The equipment room was cold and damp, the air thick with the acrid, chemical scent of aged anti-vibration foam. Yet, within that cheap, industrial odor, a trace of something else had begun to drift—a scent of cold cedar, agonizingly clear and meticulously restrained.
Silas Shen's wrist was held in a death-grip by Hunter Huo.
The force wasn't immense; in fact, it carried a tremor born of absolute exhaustion. Yet, to Silas, it felt like a brand of red-hot iron, numbing half of his body with its intensity.
"Professor... don't go..."
Hunter let out a mumble in his sleep, his head tilting instinctively to nuzzle against Silas's cool palm. The movement was too much like a wounded pup—one that was hurt but still trying its best to guard its master. It was a display of vulnerability that made Silas's heart ache with a physical sharp pain.
Silas remained half-kneeling on the dusty floor, his frame rigid, his fingertips sensing the coarse yet soft texture of the boy's hair.
He looked at the heavy, dark circles under Hunter's eyes, and his chest felt as though it had been stuffed with wet cotton, making it hard to breathe. He thought to himself: Silas Shen, you are a despicable man. He was standing there, draped in a "purity" and "innocence" that this boy had bled himself dry to provide, all while maintaining the farce of the haughty professor.
He had even slapped him. He had struck the very hand that had held him together through the night.
Silas took a deep breath, his vision blurring slightly in the gloom. He braced his other hand against the floor and began to very slowly, very carefully, attempt to slide his wrist out of Hunter's grasp.
He was terrified of waking the pup.
Even more, he was terrified of meeting those eyes—eyes that, once awake, would surely be filled with that stubborn, "I don't need your pity" pride.
"Mmm..."
Sensing the departure of the heat source, Hunter's brow furrowed deeper. His body curled inward slightly amongst the foam, a restless, unsettled movement.
Silas's heart skipped a beat. He quickly reached into the deep pocket of his lab coat and pulled out an unopened tube of expensive, high-grade gland restoration cream. It was a specialized treatment he had bought on a frantic detour to the campus infirmary under the guise of "retrieving consumables."
He knew Hunter's gland had to be damaged. For an Alpha to force out such a massive, sustained volume of stabilizing pheromones, the internal capillaries of the gland would inevitably rupture.
Silas's fingers were trembling as he peeled back the packaging, dabbing a bit of the cool, transparent ointment onto his fingertip.
He leaned in toward the nape of Hunter's neck. There was no isolation patch there; Hunter didn't care about his scent leaking out. He had wanted every drop of his presence to be available to Silas.
Silas's movements were as delicate as if he were handling the most fragile biological specimen in a cleanroom.
The moment his fingertip brushed the skin at the nape of Hunter's neck, the radiating heat nearly caused Silas to recoil. He gritted his teeth, slowly spreading the cream over the slight, inflamed swelling of the gland.
The ointment melted against the skin. The cooling sensation caused Hunter to relax his brow in his sleep, letting out a faint, satisfied hum of relief.
Silas watched him, his gaze swirling with a complex storm of emotions. There was guilt, there was hesitation, and there was a flickering flame of something he didn't dare name: heartbreak.
Just then, Hunter's eyelashes fluttered.
Silas felt as though he had been struck by lightning. Driven by a raw, panicked instinct, he yanked his hand back, the tube of ointment slipping from his fingers and vanishing into the pile of foam. He didn't stop to retrieve it. He scrambled to his feet, his head spinning from the sudden movement.
In the second before Hunter's eyes could fully open, Silas turned and fled the equipment room with a frantic, wide-strided desperation.
Thud.
The soft sound of the door closing caused Hunter to snap awake.
He sat up in the foam, his gaze glazed and bewildered as he scanned the empty room. In the air, there was still a lingering, ghost-like wisp of cold cedar—so faint it felt like a hallucination, or perhaps a gentle, unspoken goodbye.
Hunter reached back and touched the nape of his neck. His fingertips came away wet with a cool, mint-scented liquid.
He froze.
He reached down and fished out the discarded tube of ointment from the foam, staring at the expensive, imported label. He looked back at the closed door, his mind racing.
"...Silas Shen?"
He murmured the name, a spark of disbelief lighting up his eyes for a fleeting second. But then, the light died out. He let out a self-deprecating chuckle, clutching the tube tightly in his palm. He lowered his head and took a long, deep breath of the air, trying to catch the last remnant of the Professor's scent.
"Stop dreaming... why would he ever come to a place like this?"
The pup muttered to himself, his gaze returning to a quiet, lonely stillness. He assumed this was just "trash" Silas had dropped in the lab earlier, or perhaps a small act of "charity" born of a momentary lapse in conscience.
He didn't know that behind the closed door, the haughty Professor was currently leaning against the wall, nearly choking on his own tears.