo Ran had said. “Take it, baobei. You know you want to. What will it hurt?”
The book’s smoldering now. Chu Wanning pokes at the melting cover with a crowbar and frowns; it’s not burning too well. He takes the sheaf of ripped out pages and feeds it to the fire.
“I told you that it wouldn’t burn long,” Mo Ran says from just a few spaces away from him. In the dim glow of the firelight, Chu Wanning can barely make out his form. He’s lying on his side, curled up in a ball that should be impossible for a man of his size. Chu Wanning can’t fully make out Mo Ran’s expression in the dark. The light shifts over his face in teasing glimpses: his strong eyebrows, the jut of his chin, his smiling mouth. A peek of blood-soaked bandages around his shoulder, sweat glistening on his temple.
Chu Wanning looks away. “Stop talking nonsense and sleep," he says, setting aside the crowbar. It's heavier than he had thought it would be.
“I’m not talking nonsense, just making conversation. It’s boring to keep watch alone, Wanning. Won’t you indulge me?”
Chu Wanning’s eyes flit back over to Mo Ran's face. His dark eyes, distant, becoming unfocused. Hazier than they were three hours ago.
“Don’t ask stupid questions, then," Chu Wanning says.
A dimpled smile. “This humble one would never dare.”
“So you think ‘what would you do if I was bitten’ isn’t a stupid question, Mo Ran?”
“Always good to think about the hypotheticals,” Mo Ran says, as if anything that’s coming out of his mouth is reasonable at all. “Consider it a thought experiment.”
Three semesters Chu Wanning had taught Mo Ran, with another extra year spent with this disgraceful student as his TA. The audacity of Mo Ran to say that such a stupid question could be a thought experiment .
Chu Wanning purses his lips and pokes at the fire. “I don’t know," he says shortly. "Stop talking like that.”
“Come on, baobei. Worst case scenario, what would you do?” Mo Ran wheedles.
He should be sleeping. The whole point of keeping watch is to exchange shifts and get some peace of mind for even a few hours, and yet he’s sacrificing his rest to make idle chatter with Chu Wanning? Ridiculous. Chu Wanning resists the urge to knock him unconscious himself.
When Chu Wanning doesn’t respond, Mo Ran’s smile widens. A low chuckle that sends a shameful shiver of desire down his body. “Okay, lemme guess. You’d run into my arms weeping, beg me to stay human. You’d probably curse me. Say I’m stupid for getting bitten. Maybe you’d be so overwhelmed by your strong emotions and then we’d have sex all night—“
Chu Wanning scoffs.
“—one good night before I turn,” Mo Ran continues, grinning. “And in the morning, when it’s over, you’d make me a nice little grave and promise to visit, but you’re awful at visiting—“
“I am not.”
“You are. Love you to pieces, but you are. So anyways, I’d be sad and lonely until a cure is found. And by then you probably would find someone new and ask for my blessing, and my lonely spirit would give it to you because even dead, I’d want you to be happy and you know that to your bones. Happily ever after. Sunset, romantic music, cue credits. That sound about right?”
“You’re a delirious fool who needs sleep,” Chu Wanning says, instead of replying to any of that, and he tosses the stick aside to touch Mo Ran’s burning forehead, sweep aside the sweaty strands of hair. “Quit talking and get some rest. It’ll be dawn soon.”
“You’re so mean to me,” Mo Ran complains, but he catches Chu Wanning’s hand and presses a kiss to the inside of his wrist. Chu Wanning’s breath hitches. When Mo Ran gazes up at him, his eyes are hazy, but—warm. Gentle. Always so gentle.
Chu Wanning feels a sudden urge to cry.
“Ah, this sucks,” Mo Ran murmurs, soft. Too sharp, even now. “Can’t hold my baobei, and he won’t come hug me, either. I’m so cold and lonely, Wanning. Won’t you hug me?”
It’d be easier to act angry at Mo Ran. It’s obviously what he wants, a semblance of normalcy. But Chu Wanning doesn’t want Mo Ran’s last memory to be of his anger. He’s had enough of that for a lifetime.
So he swallows his pride, lays down beside Mo Ran, wraps his arms around Mo Ran’s waist, and buries his face in his chest. Mo Ran is silent. Chu Wanning lets out an exhale, presses the tiniest of kisses to Mo Ran’s neck. “There,” he mutters. “Are you warm now?”
This close, he can hear how strained Mo ran’s breathing is. The wet rattling inhales, the hissed out exhales. His skin is already so cold, like he’s been out in the snow for hours. Chu Wanning squeezes his eyes shut and holds him tighter, willing his warmth to transfer to Mo Ran, even if for a little longer. Just a little longer.
“Wanning,” Mo Ran says, sounding helpless. “I—“
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with your foolish scenario,” Chu Wanning interrupts. His voice cracks, but he ignores it and goes on, “You wouldn’t have the energy to have sex. Someone who’s bitten becomes delirious and feverish in their last hours. They start seeing the worst memories of their life. They go insane. Claw at their faces and eyes, go blind. By dawn, they’re another infected monster. Senseless. Incoherent. And you’re saying you can get hard throughout that?”
Mo Ran makes a sound, halfway between another pained groan and a chuckle. “Anything for my baobei, you know. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Where there’s a Wanning, there’s an erec—“
Chu Wanning nips at his neck, and Mo Ran subsides with a chuckle.
“Okay,” he says. “I won’t interrupt. Go on.”
I wish you would interrupt for the rest of my life, Chu Wanning thinks. But that’s too sad, and they’re not in the business of being sad about this. “Secondly," he says, "I wouldn’t weep."
“You wouldn’t?”
“No.”
“Ahh,” Mo Ran sighs, tucking Chu Wanning’s head into the crook of his neck, “my heart. Broken, shattered. That hurts, baobei.”
“Shut up. I’m not done. Thirdly, you wouldn’t have a grave.”
“And why not?”
“Because I wouldn’t kill you,” Chu Wanning says, and Mo Ran goes stiff underneath him. It’s risky, telling him this now. But they only have a few minutes before the worst stage begins, and there’s no way Chu Wanning is letting him go into it believing that he was unloved to the end. If there is one thing that Chu Wanning can do for him, it’s this. A small comfort. A home, in this decrepit mall that they had reshaped into a home for two of the happiest months of Chu Wanning's life.
They could've had a lifetime. Instead, they got a scant number of weeks, and still Chu Wanning is so pathetically grateful for even that. He loved and was loved in turn, in this horrible time. That must've been a dozen miracles in itself.
“In the morning, I’d be with you,” Chu Wanning says, squeezing the back of Mo Ran’s shirt. “To the end, I’d fight with you. That’s all.”
Silence, long enough that Chu Wanning cranes his head up to see if Mo Ran’s fallen unconscious yet. But when he looks, Mo Ran is just staring at him wordlessly, expression stricken.
“Wanning,” Mo Ran says, voice raw. “You…”
Chu Wanning shakes his head, and Mo Ran falls silent. “Sleep," he tells Mo Ran. "I'll be with you, and the night is long. We still have time.”
Underneath his chest, Chu Wanning can hear it, the way Mo Ran’s heart is slowing, each breath taking longer than the last. Still, Mo Ran laughs, and presses a kiss to the top of Chu Wanning’s head. “Of course,” he murmurs. “It’s a long night. We got the rest of our lives ahead of us. In the morning it’ll all be over." A pause, and then, "I love you.”
It’s not a goodbye. That’s why Chu Wanning doesn’t say it back. Instead, he leans up and kisses Mo Ran, his smiling mouth, and hopes that he understands that way: I love you, I love you. I’ll love you until the morning and after.