TF01 117

When Shi Yi woke up, the first thing he felt was the warmth of someone else’s body against his. Then came a ticklish sensation on his face. He frowned and opened his eyes to see Ying Ming’s short hair.

For a moment, he stared in a daze. The scent of the man in his arms was so familiar that he could confirm who it was immediately, yet the long time since they had last been this close made it hard for his mind to catch up.

He shifted slightly, wanting to get a better look at the other’s face. But a hospital bed meant for one person was already cramped with the two of them, and there was no way to turn over properly. After fumbling around for a while and failing to accomplish anything, all he managed to do was wake Ying Ming, who was clearly not thrilled about it.

The man, who had been in near-unconscious sleep from sheer exhaustion, was roused by the shifting and jostling behind him that felt like a small earthquake. The crease between his brows deepened with irritated annoyance.

“Quit fucking moving.”

His hoarse voice came out half hysterical. After barking that out, Ying Ming shifted deeper under the covers again. Shi Yi’s breath hit the back of his neck and trailed all the way down to the base of his spine.

Shi Yi tightened his arms. “It’s been days since we’ve seen each other, and that’s the first thing you say? Really sets the mood.”

He hadn’t been gentle. Ying Ming had pretty much been wrenched awake from the pressure alone. Finally fed up, he threw an elbow back into him. “Doesn’t look like it’s had any effect on the thing down there.”

That heat was hard to ignore no matter how much he tried.

Shi Yi pushed himself up slightly and forcefully turned Ying Ming toward him. “My dick was almost destroyed by your dad, okay? If I don’t let you feel it for yourself, I’ll feel too sorry for it.”

That three-meter-long baton really hadn’t been a joke. It had swung down hard enough to make him feel like his guts were about to come out.

“Would’ve done the world a favor if it actually had,” Ying Ming muttered, glaring at him before lazily yawning. “Fuck. I’m dead tired and you still can’t keep it down.”

“Tired?”

“No shit?”

Ying Ming rubbed his temples. “Last time I got any real sleep was back in the Paleolithic. Might’ve even been before I last saw you.”

When they were both asleep, it had still been fine. But now that they were both awake, the hospital bed felt even smaller. Ying Ming was practically hanging halfway off the side. Instinctively, he gripped the edge. “Forget it. Can’t sleep anyway. I might as well get up.”

But Shi Yi quickly caught him by the wrist. “Don’t. Just stay like this for a bit. It helps me breathe.”

A person’s mental endurance really did have its limits.

Shi Yi used to think he wasn’t afraid of anything, but surviving the past few days had made him realize how little he actually had control over.

The man in his arms raised a brow but said nothing.

The air in the room still carried the faint, unpleasant scent of disinfectant. The curtain in front of Ying Ming’s eyes swayed gently, evoking something like a movie scene. The light was dim, slanting into the room at just the right angle to graze the edge of the bed, making the atmosphere even lazier.

It felt like there had been a moment like this once before.

The two of them had slumped on a couch, spending nearly an entire afternoon like that.

Thinking back, it didn’t feel like that long ago, but the memory felt hazy. So much had changed in both of them. Their moods had shifted, too. Back then, neither of them had seriously considered how far this would go. But now, their connection was something that couldn’t be untangled.

Shi Yi raised an eyebrow with a half-smile. “So, when did you actually decide we weren’t going to split up?”

They hadn’t started this thinking it would last.

They knew too well how the world worked, and how much they were both carrying. It wasn’t something they could easily compromise. The cost of staying together had always felt unnecessarily high, too high to justify holding on.

To be precise, the only reason they had ended up together in the first place was because the tension boiling under their skin had pushed them past the point of rationality. They had only wanted to ease that restless, maddening urge. No one had expected it would spiral into this.

Shi Yi’s question left Ying Ming silent for a long time.

He frowned. “Never really thought about it.”

“Then think about it now.”

The man behind him was surprisingly insistent.

Because of who he was, Shi Yi had a single-patient room. It wasn’t medication time yet, so not even a nurse passed by in the hallway. The room, and the world outside it, was still. There was nothing to sense except each other’s breathing.

Ying Ming finally snorted. “Probably when you were acting like a dumbass and said you wanted to break up.”

People never knew what they truly cared about until they were forced to choose. Until that moment, Ying Ming had always been someone who left himself a way out.

In turn, he asked Shi Yi the same question. “What about you?”

Bringing up this topic again after so long, neither of them had completely worked through the knots in their hearts. But compared to that last conversation, this time they were at least more calm. Shi Yi stayed quiet for a moment, then gently rubbed his forehead against Ying Ming’s short hair. “I really don’t know.”

“Were you just always ready to split, then?”

Ying Ming’s tone was mostly teasing. He shifted his shoulder, still sore from lying in the same position, while the heat of Shi Yi’s erection pressed insistently against him. The absurdity of it made him lift an eyebrow, half amused.

The two of them, lying together in that position and talking about something like this, made the whole situation feel inexplicably strange.

And yet Shi Yi’s voice stayed calm. “I honestly don’t know when I crossed that line. If I had to explain it, I’d say it just started to feel like if one day you weren’t there anymore, I wouldn’t be myself anymore either.”

“That’s kind of deep…”

Ying Ming curled his lips into a smile. Behind him, Shi Yi chuckled softly too. “I’m just now realizing I don’t really know how to express these kinds of feelings.”

Maybe the confessions that came too easily never had much weight to them in the first place.

Shi Yi used to think he was pretty good at this sort of thing. But these last few attempts had proven just how hard it really was.

Eventually, he sat up beside Ying Ming, leaning over to press a kiss against his lips—slowly, deliberately.

It had been a long time since their last kiss.

So long that even the closeness of their bodies felt strange. The way their breaths tangled together stirred up a tension they had both been suppressing. Before Shi Yi could even properly kiss him, he was already reaching for Ying Ming’s clothes. What snapped him out of it was the sting of the IV needle pressing into the back of his hand, forcing just enough rationality back into him.

He nudged against Ying Ming, looking a little flustered. “What am I supposed to do? If a nurse comes in to change my dressing, I won’t be able to cover anything up…”

Ying Ming’s eyes were bloodshot, half from extreme sleep deprivation and half from that intense rush of arousal. He frowned and cleared his throat. “Want me to help you take a shower?”

“Don’t even joke.” Shi Yi gave a pained smile. “I don’t think my heart could handle it right now.”

“I thought you had a respiratory infection? Since when did it spread to your heart?”
Ying Ming dragged a hand through his hair.

“Shit. I was fine before, now I feel like crap because of you.”

They were both men. This kind of reaction was impossible to hide. After exchanging a brief, awkward glance, Shi Yi pouted slightly with a wounded look. “Since I’m the one in the hospital bed, how about you do me a little favor?”

“What kind of service are you implying?”

That kind of vague innuendo wore down what little patience Ying Ming had left. His brow tightened. “Are you seriously asking me to fuck you?”

“Top or bottom, depends on how much pity you’re willing to show me.” Shi Yi raised an eyebrow, face full of seductive mischief.

Still technically under him, Ying Ming narrowed his eyes andlaughed.

“As for that, I’ve been very clear from the beginning.”

—–

By the time the nurse came in to change the dressing, Ying Ming was leaning against the window with a potato stick between his teeth.

He had such a strong aversion to the texture and weird taste that his eyebrows remained furrowed the whole time. Shi Yi, meanwhile, was putting on a performance of utter weakness, barely able to lift his arm.

The nurse looked puzzled. “You’ve been on anti-inflammatories for a while now. It should be getting better by this point…”

But he looked even worse than before.

Ying Ming cut in, “Has his fever gone down?”

“More or less. He’s still running a low-grade fever, but it’s minor. There are four more units of medication left. Once he finishes those, it should clear up completely.”

Ying Ming finally relaxed a little and nodded, then turned back to chew discontentedly on the potato stick.

“But his condition’s still really weak. I’ll come check on him again in a bit. If it’s still like this, I’ll have to notify the doctor.”

The nurse was pretty thorough. She asked a few more questions before finishing up and leaving. Ying Ming didn’t look at Shi Yi until she was gone. “You’d better keep faking, and ask the doctor to transfer you to proctology while you’re at it.”

Shi Yi slowly turned his head and gave him a resentful look. “This is abuse…”

“You’re mistaken,” Ying Ming replied with a calm expression. “This is me caring about you.”

Having a mind full of dirty thoughts while sick wasn’t good for anyone’s physical or mental health. After taking care of his own urges, Ying Ming had no intention of indulging Shi Yi. Whatever arousal Shi Yi had left was firmly shut down, buried under the folds of his hospital gown.

The hospital room did not offer many options, so the method he used was crude but effective.

Shi Yi could not win, neither with words nor with strength. All he could do was glare at him with quiet resentment. But after the medication was changed, that same drowsy exhaustion began to settle in again. He forced himself to stay awake, turned his head slightly, and asked, “When you went home, did your parents say anything?”

Back when he first showed up, the fury on Ying Ming’s parents’ faces could have drowned the whole building.

He had prepared himself for that confrontation, but even so, facing the weight of their disapproval had been crushing. Back then, when Ying Ming’s father asked him whose fault the whole situation really was, he had answered that it was his. And that one line had earned him a swing from the baton.

He still couldn’t forget what it felt like to be struck in the chest. In that instant, everything had gone dark.

After Shi Yi asked the question, Ying Ming didn’t answer.

He did not want to bring up his family issues with Shi Yi. Even after everything that had happened, his parents’ opinions on the matter were still something he considered a private burden.

Still biting down on that awful-tasting potato stick, he kept his eyes fixed on the treetop outside the window. “Go to sleep. I’ll head out in a bit.”

Shi Yi closed his eyes. “You’ll stay until I fall asleep?”

“You’re a grown man. Do you really need someone to tuck you in?” Ying Ming raised his voice slightly, then rubbed his temples. “Just sleep already. I’m exhausted.”

A man acting clingy always felt a little strange, or more accurately, just awkward.

Especially when that man was someone like Shi Yi, with his personality and the way he handled things. But what felt even stranger was that Ying Ming, despite knowing this kind of compromise was pointless, still could not bring himself to simply walk out.

He leaned by the window for a long time, thinking about what exactly would count as Shi Yi being “asleep.” Then his stomach began to growl. Frowning, he tossed the potato stick aside, then quietly left the room and closed the door behind him.