At first, he just used him as masturbation fodder—he really did get bored in prison, and it wasn’t as if he could use any of his lessons or clients as anything near pleasant imagery. He’d just picture any of his nights with Weiran, pull himself off, and sleep soundly afterward. It was picturing anything else that was his mistake—that night that Weiran had bandaged up his wounds from Hu Yongzhu, his hands gentle, the way he’d held him, the way he’d kissed him, the way he confessed to him. After that, the fortress that was Liu Xiaokai’s mind was a lost cause. He started imagining all kinds of other things: Weiran’s smile, the way his mouth moved when he talked, the way his face changed with each of his wonderful expressions, the way his cheeks turned pink when he blushed, the way his voice turned low and almost gravelly when he needed sleep. He thought about the way Weiran had fallen in love with a construct that Xingyu had built to fit in while he was attending college—but that he had claimed he’d fallen in love with Xiaokai after that, that he loved him even while he knew what Xiaokai was and what he had done—what Xiaokai had done not just in his past but also what he’d done in just the hour before he came to Weiran’s room. He thought about how warm his hands were—not just in the context of when they were having sex, but also when he casually dropped a hand to Xiaokai’s shoulder, when he grabbed Xiaokai’s arms, when his fingers brushed against Xiaokai’s hand. He thought about how he told Weiran to leave as soon as possible, even if it interfered with helping Xingyu clean up the rest of the List. He thought about how he wished sometimes that Weiran hadn’t gone—that he’d stayed. He thought about a possibility where Weiran would just wait for him outside prison, even as impossible as that was—who would wait for someone for so long when there was a much more accessible person right next to him? Who would wait for someone when he’d already been in love with the person next to him before for years? Who would wait for someone when that someone was as despicable as Liu Xiaokai?

But Weiran had waited for him.

Weiran had waited for him, and he was holding Liu Xiaokai, and he was telling Xiaokai that he loved him after all of this. That he loved him before, that he loved him now.

Xiaokai’s heart felt like it was swelling inside of his chest, pressing up against his ribs, crawling up the walls of his throat.

“Come on, Xiaokai,” Weiran said. “What do you say?”

Xiaokai’s hands gripped at Weiran’s arms. He leaned forward and kissed him.