Title: Threshold
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G
Length: ~1700 words
Notes: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, set during episode 4. Technically a sequel to An Honorary Member of the Anti-Social Social Club, though it contains none of the OCs and stands alone. Also for the prompt Backward (for the Any Prompt square of my bingo). A billion billion thanks to trobadora for beta above and beyond, srsly. No warnings apply.
Summary: “I have to tell you, Professor, your students are worried about you.”


Zhao Yunlan lay on a park bench not far from the Dragon City University staff dormitories. It was a warm evening, and one of the nearby bushes was giving off a particularly sweet scent.

How long could it take for a cat to deliver a message? Maybe Professor Shen wasn’t home. (Maybe he was out in the night doing something mysterious and Dixing-related.) Zhao Yunlan would have gone inside to see for himself, but that would only set more tongues wagging. He closed his eyes and hummed to himself, drumming his thumbs against his thighs. He missed smoking.

“Chief Zhao.”

Zhao Yunlan stopped drumming and opened his eyes. “Shen Wei.”

Professor Shen was wearing a white tracksuit with thin blue stripes up the sleeves. He looked the definition of a successful young academic, or like an advertisement for expensive washing powder.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah. Uh, yeah. Have a seat.” Zhao Yunlan sat up and waved at the bench beside him as though they were in his apartment, and then had to fight off a burst of brain static at the thought of Shen Wei in his actual apartment… and that pristine tracksuit abandoned on his bedroom floor.

Shen Wei sat down, leaving a polite gap between them. “Is it the case?”

“Not exactly.” The SID was searching for someone who’d burned a couple of concrete warehouses to the ground, landing a dozen people in the hospital. Zhao Yunlan had visited Shen Wei to quiz him about Dixing powers only that afternoon.

Now he unwrapped a lollipop and stuck it in his mouth while he pulled himself together, then checked Da Qing wasn’t lurking nearby, listening in. He didn’t need witnesses for this. “I have to tell you, Professor, your students are worried about you.”

“Excuse me?”

Zhao Yunlan focused on the berry taste of his lollipop and forced an ironic grin. “Yeah, you know, hanging out with a dirtbag like me. They think I’m a bad influence on you.”

“What on earth gives you that idea?” The professor sounded politely baffled. Zhao Yunlan stole a glance—yep, he looked politely baffled too.

Zhao Yunlan took out his lollipop and examined it for manufacturing flaws or some way out of this conversation. When he found none, he licked his lips. “It’s not an idea. Two of them tailed me from the campus this afternoon to make sure I wasn’t dealing drugs or worse.” He’d confronted them on a quiet street corner, once he’d been sure the figures on the yellow scooter really were following him.

“They—” Shen Wei’s lips pressed into a thin, straight, strangely familiar line. “Which students exactly?”

“I didn’t catch their names.” They’d seemed like nice kids. He wasn’t going to tell tales on them. After all, he was used to being underestimated—half the time it was a deliberate strategy—so it wasn’t surprising Shen Wei’s fiercely protective students had decided the professor was out of his league. He hadn’t needed it spelled out. Anyway, what mattered was whether Shen Wei agreed with them. “The point is, I couldn’t let on why I’ve been hanging around the university—it would have raised too many questions.”

The university had been very clear about keeping the Wang Yike murders off the record to avoid causing a panic. The Chancellor had pulled strings with the Department of Supervision, and Zhao Yunlan saw no reason to argue. The murders had been targeted, and Wang Yike was safely in Dixing. It wasn’t as if knowing the truth would make the other students safer.

“Then what did you tell them?”

“I didn’t, exactly.” Zhao Yunlan stuck his lollipop back in his mouth, shoved it into his cheek and elaborated. “They wanted to know why I keep showing up in your office.”

“You could have said we’re friends.” An odd inflection had entered Shen Wei’s voice.

“Yeah, I tried. They didn’t seem to think a meeting of the minds was very likely, on account of, you know.” Zhao Yunlan gestured to himself: leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Not exactly the picture of scientific camaraderie. “So they extrapolated.”

The professor waited for him to finish, as if Zhao Yunlan were expounding a particularly ignorant scientific theory and Shen Wei were going to set him right just as soon as he stopped speaking.

Ugh, this was awkward. What he felt for Shen Wei might have started out as provocative flirting in an attempt to get to the bottom of a mystery, but it had quickly blossomed into an obsession that was threatening to upend his life. If Shen Wei recoiled now, Zhao Yunlan wasn’t sure what he’d do, but it would probably involve a fuckload of alcohol.

He took a breath and tried to be professional. This was a professional problem. “They think we’re seeing each other. I mean, romantically.”

Shen Wei looked at him through narrowed eyes. No, he was glaring. Shit. “I’m sorry if their theory inconveniences you, but I must say, I find it refreshing that my students are open-minded enough to conceive of such a thing.”

Zhao Yunlan swallowed wrong and started coughing. His lollipop went flying and landed with a click on the paving stones at their feet. “What?” he croaked.

“It’s a reasonable assumption on their part.” Shen Wei’s tone was frigid. Even the air temperature seemed to have dropped. “Are you all right, Chief Zhao?”

“You know, you’re right.” Zhao Yunlan eyes were watering, and his lungs burned, but he couldn’t let Shen Wei get the crazy idea he disagreed about this. He wiped his eyes and grinned. “Those kids were more worried about my clothes and my motorbike than the fact I’m a guy. Good for them.”

The stiffness in Shen Wei’s shoulders visibly eased. “Your clothes do make quite an impression, Chief Zhao.”

It was hard to tell if that was disapproval or a compliment, but at least the icy edge had thawed. Zhao Yunlan smirked. “So do yours, Professor.”

He’d make even more of an impression out of them, but Zhao Yunlan for once in his life decided to look before he leapt and keep that observation to himself.

Shen Wei dropped his gaze, his cheeks colouring as if he’d heard it anyway. Or was having similar thoughts of his own. “What are you proposing we do?” he asked quietly.

“What?” Zhao Yunlan blinked. Was that innuendo? What was happening?

“About the rumour.”

“Oh, right. Right. Well, given the recent rise in Dixing activity, I can’t exactly stop coming around the university.” He left that deliberately ambiguous, just like Shen Wei himself. Anyway, if he did stop coming around, Shen Wei’s students would probably decide he’d broken their professor’s heart and come and torch the SID headquarters or something. “Not that I want to stop,” he added hastily, to avoid another misunderstanding. He unwrapped a fresh lollipop and stuck it into his mouth before he got himself in trouble. “And denials didn’t work. So, I don’t know, we could just let them believe it. Unless that would cramp your style, Professor?”

Shen Wei didn’t hesitate. “It wouldn’t.”

And wow, okay. Zhao Yunlan took a moment to savour that. Shen Wei had been helpful and weirdly intense since they’d met, and he’d tolerated Zhao Yunlan’s attention, but Zhao Yunlan hadn’t expected him to risk his social standing just to get mixed up in Zhao Yunlan’s business.

He swallowed. “Okay, good.”

“What about for you?” asked Shen Wei.

There was an underlying intensity to the question that sent a shiver of awareness through Zhao Yunlan. He disguised his reaction with a grin. “Not for me either.”

So this was where they were: not dating, not even making a move—because Shen Wei had been linked to multiple crimes, and Zhao Yunlan didn’t believe in coincidences; getting more involved would be stupid until he knew exactly who he was dealing with—but here, on the threshold of a possibility, tacitly agreeing not to see anyone else. Pre-emptive monogamy.

If anyone else had suggested it, Zhao Yunlan would have died laughing. With Shen Wei, it left him a different kind of breathless.

Thankfully, Shen Wei seemed just as flustered. “All right, then,” he said, and he held out his hand.

Zhao Yunlan shook it solemnly, holding on too long as he fought the urge to throw caution to the wind and drag Shen Wei close. Damn, he was half turned on just from shaking his fucking hand. He was in so much trouble.

What would Shen Wei do if he slipped his lollipop between those soft-looking lips? Just tell me, he thought. Whatever it is you’re hiding, just tell me so I know if I can touch you!

But Shen Wei’s glasses had gone opaque with the reflection of a streetlight, and he was pulling back. “Now I’m afraid I have to excuse myself. I have a thesis to review. Goodnight, Zhao Yunlan.”

It was always one step forward, one step sideways with him, an evasive little dance. Tonight Zhao Yunlan decided not to mind. He had to get back to work anyway.

“Sleep tight.” He sucked on his lollipop and watched Shen Wei walk away: cool, composed and enigmatic. And Zhao Yunlan had somehow successfully called dibs.

So okay, they were going to keep doing what they were doing and let the students think what they liked. But students had families, family members had friends, and dinner-table gossip was a tradition as old as time. There was a reasonable possibility the rumour might spread to the SID, to his friends from university, to the Department of Supervision and his damned father. Zhao Yunlan had always kept his love life off the record, but Shen Wei wasn’t the kind of person you could hide.

Slow down, he told himself. This isn’t your actual love life. Not yet, anyway. And it wasn’t as if he cared what anyone else thought. There’d be time to figure it out. In the meantime, he would figure out Shen Wei, uncover all his secrets. Maybe he’d start by tracking down those students again, once he’d closed this case. He bet they had some interesting theories.


END