Shower

When Xu Ze came out of the shower, Lu Heyang was sitting on the sofa with his chin propped on one hand, watching a film. There was an empty single armchair beside him, but Xu Ze only walked to his own bed and sat down, head lowered, drying his hair.

'Have you eaten?' Lu Heyang turned his head and asked.

Xu Ze lifted his face out of the towel and answered, 'Not yet.'

'Do you want me to call a restaurant?'

'No need,' Xu Ze said. 'I bought something myself.'

Lu Heyang glanced at the tightly wrapped bag on the table. 'This?'

'Mm.'

Lu Heyang turned back to the film. Xu Ze rubbed at his hair with the towel, drew a very quiet breath, and asked, 'Would you like some?'

'Thanks, but I've already eaten.' Lu Heyang declined politely.

'Okay.' Xu Ze's voice was muffled inside the towel, a little dull.

When his hair was half-dry, Xu Ze stood, crossed to the table, and began unwrapping the bag. A loose strand fell across his face, tickling; he raised a hand and brushed it from beneath his eye.

The gesture looked very much like wiping away tears. Lu Heyang turned to look at him.

Xu Ze kept his eyes lowered. The black T-shirt was the third time Lu Heyang had seen him wear it; his pale lips were pressed lightly together, and for no clear reason he seemed a little subdued. What struck Lu Heyang as odd was that Xu Ze ought to be a person of very small emotional fluctuation — not one for smiling, sparing with words — and yet sometimes one could still pick up on something faint moving beneath that surface. Perhaps he was imagining it.

'What did you buy?' Lu Heyang asked suddenly. He wanted, for no reason he could name, to see Xu Ze's face full-on — to know whether the other really was feeling low, or whether it was something else.

Xu Ze didn't turn, but his hands clearly faltered for a beat. He was gripping the plastic bag's strap, tightening it, as though answering the question were a difficult thing.

Still, he answered: 'Sand Cake.'

Lu Heyang paused, faintly, and echoed, 'Sand Cake?'

'Mm.'

The room went quiet all at once. Lu Heyang looked back at the screen, then, after a moment, rose and walked to the table, reaching out to pull the plastic bag open a little. What was inside was still warm; steam gathered against the backs of his fingers. Lu Heyang saw there was more than Sand Cake — other pastries too, each one packed on its own and then sealed inside several layers of plastic, so that none of it had been touched by the rain.

He looked up at Xu Ze and found Xu Ze already looking at him — a gaze that could be called intent, though it lasted only a flash, because the instant their eyes met Xu Ze looked away, and, as if to cover the slip, shifted the subject: 'Do you want some?'

The question had already been refused once; Xu Ze would not normally have asked it again, but right now there was simply nothing else to say, so he asked it a second time.

Lu Heyang propped one hand on the edge of the table, tilted his body slightly, and answered a question with a question: 'You went to the City District?'

'Mm.'

'How did you get there?'

'Down the mountain, there's a bus stop,' Xu Ze told him, quite honestly.

'Far?'

'About two kilometres on foot, then a little over forty minutes on the bus, and you're in the City District.'

Xu Ze spoke at an even pace, every word distinct, as though a navigation system were announcing the route to its owner. Off his skin came the clean scent of shower gel, and beneath it — because he had not brought his Wristband, and even with effort could not quite suppress it — the Pheromone.

'So the round trip took you over three hours,' Lu Heyang concluded.

'Mm.' Xu Ze had not really looked at the time, but a quick reckoning now suggested it was about that long.

'That shop is still open?' Lu Heyang asked, watching his face.

'It's closed. I bought them from another one.' After a beat, Xu Ze added, 'They said this shop's are very good too.'

Lu Heyang noticed that Xu Ze needed to be drawn out in conversation — that as long as you asked him something, he would answer, and answer truthfully. But that was not the point.

The point was this: over three hours round-trip, on an unfamiliar street, threading through a dozen or more side alleys, looking for a small shop whose name he only knew contained the syllable 'le' and which had already vanished — how many wrong turns that took, how many strangers one had to approach and ask, only Xu Ze himself knew.

Lu Heyang's index finger traced slow circles on the smooth tabletop. He asked, 'Why?'

Those three words were neither light nor heavy, but they jolted Xu Ze fully awake.

When he had run down the mountain and taken the bus to the City District, he had not thought that far ahead, had not weighed how to give a reasonable account of what he was doing. Seen now, it was simply something that could not be explained — why one would spend over three hours buying food for a person one barely knew.

'Because…' Xu Ze stepped back, one hand on the table, trying to make himself look natural. He could feel the weight of Lu Heyang's gaze. His mouth was very dry; he licked his lips, looked at the carpet, and said, 'You said it was good, so I wanted to try it.'

That answer was not entirely honest. Lu Heyang wanted to tell him: you do not look at all like someone who would go to such lengths over a craving.

But he only looked at Xu Ze steadily, and only when Xu Ze had gone pale under the scrutiny did Lu Heyang slowly say, 'I see.'

Xu Ze even forgot to nod. He simply stood there.

'Go ahead and eat,' Lu Heyang said at last. 'Eat, and rest early.'

He sat back down on the sofa and looked at his Mobile Phone. Xu Ze, belatedly, gave a small 'mm', peeled off the film and the plastic lid, and sat down at the table.

A scream burst from the television and pulled both their attention to it. Xu Ze glanced at the screen, then tilted his head slightly toward Lu Heyang — only to find Lu Heyang already looking at him. 'You can come watch from the sofa,' Lu Heyang said. 'It's a bit of a strain from where you're sitting.'

'It's fine,' Xu Ze said, shaking his head.

He went on eating, and heard Lu Heyang say, 'The pipe in the next room has been fixed.'

Xu Ze felt, in an instant, that he understood exactly what Lu Heyang meant. He stared at the snacks in the open box, his body seeming to lock in place. After a moment he lifted his head and said, 'I'll tell the teacher right now — I'll go sleep next door.'

Even as he spoke, he was calculating in his head how long it would take to gather all his things and leave the room — surely no more than a minute, and yet even that felt long. Xu Ze might be slow on the uptake, but once he grasped Lu Heyang's implication, he could not help feeling embarrassed, awkward — because it was Lu Heyang.

Just as Xu Ze was about to rise and start packing, Lu Heyang asked, 'Do you want to go sleep next door?'

The question left Xu Ze with no idea how to answer; he could not begin to read Lu Heyang's intent in asking it.

Lu Heyang took a calm sip of water, then looked toward Xu Ze and said, 'Even if you wanted to, there's no way. Someone's already moved into the next room.'

Anyone else might have felt they were being toyed with, but Xu Ze only blinked once, slowly, and once he had confirmed he did not need to leave the room, said softly, 'Okay.'

'Are there still Sand Cake?' Lu Heyang's mouth curved a little; he looked in good humour. 'I'd like to try them — see if they were worth the trip.'

'There are.' Xu Ze's movements became brisk all at once. He took out an unopened box of Sand Cake, walked to the sofa, and held it out to Lu Heyang. 'They haven't gone cold.'

Lu Heyang took them and smiled. 'Thanks.'

After the lights were off, and before he put on his eye mask, Lu Heyang asked, 'Want me to adjust the air-conditioning?'

The room was very still, and Lu Heyang's voice was low and soft. Xu Ze touched his ear and answered, 'No need. It's just right.'

'Alright.'

His eyes gradually adjusted to the dark. Xu Ze lay flat on his back, turned his head toward Lu Heyang's side, and could just make out the lines of the Alpha's chin, lips, the bridge of his nose, his brow. He had expected not to sleep — to lie awake the whole night — yet watching Lu Heyang like this, listening to the rhythm of his breathing, he found himself unexpectedly calm, as though he were inside a dream.

He closed his eyes and slipped into sleep, and the dream grew more tangled, more disordered.

Lu Heyang was woken a little after one in the morning. He pulled off his eye mask; on the next bed Xu Ze was coughing in small, broken sounds, with the sniffling that came between them — not loud, but Lu Heyang wore no earplugs, and any stir was enough to reach him.

He sat up, reached out and clicked on the wall lamp, and looked to the right. Half of Xu Ze's face was buried in the covers; his eyes were shut tight, his brow faintly furrowed, and he was coughing without knowing it, Pheromone leaking from him beyond his control.

It must have been the rain, and the fact that his Susceptibility Period had only just ended not long before — easy, on top of that, to fall ill.

Lu Heyang got out of bed, stood beside Xu Ze's, and drew the covers down a little so that his whole face was visible. Xu Ze's lips and cheeks were flushed an unhealthy red, his hair in disarray; lying there like this he looked fragile, and yet somehow more vivid, more real than his usual self.

'Xu Ze,' Lu Heyang said.

Xu Ze's brow drew tighter, and he turned his head to the right. Lu Heyang saw that the gland at his nape was red too — a fever, almost certainly; if it weren't dealt with soon, it could pull him into another Susceptibility Period.

Lu Heyang left the room, went downstairs to the night-duty server, and asked for a thermometer and two fever tablets.

The electronic thermometer had been left unused so long that its battery had been removed at some forgotten point; the server asked Lu Heyang to wait while she looked for one, but Lu Heyang did not want to trouble her further, and took a mercury thermometer from the medicine box instead.

Back in the room, Lu Heyang put on his Wristband and turned it to the highest setting, then opened a fresh bottle of mineral water, set the water and the tablets on the bedside table, and swabbed the thermometer with an alcohol pad. He leaned down, brought the thermometer to the corner of Xu Ze's mouth, and said, 'Open. Let's take your temperature.'

……

To keep Xu Ze from swallowing the thermometer or spitting it out, Lu Heyang stood at the bedside watching him for the few minutes it took.

When the time was up, Lu Heyang drew the thermometer out — nearly thirty-nine degrees; a fever, certainly. He washed his hands, then slipped a hand beneath Xu Ze's nape and lifted his head a little, sliding a pillow underneath. He brought the tablet to Xu Ze's lips and said, 'You have a fever. Take this.'

Xu Ze, this time, opened his mouth without protest and took the tablet. Lu Heyang gave him water after; Xu Ze drank two sips and stopped.

'Did you get it down?' Lu Heyang asked.

Xu Ze gave a faint, listless nod.

'A little more water,' Lu Heyang said.

Xu Ze obediently drank a few more sips, and Lu Heyang drew the bottle away. A thin silver thread stretched between the mouth of the bottle and Xu Ze's lips; a little water spilled from the corner of his mouth and slid down to his chin. Lu Heyang took a tissue, wiped the corner of his mouth for him, then removed the pillow and let him settle back onto the bed.

After a dozen minutes or so, Xu Ze gradually quieted. Lu Heyang tidied everything away, glanced at him once more before getting back into his own bed, and at last turned off the light and went back to sleep.