from the bones of a man on a mission

by Anonymous

Summary:

What does it take to survive a cage built by your own blood?

Shen Wenlang has been chasing ghosts for three years. But when his father strikes, ghosts are not enough. Survival depends on guilt, betrayal, and the unexpected hands that pull him out of the dark.

Notes:

I got impatient with the drama and decided to speed through the novel translations. Imagine my surprise when I got slapped with the wildest B-to-C plot about Shen Wenlang’s family?

So here we are. A fix-it of sorts.
Thank you for reading, as always. I hope you enjoy it!

And as always... I remain a steadfast believer of the em dash.

Chapter 1: Three Years of Madness

Shen Wenlang is still CEO. He still signs his name in perfect strokes across contracts worth billions. He still arrives at headquarters every morning in tailored suits, still commands silence when he enters a room. On the surface, nothing has changed.

But everyone close enough to see him knows the truth.

He no longer cares about the numbers. Quarterly reports lie unopened on his desk. He spends meetings scrolling through his phone, scanning dossiers, cross-checking addresses. When his executives present strategies for expansion, he interrupts to ask if their contacts in logistics have heard anything—anything at all—about Gao Tu.

Funds are misallocated, entire budgets drained into “special projects” that do not appear in the annual report. Investigators are hired and discarded in a cycle that burns through money like dry leaves. Flights are purchased last minute, accounts rerouted, shells within shells.

The board whispers, but they whisper carefully. Their CEO walks with an Alpha presence frayed raw at the edges, a scent that shifts volatile from hour to hour, heavy with restlessness and need. More than once, subordinates have left a meeting trembling, stomachs turned by the suffocating force of it.

The company is hemorrhaging, but no one dares tell him directly.

His Alpha makes sure of that.

---

It hangs thick in the air, volatile and jagged, a restless stormfront that changes by the hour. One moment sharp as iron, the next bitter with grief. It crawls over skin, prickles nerves, squeezes stomachs until junior staff walk out shaking.

Three years. Three years of phantom leads.

Every night he paces through darkened rooms with lights left off, chasing after scents that never existed. His Alpha claws at him, pulling toward strangers in subway cars, toward shadows at the edge of alleys. Sometimes he swears he hears a child crying through the walls—real, urgent, his. He tears through rooms looking for it. Always, the rooms are empty.

He doesn’t eat. He survives on black coffee and spite. His body shakes from it, thin and strung out. He grows pale under office lights, his eyes ringed with sleepless hollows.

When the board murmurs, Shen Yu listens.

Not out of concern. Out of calculation.

The family name is starting to tarnish. Investors mutter. The company wavers. His son is unraveling in public.

Correction is required.

---

It happens in a parking garage at midnight, rain slicking the pavement in glassy sheets. Wenlang halts mid-step, nostrils flaring. He smells something—he swears he does—faint, sharp, achingly familiar. He rounds a pillar, body thrumming, convinced at last.

And instead finds his father.

Shen Yu stands in his immaculate coat, flanked by silent men in suits. Their eyes pass over Wenlang like he is another problem to be solved.

“You’ve made a mess,” Shen Yu says, mild as ever. “Get in the car.”

Wenlang laughs once, sharp, too loud. “Arrest me, then.”

“It isn’t arrest,” Shen Yu replies, voice even. “It’s correction. For the company. For the family.”

Wenlang lunges. The men catch him. His Alpha rears feral, snapping teeth and elbows, scent gone sharp with desperation. They wrestle him down. A cloth presses to his face. The chemical burn hits his nose, harsh and sterile.

He fights until he can’t. The world slips.

---

He wakes under sterile light.

Restraints cut into wrists and ankles. A strap bites across his chest. His head throbs. His Alpha thrashes in his body, feral and screaming. His glands burn, swollen, overworked, trying to broadcast into a void. His scent lashes out bitter, desperate, unanswered.

He yanks at the restraints until something in his wrist cracks. The pain is bright, sharp. He drags the hand harder, bone grinding against leather. Almost—almost free—

The door opens without sound. Shen Yu enters.

“You’ve endangered the company,” he says. Calm. Businesslike. “You’ve made yourself a liability and a laughingstock. I won’t allow it.”

“You think this is about the company?” Wenlang snarls. His throat is raw, voice hoarse.

“Everything is about the company.” Shen Yu nods to the doctor. “Proceed.”

The injection flares cold, then hot. His Alpha spasms, choking, glands screaming. His chest heaves, throat closing on air. His body convulses against the straps. His nerves light up with subtraction.

He bends his thumb against the cuff until it snaps, dragging his wrist bloody against the strap. He almost feels the give—almost.

The doctor is fast. Hands pin him. Bones are put back in place with brutal precision.

Shen Yu watches, detached. “You will rest. You will recover. You will return to work. This is necessary.”

---

Time dissolves into cycles.

Restraints. Injections. The rasp of his breath against the strap. The steady hum of machines.

He fights, again and again. Dislocates his shoulder against the bedframe. Smashes his skull into the wall until stars burst behind his eyes. Rips his own fingernails trying to claw the cuff loose. Every time the doctor resets him. Every time Shen Yu watches, eyes flat.

“Discipline is necessary,” his father says, as though carving the word into him.

---

The hallucinations begin after the third round of injections.

Not visions—memories, sharp and vicious, looped until they bleed.

In college: Gao Tu laughing softly, sliding him a bowl of noodles when he forgets to eat.

At the workplace: Gao Tu steadying him during long nights, covering mistakes before they reached the board.

At parties: Gao Tu a quiet shield at his side, patient, steady, devoted.

That one night: warmth in a bed Wenlang has never let anyone else into. A morning colder than he remembers.

The resignation letter: precise strokes, cruel in their neatness.

The silence: three years of nothing.

He whispers Gao Tu’s name until his throat tears. His Alpha claws his insides raw, desperate, reaching, screaming into emptiness. His glands flare, burn, fray. His body feels like it is eating itself.

Sometimes he swears he smells it—the faintest edge of Gao Tu’s scent—just beyond reach. He surges toward it, biting at leather until his jaw aches. Nothing.

Sometimes he swears he hears the child crying. He sobs with it, choking on air, begging to hold a boy he has never seen.

Each time, the room stays empty.

---

Shen Yu steps in once more. His shadow cuts the light.

“This is business,” Shen Yu says. “I won’t let you tarnish the family name.”

Wenlang turns his head to the ceiling, eyes red, breath shuddering. His Alpha claws and claws, wild in the cage of his body.

And then, hoarse and cracked, he whispers the only name left to him, broken like a prayer:

“Gao Tu.”

Chapter 2: A New Name, An Old Flame That Still Burns

Summary:

Gao Qing sees more than he thinks.

She sits with him one evening, the lamp dim between them, Lele asleep in the other room. Her voice is quiet, careful. “You keep looking over your shoulder.”

“I don’t,” Gao Tu says.

“You do,” she insists. Her gaze is steady. “You’re here, but you’re not here. You left him, but you haven’t left him.”

The papers exist, folded away in a drawer. Stamped, official, the neat lies of a government office. Gao Tu never looks at them. He doesn’t need to. On the page he is someone else, a new man with no ties. In his heart he is still Gao Tu, brother to Gao Qing, father to Gao Lele, and nothing will make him anything else.

The new flat is modest, its windows streaked with city grime, but it is theirs.

Gao Qing sits by the window with a blanket across her knees. She coughs less these days. Her color is returning, little by little, as if she’s relearning what health feels like. Gao Tu brings her tea, checks her medication bottles, makes sure she eats. She swats at him with tired affection.

“You hover too much,” she says.

“You don’t hover enough,” he answers, and sets her cup down firmly.

On the floor, Lele arranges his small cars in a perfect row. He has Shen Wenlang’s eyes—round, sharp, unblinking. Sometimes when he looks up at Gao Tu, it feels like being cut open.

---

Nights are hardest.

Lele wakes crying, fists balled, face twisted with misery. Gao Tu rocks him, walks the floor, whispers lullabies until his throat is raw. Nothing helps. Sometimes it goes on until dawn.

“It’s like he feels something,” Gao Qing says once, standing in the doorway, her hair loose, her eyes dark with sleeplessness. “Like there’s something wrong out there, and he knows.”

“He’s a child,” Gao Tu snaps, harsher than he means. “He doesn’t know anything.”

But later, when Lele finally exhausts himself to sleep, Gao Tu lies awake listening to the boy’s breathing, his chest aching with every exhale.

---

Ying Yi visits, neat as ever, his movements precise. He surveys the flat, the child, the recovering sister, and nods like a man confirming a ledger.

“You’ve done well,” he says. “This is what safety looks like. This is freedom.”

Gao Tu pours tea but does not reply.

“You know what Shen Wenlang is,” Ying Yi continues, voice cool. “You know what his father made him. You’ve seen it. I failed to escape that life. You don’t have to. Don’t waste this chance.”

Gao Tu’s jaw tightens. He remembers laughter in office corridors at midnight. He remembers Wenlang’s voice low at his shoulder, words meant only for him. He remembers the one night he let himself give in, and the cold morning after when Wenlang pretended nothing had changed.

He remembers the resignation letter. The silence.

“I won’t waste it,” Gao Tu says, voice flat.

But Ying Yi’s certainty doesn’t stick. The wrongness remains.

---

Some nights, Gao Tu dreams.

He dreams of Wenlang at a boardroom table, tie loosened, eyes bloodshot from too much coffee. He dreams of a hand reaching across the desk, warm and heavy, grounding him. He dreams of Wenlang leaning in, scent sharp and thick, whispering his name.

When he wakes, his throat is tight, his body trembling with need. He presses his face into the pillow and tells himself it is dependency. Just dependency.

Once, he catches himself almost writing Wenlang’s name on a scrap of paper, as if to prove the man still exists. He crushes the page in his fist before the letters are finished.

Once, when Lele clutches his shirt with small fists in the night, Gao Tu almost whispers it out loud—but he bites his tongue until he tastes blood.

---

Gao Qing sees more than he thinks.

She sits with him one evening, the lamp dim between them, Lele asleep in the other room. Her voice is quiet, careful. “You keep looking over your shoulder.”

“I don’t,” Gao Tu says.

“You do,” she insists. Her gaze is steady. “You’re here, but you’re not here. You left him, but you haven’t left him.”

He doesn’t answer. His throat burns with unsaid things.

---

That night Lele cries again, harder than before. He sobs until his voice breaks, until his body shakes with exhaustion. Gao Tu rocks him, murmurs until he can’t speak anymore, but the crying doesn’t stop. Gao Tu can't help the tears that form.

Gao Qing watches from the doorway, her voice almost a whisper. “He’s crying for someone. Maybe you are too.”

Gao Tu closes his eyes. The ache in his chest is unbearable.

When Lele finally collapses into exhausted sleep, Gao Tu lies flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. He swears he smells Wenlang, faint and sharp, curling through the corner of the room. His body jolts with it, glands aching, instincts clawing.

He presses a hand hard against his racing heart, willing it away. He tells himself it is dependency. He tells himself it is nothing.

And still, the name sits heavy on the back of his tongue, a wound he will not close.

Chapter 3: Whispers and Withdrawals

Summary:

TW: Medical trauma and abuse + medical and psychological torture

The name sits at the back of his throat, heavy as a coin. Saying it changes nothing. Not saying it is impossible.

His voice is wrecked when it comes. He speaks anyway, to the light, to the leather, to the thin air that smells like nothing at all.

Days flatten into segments of light and chemical sleep. Morning is only the hour the blinds are opened. Night is only when the white coat dims the screen. Time is measured in the rise and fall of a green line and the click of a door that never creaks.

The restraints sit easy now, leather warmed by skin. When the room is empty, Shen Wenlang rolls his wrists against them the way a man worries a chipped tooth—compulsively, pointlessly. His body is sore where muscle meets strap. His glands ache deep in the neck like bruises caught under bone. The air tastes of antiseptic and the ghost of his own scent, faded, thinned to a chalk smear.

The injections come on a schedule he can almost set a watch by. First the cold, then the heat, then the subtraction—the sense of something being lifted out of him nerve by nerve, like wire stripped from its sheath. Each time, his Alpha bucks hard under his ribs, tearing at the absence it cannot fill. Each time, the bucking lasts a little less.

He fights because the body is built for it. Thumb twisted until the joint gives; shoulder ground against the bed edge until the socket slides; teeth set into his own forearm to ride out the surge. The doctor is quick, practiced: a wedge slipped between molars, a firm hand at the jaw, a clean pop when bone returns to its place. No judgment. No pity. Efficient repairs for a failing machine.

Shen Yu visits with the weather—regular, impersonal. He stands at the foot of the bed and asks numbers: sleep, appetite, compliance. He speaks as if reviewing a portfolio. You’ve gotten ahead of yourself and damaged the company. The family legacy is in tatters because you can't seem to remember your place. This is necessary. We will return you to function as a real S-Class Alpha. He does not look at the wrists, or the strap across the chest, or the way his son’s breath hitches when the needle slides home.

Wenlang closes his eyes and lets the room dissolve.

---

The first memory comes easy: rain pooling on the campus steps, the cheap umbrella that flips inside out, his own temper frayed by cold and hunger. A boy—no, a man already—offering a paper cup of broth, steam touching his face like a hand. Gao Tu’s smile is small, careful, the kind offered to skittish animals and proud men. You looked hungry, you should eat, that smile says, and Wenlang does, scowling to hide it.

Then: library floors at midnight, fluorescent buzz, a stack of case studies dog-eared in all the useful places. Gao Tu slides notes across the table without being asked. He keeps a second pen in his pocket for Wenlang because he always loses the first. He remembers the sound of pages, the drag of ink, the quiet way Gao Tu breathes when he’s focused—steady, measured, a metronome he didn’t know he was moving to.

Another needle. Another load of suppresants.

His father's voice cuts through the haze. You should have known better than this. How could you let yourself get carried away with an Omega no less? How could you let yourself lose?

---

Office corridors years later, carpet thick enough to swallow footsteps, Wenlang’s voice hard from too many fights. Gao Tu balances coffee on a file folder and lays both down within reach, leaving no room for refusal. The scent in those nights is heat and ink and the faint salt of sweat, and something else that’s only ever meant for him. When a meeting spins out, Gao Tu stands half a step behind his right shoulder, steady weight at the edge of awareness. When the room empties, his hand finds Wenlang’s wrist and presses once, a quiet: enough.

The room tilts. He takes the discomfort as data, tests the straps for give. Nothing. He breathes through the rise of bile and the sudden sting at the back of his eyes. His Alpha pushes hard against the cage of his body, then harder, then—nothing, a stutter, a drop. The monitor catches it and complains in a thin mechanical tone.

“He’s destabilizing. His Alpha instincts have been sent into overdrive after the loss of his mate and his pup. We're concerned that the current dosage is not enough,” the doctor says, already reaching for a vial.

“Adjust the dosage,” Shen Yu answers. “He needs stability. Not drama.”

---

The gala: music, the weight of other people’s names, a thousand cameras. He hates gala scents—too much sugar, too much sweat slicked over with expensive metal. Gao Tu threads through the crowd to him as if there is a string between them. He straightens Wenlang’s tie before the photographers, careful fingers brushing the notch of his throat. Later, on a balcony that smells like wet stone, Gao Tu stands close enough that their coats touch at the sleeve and says nothing. It is the nothing that steadies him.

Another cycle. Another repair. The forearm blooms purple where his teeth went; the wrists are raw where leather chafes. He watches the doctor re-tape the line at his hand and thinks absurdly of the night Gao Tu learned how he takes his bandages—edges tucked cleanly, no loose ends to snag.

The memory he avoids arrives anyway: the bed he has never shared with anyone, the way the sheets looked wrong in the morning sunlight after. Not a mistake. Not a triumph. A thing that happened because ten years of steadying had nowhere else to go. He remembers the weight of Gao Tu asleep against him, shockingly heavy for someone who moves like quiet water. He remembers waking first. He remembers choosing the mask before he stood up. He remembers how cold his own voice sounded when he said nothing at all.

---

He can still see the resignation letter—neat, correct, every word smoothed until it doesn’t cut until it does. He puts his finger on the paper in memory and cannot feel the texture. That is how he knows this is the drug and not the past.

The third day—if this is a day—the scent in the room thins to almost nothing. He notices it the way a man notices a missing tooth with his tongue. His Alpha reaches for the usual burn and finds only ash. Panic doesn’t arrive all at once; it seeps in, slow as frost, until his teeth chatter and he can’t tell if it’s cold or fear.

“His levels are dropping,” the doctor says, softer. “We may be approaching a collapse.”

Shen Yu’s answer is paper smooth. “Prevent collapse. We have no appetite for spectacle.”

Prevent collapse. The phrase lands like a weight across his chest. The straps and the words press him flat together.

---

He stops fighting in big gestures because big gestures betray him. He learns the rhythms of the room instead: when the steps pass, when the corridor hum is loud, when the camera’s red light flickers to sleep for a second longer than it should. He worries at the cuff’s stitching with fingernails already torn to soft crescents. He twists the left shoulder in micro-movements until the socket thinks about loosening. He counts the beats of his heart, trying to parse them into a pattern that does not include the space where Gao Tu should be.

When sleep drags him, it drags him by the throat. He dreams of a copier jam at two in the morning, both of them elbow-deep in paper and toner dust, Gao Tu laughing for real, mouth open, head tipped back. He dreams of a hand on his neck in a crowded elevator, grounding him without anyone seeing. He dreams of the shape of his name on Gao Tu’s tongue—rare, careful, the way people speak words that feel like doors. Somehow, Shen Wenlang knows that everything about this dream is fantasy.

He wakes to the taste of metal and the steady whine of a machine telling him what he already knows: something in him is failing.

The doctor speaks in numbers he doesn’t care about. Shen Yu answers in terms of policy and optics. Their words pass above him like a ceiling he cannot touch.

When the room is empty again, he tilts his head and drags the strap’s leather into his mouth. The taste is chemical and bitter. He gnaws at it until his jaw aches and the skin splits at the corner of his lip. He stops when the world grays out and starts again when it returns. He knows it will not work. He does it anyway. The doing is the only part that still feels like a choice.

By evening—or something like it—his strong iris scent has thinned to a suggestion. He can smell the ghost of himself in the sheets, a trace already going stale. The emptiness inside him hums like a fluorescent tube about to fail.

He thinks of a paper cup of broth in the rain. He thinks of fingers tucking the edge of a dressing just so. He thinks of the steady weight at his shoulder in rooms he hated. He thinks of a night and a morning he still can’t hold together without shaking.

The name sits at the back of his throat, heavy as a coin. Saying it changes nothing. Not saying it is impossible.

His voice is wrecked when it comes. He speaks anyway, to the light, to the leather, to the thin air that smells like nothing at all.

“I'm sorry.”

Notes:

It's a lot of medical bullshittery that's happening here...

In the novel, Shen Yu basically beats Shen Wenlang into submission, but I figured that since they belong to a massive medical empire of sorts (next to to Sheng Shaoyou and Hua Yong) there's probably a more insidious spin/side to it.

I'm looking at about 12 to 13 chapters, everything's been outlined for the most part.

Thank you as always for reading.

Chapter 4: Reckoning's A New Brand Of Remorse

Summary:

Hua Yong keeps his eyes on the train track. “It’s not our fight,” he says softly. “We didn’t put him there.”

Shaoyou is quiet a long breath. “You helped. You know you did.” No accusation, only the fact of it laid carefully on the table between them

Hua Yong tells himself it's just business.

He signs at the front desk with a practiced hand. The badge prints warm, the plastic smell thin and new. The woman in white nods and leads him down a corridor that swallows sound. Lights hum. The floors shine. No one talks about what this place is; they say compliance, risk, stability, as if those words could stand in for what happens to a man behind a locked door.

He has been here before. It didn’t feel this cold.

Outside the room, a monitor murmurs. Inside, Shen Wenlang lies smaller than Hua Yong remembers, straps neat across chest and wrists, a line taped to the back of his hand like a ribbon tied too tight. The scent in the room is antiseptic and the faintest echo of something that should be heavy, should be unmistakable. Now it’s almost nothing, the ghost of chalk after rain.

“How is he doing?” Hua Yong says, feigning indifference because numbers and results are the only language permitted here.

The doctor lists them. Hormones in ranges that are stabilized and ranges that are breached: glandular fatigue, episodes of resistance. The terms stack into a wall. Hua Yong hears only the gaps in between— Alpha drop, thinning, risk—and the long space where phrases like pain and grief should be.

Shen Yu stands behind the glass as if at a museum. His reflection halves his face when he turns to speak. “He’s calmer,” he says, which is true if calm means too tired to fight. “He’s responding to the treatment to keep his more... distracting instincts in check.”

Hua Yong keeps his hands in his pockets so they don’t betray him. “And if he stops responding?”

“We’ll continue to adjust,” Shen Yu says. “Until he does and comes back correct.”

Wenlang’s chest rises and falls. His mouth is split at one corner. The forearms are banded with old bruises going green at the edges. A thumbnail shows a strip of raw where impatience has worn skin thin. He looks like a man that's been filed down to fit his chains, rather than the haughty, noble, and brutish person Hua Yong came to know. But that's not all. 

Hua Yong can’t smell him. That, more than the straps, startles him.

“He needs time to rest,” the doctor says. “So he can continue to stabilize.”

Stabilize. The word tastes like ice.

---

Hua Yong leaves on schedule when the visit card says he should. He nods to the woman in white. He returns the badge. In the elevator he watches his own reflection multiply and tries to recognize the version of himself that is necessary here.

On the drive home, the city rolls by in glassy panes. His phone lights twice and he ignores it—board notices, a logistics question. At a red light he thinks, absurdly, of a night years ago when Wenlang used to scoff, laugh, and mock his attempts at mixing political intrigue with pining romance, and of how easy it was then to shove him around. Frenemies, wingmen, both. Men who said I hate you with some form of distant respect and disgust that meant but I guess you’ll do. He adjusts the rearview mirror until he cannot see his growing frown.

At home, the apartment is warm with dinner and the low rattle of cartoons. Sheng Shaoyou stands at the sink with sleeves pushed to the elbow, hands in the suds. Hua Sheng has abandoned the screen for a wooden train that keeps derailing on the same corner because the carpet sags there. The boy’s giggle rises in small bursts as he sets the cars back on the track again and again. There is a damp towel on the back of a chair, a half-folded blanket, a cup with a dinosaur on it left dangerously near the edge of the table.

Hua Yong hangs his coat. He kisses his son’s hair and sits for a minute on the floor to fix the corner so the tracks meet clean. Hua Sheng beams at him and pushes the engine along with serious concentration. The engine whistles. The world arranges itself into something that could be called gentle.

“You’re late,” Shaoyou says, not accusing. He turns off the tap, shakes his hands dry, leans into the counter.

“Traffic,” Hua Yong answers, and hears how thin it sounds.

Shaoyou looks at him properly then. He is a man who used to keep enemies at bay by outlasting them in quiet rooms. He doesn’t need volume to make a point. “You went to see him,” he says. Not a question.

Hua Yong nods.

“How is he?”

Numbers rise to the back of Hua Yong’s tongue. He could recite them. He feels, suddenly, how obscene that would be. “Bad,” he says instead, and the word costs more because it’s the truth. “Worse.”

Shaoyou waits. The waiting is its own kind of pressure.

“He’s—” Hua Yong searches. He lifts a hand, palm open, as if the right word might land there. “Thin,” he says finally. “Quiet.” He swallows, thinks of the room’s air, the chalk smear of scent. “Not there.”

Hua Sheng drives the train into Hua Yong’s shoe and laughs at his own joke. The sound opens something in the room.

“I could barely smell him,” Hua Yong says, no humor in it. He sits back on his heels, then rises. “They say it’s a process of stability but—” He stops. He doesn’t say it looks like a definitive end.

Shaoyou dries his hands. He crosses the room and stands with his shoulder near Hua Yong’s without touching. Close enough to be felt. “You can’t ignore this,” he says, voice as even as it is stern. “You know he won’t last much longer. Even if he does survive Shen Yu’s latest trials, I don’t think the person that’ll walk out of those doors will be the man we once knew.”

Hua Yong keeps his eyes on the train track. “It’s not our fight,” he says softly. “We didn’t put him there.”

Shaoyou is quiet a long breath. “You helped. You know you did.” No accusation, only the fact of it laid carefully on the table between them. “You did it for the same reasons they say in that building—business, stability, reputation. You did it to keep us safe.” A pause. “He is our son’s godfather. He was a willing pawn in your game back then. He is your friend now. And a welcomed annoyance to me.” He exhales. “We don’t have the luxury of pretending he doesn’t belong to us.”

Hua Yong closes his eyes once, the way a man does before stepping into cold water. “If I do move, I’ll do it cleanly,” he says. “No noise. No heroics.”

“I’m not asking you to be a hero,” Shaoyou says. “I’m asking you to stop being a damn bystander.”

Hua Sheng crashes the train again and looks up, waiting to see who will fix it. Shaoyou crouches, resets the pieces with efficient hands, then smooths the boy’s hair. “Bed in ten,” he says lightly. “Race your papa.”

Hua Yong watches his son run the engine in a tighter circle around his knees, the small mouth pursed in concentration. The sight lands like a weight and a mercy both. He knows how many nights Wenlang has stood on his balcony joking about never having children, about being terrible with delicate things; he knows how easily that man sat on their floor two winters ago and built towers out of blocks for this child he did not have to love, and did.

He goes to the kitchen. He takes two cups, fills them, sets one by Shaoyou’s place. He stands with his hands braced on the counter and the tiled wall cool under his palms.

“We should probably find him too,” he states, not looking up.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on him for some time,” Shaoyou says.

Hua Yong turns.

“Your first priority is to get that idiot out from under his father’s foot,” Shaoyou says, as if the mere mention of a name could crack porcelain. “If Gao Tu reaches out. If he’s already trying. I’ll meet him half way.”

Hua Yong’s mouth tightens. “If either of you make a move to talk, someone else will hear. You know how tight the net is.”

 “Does it really matter at this point? Either way, we meet in the middle.” He folds his arms, a posture that in other rooms means I will brook no argument. “When the time comes, you just need to open the right door.”

Hua Yong can picture it in an instant: a shift schedule altered by a single line. A badge that prints with permissions it should not have. A corridor where a camera sleeps for three minutes longer than usual. A door that forgets to lock.

“I’ll make it look like an oversight,” he says.

“You can make it look like nothing at all,” Shaoyou replies.

They stand in that quiet for a few heartbeats, the house settling around them. In the other room, the train whistles. A child’s feet patter down the hall and back again. Life, stubborn, runs its small tracks.

“Don’t be reckless,” Shaoyou adds, softer. “I won’t lose you to fix him.”

“You won’t,” Hua Yong says, and means it.

Later, after teeth and pajamas and a book about a rabbit that refuses to sleep, Hua Yong watches his son breathe. The boy’s lashes rest on his cheeks like commas. His small hand is thrown open above his head, palm up, imperious even in dreaming. In the dim, the nightlight paints the room in a gentle, wrong color.

Wenlang once stood exactly there, ridiculous in a borrowed apron, and declared that bedtime stories were a scam. He had told one anyway, badly, all sharp edges and pauses, and Hua Sheng had beamed as if given a prize.

Hua Yong closes the door with care.

In the living room, Shaoyou has left his phone on the table beside the two cups gone cold. Hua Yong sits. He opens a thread and types a message to a number that hasn’t worked in years. He deletes it. He types an email to an address that will forward through three places before it lands. He doesn’t send it. He opens a map of guard rotations in a system he isn’t supposed to access and adjusts one line by three minutes. He saves. He wipes his prints.

He breathes.

From the bedroom, Shaoyou’s voice drifts, low and steady, the kind of tone that can hold a person together. “Come to bed,” he says.

“In a minute,” Hua Yong answers.

He goes to turn off the lamp. The room drops into soft dark. In it, a decision sits between them like a piece of furniture that has always been there, only now noticed.

He has no need to be a hero. But somewhere, a door is already learning how to forget to lock.

Notes:

I've been really tinkering with this fic and now it's completely jumped off the rails into a fix-it to rehaul of the novel's events in Shen Wenlang and Gao Tu's arc together.

If you know the events of the novel, it's pretty clear that Hua Yong helped Shen Yu capture Shen Wenlang. I wanted to be able to dig into that a little more. Morality barely exists in this universe, but I wanna dream just a little!

As always, thank you for reading. Talk to me more if you've already read the novel too!

Chapter 5: Bond? Burden? Both?

Summary:

“Just call someone already!” Gao Qing says, exasperated and back. “If you don't want to call him directly, call someone that's close enough to check in! I'm tired of watching you pretend that you're not worried about Shen Wenlang.”

Morning is small on purpose. Congee on the stove, steam fogging the window. Gao Qing takes six careful steps from chair to counter and back again while the kettle hums. Lele scatters blocks in a circle and names each one a car. The flat smells of ginger and detergent and the faint leftover sweetness of children’s soap.

“You don’t have to stand,” Gao Tu says, one hand hovering.

“Of course I have to,” Gao Qing answers. She lifts her chin, determination in ther eyes. “That's what recovery means.”

He nods, sets the bowls out, pretends not to watch the way her fingers tremble when she sits. Lele bangs a spoon against the table. The metal clatter and joyful laughter rings in the little kitchen and then fades into ordinary sound.

This is what it means to be free — to be done with hiding. He rolls it through his mind as he wipes the counter, as he sorts Gao Qing's rehabilitation schedule, as he ties Lele’s shoelaces. He continues to roll it thorugh his thoughts: This is calm. This is shelter. This is enough.

It should be enough.

---

At night, the wrongness returns like the tide.

Lele wakes with a sob lodged deep. His small body stiffens in Gao Tu’s arms, fists knotted in the fabric at his shoulder. The crying is not loud so much as relentless—wet gasps stacked end to end until the clock hisses past two, past three.

“It's okay, love,” Gao Tu murmurs, rocking the boy in a steady arc. “I’m here. Papa's here.”

Lele’s breath snags and stutters; the little heart kicks rabbit-fast against Gao Tu’s chest. Nothing helps: not water, not the window cracked for cool air, not the old lullaby sung too quietly for the neighbors to complain.

Gao Qing stands in the doorway, blanket pulled tight. She doesn’t speak for a long time. When she does, her voice is soft. “He cries like he's missing someone or... mourning someone,” she says. “Like something is happening far away and he knows.”

“He’s a child he doesn't know any better,” Gao Tu says, automatic.

“Great, and you're as stubborn as one,” she huffs, and leaves him because she knows he won’t answer that.

Lele's sobs thin at dawn, pulled out like thread. He falls asleep with his face pressed to Gao Tu’s collarbone, fingers still curled. Gao Tu stands a while longer at the window, watching the street sweepers move the night into piles. His chest aches in the center, a bruise that doesn’t yellow. He tells himself again that it’s habit, not instinct. He knows he is lying.

---

Ying Yi brings groceries and a new list that smells faintly of the place where it was printed. He sets both on the table, straightens each item as if lining soldiers in a row.

“Rent is paid through the quarter,” he says. “There is an apartment across town if you need to change addresses. The papers will hold,” he adds, not looking up.

“Thank you... I don't know how to thank you enough for this,” Gao Tu says.

Ying Yi’s gaze flicks to Lele, who sits in Gao Qing’s lap and watches cartoons with ferocious concentration. The little brow pinches when the cartoon dog makes a bad decision. Lele scolds the screen under his breath. His hand is a small warm weight anchored at Gao Qing’s wrist.

“It's not easy, but it's better than living in denial of who and what you are,” Ying Yi says, voice even.

Gao Tu stares at the table. "Do you know... Maybe... Might you know how Shen Wenlang is doing?" 

Ying Yi pauses and suddenly it feels like the entire room's gone cold. “I don't know fully. But from what you've been through, it feels like he's started to fit the role his father has set for him. You shouldn't worry yourself about that now. You don’t have to. Don’t waste this fresh start.”

Gao Tu’s jaw ticks. He does not argue with the shape of the warning; he argues with where it is pointed. “I don't know what it was like for you. I don't think it would be fair of me to ever question it. But Shen Wenlang isn't like that... not intentionally,” he says quietly. “I know a life for Omegas can feel like a cage but it doesn’t mean that every door I’ve ever walked through is the same one.”

Ying Yi’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t rise to it. “This is about safety and stability, Gao Tu,” he repeats, as if stability is a word that can be enforced. “Hold on it.”

After Ying Yi leaves and after Gao Qing comes out of her room, it feels like Gao Tu's able to breathe again. Gao Qing sips tea and watches her brother’s face. “You're worried about him, right? Shen Wenlang?” she prods.

“If it was something so dire, I'm sure Ying Yi would have brought it up,” Gao Tu says. “No news might be good news after all?”

“Do you seriously believe that?”

He doesn’t answer. Lele turns, leans forward, plants both hands on Gao Tu’s knee as if to anchor him in place. Gao Tu cups the little skull and breathes in the smell of clean hair and milk. It steadies him, it makes him shake, it makes him worry.

---

He dreams about Shen Wenlang that very night.

A copier at two in the morning. Paper dust on their hands. Wenlang laughs, surprise bright in it, and the sound lands somewhere under Gao Tu’s ribs and stays. A balcony after a gala, the city’s noise softened by glass; Wenlang’s shoulder brushes his as if distance isn’t the same as space. A bed once, the weight of someone who never puts weight anywhere but did then. In the dream, Gao Tu says his name aloud and the name is a handle that opens the room to morning.

He wakes with his teeth clenched and the sheet twisted around his legs. The ceiling looks back, blank. He presses the heel of his hand to his sternum until the ache moves from inside to under skin. The ache refuses to move back.

Once, he almost says his name in the kitchen, alone with the kettle, the word rising like steam. He swallows it. The taste lingers anyway.

---

Gao Qing keeps a small notebook for practical things: blood pressure, medication times, the days she walks to the elevator and back. She adds a column she doesn’t announce: Lele’s wake-ups. Lines of numbers accumulate, innocent and undeniable. One evening she slides the notebook across the table and taps the page.

“It’s not random,” she says. “He cries at the same times.”

Gao Tu studies the marks. He pretends not to understand and then stops pretending. The pattern is plain as rain. A rhythm. A call and answer he can’t hear the full of.

“Maybe it’s just growing pains... his teeth are also coming in,” he finishes lamely, not to convince her but to see if the sound of the lie is lighter than his lungs feel.

She lifts an eyebrow. “Three-year-old milk teeth are not synchronized to your nightmares.”

He shuts the notebook. He doesn’t push it back. His thumb stays on the edge as if heat might leach through and make a different truth.

“Just call someone already!” Gao Qing says, exasperated and back. “If you don't want to call him directly, call someone that's close enough to check in! I'm tired of watching you pretend that you're not worried about Shen Wenlang.”

An old name folds itself quiet at the back of his throat, one he has not used in too long. Sheng Shaoyou. He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to. Gao Qing sees it in his face and nods once.

“Well? Get to it! Make sure he's not dead or whatever!”

---

The card is still in his wallet, edges frayed. He sets it on the table, the print sharp even in dim light. Sheng Shaoyou’s name. The number below.

He picks up the phone. His thumb hovers over the keypad. The apartment breathes around him—Lele’s soft sigh, Gao Qing’s cough, the refrigerator’s hum.

One digit, then another. His throat is dry. The card waits.

He presses the last number.

The call connects.

Notes:

EPISODE 10's literally hovering over my head like a guillotine... Anyway, I think Gao Qing's probably smarter than all these fools combined.

The next few chapters might have heavier depictions of medical horror and abuse, so trigger warnings abound.

As always thank you for reading and commenting — just engaging really!

Chapter 6: A Crescendo of Diversion Tactics

Summary:

Shaoyou doesn’t try to pry further. “I’ll admit that I’m taken aback by this and the way you’ve come about things. If it’s convenient for you still, how about we meet at my office? It’ll be better to speak there. I’ll tell you everything I know so far.”

“I’ll be there in the next hour. Thank you.”

Notes:

Trigger warning for more medical abuse and torture. Shen Yu gets to be even more of a pronounced villain here (for fun! For the plot!). Sheng Shaoyou continues to be one of the best characters around. Gao Tu's finally trying to get his idiot mate back. Hua Yong does something.

And Shen Wenlang is well... well within the whump factory here.

As always thank you for reading. I've also loved reading every single comment. I'll reply soon!

The call connects after two rings.

“Sheng Shaoyou.” Gao Tu’s voice is hushed but firm, measured, ready for any apprehension.

“It’s Gao Tu.”

A pause. Not cold, but surprised. “I didn’t expect to hear from you like this, did something happen?”

“I know this might be really… out of nowhere, but I needed to speak to someone,” Gao Tu says. His voice is low, tight. “Something’s wrong. I—Lele— My son wakes up screaming every night, and it’s not random. It’s the same time, over and over. At first I thought it might be growing pains, or maybe because of a constantly shifting environment…” He exhales sharply. “But I can’t shake the feeling that something’s gone really wrong with W… Shen Wenlang? Is he in any trouble?”

Shaoyou doesn’t try to pry further. “I’ll admit that I’m taken aback by this and the way you’ve come about things. If it’s convenient for you still, how about we meet at my office? It’ll be better to speak there. I’ll tell you everything I know so far.”

“I’ll be there in the next hour. Thank you.”

---

Elsewhere, Shen Wenlang convulses under a fluorescent light.

The needle pierces his vein; fire floods his chest. His inner Alpha thrashes once, then collapses. His neck is on fire, glands raw and swollen. He can barely move. His breath rattles in his throat. He pulls against the straps until something in his wrist cracks. The doctor notes his latest hormone levels with indifference.

Shen Yu’s voice is smooth, detached. “Keep him under until he figures out what’s most important, he can’t afford to be swayed by some no name Omega and whatever brood its created.”

“But sir, what Shen Wenlang’s experience is just pure instinct, it’s both a mental and physical desire to find his kin and his mate. With how much he’s been fighting back, we fear that further suppression might cause your son long term damage.”

“If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll be able to pick himself up even after this so-called damage. Proceed.”

Another cocktail of suppressants continue to fed into Shen Wenlang’s system.

---

Wenlang’s Alpha claws at the void, starving, searching. For a heartbeat it breaks free, rage flaring—and then the drug drowns it back into silence. Almost.

Wenlang clenches his jaw, grinding his teeth into dust if it’s even possible. He hangs on by the thought of Gao Tu and their child like a nail through his hand.

---

Shaoyou’s office gleams with rain-soaked glass. Gao Tu sits across from him, stiff-backed, hands clenched in his lap.

“My son wakes screaming,” he says, voice hoarse. “After going through all my initial thoughts, I thought it was because of some very nasty illness. But, like I said over the phone, it’s every night on the dot, at the same time, for an hour. I can’t pretend anymore. Something’s wrong... and I think all of this might have some sort of connection to Shen Wenlang.”

Shaoyou studies him, expression unreadable, though his voice softens. “You’re not wrong. Until today,  the way our biology, bonds, and connections work have not been fully mapped out or understood by science. It’s rare and almost beyond the natural, but some pups forge almost instinctual connections with their parents… even those that weren’t fully present to scent them at birth.”

Gao Tu looks up, sharp, frantic. “So something really did happen to Shen Wenlang? Where is he? Can you take me to see him? Please if something’s happened to hi—”

“Gao Tu,” Sheng Shouyou cuts in.

“I-I’m sorry, please I just need to know what’s happened.”

Shaoyou leans back, arms folding. “For three years, Wenlang has done nothing but hunt for you. He burned money, reputation, almost his company—driven by guilt, by obsession. His inner Alpha’s been in torment, clawing itself to pieces without you. He’s nearly ruined himself.”

The words hit like stones. Guilt burns under Gao Tu’s ribs.

Shaoyou continues, quieter. “Shen Yu stepped in. To ‘restore order.’ Which means correcting his son’s as he sees fit.” His jaw hardens. “And Shen Yu’s correction isn’t gentle.”

Gao Tu swallows hard, voice trembling. “Is… this is my fault?”

“No.” Shaoyou’s reply is swift, stern. “Wenlang’s choices brought him here. His arrogance. His obsession. But this—” his voice sharpens, “—even this is taking things too far.”

Sheng Shaoyou pauses, then asks: “How much do you know about his family?”

Gao Tu shakes his head, shame flickering across his face. “Almost nothing. He never spoke of them. If anyone mentioned it, he froze. Or he snapped. Sometimes Wenlang broke into a sweat. All I know is what the papers said back when we were children: Ying Yi. Prison. Death—except it wasn’t. He’s the one who helped me disappear.”

Shaoyou exhales slowly. “Then you know enough to understand why Wenlang behaves as poorly as he does. His fathers casted a shadow that was always lurking around him.”

He looks away, toward the rain outside. “He’s an idiot. Misguided. But he’s my son’s godfather. I won’t explain to my child why that fool somehow vanished without a word — especially when that idiot promised to take my son to a theme park. I won’t let Shen Yu make a corpse out of him.”

The words hang heavy. Gao Tu can’t help but feel like he’s practically sinking into the ground with worry and guilt.

“We know where he’s currently being held,” Shaoyou says quietly. “My men are on standby to retrieve him if and when there’s an opening. Hua Yong will be handling it in his own way. It’s only a matter of time that we get him to safety.”

But Gao Tu feels no comfort. Only the sick ache in his chest that grows sharper by the minute.

---

On the dot, Hua Yong alters a schedule by three minutes. A camera blinks off for ninety. A door remembers not to lock. He closes the file, wipes the record.

To anyone else, it is nothing. To Wenlang, it will be his only opportunity to escape.

---

The cuff eventually gives. Wenlang isn’t sure if it’s because he’s nothing but skin and bone, or if all his restless tugging has finally paid off.

Leather tears skin. Blood slicks Wenlang’s palm. He wrenches his arm free, rips the line from his vein. He staggers into the corridor barefoot, leaving streaks of red and sweat. The hall hums with sterile light.

Cameras blink red, then one falters, dead-eyed. He slips beneath it. A guard rounds the corner; Wenlang presses into shadow, chest heaving, vision tilting. The man passes. Wenlang forces himself onward.

The stairwell door yields. He drags himself up with raw hands, lungs burning. Rain bursts against his face as he pushes out into the world.

He runs. He doesn’t know where. He only knows forward. He follows the river and lets it guide his steps. Beneath an underpass, his legs give out. He collapses, head hits concrete, cheek against wet stone, body trembling into stillness.

---

Shaoyou walks Gao Tu out of the office, umbrella tilted against the storm. “Stay calm. Hua Yong’s men, my own, Wenlang’s allies — they’re on it. We’ll get him home.”

Before he’s able to thank Shaoyou for his steady kindness, Gao Tu freezes mid-step. His nostrils flare.

The scent is faint, thinned by rain — acrid, burnt grass and irises. The stench of an Alpha’s collapse — Wenlang’s collapse.

His chest seizes. “Wenlang.” Gao Tu lurches forward.

“Wait—” Shaoyou begins, but Gao Tu is already running into the rain umbrella long forgotten.

Shaoyou curses under his breath and follows.

---

The stench grows thicker, fouler, guiding them under the bridge. Shadows gather where the light ends.

There — a body sprawled on the wet concrete.

“Wenlang?!” Gao Tu drops, hauls him into his arms. Wenlang is cold, clammy, with almost translucent skin and cracked lips. His scent is a ghost, barely clinging on, as though the rain could wash it all away.

Shaoyou kneels, jacket already off, covering Wenlang’s shaking frame. His voice is calm, clipped, practiced. “Hold him steady. Keep his head up.”

Wenlang stirs faintly, lips moving soundlessly. His Alpha jerks weakly toward the familiar scent at last.

“I’ve got you,” Gao Tu whispers, pressing his face to Wenlang’s temple, flooding the space with his own sage scent, gentle but anchoring. His arms tremble, but he doesn’t let go. “I’m here.”

Shaoyou lifts his phone, voice quiet but firm. “All specialists need to be on standby. Keep Door B open. Now.”

Within minutes, shadows move at the edge of the street — Shaoyou’s men, quick and silent. They ease Wenlang onto a stretcher, shrouded against the storm.

Gao Tu stays beside him, soaked, shaking, hand pressed tight to Wenlang’s.

Shaoyou watches them both, jaw set. “We’ll take him to Hua Yong’s hospital. He’ll be safe there.”

For now, Gao Tu believes him.

Chapter 7: Shen Wenlang POV: Inbetween Breaths

Rain.

It hits his face in sharp lines, cold enough to split him open. He can’t tell if he’s still running or already fallen. His Alpha claws weakly in his chest, ragged, frantic. Mate. Child. Gone. The bond is a scream in a locked room.

He tastes blood. His lip is split, mouth full of copper. He presses his palm to the ground, but the concrete is slick, and he can’t rise again. His knees buckle. His body folds.

This is it, he thinks dimly. This is how it ends. Alone. Unwanted. Another bad example for father to scoff at.

But—

A scent cuts through the rot. Sage. Grass in sunlight, warm and sharp.

Gao Tu.

He tries to lift his head. His neck won’t move. His Alpha surges weakly, claws dull but insistent. He shapes the name with his lips, but no sound comes out. His lungs rattle instead.

Hands touch him—warm, frantic. A voice breaks through the haze. “I’ve got you. I’m here.”

The Alpha inside him jerks hard, then collapses into that scent, finally anchoring, even as the rest of him slips.

He tries again to say it, and this time the word is almost there—Gao Tu.

The dark takes him before he knows if it reached.

 

 

Chapter 8

Summary:

“Come back,” he whispers to the man who cannot hear him. “I’ll be here when you do.”

Notes:

Shen Wenlang's finally out of the basement but not out of the proverbial dog house just yet. Continued warnings for medical trauma (like resucitation and other hard topics around recovery and fallback).

Everyone's comments have been really exciting to read, and I know I owe a bunch of replies back too! I just started a new job, so I'm a little slow(-er) with everything. But it's been so fun reading the comments from some of you that've read the novel!!!

As always thank for showing the work so much love. Thank you for reading as always.

The hospital doesn’t exist on maps. It is a building behind tinted glass, with halls too white and too quiet, designed not for healing but for hiding.

They wheel Shen Wenlang in on a rain-soaked stretcher. He looks too long for the bed, stretched thin by hunger and hurt. His lips are split, wrists wrapped where leather bit deep, ribs lifting shallowly under a gown that clings to a body mapped in yellow and purple. Machines assemble around him with practiced indifference, translating him into numbers: oxygen, pressure, gland markers burned down to ash.

“The strain will kill him if he wakes,” a doctor says. “We either put him into a medically induced coma, or we lose him.”

Sheng Shaoyou answers without hesitation. “Then do it.”

No one asks Gao Tu. He is already at the bedside, fingers locked around Wenlang’s cold hand as if his human grip can pull Shen Wenlang back from wherever he’s fallen off to. When new medication and stabilizers slide through the line, Wenlang’s lashes tremble once and go still. The monitor finds a slow mechanical rhythm. Gao Tu drags a chair forward until his knees press the frame and refuses to move.

---

Days pass with the sound of machines. Beeps, hisses, soft shoe-squeaks from nurses who call Wenlang “the patient” because names make this harder. Gao Tu hates the euphemism and says nothing. He sits, and when he does speak, his voice is low, raw at the edges: “You’re not alone. I’m here. Do you hear me? I’m here.”

The first time Lele comes, he clings to Gao Tu’s leg at the door, wary of tubing and tape. But when his father lifts him onto the bed, he creeps forward, bold with the stubborn fearlessness of a child, and curls a small hand into Wenlang’s slack fingers. The monitor blips, almost nothing—then steadies, a fraction stronger.

The staff exchange glances. Gao Tu exhales like a man surfacing. “He knows,” he whispers into Lele’s hair. “He knows you’re here.”

Lele falls asleep against Wenlang’s arm. Gao Tu covers both their hands with his own, as if he can keep all three of them in the same place by sheer pressure. That night he sleeps too, cheek on the sheets, breath hitching when the machine sighs.

---

The bruises fade to the color of old fruit, then to shadows of themselves. The scent in the room is mostly antiseptic, sharpened by the steady, anchoring weight of Gao Tu’s Omega scent, which pools heavy as if it can hold Wenlang’s Alpha in place through the induced dark. The rest of Wenlang thins: cheeks hollowing, mouth gone slack around plastic, the edges of him dissolving into the bed like fog.

The first alarm comes near midnight. A flat scream from the monitor, then a rush of bodies. Hands pry at Gao Tu’s grip to move the bed, to hammer at buttons, to push drugs. “Don’t touch him!” he hears himself snarl, but the plea breaks into a sound he doesn’t recognize, and he is pushed back by firm palms as numbers dive.

For a breath too long, there is no rhythm. When it slams back—thin, irregular, but back—his knees hit the floor. He presses his forehead to Wenlang’s hand and shakes until he is empty.

---

Shaoyou appears the next afternoon, tie loose, eyes steady. He doesn’t offer platitudes. He stands at the foot of the bed with arms folded like a barricade and says, simply, “He’s too stubborn to die. He’ll crawl back just to spite anyone who counted him out.”

Gao Tu doesn’t answer. He looks at the shallow rise of Wenlang’s chest and counts them like beads on a string he’s terrified to drop.

Hua Yong comes with Shaoyou, but does not enter fully. He remains near the door, reading the room with a glance, then sets a paper bag down—a spare blanket, a box of tissues, a small blue car Lele forgot on an earlier visit—and disappears down the hall. No speeches. No guilt to manage or cast. Only the quiet, practical touch of a man who understands how to keep a room from failing.

---

Meals arrive and congeal and leave. Gao Qing calls once a day to make sure her brother is still a person who eats and speaks. “I am,” he lies, until he cannot lie anymore and says, “No.” She tells him to bring Lele again soon.

He does. The boy toddles in with solemn offerings: a wooden block, a toy car, a bright rubber ball. He sets each on the pillow near Wenlang’s temple like offerings to a sleeping god and babbles patient nonsense as if explaining rules to someone who will surely wake and play.

When the door soft-closes and the room shrinks to the sound of air and electricity, Gao Tu leans forward, voice fraying: “I hated you. I loved you. I left because I was drowning, and I would do it again if it meant Lele was safe.” He swallows hard. “But I don’t know how to do this without you. Don’t make me raise him alone.”

---

Another night unspools and takes him with it. Once, the monitor shrieks again, and the room fills with quick, precise hands. Rage cracks through his chest—rage at Wenlang for giving up, at himself for letting Wenlang go, at the whole machine that could grind a man into numbers. He thinks, for an instant only, How dare you leave me like this?

The thought burns him and disappears. After, he holds Wenlang’s hand and whispers apologies into the damp sheet, not sure whether he is asking forgiveness from a man who can’t hear him or from himself.

---

Shaoyou remains a fixed point. He comes in crisp and unshaken, reads charts with a quick eye, counters doctors who use phrases like “quality of life” too early and too easily. If anyone suggests withdrawal of anything, their words die under his stare. “He is my son’s godfather,” he says once, voice flat as a blade. “Keep. Him. Alive.” It is not a plea. It is policy.

Hua Yong’s presence is less a line than a watermark. Some mornings the blanket at Wenlang’s shoulders is smoothed perfectly where Gao Tu’s shaking hands left creases. Once, when Gao Tu nods off in the chair, he wakes to find a thermos of hot tea on the windowsill and Lele’s car lined up next to it, polished clean. He glances toward the hall and catches a glimpse of Hua Yong’s retreating shoulder. There is no confrontation. No confession. Only the courtesy of care.

---

After two months, hope is thin as paper. Gao Tu’s face hollows; his stubble grows in uneven, his hands shake when he tries to button his shirt. He stops pretending sleep. He counts breaths in sets of ten until numbers lose meaning. There are days where the only sound he makes is Lele’s name and days where he talks without stopping because silence feels like dropping something you can never pick up again.

When Lele is there, the room changes. The child hums to himself, pulls Gao Tu’s wrist closer to curl both their hands around Wenlang’s. Once, he climbs fully onto Wenlang’s chest and collapses there, small and trusting, letting the machine’s rise and fall rock him to sleep. For a long time, Gao Tu does nothing but watch the way the boy’s lashes move with his breathing and the way Wenlang’s fingers—still, always still—rest near a toy block as if they might one day close around it.

---

The third month tastes like metal. The alarm returns with no warning one afternoon, and the world narrows to red numbers and a line trying not to go flat. Gao Tu’s body moves without him: he stands, he staggers, he sits because a nurse pushes him down. The line climbs back into rhythm. He breaks, finally and completely, into the crook of his own arm.

When he lifts his head he finds Shaoyou beside him, hand steady on his shoulder. “Even idiots,” Shaoyou says, almost gentle, “deserve someone who won’t give up on them.” It is a strange benediction and the only one Gao Tu will accept.

He nods once and returns his forehead to Wenlang’s knuckles. The skin there is cool and fragile. He warms it with his breath. “I’m still here,” he says. “I’ll be here tomorrow and the day after. If you take a year, I’ll be here then too.”

---

On a day that looks like all the others, the rain has stopped. Light honeycombs the blinds. Lele plays with the rubber ball on the floor, losing it under the chair and retrieving it with triumphant noises that make a nurse smile before she remembers not to.

After a time, the boy tires and climbs onto the bed without being asked, tucking himself against Wenlang’s chest, face pressed into the gown. The machine lifts them both, slow and patient.

Gao Tu’s head droops; his eyes slide closed. It is not sleep so much as the brief mercy of nothing, the body shutting off for a minute because it must. His hand is still on Wenlang’s. He does not feel the first twitch. He feels the second.

It is the smallest movement. A quick, involuntary closing, a flinch against air. For a beat, Gao Tu thinks he imagined it. He startles awake, looks down, waits—there. A faint pull under his palm, as if someone far away just remembered how to reach.

“Lang,” he says, and the word breaks. He is already crying when he realizes he is. He cups the lax hand with both of his and bows over it. “You’re still there. God— you’re still there.”

No alarms sound; the machine keeps its indifferent tempo. A passing nurse looks in and sees only a man in a chair with his head in his hands. The room remains the same shape it has been for weeks. But the air has changed. The weight of it. The sense that something, somewhere, shifted its angle.

When Shaoyou steps in at dusk, he reads the room like a ledger and then like a friend. He takes in the tear-slick face, the child asleep against the sleeping man, the way Gao Tu won’t stop touching Wenlang as if contact is the only proof he has. Shaoyou’s gaze drops to the hand in Gao Tu’s. He doesn’t ask. He says, quietly, “He’s still fighting.”

Hua Yong appears a moment later with a folded blanket. He lays it over Lele’s back without a word and straightens the corner where it catches on a wire. In the glass he catches his own reflection, then the outline of three figures: one broken open, one sleeping, one refusing to move. Something like a smile flickers and is gone.

---

Night presses its face to the glass. The machines hum on. Lele sighs in his sleep and kicks once, settling deeper against the slow rise and fall. Gao Tu strokes Wenlang’s knuckles with his thumb, counting a rhythm other than the monitor’s: touch, breath, wait; touch, breath, wait.

It is not a miracle. It is a twitch barely large enough to claim. But after three months of nothing, it feels like light coming into a room that forgot it had windows. He tips his head, resting it against their joined hands, and lets the hope hurt.

“Come back,” he whispers to the man who cannot hear him. “I’ll be here when you do.”

Chapter 9: Pull the Trigger, I'm Wide Awake

It begins with tremors.

At first Gao Tu thinks he imagined them. Wenlang’s fingers twitch against his palm once, then again, stronger. The machines spike. Nurses rush in, voices sharp.

“Seizure activity—hold him steady.”

Wenlang’s whole body arches off the bed, every muscle seizing at once. His mouth tears open around the ventilator, eyes snapping half-lidded, unfocused. The cords in his neck stand out like wire. His scent, thin for months, suddenly bursts into the room — sharp, acrid, burning like charred grass.

“Wenlang!” Gao Tu tightens his grip, leaning in close. “It’s me, it’s Gao Tu, you hear me? You’re safe. You’re alright! You need to stay calm, you’re hurting yourself.”

The nurses and doctors swarm, strapping his arms, re-adjusting the drip with sedatives to help Shen Wenlang’s violent thrashing. Gao Tu doesn’t move aside. He braces Wenlang’s shoulder, holding his head against his chest, flooding the room with his own Omega scent — steady, grounding, a low hum beneath Wenlang’s wild flare.

“His glands are overreacting severely,” a nurse says. “His body thinks it’s under attack.”

And for Wenlang, his entire body is under attack. Wenlang’s Alpha thrashes in blind panic, clawing for his mate, for his child, for survival. His body jerks again, teeth clenching, lips bloodied from the force.

Then — a sound. Small, clear.

Lele’s voice, piping from the corner where Gao Qing clutches him: “Baba!”

The word cuts like a thread through chaos.

Wenlang’s convulsions falter as his body seizes up and promptly crashes back down. His head lolls against Gao Tu’s chest, lashes fluttering above darting eyes, breath rasping through the tube. His Alpha surges once more, then crashes back down again, clinging to the familiar scents that hold the room.

“Shen Wenlang,” Gao Tu murmurs, voice breaking as he presses his cheek to Wenlang’s temple. “I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re not alone anymore. You’re alive. You’re safe.”

Slowly, raggedly, Wenlang’s eyes slit open. Unfocused at first. Then they find Gao Tu.

His lips move around the tube, forming the shape of a name. Gao Tu.

Gao Tu’s throat burns. “Yes,” he whispers fiercely. “It’s me.”

The machines shriek again — not signalling collapse, but overload, as Wenlang’s Alpha instincts cause him to break into another surge of energy. He begins to seize up as his battered body struggles to adjust. It takes multiple hands of medical staff to restrain him gently, dosing more stabilizers.

Through it all, Gao Tu doesn’t let go. He anchors him, murmuring over the alarms. “Breathe. Come back to me. I’ve been waiting, Wenlang.”

Wenlang’s gaze slides sideways, eyes frenzied and fevered. He looks like a frightened animal that’s been hunted out for days. As he tries to focus on Gao Tu, Shen Wenlang’s eyes catch the small figure in Gao Qing’s arms. Lele squirms, sensing, calling again: “Baba! You’re up!”

For the first time in three years, Wenlang sees his son.

Shock cleaves his expression, guilt flooding behind it, grief so raw it hurts to look at. His fingers twitch again, weakly, trying to reach. Gao Tu ushers Gao Qing to let Lele in closer, pressing the boy’s tiny hand into Wenlang’s limp one.

Lele grasps instinctively, giggling through confusion.

Wenlang exhales — a sound more sob than breath, eyes spilling silent tears down bruised cheeks. His entire body is shaking. His nerves are on fire, he feels like he’s about to pass out. But before he lets go, he clutches Lele’s little hand weakly, as if afraid the child will shatter if he hangs on too tightly.

Gao Tu presses his forehead to Wenlang’s temple, voice hoarse. “He’s real. He’s ours. And you’re here to see him. You made it out, Wenlang.”

The room steadies. The incessant beeping tapers down. Wenlang lies shaking, eyes wet, a limp hand trembling around his son’s. He is weak, fragile, half-broken. But awake.

For the first time in years, awake.

Notes:

Shen Wenlang's finally up!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Shen Wenlang Whump Factory