Chapter Text
Naturally, the first thing Mo Ran did upon moving into his new university-sponsored flat (he still can’t believe he got that scholarship) was calling up Rong Jiu and pay him for a not-so-quick fuck that probably disturbed his new neighbors.
Naturally, the second thing he did, was kick him back out because Mo Ran doesn’t actually like him, and finish unpacking his belongings into a flat way too large for a single person.
Naturally, the third thing he did was pull up the university’s website, google up the professor of his introductory classes, and jerk off to him fervently, multiple times in a row, until he nearly blacked out.
Maybe that wasn’t Mo Ran’s most lucid moment.
And maybe he’s just a teeny tiny bit more fucked than he previously thought. Not literally, because Mo Ran is the one to do the fucking, usually, but oh, what he would give to fuck that professor of his – and dear lord is that bad.
Mo Ran didn’t come here to fuck his professor. Okay, alright, perhaps he did, he’s-
Unsure.
If Mo Ran has ever been unsure about anything in his entire life, it’s this person. Just how long ago did he meet him at this point? How old was he? Five years, right? Give or take, given that Mo Ran doesn’t know his actual birthday, too young to remember it when his mother died. Memories of her are blurry these days. He misses her.
Either way- back at the orphanage, he was alone. Too hurt after his mother’s death, always trying to protect himself, no amount of therapy back then helping him. He doesn’t blame the other kids for being scared of him after a while, with him acting out so much. He doesn’t blame the nurses either, of course; they tried their hardest. Got him the best therapists they could have, but little Mo Ran, oh, he didn’t take any of that therapy talk in.
He didn’t want to get better.
Mo Ran was just about ready to wither away. Without his mom, what was the point? He could’ve just died, and yet-
Yet, he prevailed and survived and suddenly he was five years old already. Every kid hated him because he was violent, every nurse talked behind his back, saying that he wouldn’t make it, that they’ve tried it all. Even their cook hated him, because sometimes he’d steal food, hoard it away, because that’s the rule of the street – and how do you teach a three-year old who spent his first few years living on the streets with his mother that there’s more than enough food to keep him alive?
A child won’t understand that they’re suddenly safe, and frankly, Mo Ran still doesn’t feel safe sometimes.
Especially as a child though, he didn’t understand that there were good things in the world at all. Not until that day, when suddenly, there was a teenager dressed in wide, beige pants and a white hoodie way too large for him. He was standing in the kitchen as if he’s always been working there and didn’t suddenly appear overnight, bathed in the light of the morning sun, making wonton.
In that moment, something for Mo Ran changed. He stood in the door, the first to be awake, ready to scavenge for food in the fridge another time, but the youth in front of him had captured him more than anything else. Every thought of food had left his mind, all at once.
He looked ethereal. His hair, his clothes, his hands making those plump, soft-looking wonton, and Mo Ran knew from the get-go that he needed them.
When he approached and their eyes met – his whole world shifted, okay?
And from then on out, it was just him and that seventeen year-old boy whose voice jumped every few sentences and who sometimes looked into the distance in the same way as the child clinging to his hand.
Over the span of a year, the boy taught Mo Ran a lot. How to make wontons even though he wasn’t even at school yet. How to write his name, and how to write another few, easy characters. Carrying him around and playing with him when no one else would. Sometimes, Mo Ran heard the nurses talk badly about him, but usually, they were positive, glad that someone was helping out without even taking payment.
Mo Ran knew why he was there.
He saw the hungry gaze during the first few weeks in his eyes when he saw their usual cook make breakfast and lunch and dinner. Mo Ran knew that yes – the boy was there out of goodwill first and foremost, but food didn’t not play a role.
And after that year, he was gone.
Mo Ran got told that he was going to leave, at least by himself. His voice was all quiet, and not exactly sad, but still regretful.
There was a promise made.
He promised Mo Ran that he’d come visit whenever he could, and that he’d always remember him and then?
Well, that’s the part Mo Ran has obsessed over for the past fifteen years. He never came back.
He never saw him again, but at the same time, he saw him in his mind every single day. Always that small smile on his face as he patted his hair and then blew one of the cooked wonton for him so that Mo Ran could take it into his small, chubby hands and bite away at it. Those eyes looking at him with nothing but kindness, the first person to not stare at him in contempt apart from his mother.
Mo Ran thought of nothing but him when he got adopted, when he first met the guy who was supposedly his cousin (spoiled little peacock brat – ugh, Mo Ran loves the guy) and his uncle and his uncle’s wife. He thought only of that raspy, insecure little voice when he changed schools and then came into middle school and then high school, his life suddenly passing in a blur with Xue Meng around. And other people who looked at him like they actually liked him, now that Mo Ran tried his best to be a nice person in some way after being shown kindness by that person.
Parts of it did admittedly rush by in attempts to forget those fingers touching his and taking his hand; long nights filled with alcohol and drugs and meaningless sex, just like the one he’s had with Rong Jiu just a few hours earlier, usually ending with Ye Wangxi holding his hair back when it was still longer so that he wouldn’t get his own vomit in it when he was bent over the toilet. Sometimes, Xue Meng got the honour. Nangong Si refused. Mo Ran loves the guy too, he swears, but he should’ve just puked on his shirt back then, really.
None of it was to any avail though, and he’d never leave his mind, even when Mo Ran started and finished an apprenticeship in half the time he was meant to because if Mo Ran knew how to handle anything, it was cars. So, when Xue Zhengyong brought up that he could look into universities and that him and his wife are totally ready to finance it, and well, that’s how he got here.
Because Mo Ran took it to heart, apart from the money part, so in his last six months of apprenticeship, he did his best to get the highest grades, and then went to apply to several universities and their respective scholarships.
He got accepted for three, and only then did he look into them more.
It was quick research though, because when Mo Ran typed in the name of this city and ‘Mechanics’, the first thing to pop up was a newspaper article about the youngest professor the university has ever had. Out of pure curiosity, Mo Ran clicked – after all, he would have to know whether a professor this young could provide good quality classes so that Mo Ran can make his adoptive family proud.
Well.
There was a picture attached to that article. Not that Mo Ran needed that picture after seeing the name, but-
It matched.
Chu Wanning looked exactly the same as he did back then. Okay, not exactly the same, of course. He’d grown up, and visibly had top surgery, considering the picture featured him wearing a well-fitted white button-up, and back then, Mo Ran distinctly remembers thinking ‘huh, this doesn’t feel like the chests of other guys’, although it took him a while to understand. Not that he cared. Hell, Mo Ran couldn’t possibly care less about whether Chu Wanning is trans or not, but there’s no binder below that white button up, and the slightest shimmer of skin right below.
But his hair was exactly the same, and so was the shape of his face and the look in his eyes and the stern expression topped off by his thin lips, and Mo Ran-
He’d never been that hard in his entire life, and he accepted the university application in a single second.
Apparently, Chu Wanning is thirty-two now. Thirty-two. He started working at this university already several years ago, the news article having been old, but the maths was done quick.
So, after accepting the application and scholarship offer and making a mental note to prepare for any kind of conversations he’d have to have about it, Mo Ran, ahem, well, he beat his meat, and then stared at the ceiling with a whole turmoil of feelings inside of him.
Does Chu Wanning remember him? Is he still as kind? Did he not come because life got in between, or did he make the conscious decision not to come see him? Would he let Mo Ran dick him down until he’s all out of breath and his chest is splotched with red? Would he let him kiss him until his lips are as plump as the wontons he’s made?
Ever since finding out that Chu Wanning could be his teacher, it’s been two months; the scholarship and everything was a last chance kind of thing with them miraculously still having a spot. He got a flat, and he moved into this flat, then had sex with Rong Jiu, then pulled up this specific picture of Chu Wanning instead, and got off.
And now, he’s lying on his new bed, staring into space, and wondering just what exactly led him to make the decision to become Chu Wanning’s student when this is the man he’s been obsessing over horribly, the only person he really and truly wants to see. When this is the guy he’s been jerking it to at least twice a day for the past two months.
When this is the man who never came back when little Mo Ran was always waiting for him, sitting at the window every free minute of his day hoping to see the familiar fluffy white hoodie appear behind the bushes of the orphanage’s gateways.
No one ever came.
He’s still trying to catch his breath from his last session when suddenly, he hears very distinctive sex noises from the apartment over.
Well, it’s nice to know that his neighbours are also going at it like animals because he’d already felt bad about having made his introduction fucking Rong Jiu into his new mattress until he was screaming and crying, Like this, however, he supposes everything is fine. He disturbs the neighbours, and the neighbours disturb him, fine.
Nevertheless, he swiftly reaches for his phone that he dropped somewhere during his last orgasm, just for the picture of Chu Wanning being plastered on it still.
This is either the face of the man who’s never forgotten him, or never remembered him.
And Mo Ran doesn’t know which, but when classes start in three days, he will at least see him. He can decide then whether he’s going to dedicate his life to supporting him or destroying him.
For now, all Mo Ran can do is hope that Chu Wanning remembers.
Kissing him and fucking him be damned – if he remembers him, that’d be more than enough for Mo Ran to make his entire life worth it.