WFY 6

The rush was great while it lasted, but after that came a wave of endless dread.

Xu Ran curled up in the neighboring dorm, listening intently to the noise next door. He even pressed his ear to the wall, but heard absolutely nothing.

Was this the calm before the storm?

He started to regret it. If he hadn’t kicked Pan Hao, maybe they’d be out grabbing late-night snacks together right now, arms over each other’s shoulders, laughing like idiots. That would’ve been nice. So why the hell did he have to spaz out like that?

He played cards distractedly, and within an hour, lost the hundred bucks he had won the other day. When lights out was near, the guys he was with all gave him the same look.

Dude, why the fuck are you still here?

With his head down, Xu Ran dragged himself back to the dorm. At the door, he carefully cracked it open just a little. The first thing he saw was Pan Hao’s bed. Empty. Both the top and bottom bunk were vacant. He exhaled in relief and snuck inside, gently closing the door behind him.

But halfway through that breath, it caught in his throat and shot back out in a startled gasp.

“Fuck.”

Pan Hao was standing by his desk, arms crossed, watching him with the calm patience of someone waiting to deliver a beating. When Xu Ran’s panic showed all over his face, Pan Hao even raised an eyebrow.

“Look who finally came back.”

Xu Ran forced a smile.

“Yeah… hey, are you still hungry or something?”

Pan Hao said nothing and took a step forward. Xu Ran flinched and took a step back.

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

Xu Ran cursed himself silently but couldn’t stop his body from backing away. Pan Hao wasn’t just anyone. The guy was a whole seventeen centimeters taller than him and built like a machine. He was the type who could lift him with one hand without breaking a sweat.

Xu Ran decided to try a different approach.

“Come on, don’t be mad. It was just a joke. You’re such a generous guy, you wouldn’t hold a grudge, right?”

He even gave Pan Hao a playful wink.

Pan Hao had already walked up to him. If the words hadn’t triggered him, that wink sure as hell did.

Xu Ran had fair skin. Even after a few days of military training, he still looked fresh. The skin on his arm under his sleeve was barely a shade lighter than the rest. His looks weren’t anything insane on their own, but put it all together on one face and it just worked. And those big eyes, when they blinked like that, it was like a pool of spring water rippling in the light.

Pan Hao clicked his tongue and kept a straight face, but in his head, ten thousand flowers were blooming. Xu Ran was standing right in the middle of the biggest one, flapping his wings in circles. Every time he turned to face him, he’d wink again.

Xu Ran kept winking a few more times. When he saw that Pan Hao’s expression stayed cold, he finally gave up and leaned against the door like a martyr waiting for execution.

“You can hit me, but not the face. You know I rely on this face to survive. I’m serious, there was this one time during a group fight. Some guy raised a bat at me, looked at my face, and just couldn’t bring himself to swing. Swear to god. The look on his face—”

Xu Ran broke into a fit of laughter, holding his stomach. He looked up at Pan Hao and doubled over again.

“Shit, your face right now is exactly the same. I’m gonna die from laughing.”

Pan Hao said nothing.

Xu Ran was absolutely not a good roommate. Loud. Annoying. Always asking for it. He never learned his lesson. He could nag you to death with one story that stretched into the next morning.

Pan Hao rubbed his ear. Xu Ran saw the motion from the corner of his eye and immediately shut up like a sinner waiting for judgment.

“What did I say before?”

Pan Hao stared down at him.

“I said if you keep talking, I’ll beat your ass.”

Xu Ran nodded like his life depended on it. He even crossed his index fingers over his lips and stared at Pan Hao with wide eyes, waiting.

“But now I need to change that.”

Hope flickered in Xu Ran’s eyes. His pupils lit up like someone just turned on the lights in a pitch-black room.

Pan Hao curled his lips into a smirk. It wasn’t dazzling, but with that cocky face of his, it had a kind of dangerous charm.

“If you keep talking, I’ll fuck you.”

Xu Ran stood frozen.

What?

What the hell did Pan Hao just say?

Fuck him? What was this guy on?

Over the years, his high school buddies had sent him a few guy-on-guy videos. Called it variety for the soul or some bullshit like that, but Xu Ran had never done anything himself. Yes, he had watched enough porn, but not lived any of it. Still, even if he hadn’t eaten pork, he’d definitely seen pigs run. He knew damn well what Pan Hao meant.

“You’ve lost your fucking mind. Hey, Pan Hao, you need to see a doctor.”

Xu Ran jumped back, practically hopping like a rabbit on fire.

Being scared was bad enough, but getting fucked? Hell no.

Fear was the lesser evil.

Pan Hao’s smile deepened. “If you don’t believe me, we can try it out.”

Xu Ran shoved him away and snapped, “I have nothing to say to you.”

He scrambled straight to his bed and dove under the blanket. Despite the heat, he wrapped himself up tightly from head to toe.

Shy, seriously?

Pan Hao stood there staring. He was really about to fall for this idiot.

The dorm lights were off. Pan Hao leaned back on his bed with his laptop resting on his legs, watching a football match. No class the next day. Now that the little nuisance was asleep, he could finally enjoy some quiet.

Even with earphones on, the volume was turned down low. But in the middle of the night, he kept hearing rustling from the other bed. He glanced over. Xu Ran had kicked half the blanket off the bed, and it was hanging at the edge. He kept tossing and turning like he couldn’t sleep.

The game reached the final minutes, and Pan Hao stopped paying attention to him. When the match ended and he pulled off his headphones, Xu Ran’s voice started drifting in through the dark.

“He really wanted to fuck my ass… huh, doesn’t he realize how short he is… damn it’s hot… Pan Hao, turn on the aircon already…”

Short?

Pan Hao raised an eyebrow and tossed the laptop aside. He focused on Xu Ran’s sleepy mumbling. That voice was low and lazy, and before long, the rhythm of it actually lulled him to sleep.

He watched the game until nearly three in the morning. When he woke up, his whole body felt heavy, especially his head.

Because he had been woken up.

“Pan Hao… hey… are you awake?”

Xu Ran was calling from beside his bed.

Pan Hao didn’t answer. He turned over and faced the wall. Xu Ran walked away, probably returning to his own bed.

“I had a nightmare just now. Scared the shit out of me… I was in this deep well, and people kept jumping in. The bodies stacked up to the rim. Pale, cold… just awful…”

“Thank god I woke up. I didn’t go near them. You were there too, standing beside me. If you hadn’t been there, I think I’d have cried…”

“Hey, Pan Hao, are you listening?”

“I’m not that scared anymore now.”

After that, it went quiet for a moment. Pan Hao was still half-asleep. Whatever Xu Ran was saying floated through his brain before disappearing entirely.

“I really miss home… why the hell did I decide to come all the way up north for college? Pan Hao, are you from around here? Maybe take me around this weekend? I don’t know shit about this place…”

“Shut up.”

Pan Hao’s temper had reached boiling point. He was already running on no sleep, and now he had to deal with nonstop noise. Those two words carried enough fire in them that even someone as slow as Xu Ran should have sensed the warning.

But maybe the nightmare had left him a bit rattled. Xu Ran just wanted to talk everything out. When Pan Hao said shut up, he was already in the middle of another sentence, so he completely ignored it.

Pan Hao let out a sharp click of the tongue.

He threw off the thin blanket and got out of bed, face dark as thunderclouds. Xu Ran shrank into the wall, but Pan Hao wasn’t about to let him slip away this time. He climbed onto the bed.

It wasn’t a large bed. With two guys on it, it felt even tighter.

Pan Hao grabbed Xu Ran from the wall and pinned him down. To stop him from squirming, he locked his legs around Xu Ran’s hips. His larger body completely covered him.

“What did I say last night? Hmm?”

Xu Ran was wide-eyed in terror, frozen in place. He couldn’t even get the words out to beg for mercy.

Pan Hao’s face, still burning with leftover anger, inched closer. Xu Ran’s soul finally caught up to his body.

“Hey hey, Pan Hao, stop! Can’t we just talk like normal people?”

Pan Hao lowered himself slightly. The weight of a grown man wasn’t easy to bear. Xu Ran clenched his teeth from the pressure. Pan Hao ignored it completely, grabbed his chin, and forced that constantly flapping mouth into a small O shape.

“You don’t get to talk anymore.”

Then Xu Ran felt something hard press against the inside of his thigh.

As a fellow man, he knew exactly what that was. And what it meant.

What the hell. Was Pan Hao seriously blaming his morning wood on him?

Xu Ran wanted to salvage the situation somehow. The thought of a roommate turning into a hookup was way too much for him to process. And worse, he was the one being pinned down.

Still, thinking back to those gay videos his buddies used to send him… the one spreading his legs never seemed to be having a bad time either…