Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

***

The afternoon light came through the empty science room windows in long, dusty strips, falling across abandoned tools and stacked papers that hadn't been touched in years. The room smelled like turpentine and old paper and the particular kind of quiet that came from a space that had been forgotten by everyone except the people who needed it most.

No one came here anymore.

No one except Wu Suo Wei.

And now, apparently, Chi Cheng.

They were pressed against the cabinet at the back of the room, Wu Suo Wei's fingers twisted into the front of Chi Cheng's shirt, Chi Cheng's hand warm at the side of his jaw, neither of them particularly concerned with the stack of notebooks that had been knocked to the floor at some point in the last ten minutes. The kiss had the easy quality of something that had happened many times before, no longer tentative, no longer surprising, just familiar in the way that certain things became familiar when you'd been pretending they weren't happening for long enough.

Wu Suo Wei was the one who broke it.

He turned his face to the side, catching his breath, Chi Cheng's lips brushing his cheek instead. "I have to go."

Chi Cheng didn't move back. "You just got here."

"I've been here forty minutes."

"Mm." Chi Cheng's thumb traced a slow line along Wu Suo Wei's jaw, the touch gentle, a thing he did when he was in absolutely no rush and wanted Wu Suo Wei to know it. His fingers slid back to cup Wu Suo Wei's face more fully.

Then, with gentle but inexorable pressure, he turned Wu Suo Wei’s face back toward him.

Wu Suo Wei’s breath caught as their eyes met.

Chi Cheng’s gaze behind his glasses was far too gone, pupils dilated, dark and hungry. His usual control was slipping. The afternoon light caught on the frames, but couldn’t hide the want written plainly across his face.

“Stay,” Chi Cheng murmured, his voice rougher than usual.

His other hand moved to Wu Suo Wei’s waist, fingers finding the space where his shirt had come untucked, pulling him closer even as his grip on his jaw kept him exactly where Chi Cheng wanted him.

Then he was leaning down, closing the distance with determination that had lost its confidence. His eyes were intent, focused entirely on Wu Suo Wei’s mouth. His thumb brushed across Wu Suo Wei’s lower lip once, a ghost of a touch that made Wu Suo Wei’s breath catch, seeing the way Chi Cheng’s composure had cracked. The desperation barely hidden beneath the surface. The need.

Something smug and satisfied curled in Wu Suo Wei’s chest.

His lips curved into a slow smirk.

“I can’t,” he said, and this time there was a teasing edge to it, provocative and knowing. He put his hand flat against Chi Cheng’s chest, not pushing, just stopping him mid-descent, fingers spread over his racing heartbeat. “I have something to do.”

He could feel Chi Cheng’s frustration in the way his grip tightened on Wu Suo Wei’s jaw, in the tension that ran through his entire frame.

Chi Cheng’s eyes dropped to the hand on his chest, then back up. That look, usually so composed, so perceptive, now edged with barely restrained want. “What something?”

Wu Suo Wei’s smirk widened. Clearly enjoying himself.

“School related.”

“Classes are over,” Chi Cheng said, his tone flat, calling out the weak excuse for what it was.

“Extracurricular then.” Wu Suo Wei removed his hand from Chi Cheng’s chest slowly, letting his fingers trail down before pulling away entirely. He stepped sideways, breaking free of Chi Cheng’s proximity, and reached down grab his bag from where it had been dropped earlier beside the cabinet.

He slung it over his shoulder with slowly, taking his time, fully aware of Chi Cheng watching him with that frustrated, hungry expression.

"Also, don't you have somewhere to be anyway?"

Chi Cheng leaned back against the cabinet, arms crossing loosely over his chest. He was watching Wu Suo Wei now with something closer to his usual expression, patient, slightly amused, regaining his composure despite the fact that his collar was crooked and his hair was marginally less perfect than usual. "The welcoming ceremony."

"Right." Wu Suo Wei paused, his hands stilling on his bag strap. "The welcoming ceremony."

Another pause, the words sitting in his mouth like something sour, bitter and sharp.

"For Wang Shuo and Yue Yue."

The names came out clipped, each syllable edged with something.

Chi Cheng watched him, and the amusement was clearer now, no longer hidden. "What's with the tone?"

It wasn't really a question. It had the quality of something Chi Cheng already knew the answer to and was asking purely for the entertainment of hearing Wu Suo Wei try to explain it.

"There's no tone," Wu Suo Wei said, with considerable tone.

"They joined student council," Chi Cheng said, his voice taking on that overly patient quality, like he was explaining something very simple to someone very slow. "Hence the welcoming ceremony."

"I'm aware," Wu Suo Wei said, his voice pitching higher.

"And yet."

"And yet nothing." Wu Suo Wei adjusted his bag strap with more force than necessary, yanking it higher on his shoulder. "Both of them. At the same time. Joining now when our last year is almost over. On the same council that you're on."

"Yes."

"Both of them," Wu Suo Wei repeated, as if saying it again might make it make sense, might make it less infuriating.

"Both of them," Chi Cheng agreed, his voice carrying that patient, neutral tone that Wu Suo Wei found deeply irritating because it meant Chi Cheng was enjoying himself.

Wu Suo Wei made a sound in his throat, short and sharp, communicating in a single syllable everything he thought about Wang Shuo and Yue Yue joining the student council.

Chi Cheng’s lips curved. Just slightly. Just enough.

The smile was small, barely there, but Wu Suo Wei had learned to read every micro-expression on Chi Cheng’s usually impassive face. That was satisfaction. That was amusement at Wu Suo Wei’s expense.

“Don’t,” Wu Suo Wei warned.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.” Wu Suo Wei turned toward the door. "It's obvious why they joined anyway. You're there. That's basically an open invitation for every person in this school who wants to—" he stopped himself, jaw tightening, and changed direction mid-sentence "— for every opportunist who wants something on their record."

"Mm," said Chi Cheng, which meant nothing and everything.

His expression hadn't changed, but his eyes were tracking Wu Suo Wei's face with that intensity that suggested he'd heard both what Wu Suo Wei had said and what he hadn't.

"Have fun at your ceremony," Wu Suo Wei said, and moved toward the door.

"Wei Wei."

Wu Suo Wei stopped.

Not because he had to. Not because Chi Cheng had used any tone of command. Just because Chi Cheng said his name like that, quiet and even, the same way he said everything, but with a weight to it that Wu Suo Wei had stopped being able to ignore months ago.

The nickname still made something in his chest tighten, still made his pulse kick up in a way he'd given up trying to explain away.

He looked back over his shoulder.

Chi Cheng had pushed off from the cabinet and was crossing the room, three unhurried steps that closed the distance between them with that quiet confidence that made everything he did look intentional. He stopped directly in front of Wu Suo Wei.

Up close, Chi Cheng's expression was unreadable in the way it always was, composed, controlled, dark-eyed behind his glasses. The afternoon light caught on the frames, creating brief flashes of gold that obscured his eyes before he tilted his head and Wu Suo Wei could see them again, focused entirely on him.

"You're really going," Chi Cheng said. It wasn’t a question.

"I told you. School related thing."

"Mm."

Chi Cheng reached out, his fingers catching lightly at Wu Suo Wei's wrist. He held and touched him, his thumb resting against Wu Suo Wei's pulse point where it was probably broadcasting exactly how affected Wu Suo Wei was by this simple contact, by Chi Cheng's proximity, by the way those dark eyes were studying his face.

"Five minutes."

Wu Suo Wei's breath caught slightly. "I don't have five minutes."

"Two." Chi Cheng's thumb moved, just barely, a small stroke against the sensitive skin of Wu Suo Wei's inner wrist.

"Chi Cheng—"

Chi Cheng kissed him.

Not urgently. Not desperately. Not with any of the heated frustration from moments ago. Just kissed him, slow and thorough and devastating, one hand curving around the back of Wu Suo Wei's neck, fingers sliding into his hair, warm and steady, like he had all the time in the world and two minutes was more than enough.

Wu Suo Wei made a small sound in his throat, surprise or surrender, he wasn't sure, and his bag strap slid off his shoulder.

He caught it automatically, his hand finding the strap even as the rest of him melted into the kiss, even as his free hand came up to Chi Cheng's chest, fingers curling into his shirt the way they always did, holding on rather than pushing away.

Chi Cheng kissed like he did everything else, with complete control and absolute certainty. His mouth moved against Wu Suo Wei's with practiced familiarity, knowing exactly how to draw a response, knowing exactly how much pressure to apply to make Wu Suo Wei's thoughts scatter and his knees weak.

The hand in Wu Suo Wei's hair tightened slightly, angling his head for better access, and Chi Cheng deepened the kiss just enough to remind Wu Suo Wei exactly what he was walking away from, exactly what he was choosing to leave unfinished.

Then Chi Cheng pulled back decisively, his hand sliding from Wu Suo Wei’s hair, but only as far as the back of his neck, fingers curling warm against his nape and stopping there. Holding him in place with that light, certain grip.

Wu Suo Wei’s eyes were closed. His lips were still parted, and his expression stripped of its usual sharp edges.

Chi Cheng looked down at him without speaking.

His thumb moved once against Wu Suo Wei’s nape, a slow, genlte stroke.

“Don’t you have to go?” Chi Cheng asked, his voice perfectly calm, perfectly composed, like he hadn’t just kissed Wu Suo Wei senseless. Like his own breathing wasn’t slightly uneven.

Wu Suo Wei blinked, still dazed, his lips parted and his eyes unfocused. Then the words registered.

His expression darkened.

"You—" Wu Suo Wei started, his voice sharp with irritation.

Chi Cheng's lips curved into a small, satisfied smirk. "Your school-related thing. Remember?"

Wu Suo Wei's eyes narrowed. He jerked his bag strap back onto his shoulder with unnecessary force, his movements aggressive.

“Asshole,” Wu Suo Wei muttered under his breath.

Chi Cheng didn’t respond. Didn’t defend himself or deny it or say anything at all.

He just smirked.

That small, knowing curve of his lips, satisfaction and amusement wrapped into one infuriating expression. His dark eyes behind his glasses were steady, watching Wu Suo Wei with complete calm, like he had all the time in the world to appreciate Wu Suo Wei’s irritation.

Wu Suo Wei’s jaw clenched hard enough that his teeth ached. His entire body tense with the urge to wipe that smug expression off Chi Cheng’s face.

He made a sharp sound of frustration, half scoff, half growl, all irritation, and spun on his heel without another word. He couldn’t stay here another second looking at that face, that smirk, those glasses catching the afternoon light while Chi Cheng stood there looking perfectly composed despite his crooked collar and mussed hair.

He strode toward the door, his movements quick and tense, every step radiating barely controlled annoyance. His bag bounced against his hip. His footsteps were loud against the wooden floor.

He reached the door and yanked it open hard enough that it swung wide, hitting the doorstop with a soft thud.

Then he paused.

Just for a second.

Just long enough to throw one last glare over his shoulder at Chi Cheng.

Chi Cheng was still where he was standing. arms crossed loosely over his chest, completely relaxed. He looked thoroughly kissed and entirely unbothered by it.

And he was still wearing that same small, knowing smirk.

Wu Suo Wei’s grip on the door handle tightened.

“Don’t be late to your ceremony,” he bit out, his voice clipped and cold, each word sharp-edged.

Wu Suo Wei huffed, a sharp exhale of pure frustration, and walked out.

Chi Cheng stood in the empty science room, listening to the sound of Wu Suo Wei's footsteps fade down the corridor.

He reached up and straightened his glasses with one finger, a small, precise gesture. Then he fixed his collar, smoothing the fabric back into place with practiced efficiency, and tucking his shirt back in properly. The perfect student council member preparing for an official ceremony.

His expression remained unreadable. But his eyes were steady, and patient, focused on the empty doorway with quality of someone who was very good at waiting.

And who fully intended to keep doing it.

The student council room had been arranged for the occasion.

Chairs pulled into neat rows, the long table at the front draped with the school’s ceremonial cloth, the council’s framed charter hanging on the wall behind it like a silent witness to decades of institutional seriousness. Twelve council members stood in two precise lines, uniforms pressed, badges gleaming, expressions carrying the gravity of students who took their extracurricular responsibilities very seriously.

Wang Zheng stood at the front with the bearing of someone who had been born for moments exactly like this one.

Chi Cheng stood at the end of the left line, arms clasped loosely behind his back, expression neutral, glasses catching the overhead light.

Wang Shuo and Yue Yue entered together, which was already mildly irritating for reasons Chi Cheng didn’t examine too closely. Wang Shuo was wearing his most important expression, the one he reserved for situations where he wanted to be perceived as gracious and significant. Yue Yue was bright-eyed and perfectly turned out, her smile wide and genuine as her gaze swept the assembled council members.

It snagged on Chi Cheng for a half second longer than everyone else.

He kept his expression neutral.

Wang Zheng began the ceremony with the measured authority of someone who had written his opening remarks in advance and possibly rehearsed them. He spoke about the honor of service, about the council's commitment to the school community, about the high standard expected of its members, the same speech that had been delivered at the start of the year to the students who had actually gone through the proper intake process. The ones who had waited, applied, been selected through the established procedure like everyone else.

Not that any of that apparently applied when your last name was Wang.

Wang Shuo nodded along with the expression of someone hearing things they already knew. Yue Yue stood with her hands clasped, attentive and bright.

Chi Cheng listened with half his attention.

The other half was on the window.

Not the window specifically. The quality of the light outside it, the angle of the afternoon sun, the way the shadows had shifted in the last twenty minutes. The specific stillness of the campus at this hour, when most students had dispersed but a handful of specific ones might still be—

A sound.

Faint. From the building directly across the courtyard.

Chi Cheng’s gaze moved fully to the window.

Wang Zheng had produced the ceremonial pins and was delivering the section of the speech about responsibility and representation. Wang Shuo stepped forward first, chest out, ready to receive his badge with the solemnity of a general accepting a medal.

Then a tarpaulin dropped.

It came from the wall facade directly visible through the council room's east-facing window, close enough that Chi Cheng could see it from where he was standing, could watch the massive sheet unfurl with sudden, dramatic efficiency, it suggested significant advance preparation and a working knowledge of the building's exterior architecture. It was not blank. Not even close to blank.

Painted across it in bold, aggressive colours, unmistakable in its style, unmistakable in its authorship to anyone who had spent the last year paying close attention, was an image of Wang Shuo rendered in brutal caricature, standing on a pedestal made of his father’s money, holding a paintbrush he clearly didn’t know how to use, while a caption beneath it read, in Wu Suo Wei’s distinctive lettering:

STUDENT COUNCIL’S NEWEST MEMBER:

WANG SHUO

BROUGHT TO YOU BY DADDY’S CONNECTIONS

The ceremony stopped.

For approximately five full seconds, the council room was completely silent.

Then Wang Shuo made a sound that was not compatible with dignity, and the room erupted.

Several council members moved toward the door simultaneously. Wang Zheng’s face had gone a shade of red that suggested an imminent and thorough investigation. Yue Yue’s hand had flown to her mouth, her eyes wide, though whether from shock or suppressed laughter was difficult to determine.

Outside, through the window, a figure was already running, crossing the courtyard at speed, low and fast.

Chi Cheng watched it go.

Wu Suo Wei was fast, he always was, bag bouncing against his shoulder, moving with the energy of someone who had executed a plan successfully and was now extracting themselves with practiced efficiency. Even from this distance, Chi Cheng could see it, the way his shoulders shook, the tilt of his head. He was laughing.

Three council members made it out the door and into the corridor. Chi Cheng heard the sound of pursuit, footsteps quick on the floor below.

Then, from the main stairwell, the unmistakable sound of Jiang Xiaoshuai’s voice raised in what appeared to be a completely spontaneous and very loud announcement that he had just witnessed something concerning in the opposite direction entirely, something about a fight, possibly a fire, definitely something that required immediate attention, delivered with the conviction of someone who had prepared this exact distraction in advance.

The pursuing footsteps faltered. Divided. Three council members became two became one, the pursuit dissolving into confusion as Jiang Xiaoshuai’s misdirection did its work with cheerful efficiency.

Chi Cheng remained at the window.

Wu Suo Wei had reached the far edge of the courtyard. He was still running but he glanced back, just once, just briefly, and across the distance, across the chaos of the unraveling ceremony and the shouting and the tarpaulin still hanging from the wall in all its damning, detailed glory—

His eyes found Chi Cheng’s.

The glance lasted less than three seconds.

Chi Cheng looked at him with the expression he reserved for Wu Suo Wei’s more elaborate rule violations, controlled and sharp, a look Wu Suo Wei had, over the course of this year, become intimately familiar with.

Then, very slowly, Chi Cheng’s lips curved.

Just slightly.

Wu Suo Wei’s face split into a grin, wide and unguarded and completely unrepentant, the most honest expression Chi Cheng had ever seen on him, bright with the satisfaction of someone who had done exactly what they set out to do and felt not even a shadow of regret about it.

One beat.

Then he was gone, disappearing around the corner of the building, footsteps fading, the courtyard suddenly empty.

Chi Cheng turned back to the room.

Wang Shuo was staring at the tarpaulin through the window with an expression that suggested the afternoon had not gone the way he’d planned. Wang Zheng had his phone out, jaw set, already calling someone. Yue Yue had positioned herself near Wang Shuo with the expression of someone performing sympathy while clearly processing several things at once.

The ceremonial pins were still in Wang Zheng’s hand, unceremoniously forgotten.

“Chi Cheng.” Wang Zheng’s voice cut across the room, sharp and controlled. “Deal with your delinquent.”

Chi Cheng looked at him. Then at the window. Then back at Wang Zheng.

“Of course,” he said, his voice carrying its usual measured calm.

---

Wu Suo Wei was sitting on the table, legs dangling, spinning a marker between his fingers with the easy restlessness of someone who had been waiting long enough to get comfortable but wasn't going to admit he'd been waiting. The marker caught the dim light as it turned, a slow, idle rotation that he kept going with practiced absent-mindedness, his gaze fixed on the middle distance.

He looked up when Chi Cheng came through the door.

The marker kept spinning for one more rotation. Then it stilled.

"Took you long enough," he said.

Chi Cheng stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind him. He looked at Wu Suo Wei. Then at the marker, held loosely between two fingers. Then back at Wu Suo Wei's face, which was doing its very best impression of someone who was completely unbothered and had absolutely not been sitting here counting the minutes.

It was not a convincing impression.

"Wang Zheng wanted a full debrief," Chi Cheng said.

"How is Wang Zheng," Wu Suo Wei said. Not quite a question.

"Unhappy."

Wu Suo Wei's mouth curved, slow and satisfied. "And Wang Shuo?"

"Very unhappy."

"Good." The marker went down against the table with a soft click. Wu Suo Wei's smile settled into something slower, deeper, the expression of someone reviewing completed work and finding it had met every standard they'd set for it. "The likeness was accurate, by the way. I spent a lot of time on the nose specifically. Got the angle exactly right."

"I noticed," Chi Cheng said, and started walking toward him.

"The caption too. Four drafts. I wasn't happy with the first three."

"It showed." Chi Cheng stopped in front of him.

Wu Suo Wei looked at him properly then, reading his expression with the attention of someone who had spent considerable time learning to interpret Chi Cheng's understatement. Whatever he found there made something in his chest tighten with anticipation.

“You’re really looking to get punished,” Chi Cheng said. His voice was low and measured, carrying the weight of someone who had said variations of this sentence many times before, fully aware it would have approximately the same effect it always had.

Wu Suo Wei looked at him for one more beat.

Then he reached out, took a handful of Chi Cheng’s perfectly pressed shirt in his fist, and pulled him in.

It was not a tentative kiss. It had none of the uncertainty of the first time, none of the careful testing of what came after. It had the easy, practiced confidence of a shortcut that had been used enough times to feel like second nature — shut Chi Cheng up. A move Wu Suo Wei had developed and refined and deployed with increasing frequency over the last several weeks.

It usually worked.

Chi Cheng let it work for approximately four seconds.

Then his hands found Wu Suo Wei's waist, and he kissed him back, and the dynamic shifted the way it always did, Wu Suo Wei starting it, Chi Cheng taking it somewhere else entirely.

Wu Suo Wei made a sound against his mouth that he would have denied making if asked.

Chi Cheng pressed forward into the space between Wu Suo Wei's knees, one hand braced against the table beside him, and kept going, his mouth moving to Wu Suo Wei's jaw, the line of his throat, the spot just below his ear that Chi Cheng had identified weeks ago and had not forgotten since.

“Chi Cheng—" Wu Suo Wei's voice came out unsteady, lower than intended, his hands fisting in Chi Cheng's shirt and dragging him closer, chasing the pressure, like having him nearer might somehow make the sensation more.

"Mm," Chi Cheng said against his throat, which was not an apology and both of them knew it.

The grey-blue light deepened around them. Outside the window the campus had gone quiet, the last of the afternoon's chaos long settled into evening stillness. The distant sound of the school's outer gates closing.

Inside the room there was only the sound of uneven breathing, and the occasional soft sound that Wu Suo Wei would absolutely deny later, and Chi Cheng's hands, careful and eager and entirely focused, finding their way with practiced patience to the places that made Wu Suo Wei's thoughts scatter and his arms pull Chi Cheng closer, tighter, like letting go was no longer an option he was considering.

They walked.

Chi Cheng had fallen into step beside him at the school gates the way he always did these days, no announcement, no suggestion, just appearing at Wu Suo Wei's left shoulder like he had decided some time ago that this was simply part of his route home. Wu Suo Wei had stopped challenging it sometime around week four. It seemed to encourage him, and besides, it was harder to argue with something that had already quietly become habit.

The path lamps had flickered on while they were still inside, and now the walkway stretched ahead of them in alternating pools of yellow light and shadow, the evening air cool against Wu Suo Wei's face, carrying the smell of cut grass and someone's dinner from the apartments beyond the school wall.

Neither of them spoke.

The silence wasn't uncomfortable exactly. It had some sort of something to it, some texture, like it meant something was coming and both of them knew it.

Chi Cheng broke it a block past the gates.

"You need to stop."

Wu Suo Wei kept walking. "Stop what."

"Causing trouble." His tone was even, measured, not unkind. "The tarpaulin today. Last month with the paint in the corridor. And the thing with Wang Shuo's locker before that."

"That last one was never proven by the way”

"Wei Wei."

"Lack of evidence is a legitimate—"

"This is our final year." Chi Cheng glanced at him without breaking stride. "We're almost at the end of it. University applications. Transcripts. Records that follow you past graduation. What you do now has real consequences."

Wu Suo Wei went quiet.

He walked with his chin forward and his shoulders set and the specific energy of someone who had heard something they didn’t want to sit with and was deciding, very carefully, whether to argue or just pretend the words hadn’t landed anywhere important.

Like a kid being told off and knowing, somewhere underneath all the noise, that the telling off was fair.

"Wang Shuo deserved the tarpaulin," he said finally.

"This isn't about Wang Shuo."

Wu Suo Wei’s jaw tightened. The pavement ahead of him was very interesting suddenly.

"You don't need to cause trouble to get my attention," Chi Cheng said quietly.

Wu Suo Wei’s stride hitched, just once, just barely, and then steadied. His ears went red, then his neck, the flush crawling up fast and hot and completely beyond his control. And then, because his body apparently hadn’t finished betraying him, his mouth opened.

“Who said anything about attention?” His voice came out sharp, pitched too high, words tumbling over each other with velocity, like he was trying to bury something before it could be examined. “I wasn’t doing it for your attention. I don’t need your attention. I was doing it because Wang Shuo is an arrogant, talentless—"

"I know."

"—who has been walking around this school for years acting like his father's money makes him—"

"I know."

"—and the tarpaulin was a completely justified response to a pattern of behaviour that this school has consistently—"

"Wu Suo Wei."

He stopped talking.

His chest was rising and falling too fast. The lamplight caught the line of his jaw, tight and set, and the way he was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular with great intensity.

You don't need to cause trouble to get my attention.

The words sat in his chest like something lodged. He couldn't shake them loose and he couldn't look at them directly and he couldn't do anything except keep walking and hope that forward momentum was enough.

"So full of yourself," he huffed.

Chi Cheng said nothing.

They walked on, side by side, the streetlights passing over them at intervals, and the evening settling quietly around them, and the space between their hands close enough that it kept almost meaning something.

Wu Suo Wei's room was its usual comfortable disaster.

Sketchbooks on every surface, spray can caps scattered across the desk like confetti, a half-finished canvas leaning against the wall that he kept meaning to get back to. The overhead light was off, the room lit by the warm glow of the laptop screen and the desk lamp angled uselessly toward the ceiling.

Xiaoshuai was sprawled across the foot of the bed the way he'd been doing since they were freshmen, legs dangling off the edge, a bag of chips balanced on his stomach, eyes fixed on the screen with the loose attention of someone deeply invested in a fictional situation that had been going on for eight episodes and showed no signs of resolving.

On screen, two boys were doing the thing they'd been doing for a while now, circling each other with the exhausting energy of people who clearly wanted something and were going to take a very long time getting there. The taller one was doing a lot of significant looking. The shorter one was doing a lot of not-looking-back.

Wu Suo Wei was sitting against the headboard with his knees up, sketchbook balanced against his thighs, pencil moving in the absent, automatic way it did when he wasn't really thinking about what he was drawing.

He had been not-really-thinking for approximately forty minutes.

"He's going to do the thing again," Xiaoshuai said, gesturing at the screen with a chip.

"Mm?"

"Watch."

Wu Suo Wei looked up.

On screen, the taller boy, who was wearing a live snake draped across his wrist like this was a completely normal accessory, was moving closer to the shorter one. Slowly, The snake swayed gently with each step, unbothered. The shorter boy was doing the thing where he stared very hard at a fixed point in the middle distance and pretended with his whole body that he had not noticed the other person approaching, which would have been more convincing if his ears weren't going red.

Xiaoshuai pointed at the screen with his chip, vindicated, and ate it.

Wu Suo Wei dropped his gaze back to his sketchbook without saying anything.

"Ten episodes," Xiaoshuai said to the screen, with feeling. "Ten episodes of circling around each other. Just sleep with him already!"

Wu Suo Wei turned a page. "Why would he want to just suddenly sleep with some rando? Think about it."

"He's not some rando, he's the main lead," Xiaoshuai said, without looking away from the screen. "The love interest." He pointed his chip at the shorter boy as he appeared on screen. "Also, you think things wouldn't already be happening ten episodes in? Things have been happening. This guy is just—" he shook his head, "—confusing himself."

Wu Suo Wei considered this. "Oh."

"Right." Xiaoshuai reached back into the chip bag. "Come to think of it though." He gestured at the screen. "He's only with this guy to get back at his ex. So they're probably not that official official yet." A pause. He tilted his head, mildly aggrieved. "Which means I'm going to have to wait a few more episodes before anything actually happens."

Wu Suo Wei looked up from his sketchbook.

On screen the shorter boy was doing the not-looking thing again while the taller one stood two feet away, maintaining significant eye contact with the side of his face.

"What do you mean they're not official," Wu Suo Wei said. "You said he's the love interest."

"Being the love interest doesn't immediately make you the official love interest." Xiaoshuai shrugged.

“What?” Wu Suo Wei's pencil had stopped moving. "But you said we’re ten episodes in. Things have happened."

"Yeah, they've been kissing and stuff."

“Kissing doesn't make you official?" The words came out quiet, barely above a murmur, more to himself than to Xiaoshuai.

Xiaoshuai didn't notice. "Hmm." He made a vague gesture at the screen. "Maybe he still likes his ex."

A pause.

"Wait, no." He frowned. "He hates his ex."

“They’re probably just building tension,” Wu Suo Wei said. Not to Xiaoshuai. Not really to anyone. Something you said out loud because it sounded more convincing that way.

Xiaoshuai missed it entirely. He was frowning at the screen with the focused displeasure of someone personally wronged by a narrative decision. "They're building my blood pressure is what they're doing. Like, if it’s clear that you actually like someone. You stop with all the back and forth and the not-saying-it and you just — " he waved his chip, "— do something about it."

Wu Suo Wei sat up sharply, sketchbook sliding off his knee.

“Wait.” He caught it without looking, eyes fixed on Xiaoshuai. “Wait, hold on.” His voice came out level. Mostly level. The voice of someone asking a completely normal question about a drama they were only partially invested in and definitely not relating to on any personal level. “You said they’ve already been... kissing and stuff. Doesn’t that count for something official?”

“Kissing is kissing.” Xiaoshuai shrugged. “I could kiss someone right now and go kiss someone else tomorrow. Doesn’t mean anything by itself.”

He glanced over at Wu Suo Wei, just briefly and caught the expression on his face, which had gone tight and sharp in the way it did when Wu Suo Wei felt personally accused of something. Xiaoshuai looked back at the screen, reached for another chip, and said nothing.

“So they’re not really together,” Wu Suo Wei said. Not to Xiaoshuai. To the screen, to the air in front of him, to the patch of nothing he’d been staring at for the last thirty seconds. Like the information had just arrived and he was still processing what it meant.

Xiaoshuai turned to look at him now. His eyes moving over Wu Suo Wei's face with the slow, methodical attention of someone who had just noticed something had been happening for a while and they were only now catching up to it.

Wu Suo Wei’s sketchbook had gone still in his lap, pencil loose between his fingers, forgotten. His eyes were fixed on the screen but he wasn’t watching it anymore.

“What if it’s not just—” he started. Stopped. Tried again. “Like.... What if there’s other stuff too.”

Xiaoshuai was still looking at him. “What?”

“What if they do other stuff.” Wu Suo Wei’s voice had gone careful in the way it did when he was picking his words like he was crossing something on stepping stones, testing each one before he put his weight on it. His eyes hadn’t moved from the screen. “Like. Besides kissing.”

There was a beat of silence.

“What kind of other stuff,” Xiaoshuai said. His eyes had narrowed, slow and considering, a chip halfway to his mouth, forgotten.

"Just. Other stuff." Wu Suo Wei made a vague gesture with his pencil. "More than kissing. But not... all the way. Like somewhere in between."

Xiaoshuai pulled the chip bag onto his lap and reached in with the same energy that of someone who had just decided this was the most interesting thing that had happened all week. Suddenly the conversation was more interesting than the drama. “Okay,” he said slowly. “So they’re doing things.”

Wu Suo Wei looked at him with the expression of a child attempting innocence and not quite pulling it off. “Hypothetically.”

“Right.” Xiaoshuai turned back to the screen, carefully, because the conversation was just getting good and the last thing he wanted was for Wu Suo Wei to clock his interest and shut down entirely. His eyes slid sideways just once, briefly, then away. “Hypothetically. For how long. Hypothetically.”

From his peripheral he watched Wu Suo Wei look down at his sketchbook. The page had a drawing on it that hadn’t decided what it wanted to be yet, lines trailing off in directions that hadn’t been committed to. Wu Suo Wei’s pencil hovered over it without moving.

“I don’t know.” A pause that went on slightly too long. “A few months. Maybe.”

“A few months of things.”

“Yeah.”

“But not ... all the way.”

“Mm.” Quiet. Almost inaudible.

On the laptop screen, entirely unnoticed by either of them now, the shorter boy had just been pushed back against the office table, the taller one leaning over him with calm, unhurried focus, working his belt free with one hand while the shorter boy's wrists were gathered up and held above his head. Things were, by any measure, getting very interesting. Xiaoshuai's eyes passed over it without registering a single frame.

He reached into the chip bag again. Chewed slowly. “So you don’t think they’re official?”

“He didn’t say.” Wu Suo Wei said it toward the screen, in the voice of someone making a casual observation about a fictional situation. Then the words landed back on him. His pencil hand went very still against the page. “I mean, I don’t know.”

The silence that followed had a texture to it — thick and warm and slightly charged, a silence that settled into a room when something true was about to be said out loud for the first time. Xiaoshuai didn't fill it. He sat with his chip bag open in his lap and his eyes on the screen and let it breathe.

Then, without turning his head, without any change in his voice at all: "So. The taller one. In the show."

Wu Suo Wei's jaw tightened. The lamplight in the room caught the line of it. "Yes."

"Who is currently on screen."

Wu Suo Wei's eyes went to the screen. The taller character was on it, yes. He was also, at this exact moment, using his belt to bind the shorter boy's wrists above his head against the office table, the shorter boy's chest rising and falling too fast beneath him. It was a lot to be looking at directly. Wu Suo Wei looked at it anyway, because looking at Xiaoshuai was worse.

A beat passed.

Xiaoshuai turned. Looked at Wu Suo Wei's profile for a moment, taking in the set jaw and the too-still posture.

Then he raised his eyebrows. “The one who wears glasses." He said.

Wu Suo Wei's pencil snapped against the page.

The sound cracked through the room like something breaking. Both of them heard it. Neither of them mentioned it.

"What? No—" Wu Suo Wei started.

"Right?"

"The character doesn't—"

"I'm not asking about the character."

Wu Suo Wei put his sketchbook down. Not gently. It hit the duvet and bounced slightly, splaying open at an angle, the unfinished drawing face-up and abandoned. His whole body had shifted, shoulders risen, jaw locked, spine straight in the rigid, coiled way it got when he felt cornered and was deciding whether to fight or bolt. The lamplight caught the flush climbing up the back of his neck.

"We're talking about the characters."

"Are we?"

Wu Suo Wei's mouth opened. His eyes moved, to the screen, to the wall, everywhere. He was looking for a thread, something to pull the conversation somewhere safer, and the room was offering him absolutely nothing. The screen least of all.

"Okay." Xiaoshuai leaned back against the headboard, arms folding over his chest, eyes drifting back to the laptop like he was merely a casual observer of a fictional drama and not the most interested person in this room right now. "So. The tall one. Who wears glasses. Has been doing things with the shorter one for months. And the shorter one doesn't know if they're together together or not."

He turned to look at Wu Suo Wei then. The smile on his face was very small and extremely smug.

"Did I get that right?"

Wu Suo Wei's jaw worked. The room felt suddenly warm.

"I didn't say any of that."

"You said most of it."

"I said none of it." Wu Suo Wei's voice had gone flat, liek he was working very hard to keep it that way.

"You said it's been going on for months."

"About the show."

"The show," Xiaoshuai said, with the patient pleasure of someone laying down a card they've been holding for a while, "has been running for ten episodes. That's not a few months. That's a few weeks at most." He tilted his head, the chip bag crinkling softly as he shifted. "A few months is a very specific detail to add about a fictional situation, Da Wei."

Wu Suo Wei stared at the laptop screen. The shorter boy on it was not having a great time, wrists bound, chest heaving, expression doing the thing where it was trying very hard to be composed and failing completely.

Wu Suo Wei could relate.

"Da Wei."

Wu Suo Wei blinked, pulled back from wherever his head had gone.

Xiaoshuai was looking at him directly now. No more pretending to watch the screen. No more mild, sideways attention. Just looking at him, straight on, with the calm focused expression he got when he had already arrived at a conclusion and was waiting for everyone else to catch up.

"Is it Chi Cheng?”

Wu Suo Wei stood up so fast his tools slid off the bed and scattered across the floor, an eraser bouncing off the duvet and flying directly at Xiaoshuai's face.

“I didn’t say his name.”

Xiaoshuai dodged it without blinking. "I did," he said pleasantly, straightening up. "You just didn't deny it."

"I'm denying it now."

"Are you?"

"Yes. Completely." Wu Suo Wei was standing in the middle of his room, one hand shoved through his hair, his face cycling through expressions too fast to land on any one of them. "There is nothing — we are not — it's not—" He stopped. Something in his throat closing around the words. He pushed his hand through his hair again, harder. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Xiaoshuai said nothing.

He sat on the bed with expression mild and his eyes steady, in the way he had when he was prepared to wait as long as it took. He had known Wu Suo Wei long enough to understand that the louder and faster the denial came, the more thoroughly it confirmed the thing being denied. So he waited. The chip bag sat beside him, untouched.

Wu Suo Wei turned around. Caught Xiaoshuai's face, that small, satisfied smile, watching the screen and then watching him with equal interest, like both were part of the same entertainment.

Wu Suo Wei reached over and slammed the laptop shut.

"Hey," Xiaoshuai said. "I was watching that."

"No you weren't."

A pause. Xiaoshuai's mouth curved into a grin, slow and deeply unbothered.

"No," he agreed. "I wasn't."

Wu Suo Wei's eyes rolled, and then he dropped straight back onto the bed like a man whose strings had been cut, the impact sending a wave through the mattress violent enough that Xiaoshuai lurched sideways, one hand shooting out to grab the laptop before it slid off the edge.

He saved it. Barely.

Then, settling back, straightening the laptop with great dignity, and looking at Wu Suo Wei's prone form with the satisfied expression of someone whose work here was thoroughly done: "So. Chi Cheng." He said. "I knew there was something going on with you two."

Wu Suo Wei picked up his pillow and put it over his face.

Xiaoshuai took that as a yes.

Wu Suo Wei kept the pillow over his face for a very long time.

It was an ordinary Friday lunch period.

Wu Suo Wei and Xiaoshuai were walking the long way to the cafeteria, not for any particular reason, just the habit of taking routes that weren't the most direct one, a leftover from years of moving through school in ways that kept them at least two corridors away from whoever was currently looking for Wu Suo Wei specifically. The hallway was thinning out, most students already settled somewhere with their food, the stragglers drifting past in ones and twos with the energy of people who had nowhere urgent to be.

They heard it before they saw it.

A sound coming from the direction of the main cafeteria, high and collective, the specific noise a group of people made when they had mutually agreed to be excited about something and were fully committed to being excited about it together in public with no apparent shame. It rose and fell in waves, punctuated by rapid overlapping conversation and at least two distinct squeals that bounced off the corridor walls and carried.

Xiaoshuai slowed. "What is that?”

Wu Suo Wei had already slowed without meaning to. "Sounds like someone's having a breakdown."

"Sounds like multiple people are having the same breakdown simultaneously."

"Could be a fire drill."

They looked at each other.

Then, with the wordless agreement of two people who had been friends long enough to make decisions without discussing them, they drifted toward the source. Not quickly. Just in that direction.

The cafeteria was warm and loud in the way it always was at peak lunch hour, the smell of rice and something fried, the scrape of chairs, and the layered noise of a hundred conversations happening at once. But underneath all of that, concentrated in the far corner, something else was going on. It was the good corner too, the one with the big windows that caught the afternoon light in long pale strips across the floor, the corner with the round tables and the unofficial social hierarchy attached to it that Wu Suo Wei had never once cared about. Right now, it had acquired a crowd.

Not a large crowd. Maybe ten, fifteen students, predominantly first-years by the look of them, still carrying freshness that of those who hadn't yet learned to be publicly nonchalant about things that excited them. They were clustered at the edges of the corner with their phones out and their voices low and rapid, occasionally emitting sounds that suggested they were witnessing something of genuine cultural significance.

Wu Suo Wei reached out and caught the sleeve of a passing first-year — a small girl with a high ponytail, walking with the slightly dazed expression of someone who had just had a formative experience and was still processing it.

"Hey. What's happening over there?”

The girl looked up at him. Her eyes were still soft at the edges, pupils slightly wide. "Oh." She glanced back toward the corner like she was already being pulled back to it by some invisible force. "Yue Yue xuéjiě is having lunch with Chi Cheng xuézhāng. They came in together and someone brought them food and they're so—" she made a sound that wasn't a word but communicated tremendous feeling, her hand coming up briefly like she was going to gesture and then not knowing what gesture was sufficient. "Like together they're just—" another sound. "You know?"

She drifted away before Wu Suo Wei could respond, already gravitating back toward the crowd like a small moon returning to orbit.

Wu Suo Wei stared after her.

Then Xiaoshuai appeared at his shoulder, having conducted his own separate intelligence gathering from a different passing first-year. "There's a fanclub," he said, with the tone of someone delivering sensitive information while keeping one eye on how it was landing. "For students who ship them."

Wu Suo Wei turned to look at him.

"It has over a hundred members," Xiaoshuai added.

Wu Suo Wei turned back to look at the crowd.

"Someone posted a photo of them at a student council event, it got circulated, and now there's a whole—" Xiaoshuai gestured at the crowd with his lunch tray, encompassing the squealing first-years and the phones and the general atmosphere of collective romantic investment, "— thing."

Wu Suo Wei's jaw tightened. The muscle in it jumped once, visibly, then held.

"A hundred members," he muttered.

"And growing." Xiaoshuai paused. "Apparently."

Wu Suo Wei looked at the crowd. At the shifting gaps between bodies where the view to the center table opened up briefly before closing again, a frame appearing and disappearing as people moved.

He looked through one of those gaps.

Yue Yue was sitting with the natural ease of someone in her element, bright-eyed, laughing at something a first-year had said, her hands wrapped around a drink someone had apparently brought her as an offering. She had the glow of someone receiving exactly the kind of attention she most enjoyed, and she was receiving a great deal of it.

Beside her, Chi Cheng sat with the expression of a man enduring something.

Not unkindly. He was being polite, he was always polite, it was one of the things Wu Suo Wei found simultaneously irritating and, in some circumstances, deeply reassuring, answering questions with measured patience, accepting the small gifts placed in front of him with minimal ceremony, maintaining the composed professionalism he brought to every situation. But his eyes had the quality of someone who had somewhere else to be and was calculating how long before he could reasonably get there.

He looked like he was supervising a very enthusiastic committee meeting that he had not been warned about in advance.

A first-year girl placed a small packaged snack in front of him with trembling hands. He thanked her with the same polite gravity he brought to everything, and her entire face collapsed into joy.

Yue Yue said something to the girl and laughed, leaning slightly toward Chi Cheng in the easy way of someone who had decided they had a claim to a person's proximity and was acting accordingly.

"They do look good together," Xiaoshuai said, eyes still on the crowd, not on Wu Suo Wei. Watching for the reaction anyway.

Wu Suo Wei's head turned sharply. The movement was fast enough that Xiaoshuai felt it beside him before he saw it.

"Objectively," Xiaoshuai added quickly, with a laugh that came out slightly more nervous than he intended. "From a visual standpoint. If you didn't know anything about either of them and you just saw them sitting there, you'd think — "

"I don't care what they look like together," Wu Suo Wei said. Flat. Immediate. His face arranged itself into an expression that was working very hard to communicate indifference and communicating something else entirely.

"Okay." 

"I'm just standing here."

"You are," Xiaoshuai agreed. "Very still. With that face."

"What face."

"The one you're making right now."

"I'm not making a face." Wu Suo Wei's voice had gone carefully level, that it required active maintenance.

"Da Wei."

"What?"

"Don't overthink it."

"I'm not thinking about anything." He was staring at the crowd again. At the gaps between bodies. "I'm standing here not thinking about anything."

"Your jaw is doing a thing though."

Wu Suo Wei unclenched his jaw. The effort of it was visible. He looked away from the crowd, then as if being pulled by something, looked back once, involuntarily, at the table in the center where Chi Cheng was sitting with the flat, contained expression of a man quietly waiting for a natural disaster to pass.

He turned and walked away. Back toward the corridor, movements clipped and controlled, each step a little faster than strictly necessary.

Xiaoshuai fell into step beside him.

"I'm just saying." A pause while he matched Wu Suo Wei's pace. "It's just freshmen who think two pretty people look good next to each other. It doesn't mean anything."

Wu Suo Wei walked faster.

"And besides," Xiaoshuai tried, slightly breathless now from keeping up, "he looked like he wanted to leave."

"I don't care what he looked like."

"Okay, okay" A beat. "I believe you." He said it the way you talked to someone who needed a moment, calm and even and carefully not making it into anything, which made Wu Suo Wei's eye twitch more than an argument would have.

They walked.

The cafeteria noise faded behind them until it was just the sound of their footsteps in the corridor and the distant clatter of the lunch period carrying on without them.

Wu Suo Wei's jaw was doing the thing again.

He didn't unclench it this time.

His ceiling had nothing interesting on it.

But Wu Suo Wei had been staring at it for approximately an hour and a half, long enough to have mapped every crack, every faint water stain, every place where the paint had bubbled near the corner and never been fixed. Long enough for the room to have gone fully dark around him without him noticing or doing anything about it. His phone sat face-down on the bed beside him. His sketchbook was open on the desk, abandoned mid-page, the pencil still resting in the groove where he'd left it.

He wasn't thinking about anything.

He was trying very hard not to, anyway.

The thing about the freshmen was that they didn't know anything. That was the first thing. They were first-years who had been in this school for five minutes, who saw two pretty people on the same student council and made a whole story out of it because that was what people did, took two pretty things and put them together and decided it meant something. It didn't mean something. It meant nothing. It was a group chat with a hundred members who had collectively mistaken proximity for destiny, and Wu Suo Wei was absolutely not going to lie in the dark thinking about it.

But here he was.

He thought about the way Yue Yue had leaned toward Chi Cheng across the table. Easy and comfortable. Like the space between them was hers to close whenever she wanted. He thought about how the first-years had looked at them the way people looked at things that made immediate, obvious sense, you could see it from across a cafeteria without knowing either person's name and still go yes, obviously, those two.

Same world. Same family background. Same effortless social gravity. Both of them, the kind to make a room quietly arrange itself around without being asked.

Xiaoshuai's voice came back to him.

It doesn't mean anything.

Right. It didn't mean anything.

Except.

Xiaoshuai's other voice came too, from two nights ago, chip bag in his lap, deeply unbothered: kissing doesn't make you official.

Wu Suo Wei frowned at the ceiling.

That sentence had been living rent-free in his chest for forty-eight hours and showed absolutely no signs of leaving.

He and Chi Cheng were not anything. No name. No label. Nothing you could point at from across a cafeteria and immediately understand. Just a room. A locked door. Things that happened behind a closed door and were never discussed afterward like two completely normal people.

So technically. Logically. He had no grounds to feel weird about any of this.

Even though he felt weird about all of it.

But Yue Yue and Chi Cheng though.

Yue Yue and Chi Cheng were student council. Were from the same orbit. Were exactly the kind of pairing that made a hundred first-years lose their minds in a cafeteria because it just made sense, visually, socially, probably cosmically.

His chest did something unpleasant.

He turned onto his side.

Okay. So. Chi Cheng had never tried to make it into something. Wu Suo Wei was only just now noticing this. Which was fine. It was a completely normal thing to only just now be noticing while lying alone in the dark. Months of the science room and everything they'd done and not one single conversation about what any of it was. Not one.

Wu Suo Wei had told himself that was fine.

The frown deepened.

Was it always just going to be the science room? Forever? Was that the plan? Did Chi Cheng even have a plan?

He rolled over, and faced the wall.

Was Yue Yue going to be the non-secret version? The one that existed in cafeterias and student council events and places where a hundred first-years could see it and make a group chat about it.

No. He was being an idiot. Chi Cheng wouldn't, it wasn't like that. Probably.

But they weren't official.

Wait why aren't we official?

That was a reasonable question right?

He made a sound into his pillow.

Fine!

Fine. Okay. If Chi Cheng didn't want to make it into something then that was fine. Great. Wonderful. They were nothing. Wu Suo Wei was a person who did not need things to be official. He had never needed anything to be official in his life. He was completely unbothered by the concept of official.

He was fine.

He pulled the pillow over his face.

He was completely fine and Chi Cheng could sit in that cafeteria with Yue Yue and their matching social orbits and their hundred-person fanclub and Wu Suo Wei was going to go to sleep right now and not think about it at all.

He stared at the inside of the pillow.

Outside his window the street had gone quiet, the yellow glow of the lamp post making a small steady circle on his curtain. The room was dark, and Wu Suo Wei lay under his pillow and was fine about everything.

Monday arrived with the indifference of days that didn't know they were supposed to be significant.

He got dressed. Ate breakfast. Did all of this with the focused normality of someone who had made zero decisions and zero peace with anything and intended to keep it that way indefinitely.

He had a plan.

The plan was: no plan.

The plan was to be completely fine and go to his classes and be normal and not do anything with any of the thoughts that had been sitting in his chest since Friday.

The thoughts could stay there. Indefinitely. Wu Suo Wei was unbothered.

Then he saw Chi Cheng at the school gates.

He was coming in from the opposite direction, notebook open, slightly absorbed. He looked up when he was close enough and found Wu Suo Wei immediately, the way he always did, like some internal compass that had been calibrated specifically for this purpose.

His expression did the thing. That small, almost imperceptible shift. He started to move toward him.

Wu Suo Wei walked straight past him.

No huff. No pointed look. Nothing. Steady pace, and eyes forward, like Chi Cheng was furniture. Like he was air. Like he was a perfectly ordinary patch of school gate that Wu Suo Wei had no particular feelings about.

Behind him, Chi Cheng's footsteps slowed as Wu Suo Wei passed. Then stopped entirely.

Wu Suo Wei kept walking.

We're nothing, right?

He humphed. At no one. To the open air. Completely unbothered.

---

The science room was empty that afternoon when Chi Cheng arrived.

He stood in the doorway for a moment. The familiar dim space, stacked canvases, abandoned easels, and Wu Suo Wei’s jacket still draped over a chair like it lived there. Sketchbooks on the table. Undisturbed.

He set his bag down. Sat and opened his notebook.

And waited.

Wu Suo Wei didn’t come.

After forty minutes Chi Cheng closed his notebook. He sat there for a moment longer, not reading, not writing, just sitting, which was not something he usually did. Then he picked up his bag and stood.

On his way out he paused at the window. Looked out at the path below, the empty courtyard, the stretch of walkway that led from the main building.

Nothing.

No one.

He looked for another moment anyway. Then exhaled through his nose, a small, tight sound, and left.

---

The next day, Wu Suo Wei was present. Physically in the building, attending classes, occupying his usual seat, and doing everything a person attending school was supposed to do.

“You’re very quiet,” Xiaoshuai said at lunch, setting his tray down across from him.

“I’m always quiet.”

"You are famously never quiet," Xiaoshuai said.

Wu Suo Wei ate his rice.

"See, that's actually concerning," Xiaoshuai added.

Wu Suo Wei ate his lunch and said nothing, which proved Xiaoshuai's point entirely.

Chi Cheng arrived in the cafeteria at the usual time. Wu Suo Wei knew this not because he was watching the entrance, but because the quality of the room shifted slightly, the way it sometimes did, and his eyes moved there on their own before he could stop them.

Chi Cheng collected his food, and looked across the room.

Directly at Wu Suo Wei's table.

Wu Suo Wei turned his head away with a sharp, dramatic hmph and then became very interested in his rice.

Chi Cheng looked away too. He sat down with two other student council members and ate with the composed self-containment of someone who was fine and intended to keep being fine. He didn't approach. He didn't try to catch Wu Suo Wei's eye again.

He did, however, and Wu Suo Wei noticed this without meaning to notice it, without wanting to notice it, with the specific suffering of someone whose peripheral vision was working against them, sit at an angle that gave him a direct sightline to Wu Suo Wei's table.

Wu Suo Wei kept his eyes on his rice. Even though peripheral vision had other ideas.

He ate his entire lunch staring at his tray with the focused intensity of someone engaged in a very important battle of wills with a bowl of rice, occasionally losing, his gaze sliding sideways before he caught himself and dragged it back, while across the table Xiaoshuai watched the whole performance unfold with the expression of a man who deeply regretted not bringing snacks.

---

Later, the between-period noise filled the corridor, bags, footsteps, the low collective shuffle of people transitioning from one class to the next. Wu Suo Wei was packing up his things when Zhang from the back of the class stopped beside his desk.

"Hey, a few of us are going to that place by the station after school. The one with the rice cakes." He gestured at the loose group assembling near the door. "You coming?"

Wu Suo Wei glanced at Xiaoshuai. "Can't. Plans."

Zhang shrugged and turned to Xiaoshuai, and then Ming cut in before anyone could answer, already pulling his bag on. "Can't either," Ming said. "My girlfriend is sulking about something. I have to go figure out what it is." He said this the way someone stated a fact about the weather, no resentment, no drama, just a man who had made his peace with it. “I don't even know what I did yet. I guess I’ll figure it out when I get there."

"Ooh, looks like he's going to grovel," announced the girl by the door, delighted.

"I'm not going to grovel—"

"You're already making the groveling face though."

"What face, I'm not making a face—"

"That's the face," someone else confirmed.

"Just come with us then," Zhang said, shaking his head.

Ming's expression made it very clear that he really, genuinely could not. There was a brief moment where he seemed to consider it anyway, and then his phone buzzed in his pocket and whatever consideration had been happening ended immediately. The group dissolved into laughter and swept him off down the corridor, their voices bouncing off the walls as they went, something about texts, something about Ming being categorically the most down bad person in their entire year and showing absolutely no signs of improving.

Then they were gone, and the corridor went quiet.

Wu Suo Wei stood by his desk.

He hadn't moved. He wasn't entirely sure when he'd stopped packing his bag but at some point he had, and now he was just standing there with his notebook in his hand and the empty corridor in front of him and the distinct feeling of someone who had just watched something that hit closer to home than he was prepared to deal with.

Ming didn't even know what he'd done wrong and he was already on his way to fix it. Was giving up rice cakes for it.

Wu Suo Wei shoved his notebook into his bag.

He knows, he thought. He definitely knows. He looked right at me at lunch. He has eyes. He has four eyes, he notices everything, he once noticed I had paint on my elbow from three meters away.

He zipped his bag shut.

So he knows. And he's just... all chill. Sitting there eating his stupid lunch.

He shouldered his bag so hard it swung.

Why not come over and ask me what's wrong?

He stood up sharp, chair scraping back against the floor.

What an asshole.

Beside him, Xiaoshuai watched all of this with the quiet, contained amusement of someone watching a very entertaining one-man show. He observed Wu Suo Wei wrestle his pencil case into his bag, glare at his water bottle, shove that in too, snap the zip shut with unnecessary aggression, and then stand there holding the bag like it had also personally wronged him.

Wu Suo Wei walked out of the classroom. With significant feeling.

“You’re stomping like a giant looking for something to step on.” Xiaoshuai observed, falling into step beside him on the path outside.

"I am perfectly fine."

Xiaoshuai unwrapped something from his bag and started eating it. "I didn't say you weren't," he said pleasantly. "It's just funny that you felt the need to clarify."

Wu Suo Wei made a sound that communicated everything and nothing and stomped on ahead.

Xiaoshuai followed, eating his snack, expression mild, saying nothing else

Later that afternoon, the school emptied out the way it always did at the end of the day. Quickly, enthusiastically, students pouring through the gates with the energy of people who had somewhere better to be and were finally allowed to go there. The corridors thinned. The noise dropped away in layers, the distant shouting first, then the locker doors, then the footsteps, until what remained was the specific quiet of a building that had finished being a school for the day and hadn't yet become anything else.

Wu Suo Wei was in the science room.

His bag was by the door. His sketchbook was open on the table in front of him, a half-finished something on the page that hadn't decided what it wanted to be yet. The late afternoon light came through the window in long familiar strips across the floor, the same as it always had, catching the dust in the air and the faint smell of old turpentine that the room never quite lost.

He'd been sitting here for twenty minutes. Drawing, or trying to — the pencil kept moving without much direction, his hand going through the motions while his brain did the thing it had been doing all week; circling back, always circling back, no matter how many times he redirected it.

It wasn't like he'd come here specifically. It wasn't like he'd thought about it, or checked the time, or positioned himself at this particular hour with any awareness of when Chi Cheng usually arrived.

He was just here. Drawing. Minding his own business entirely.

He didn't hear the door open.

Chi Cheng came through it the way he always did, quietly, without announcement. He took in the room. Took in Wu Suo Wei sitting at the table with his sketchbook and his expression and the careful quality of someone who was definitely just here drawing and had not been waiting for anything.

The taller one was quiet for a moment.

Wu Suo Wei kept his eyes on the drawing. In his peripheral vision he could see Chi Cheng standing there, bag still over his shoulder, taking in the scene with that attention of his. Wu Suo Wei turned a line into a curve and said nothing and waited to see what happened next.

For one brief moment he considered picking up his bag and leaving through the door. Genuinely considered it, weighed it, measured the distance. Then decided against it. He was here first. He wasn't going anywhere.

Chi Cheng set his bag down.

"You finally showed up," he said.

Wu Suo Wei kept his eyes on his sketchbook with the expression of someone who had not been waiting and found the implication mildly offensive. "I've been busy," he said. The line had been prepared. It landed with appropriate casualness.

Chi Cheng looked at him. Then at the sketchbook, which had approximately three lines on it. Then back at Wu Suo Wei's face.

"For two days?" he said.

"Yes! Very busy," Wu Suo Wei said, and turned a page on a sketchbook that had nothing on it worth turning to.

The silence that followed settled into the room like weather. Chi Cheng stood where he was, looking at Wu Suo Wei looking very focused on his sketchbook, and something in what he was seeing — the careful not-looking, the turned page, the specific rigid quality of Wu Suo Wei's shoulders...registered. His expression shifted slightly. He crossed the room and stopped on the other side of the table, close enough that Wu Suo Wei would have to actively work to avoid looking at him.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Finally Wu Suo Wei looked up. Something hot shifted in his chest. He held Chi Cheng's gaze for a moment, taking in the slight furrow between his brows, the genuine confusion sitting there, the expression of someone who had arrived at this room with no idea what he was walking into.

“So you do know how to ask?" he said.

Chi Cheng's brows drew together further. "What?"

"Took you two days though." Wu Suo Wei looked back down at his sketchbook with great casualness, turning another page he hadn't finished. "But sure."

"I don't —"

"It's fine." Wu Suo Wei waved a hand, magnanimous, the gesture of a person who had absolutely no feelings about anything and was completely unbothered by all of it. "I understand. You were probably very occupied." A pause, perfectly timed. "With your fanclub."

Chi Cheng frowned at him. "My what?"

"It's fine. Really." Wu Suo Wei turned another empty page. "I don't want to get in the way of your fame anyway."

"My fame—" Chi Cheng sighed and moved around the table, putting distance between them as he did, his voice carrying the patience of someone trying very hard to follow a conversation that had begun without him. "Wei Wei, you're going to have to explain to me what you mean."

Wu Suo Wei's eyes tracked the movement. The distance registered somewhere in his chest as a small, specific tick of annoyance that he absolutely was not going to acknowledge.

"Why are you always—" He stopped himself. His jaw tightened. The pencil in his hand had gone still against the page without him noticing, the half-finished line trailing off into nothing.

Chi Cheng waited.

"Always what?" He said. Quiet. Genuinely asking.

Wu Suo Wei's face was going red. He could feel it happening, the flush crawling up his neck and into his ears, completely beyond his control and deeply unhelpful. He kept his eyes on the sketchbook.

Finally having enough of it, Chi Cheng crossed the remaining distance between them. Wu Suo Wei heard him coming and stared harder at his sketchbook, which did nothing. Chi Cheng’s hand found the back of his chair and pulled it around, turning Wu Suo Wei to face him, and then he crouched down to his level, which was somehow worse than if he’d just stood there, because now they were eye to eye and there was nowhere to look that wasn’t directly at Chi Cheng’s face, which was doing the thing where it was completely focused and completely serious and not giving Wu Suo Wei any room to maneuver.

"Tell me what's wrong," Chi Cheng said. The patience was gone from it, not unkind, just done waiting, direct in the way he got when he'd decided something needed to be addressed. His hand moved from the chair to the back of Wu Suo Wei's neck, warm and certain. "Wei Wei."

Wu Suo Wei looked away.

Chi Cheng's hand shifted from his nape to his jaw, gentle but firm, and turned his face back. Not forceful. Just not accepting the deflection.

Their eyes met.

Chi Cheng waited, his hand staying where it was, warm and steady, saying nothing else, just looking at Wu Suo Wei with that focused attention that Wu Suo Wei had absolutely no defense against and had never had any defense against and resented deeply.

Wu Suo Wei's jaw worked.

He exhaled through his nose. A long, defeated sound. The sound of someone who had held out for as long as they reasonably could and had now run out of runway.

"The freshmen," he muttered, still not looking at Chi Cheng, glaring at some fixed point just past his shoulder, "think you and Yue Yue are a couple." The words came out smaller than he'd intended, less steady, nothing like the flat controlled delivery he'd been rehearsing in his head the whole day. "There's a whole fanclub. A hundred people." His jaw tightened. "At the cafeteria. They were all there watching you two like it was some kind of — " he stopped. Restarted. "They said you two look good together."

Chi Cheng was quiet for a moment. His hand was back on Wu Suo Wei's nape, warm and unmoving. The scene at the cafeteria settled into place. The pieces arranging themselves into a shape that was, now that he was looking at it directly, very clear.

His thumb moved once against Wu Suo Wei's skin.

"Is that why you've been sulking?" he asked.

"Who says I'm sulk—" Wu Suo Wei's voice rose, sharp and immediate—

Chi Cheng looked at him.

Just looked at him. Steady. Saying nothing. His face doing all the necessary work on its own.

Wu Suo Wei's voice dropped back down.

"I wasn't sulking," he muttered, to the wall.

Chi Cheng made a small sound that was almost a laugh. Not mocking, just quiet, escaping before he could help it. Wu Suo Wei's eyes cut to his face to glare at him for it, and caught the expression there instead. The faint amusement, yes, but underneath it something more careful, more attentive, like he was looking at Wu Suo Wei's face and finding something he hadn't been expecting and was now examining with quiet interest.

Wu Suo Wei looked back at the wall.

Chi Cheng tilted his head slightly. Something had shifted in his expression, the amusement still there but quieter now, something more focused underneath it, like a question forming.

"You already know I don't want Yue Yue," he said. His voice was quiet.

Wu Suo Wei's jaw tightened. He said nothing. Looked pointedly in the other direction, away from Chi Cheng's far too perceptive gaze, which had developed a quality he didn't like.

"I don't even want her on the council," Chi Cheng continued, even and matter of fact. "and I would have left that table twenty minutes earlier if the freshmen hadn't made a scene every time I moved.”

Wu Suo Wei turned to look at him sharply. "Then why didn't you say something!" His voice came out louder than intended, the week's worth of it finally finding an exit. "Why didn't you — " he gestured, the gesture encompassing all of it, the cafeteria, the fanclub, the sightline, the two days of nothing, "— do something. You could have just told me that from the start."

Chi Cheng looked at him. "You walked past me at the school gates without looking at me."

"Still!"

"And you’ve been giving me death glares since Monday."

"Because you—"

"How was I supposed to know you wanted me to come after you," Chi Cheng said, and there was something in his voice now, not quite exasperation, but close, the faintest crack in the composure. 

"You always chase after me!" Wu Suo Wei's voice went up, indignant. "and you always catch me! Since day one you've always... whenever I do anything you're right there, right behind me, and now suddenly you just let me disappear?"

Chi Cheng looked at him for a long moment.

"And where," he said carefully, "do we usually end up?"

Wu Suo Wei opened his mouth. He thought for a second.

Chi Cheng waited.

"...here," Wu Suo Wei said, after a pause that lasted slightly too long.

"Here," Chi Cheng agreed, voice was quiet, not unkind. "You haven't been here in two days. You just stopped coming. How was I supposed to know?".

His mouth pressed into a line. The pout was still there, fully committed, doing nothing to disguise the fact that the argument had just been taken apart again and he didn't have another one ready.

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"The point is!" Wu Suo Wei's voice cracked slightly on the last word, too loud for the quiet room, and he felt his face go hot immediately. He looked away. Crossed his arms. Stared at the far wall with tremendous focus. "Ming from my class didn't even know what he did wrong and he still chased after his girlfriend."

The silence that followed had a very specific quality to it.

"...who?" Chi Cheng said. Fully confused.

"Nevermind!" Wu Suo Wei huffed, the tips of his ears going red.

Chi Cheng looked at him. Wu Suo Wei could feel it from his peripheral vision, that steady focused look, taking in the crossed arms and the red face and the pout and the very interesting wall. Something in Chi Cheng's expression shifted to the look of someone who had just understood something about a person they thought they already knew completely and was finding it unexpectedly new. Wu Suo Wei, who would argue with anything that moved, who would spray paint a wall and pick fights and get himself into trouble just to get Chi Cheng's attention rather than simply calling and saying so, wanted to be coddled.

Chi Cheng was quiet for a moment, genuinely stumped by this.

Then, very quietly: "So you're upset because someone else chased their girlfriend and I didn't chase you?"

Wu Suo Wei opened his mouth.

"I didn't say that," he said, but it came out thin.

"Just tell me." Chi Cheng said it quietly, and there was something in his voice that was almost helpless, the tone of someone who had been trying to follow this conversation for the past ten minutes and was genuinely, sincerely asking to be let in.

"Fine." Wu Suo Wei’s jaw tightened. "Fine. You're right. I don't have the right to be upset anyway." He uncrossed his arms. "You don't have to chase me. We're not anything."

Chi Cheng went very still. "I didn't say-"

"We're not official," Wu Suo Wei continued, his voice going flat in the way it did when he was saying something that hurt and trying to say it like it didn't. "We've never been official. So I don't have the right to be upset and you don't owe me anything and it's—" he stopped. Started again. "It's fine."

"What do you mean we're not official?" Chi Cheng said.

"I mean exactly that." Wu Suo Wei looked at him now, fully, the pout gone and something more honest in its place. "We're not anything, you never said we were! And you know what? You could have just told me you didn’t want to from the very beginning instead of letting me think—" he stopped himself. His face was very red. "Forget it."

The silence that followed was a different kind. Chi Cheng looked at him for a long moment, not speaking, just looking at Wu Suo Wei's profile, the way he was staring at something across the room that wasn't actually there. Wu Suo Wei could feel it happening even without looking back, the slight recalibration, something shifting, the confusion giving way to something else entirely. Like a picture coming into focus. Like two days of death glares and huffs and empty afternoons in this room suddenly arranging themselves into a shape that made a very specific kind of sense.

Chi Cheng exhaled once through his nose.

“You've been thinking that this whole time?" Chi Cheng's voice was very even. "That I didn't want to—"

"I didn't know you had a problem hearing," Wu Suo Wei muttered.

Chi Cheng tsked. Short and sharp, the sound of someone's patience being tested in a very specific way. "Wei Wei." His hand came back to the side of his face, gentle and certain, and Wu Suo Wei let it happen because he was tired and his face was hot and he had run completely out of things to say. "I wasn't choosing not to. I was waiting."

Wu Suo Wei's eyes snapped toward him. "Waiting?" He let out a short, disbelieving sound. "For what?”

“You.”

Wu Suo Wei opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

"For you to be ready." Chi Cheng's thumb moved against his jaw. "I didn't want to push you into something before you wanted it. So I waited.” His eyes behind his glasses were steady, focused entirely on Wu Suo Wei's face. "I was giving you time. Not opting out."

Wu Suo Wei stared at him.

Chi Cheng's expression was open in the way it only ever was when they were alone and he'd stopped performing composure entirely. His dark eyes behind his glasses were focused entirely on Wu Suo Wei's face with an attention that made Wu Suo Wei want to look away again.

Instead he stared at the floor, jaw working, processing what had just been said. Chi Cheng was still crouched in front of him, patient and present and not going anywhere.

“Why didn't you just say so?" The words came out before he could stop them, frustrated and cracking at the edges. "You never said anything ... you just ... I didn't know. How was I supposed to know you were waiting and not just ... fine with how things were?”

His face was red. Fully, comprehensively red, all the way to his ears, and he knew it and hated it and looked at the floor because looking at Chi Cheng right now was not something he was capable of.

"I was respecting you," Chi Cheng said. "I didn't want to push you before you were ready."

"How was I supposed to know that?" Wu Suo Wei's voice rose again, helpless and frustrated in equal measure, the specific misery of someone who has been handed an explanation that makes complete sense and is furious about it.

The silence stretched. Long enough that it stopped being a pause and started being something of its own, full and weighted and asking something neither of them had said out loud yet.

Then Chi Cheng said, simply: "I want it. I have always wanted it. I was waiting for you to want it too."

The words sat in the dim science room light and didn't move.

Wu Suo Wei looked up, and Chi Cheng looked back at him. His expression still open in that specific unguarded way.

And then, because he was who he was, the corner of his mouth curved.

"So," he said. "You want to be official huh?"

Not a question. Just Chi Cheng, enjoying himself.

Wu Suo Wei's face did something complicated. Several things, in quick succession. "I — if you don't want to—"

"I just said I want to."

"I'm just saying if you ‘re not sure—"

"Wei Wei." The warmth in his voice had developed a faint edge of amusement. "I just told you I've been waiting for months. So I want to. I am telling you clearly. Out loud, that I want to."

Wu Suo Wei looked at him. Looked away. Then, despite his best efforts, looked back.

His jaw was tight. His hands were at his sides. His entire posture communicated someone in the process of making a decision they'd already made and were simply catching up to.

"...sure, whatever," he said, lifting a shoulder like this was all very boring and routine and he had not spent two days stomping through school hallways over it.

Chi Cheng's expression changed. Just warmth, sudden and unguarded, moving across his face like something he'd been holding carefully for a very long time had finally found somewhere to land. His eyes went soft behind his glasses. The corners of his mouth curved in a way that had nothing to do with winning anything.

Wu Suo Wei saw it and immediately looked away, his face burning.

"Don't make it weird," Wu Suo Wei said.

"You made it weird," Chi Cheng said.

"I will leave if you don't shut up."

"Really?"

He didn't.

He stayed. In the abandoned science room — their room — with his face very warm and his hands at his sides, fully aware that he had absolutely nowhere else to be and no real intention of going anywhere, and that Chi Cheng knew this, and that there was nothing to be done about either of those facts.

A silence settled between them. Not uncomfortable, just new, silence that came after something had shifted into place and neither of them quite knew what to do with the quiet it left behind. Wu Suo Wei looked at the floor. Chi Cheng looked at Wu Suo Wei. The room was dim around them, the last of the evening light catching the dust in the air, the window still unlatched, letting in the cool city sounds from outside.

"So," Wu Suo Wei said, eventually.

"So?"

"What does this mean now?."

Chi Cheng looked at him steadily. "It means we're boyfriends."

Something happened to Wu Suo Wei's face. Hearing it said out loud, plainly, without ceremony or buildup, just Chi Cheng stating it like a fact that had always been true and was only now being acknowledged, made several things happen to his expression simultaneously, none of which he had any control over. "That word is—"

"What, boyfriends?" Chi Cheng said again, and there was something in his voice now, light and teasibg, the tone of someone enjoying themselves at Wu Suo Wei's expense and making absolutely no effort to hide it.

"You don't have to keep—"

"Boyfriends?"

Wu Suo Wei's face had been red for so long at this point that it had simply become his new permanent condition. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Gave up. "Okay. Fine. Yes. That. Stop saying it."

Chi Cheng's mouth curved, warm, the real smile, not the smirk, not the knowing curve, just Chi Cheng actually smiling, and said nothing else.

Instead he reached over and fixed Wu Suo Wei's collar. The small, familiar gesture, his fingers finding the fabric with the ease of something done a hundred times. Like they had all the time in the world and the science room wasn't going dark around them and this wasn't the first time he'd done it knowing exactly what it was.

He didn't move his hand away immediately.

Just left it there, warm against Wu Suo Wei's collar, his thumb resting lightly against the side of his neck.

Wu Suo Wei felt it move through him, that warmth, traveling from the point of contact outward. His shoulders dropped a fraction. The tight, defensive set of his jaw loosened without him deciding to loosen it. He'd spent two days being furious and then an hour being mortified and somewhere in the last ten minutes the fight had gone out of him entirely, and what was left underneath it was something quieter and more honest than anything he'd said out loud today.

He didn't say anything.

He didn't pull away.

He didn't make it nothing.

The room had gone dark around them without either of them noticing, the light from outside bleeding out through the window in slow degrees while they’d been otherwise occupied. Outside, the last sounds of the school day had faded, distant footsteps, a door, then nothing. Just the city beyond the walls and the cool evening air coming through the gap where the window didn’t latch and the quality of silence that settled into a space when it had been forgotten by everyone except the people inside it.

Wu Suo Wei had his back against the shelves, the edge of one digging slightly into his shoulder blade in a way he was not paying any attention to whatsoever.

Chi Cheng’s mouth crashed against his, swallowing the gasp that had barely formed. Wu Suo Wei’s back slammed hard against the wooden shelving, the impact sending supplies rattling and shifting on the racks above them. A box teetered at the edge but neither of them noticed, neither of them cared.

Chi Cheng’s hands were everywhere, one fisted in Wu Suo Wei’s hair, gripping tight enough to sting, angling his head exactly where he wanted it. The other had his hip in a bruising grip, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks through the fabric. Holding him in place. Keeping him pinned.

Wu Suo Wei couldn’t breathe. Didn’t know if he wanted to breathe. His world had narrowed to the burning pressure of Chi Cheng’s mouth against his, the slide of tongue and teeth, the way Chi Cheng was kissing him like he was starving for it.

His own hands scrabbled for purchase on Chi Cheng’s shoulders, nails digging into his uniform. The material creasing under his grip as he pulled Chi Cheng impossibly closer, eliminating even the whisper of space between their bodies. Chest to chest, hip to hip, the hard line of the shelf biting into his spine contrasted against the solid heat of Chi Cheng pressed against his front.

The shelf rattled again as Chi Cheng shifted, one knee pushing between Suo Wei’s thighs, spreading them, creating friction that made Wu Suo Wei’s head fall back against the wood with a dull thunk. Chi Cheng’s mouth immediately left his to attack his exposed throat, hot, open-mouthed kisses that turned to bites, teeth scraping sensitive skin.

A broken sound escaped Wu Suo Wei’s throat, something between a gasp and a moan. His fingers tangled in Chi cheng’s hair, not pulling him away but holding him there, right there against the rapid flutter of his pulse. Chi Cheng sucked hard at the junction of neck and shoulder and Wu Suo Wei’s hips jerked forward involuntarily, grinding against his thigh.

Chi Cheng pulled back.

Not far, just enough to breathe, his forehead dropping briefly to Wu Suo Wei's shoulder, his grip on his hip loosening from bruising to something steadier. His breathing was uneven. Wu Suo Wei could feel it against his neck, the rise and fall of it, the slight hitch.

Then Chi Cheng lifted his head.

Looked at him properly, and took in the flushed face, the blown pupils, the thoroughly wrecked expression, and something warm moved across his face that he didn't bother hiding.

Wu Suo Wei looked back at him.

Looked at his face, at the unguarded warmth in his eyes behind his glasses, at the expression that was still doing the thing it had been doing since the boyfriends.

Boyfriends.

Wu Suo Wei turned it over quietly in his head. Felt something loosen in his chest that had been tight for a long time, something that had no clean name but felt like relief, like the exhale of someone who had been holding a breath they didn't know they were holding.

"So," Wu Suo Wei said.

"Mm," Chi Cheng agreed, his thumb tracing along Wu Suo Wei's jaw, clearly not interested in a conversation.

He leaned back in.

“Are we doing the sex now?”

The room went very quiet.

Chi Cheng stopped. Pulled back properly this time. Looked at Wu Suo Wei with the warm, unguarded expression still on his face, which hadn't had time to rearrange itself into anything more appropriate for this conversation.

Wu Suo Wei looked back with the expression of someone who had said a completely reasonable thing and was waiting for a reasonable response to it.

"...what?" Chi Cheng said.

"We're boyfriends now, right?" Wu Suo Wei said, with the patient tone of someone explaining a logical sequence to someone who was being unnecessarily slow about it. "So. Official. Sooo.”

Chi Cheng opened his mouth. But he didn’t have the words. Something was happening behind his glasses that Wu Suo Wei had never seen before, a genuine, unscripted moment of not knowing what to do with what had just been said to him.

"What?" Wu Suo Wei asked worried after seeing Chi Cheng's reaction.

"That's not — it doesn't automatically mean—"

"Doesn't mean what?"

"No." Chi Cheng's composure had developed an expression Wu Suo Wei had never seen on it before, something between genuinely thrown and trying very hard to respond to this correctly. "It doesn't automatically — being boyfriends isn't a — there are steps, there's — it's not just—"

Wu Suo Wei's expression shifted.

It was subtle. Almost imperceptible. But Chi Cheng, who noticed everything about Wu Suo Wei, saw the slight flattening of his expression, the way his shoulders came up a fraction, the quality of someone who had just heard something through a specific filter and was already interpreting it as rejection and beginning, efficiently and with long practice, to build a wall around it.

Being the lead doesn't make you immediately official.

"Okay," Wu Suo Wei said, his voice gone flat. "Fine. Forget I said anything."

"Wei—"

"No, it's fine." The wall was going up fast, efficient and practiced, Wu Suo Wei's face arranging itself into the specific neutrality of someone who was fine, who had always been fine. "You don't want to. That's fine. I get it."

"That's not what I'm saying—"

"It's okay," Wu Suo Wei said again, and detached himself from Chi Cheng. He picked up his stuff from where it had ended up on the floor, scrambled for his bag and slung it over his shoulder with a movement that communicated tremendous dignity. "It was a stupid thing to say. Forget it."

"I'm trying to explain—"

"You don't have to explain why you don't want to sleep with me!" Wu Suo Wei said, his voice was raising as he walked out of the room.

Chi Cheng stood in the empty room, completely stunned.

He watched the door swing shut, and stood very still.

He replayed the last forty-five seconds.

The boyfriends. The kiss. The thirty seconds of complete disaster immediately following.

He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his glasses.

Then he crossed to the door and opened it.

"Wu Suo Wei!" he called down the corridor.

"Don't." Wu Suo Wei didn't stop walking. Didn't turn around.

"I wasn't saying I don't want to—" Chi Cheng said as he chased him.

"I don't want to hear it." Still walking. Faster now, his bag bouncing against his hip with the energy of someone making an exit on principle. "I'm going to class."

Chi Cheng looked at his watch. "What are you talking about? classes finished for the day.”

***