The corridor of the Beijing University faculty apartments was dead silent on this weekend morning, save for a few stray beams of sunlight filtering through the transom window at the far end, dancing upon the grayish-white floor tiles.
When Silas Shen pulled open his door, his breath hitched slightly.
Hunter Huo was leaning against the white wall opposite him. Today, he had rarely foregone his usual oversized athletic hoodies, opting instead for a finely textured, dark blue cashmere overcoat. The crisp, structured tailoring reined in the lingering boyishness in his bones, bringing out a deeper, more grounded presence that sat perfectly on the boundary between boy and man. His signature blonde hair was styled impeccably, looking as if the morning dawn had been crushed and worked into the tips of his strands.
"Morning, Professor," Hunter stood up straight, his face breaking into a brilliant smile.
Silas leaned against the doorframe, letting his gaze sweep over him. His tone remained cool, yet it carried a sliver of unmaskable softening. "Why are you dressed like this?"
"Today is different." Hunter took a step forward. Within the narrow confines of the foyer, his warm, orange-toned presence as an Alpha expanded instantly. He looked at Silas with complete sincerity, announcing each syllable deliberately: "I'm taking you on an 'official date.'"
Sensing that Silas was about to say something, Hunter swiftly raised a finger to his lips in a shush gesture. "No rejections allowed. None of the previous ones count—Haicheng was a business trip, the wedding was a social event where you brought me along as family, and the lab counts as overtime. Today, I am asking you out, and you are agreeing. This is called a date."
Looking at his determined expression, the corners of Silas's mouth twitched slightly. Instead of voicing a rejection, he tilted his head marginally and asked, "Do you even know what people usually do on a date?"
"Of course I know," Hunter began counting off on his long, powerful fingers. "Eating, watching a movie, and going for a walk."
At that point, he suddenly paused. Leaning his body forward, his obsidian-dark eyes locked firmly onto Silas. He dropped his voice a few decibels, injecting a hook of clear ambiguity into his tone: "And—holding hands."
The words had just left his mouth, and before Silas could react to the blunt demand, he felt his left hand steadily enveloped by a broad, warm, and dry palm.
It was Hunter's hand.
Unlike Silas's hands—which handled precision test tubes year-round and remained slightly cool to the touch—the center of Hunter's palm bore a thin layer of calluses, a footprint left by years of playing basketball and assembling large-scale equipment in the lab. That slightly rough texture brushed against Silas's smooth skin, sending a dense, electric tremor rippling through him.
"Step one, complete." Hunter tightened his grip on that hand, smiling like a general who had just won his opening skirmish.
Silas lowered his head, staring at their intertwined hands. His own fingers were long and pale, clamped tightly by Hunter's tan fingers; the visual contrast yielded a breathtakingly striking harmony. He lifted his eyes to look at Hunter's face, which practically screamed 'I won.' The corner of his mouth ticked upward imperceptibly, and in the end, he couldn't bring himself to pull his hand away.
The date that day was actually as ordinary as that of any common couple.
Hunter took him to a Cantonese restaurant that Silas frequented most. It was an established, time-honored eatery tucked deep inside an alley—not luxuriously decorated, but prized for its tranquility. Throughout the meal, Hunter deftly scalded and rinsed his utensils for him, remembered his aversion to scallions, and recalled his habit when drinking soup. Those subtle, quiet habits formed in the laboratory were magnified in this moment into a tender devotion known as "favoritism."
After dinner came the movie. Hunter had picked a highly rated sci-fi blockbuster.
The lights and shadows of the cinema flared and faded across their faces as the massive screen played out an apocalyptic overture centered on genetic cloning. Silas's professional hazard flared up; halfway through the film, he couldn't resist lowering his voice to point out three glaring biological errors to the youth beside him: "The mitochondrial metabolic rate cannot possibly hit this peak value, the logic behind this angiogenesis is entirely flawed, and furthermore—"
"Professor," Hunter interrupted helplessly. In the darkness, he precisely caught Silas's hand—which was gesturing wildly—and locked their fingers together, pressing them firmly onto his own knee. "We are on a date right now, not peer-reviewing a manuscript. Can we leave a little dignity for the Hollywood screenwriters?"
Silas felt the heat radiating from Hunter's palm, and the remaining words were choked back down his throat by that orange-scented ambiguity. He pursed his lips and fell quiet, only to realize that his subsequent attention was entirely consumed by that single, tightly locked hand.
Their walk was set around the back lake of Beijing University.
The night breeze by the lake was gentle, causing the willows on the bank to sway into dancing, mottled shadows. The weekend campus had shed the clamor of the daytime, leaving only the streetlamps stretching long, broken golden ripples across the water's surface.
Hunter didn't let go the entire time, his ten-finger-intertwined grip exceptionally dominant, yet extraordinarily tender.
As they reached a bench by the lakeside and sat down, Hunter spoke suddenly, shattering the stillness.
"Professor, do you think us being like this counts as serving as a control group for that project of ours?"
Silas turned his head to look at him, his rimless lenses reflecting a sharp, cold glint under the moonlight. "What do you mean?"
"Look, I'm an Alpha and you're an Omega. According to that 99% compatibility, I should be finding every way possible to drag you home right now and drown you in my pheromones." Hunter turned his face, the moonlight shattering within his deep eyes and rippling into an expanse of tenderness. "But right now, I'm reining in my pheromones, and you haven't taken any blockers either. We are just sitting here, holding hands, doing absolutely nothing, yet I feel—"
He paused, his voice softening as if he were afraid of startling the moon's reflection on the lake: "Incredibly happy. This feeling has nothing to do with that damned compatibility percentage, right?"
Silas looked at him, not answering immediately.
In this era where instinct governed emotion, everyone told him that Alpha-Omega pairing was an entirely natural, biological impulse. Yet at this very moment, on this night completely undisturbed by pheromones, he looked at this youth whose eyes held nothing but him. The emotion named "heartbeat" fluttering within his chest was, in fact, far more real and intense than any chemical reaction.
He didn't speak, but he delivered his answer through his actions.
Silas shifted his weight toward Hunter's direction, his shoulder gently pressing against the other's.
The scent of fir and the aroma of oranges brushed against each other inadvertently—not for a marking, but purely for reliance.
Out on the lake, a pair of swans slept with their necks entwined, sending ripple after perfect ripple expanding across the moonlit water.