Work Text:
Although Yin Yu had just started as Hua Cheng’s small business accountant and financial advisor, after his boss’s large success, Yin Yu was offered a position as the chief financial officer. It paid well, and his schedule was fairly flexible when no negotiations or scandals were occurring.
Even then, the deal they had just closed on had taken them months. Yin Yu, for the first time in weeks, had arrived home on time. He hadn’t told Yizhen, not wanting to make any promises he might be unable to fulfill.
Yin Yu half expects to be greeted immediately upon arrival, but instead, he finds his home silent. Yizhen didn’t work today, and the silence is more than unusual.
He takes off his shoes and sets them next to Yizhen’s usual ones. Venturing inside, he finds all the lights off and the curtains shut, only adding to his worry.
Yizhen had a tendency of letting Yin Yu know when he was going out. At the beginning, Yin Yu didn’t understand why. Early on in their relationship, he would receive updates from him letting him know of every single thing he was doing. When he started receiving texts from him letting him know he was leaving his dorm to go to class, Yin Yu had to bring it up. If Yizhen was texting him about these types of things, Yin Yu must have given him the impression of being controlling. He couldn’t understand why someone would offer their privacy like that otherwise,
As it turned out, Yin Yu was Yizhen’s first friend, and later boyfriend. Before that, he had never texted anyone but his mother, who requested his only child update her about everything.
All this to say, Yizhen would have notified Yin Yu had he gone out.
When Yin Yu opens the door to their bedroom and finds the bed stripped, he exhales a breath of relief. It had been so long since he was home during the day, on Yizhen’s preheat week, and he had somehow forgotten about his habits.
Yin Yu had planned to take Yizhen out on a date, but seeing as his omega’s preheat had started, he knew getting Yizhen to leave the house would be impossible. His mate was rather sensitive on a normal day, his heat and preheat left him even more so than usual. Knowing this, before going to go find him, Yin Yu takes off his work clothes and showers, making sure to only use the deodorizing body and hair wash made for sensitive skin.
During his heat month, Yizhen would become extra sensitive to bright lights, temperature, scents, textures, sounds, and tastes. It wasn’t unusual for omegas, but it was unusual for their sensitivity to grow to that extent.
He doesn’t blow dry his hair, not wanting to wake his mate in case he is napping. Instead, he makes sure to thoroughly towel dry his hair. At least it isn’t long or curly like Yizhen’s.
He chooses the softest sleepwear he has before he makes his way to the room reserved for Yizhen’s nest. It had been a luxury he had been very proud of being able to provide.
The door doesn’t creek when he opens it. Even when he had been busy with work, it was a detail he had been watchful of, always making sure to keep the hinges oiled.
Yizhen’s smell is strong, permeating every corner of the room. How long had it been since Yin Yu scented it for him?
He remembers when they first met and how careless Yizhen was with his pheromones. Even being so sensitive to the pheromones of everyone else, Yizhen was completely unaware of his own. When Yin Yu had first complimented his scent, Yizhen had been completely shocked. When Yin Yu had described his scent to him as a sunny day, Yizhen had jumped with joy. Yin Yu himself had never been able to pinpoint what his own pheromones smelled like. According to Yizhen, him smelling like sunshine only added to his growing list of why they were soulmates because to him, Yin Yu smelled like the night.
Yin Yu had never thought himself a romantic, but Yizhen made it hard not to be.
In the dark, he stumbles on a piece of Yizhen’s nest. He doesn’t fall, but the sound is loud enough to wake his omega up.
“Gege?” Yizhen asks, more asleep than awake.
“Sorry,” Yin Yu mumbles, lowering himself into the nest next to Yizhen.
“Mmm… I only planned to take a nap,” he says. His voice is muffled by the many layers of soft bedding piled all around him. He shifts, turning to face Yin Yu, and extends his arms, making grabby hands.
In the dark neither can see each other's faces, but their scents are enough to convey their feelings.
“You probably haven't been asleep for long, it's still early into the afternoon,” Yin Yu explains as he allows those hands to take hold of him. Once Yiizhen has pulled him down to join him in the nest, he makes quick work, though poorly, of covering Yin Yu in some of his blankets and pillows.
When Yizhen deems him comfortable enough, he wraps himself around him. His arms snake around Yin Yu in a tight cuddle, and he tangles his legs with his.
“Gege is home early?!” Yizhen exclaims his volume a few levels higher than needed, his arms squeezing him harder in excitement.
As if Yizhen’s scent hadn’t embedded itself into Yin Yu’s skin the second he stepped inside the room, Yizhen shamelessly scents him. All his happy pheromones filling a gape Yin Yu didn’t know he had.
It's the scent of a summer day. Like the sun burning on your skin in that comforting way that reminds you just how alive you are, and no matter how unwilling one is, etches a smile onto your face. More than that, in Yin Yu, It provokes a feeling of nostalgia.
As a child, Yin Yu had spent most of his days indoors, studying. The few occasions he had spent away from the books had been during the summer when his family would visit his grandma in the countryside. Yin Yu looks back on those days fondly.
“We finally closed on the deal, so I was able to make it home on time.”
The squeal that leaves the omega’s mouth is loud and high-pitched. It had been so long since Yin Yu got to hear him so excited.
He knows he has been neglecting him, and felt terrible about it. He remembers how hard it had been on Yizhen at the beginning. He would call him randomly throughout the day just to hear his alpha's voice, and would constantly ask Yin Yu if his project was almost done.
They had only been seeing each other in the morning and at night when it was time for bed, and if they were lucky, Yin Yu would make it back by dinner time. They also spent their heats and ruts together, but they hardly did any talking then.
Yin Yu missed this. Missed him .
Without a warning, Yizhen readjusts himself so his completely on top of the alpha, his full body weight, comforting. Still, Yin Yu doesn't complain and only wraps his hands around him. His omega deserves at least this much.
Yizhen nuzzles his face into the alpha's neck, breathing in his scent where it is the strongest. This had been another one of his habits that had taken Yizhen a while to get used to. He had never been so vulnerable with anyone. He found it just as hard to offer it as he did asking it of others.
In that way (and many others), Yizhen was perfect for him. Where Yin Yu placed high walls to maintain a level of comfort, Yizhen easily busted through his inhibitions. With him, it had been so easy to just be himself for the first time. Yizhen cared so little for other’s opinions, a concept so foreign to Yin Yu that the changes his partner had brought to his life had reframed how he viewed everyone, including himself.
“Does that mean I get to keep you home now?” Yizhen asks.
Yin Yu knows that it’s a reasonable question, given how absent he has been, yet he can’t help but find humor in it. Yizhen was an independent man, even as an omega. That was an undebatable fact. There wasn’t a single person who could force Yizhen to stray from his character.
Even then, around Yin Yu, people had described him as a completely different person. Yin Yu didn’t think so, but every time he had tried to explain it, he found it hard to do so. After years together, he finally could. When they were together, Yizhen’s everything was amplified. The thoughts he usually didn’t bother sharing would suddenly spill out of him without a second thought.
A person who didn’t know him would think Yizhen was reserved. But that wasn’t it at all. He was everything but. The real reason he was so quiet around others was because Yizhen could care less about them. It wasn’t because of some rooted arrogance either, just a simple disinterest.
“I’m sure Hua Cheng would be willing to give me a few days off.”
“How come you have to ask him? As if he didn’t keep you away from me long enough,” Yizhen whines, his hot breath ghosting over Yin Yu’s neck.
“Yizhe-” Yin Yu starts before Yizhen clasps his hands over his mouth to stop him from talking. They’ve had this conversation before, and even though Yin Yu is pretty sure Yizhen is well aware and versed in the subject, in the case he wasn’t, it would be an important thing to discuss.
“I know.”
They spend a few moments in silence together, long enough for Yin Yu to think Yizhen had fallen back asleep. Just as Yizhen is about to fall asleep himself, he hears his phone ring from the other side of the house, likely still in the dress pants he had discarded in the bathroom floor. Instinctively, he makes to get up, but before he has even managed to sit up, Yizhen springs up and runs out the door.
It takes Yin Yu a few more seconds to make sense of what had just happened before he is also running to his phone.
When he makes it to their bedroom, his phone has stopped ringing and the door to the bathroom is tightly shut.
“Yizhen?” Yin Yu calls out as he attempts to open the door to the bathroom with no luck.
From the inside, he can hear Yizhen’s voice, but his words are muffled by the thick door. With a sigh of resignation, Yin Yu backs away to go sit on the edge of the bed. Only a few seconds later, Yizhen emerges, still clicking away on Yin Yu’s phone.
“Who called?”
“Just Hua Cheng,” he states simply, his head tilting to the side like an innocent puppy and eyes that said ‘who else?’.
The action makes Yin Yu forget what he had been about to say.
“And what did he say?” he asks when he regains his focus.
“Nothing important, just to enjoy your two months off.”
“You asked for two months off?”
“Yes, Gege deserves this well-needed break.”
Yin Yu can’t argue that. He really did need it and probably deserved it too. It was easier to come to terms with it when he thought about how much he had to make up to Yizhen.
Yizhen understood more than what he led on. It had taken him many years to understand that, and at times, it had gotten on his nerves. Now, he trusted Yizhen would make smart decisions. He really loved the man. With all his oddities and habits.
“I didn’t think Hua Cheng would agree so easily.”
“All I had to do was tell him that I would otherwise spend my free days visiting his omega. Xie Lian told me to say that next time I wanted to keep you to myself. He understands.”
With how oblivious Yizhen always acts, that was the last thing he had expected from him and it sends a bubbly filling through him. Though he would never admit it, he loved it when his omega behaved this way. If he had it his way, he would never go to work again.
Whatever expression he had made was enough to dismiss whatever little worry Yizhen might have had about his reactions to him taking such liberty. The omega’s scent spikes again, and the bubbly feeling consuming Yin Yu only grows.
“Let’s go back to your nest,” Yin Yu says, giving up the idea of any conversation that could have been had.
Yizhen hops excitedly in place before he tosses Yin Yu’s phone somewhere. Yin Yu can hear the distant vibration of his phone powering off as he is dragged back into the dark room.
This time, Yizhen turns on a night light before he drags his alpha down with him onto the nest. Even though the blankets are still warm when they wrap themselves in them, the most comforting part of it all is having each other.