mo guan shan days

When He Tian’s eyes open to pitch-darkness, he can only feel two things: Guan Shan’s hedgehog hair tickling his nose and the cold numbness prickling across the skin of his bandaged hand. The whole of him feels misaligned, as if something inside shifted during sleep and never clicked back into place. Where obscurity would usually send him spiraling into the grip of whatever personal nightmare chose to haunt him, its silence now leaves room for the desperation and fear to recede and for the memory of the crazy string of events that led them here to come drifting back to him.

Just hours ago, his mind had been consumed with two things: Guan Shan’s safety, and tearing She Li out of the quiet, fragile patch of peace he and Guan Shan had somehow begun to build. A peace so muted and sparse, they hadn’t noticed it growing until it was already under threat.

Fewer hours ago, there had been only one thought left in his head: Guan Shan, Guan Shan, Guan Shan. The world had receded without protest, minutes stretching wide and unhurried as they got lost in each other. It had been just one kiss, but as soon as their lips met, Guan Shan showed a kind of courage so rare—not the bluster he wore like armor when pushing people away— that it would have been a crime not to see it as the treasure it really was. He Tian had poured everything into the moment, tracing every soft exhale, every hitch in breath, every detail; the scent of his skin, the heat of his mouth, the gentleness neither of them felt they had the words to name.

When they separated, out of breath after what felt like an eternity, Guan Shan looked at him as if, for the first time in his life, he had climbed over the walls that encased his hurt and landed on his feet, instead of breaking into pieces. For the split heartbeat that display of faint hope stunned He Tian into silence, those impossibly sharp eyes, pupils now soft and unfocused, washed in a haze of colour that is the most alluring he has ever seen.

He Tian can only hope that whatever his eyes mirrored in that moment honored even a fraction of what he was given. Seeing as Guan Shan now lies beside him, back turned and exposed, maybe it did.

He’s sure as fuck banking everything on Guan Shan believing in him, because what waits ahead is a fall without wings, and they’re already leaning over the edge.

Now that the shadow eating away at Guan Shan’s life has been dispelled, the two are melting into the mattress, tension bleeding out one exhalation at a time. He Tian craves giving himself up to this sweet reprieve. And yet, a bell tolls in his mind, each sound signalling this unbelievable night's retreat.

A creak in the hallway. Pipes groaning like an old man’s knees. A truck grinding gears out on the road. The quiet snick of the front door closing. Ms. Mo, kind as ever, doesn’t want to disrupt their slumber, even when she must be up at an ungodly hour to make it to an early shift.

Every sound stings the silence with one message: Time’s almost up, He Tian.

He shifts, slowly, careful not to wake Guan Shan. The hand that still aches is useless, so he props himself up with the other, watching the curve of Guan Shan’s spine rise and fall beneath the sheet. There’s a tiny, pale scar near his nose that He Tian doesn’t remember seeing before. The blemish beckons him to commit it to memory: another marked page to come back to when sleep won’t come and he needs to remember who it all is for—everything he’s done, everything he’ll give.

When he convinces himself he's sated, he lies back down, buries his face into the pillow he knows Guan Shan fluffed up for him when he thought he wasn’t looking. He sinks into the terribly inviting warmth of the body beside him, hoping to drown in it, if only to quiet his own thoughts. In the end, he can barely soak in it, but still, he’s grateful. Grateful he gets to touch him like this: just the barest glide of his fingertips over slightly overgrown red hair, a vulnerable nape, vertebrae pressing through a thin T-shirt.