Diurnal Rhythm [Prompt #41]
Title: Diurnal Rhythm
Rating: R
Length: 3.4K
Warnings: Some gory scenes, but none in excessive detail
Summary: Yixing is cute, maybe a little too cute for Yifan to handle, but always in the worst of times.
Yifan knew how to work a case; he had been in the police force since he’d turned eighteen and managed to become a detective at twenty-nine. He was never sure why he was so good at being an officer, maybe it was because it was all he had worked towards in his life. The minor detail of his mother being a district lawyer may have also helped his extensive knowledge of the law. He always knew his morality and compassion were unwavering. He was always the perfect person for the job, his steeled stomach meaning that he could handle the more gruesome murders given to his department.
However, he had begun to dread each call his desk received. The problem he hadn’t anticipated in all his years of preparation and training was Zhang Yixing. As harmless as he sounded, Yixing was lethal with his rounded almond eyes, styled black hair and godforsaken dimple. He was no murderer, drug dealer or gang member. He was so much worse. He was the Forensic Pathologist Yifan had to work with. Many were confused as to why the detective wouldn’t want to go to the lab to see boyfriend as much as he could. If anything, Yifan avoided any contact with the doctor as he could in their work times.
At home, he couldn’t get enough of Yixing. They were always connected by something when they were in the same room; their hands wrapped around each other’s, arms hung loosely around waists and bodies fully tangled together as they slept.
At work, he couldn’t get away from Yixing fast enough.
The two had met while Yixing was still in university, the younger having stumbled across the Yifan who was lost on the university campus while he was searching for his mother. She was being a keynote speaker in some lecture and had forgotten her laptop. Knowing Yifan would be in the area of her office, she had called upon him to take it to her. He managed to ask the man out on a date to say thank you (without stuttering, which was a shock to him) and it was from there that things progressed.
Yifan knew how cute Yixing was from the beginning but was still delighted when Yixing said he would be going to the lab Yifan’s division used most frequently. It meant that they’d be able to see each other with Yifan’s sporadic shift pattern with no excuses. Things didn’t turn out how Yifan expected.
It was just his luck that he had been placed on the graveyard shift as Yixing was placed on his night rotation. That meant any bodies passing through for processing had to go through the couple.
Yifan would have been happy with the six month shift arrangement, so happy, if it wasn’t for the fact that Yixing was cute at all times. That even meant as he was cutting open bodies with his scalpels, knives and small electric saws. It was very difficult to listen to what the smaller male was saying about entry wounds and exit wounds when his lips were pushed out in the same way they did when he was cooking. And, when he couldn’t reach for some of the tools hung up above the sink and had to use a stool to get them down it drove Yifan insane, because at home he would get them. There was even a time when he was removing a liver for testing and all Yifan had wanted to do was kiss him because he had yawned in the exact same way that a puppy would.
It was a Thursday night, pretty early on in his midnight to six AM shift, when the call of a body being found under some bridge on the edge of Yifan’s district came in. The whole week had been quiet, no need to consult with Yixing at all or even tap the third speed dial button on his phone to inform the lab that there was anybody coming in. Until that night. He made the call, thankful that it was one of the assistants who answered and said they’d inform Dr Zhang to head out to the site immediately, he couldn’t deal with the way he could hear Yixing’s tongue click adorably when he spoke on the phone.
Yifan got there a few minutes before Yixing, allowing some time to process the scene and talk to his officers without having to worry about the urge to touch his adorable boyfriend. He was making sure that any witnesses had their statements taken and that notes on everything were written up by those that were there already, thankful that there was no beautiful smile to turn his head to mush. He had only just managed to delegate the last of the people of the site off as he heard a soft, “I’m here, Detective Wu.”
Yixing knew how awkward Yifan got when he called him that in public, as the younger had a small (inexplicably huge) fetish for role-playing as one of Yifan’s suspects in bed, and it never failed in making the taller man’s back tense.
“Yixing,” Yifan greeted and the man dressed in plastic disposable overalls, which were an unflattering shade of blue, pouted.
“I didn’t go to med school to be a pathologist for nothing, detective. I am coroner on this case,” Yixing was making his way over, his lips discreetly pressing gently to Yifan’s cheek as soon as he was close enough to. “There is a title before my name, just as there is yours.”
Yifan stepped back to show his boyfriend the way, “I’m sorry, doctor.”
“I like it when you call me that, maybe we should add it to the list of bedroom games we have.”
“Yixing,” Yifan warned as they grew closer to where there were other people. “Please don’t start that here.”
“But it is so fun watching you get all flustered,” Yixing whined, his body bending to crouch down and inspect the John Doe on the floor. “Ugh, how long has he been here?”
“It’s your job to determine that, not mine,” Yifan quipped, keeping his eyes on the traffic moving a little way down the road in the hopes of not catching a glimpse of Yixing. “So, can you tell me anything yet?”
“Give me a minute, Yifan,” Yixing mumbled, “I’ve literally just got here and I’ve not even opened my tool kit yet.”
“Stick your thermometer up his ass and get it over with,” Yifan hadn’t meant to sound so crude but he couldn’t help it, it was cold and his jacket was doing nothing to keep off the chill.
“You may want me to do that to you, detective, but I’m not going to do that right here when I can feel that rigor has set in about half way; giving an approximate T.O.D at between ten and fifteen hours ago.” Yixing allowed the rest of the forensics team to take their photographs of the body and Yifan still didn’t look down. “I can give a more accurate recording back at the lab because I’ve forgotten my thermometer anyway.”
Yifan wanted to scream, how could his boyfriend forget something as important as that? He made note to bring it up when they both got home in the morning. “Am I needed for anything else or can I go back to the office and start writing this up for the morning shift?”
“Can you do that at the lab? Given the lacerations on the arms, I think you’re going to want to be there for the autopsy.” Yixing hummed, his overalls crinkling as he stood up. “Unless, you’re not wanting to, because I can always email you the results once I have them. Or I could tell you at home, if it is going to take that long.”
Once again, he screamed silently in his head as Yixing whispered the latter comments and Yifan knew he was going to end up at the lab. Firstly, he could always pick up on the subtle hints that Yixing wanted to spend time with him. Secondly, they had a no talking about work rule as soon as they stepped over their apartment’s threshold. Thirdly, Yifan knew this was Yixing’s first solo case.
It had been a big enough deal that they’d gone out to dinner to celebrate how Yixing would be unleashed upon all those dead bodies on his own. Yifan had wanted to buy a congratulations card, as had Yixing’s best friend, but both he and Lu Han struggled to work out what to write in it. ‘Well done on cutting up bodies well enough to do it without supervision,’ just didn’t have the right ring to it. They had both decided on different celebrations, Lu Han got Yixing drunk and Yifan took Yixing to seventh heaven in their bedroom a few times. But, all three had been present at the dinner to witness Yixing try to shake off his forty eight hour hangover and the limp he’d had almost all day. There were few times that Yifan and Lu Han high fived but it happened every time Yixing complained about whether or not his head or ass hurt more. All events had been a great success but Yifan knew the nerves were beginning to set in. Hence the forgotten thermometer, Yifan guessed.
“No,” Yifan moved close enough for his body heat to pass to Yixing, “I’ll go straight to the lab and set up in the observation room, you’ve still got my laptop, right?”
“Yes,” Yixing was beaming and Yifan couldn’t help but look at him, the impulse to kiss those teeth parted lips became unbearable. “It's in the left drawer of my desk.”
Yifan wasted no time in leaving the scene, his forte was not looking at the bodies but finding the killers. He had no problems with Yixing doing it; it was what the younger was both good at and wanted to do. Yifan was fully supportive of him, in fact, but sometimes he wished he could go home and not find one of Yixing’s experiments in their fridge. Sometimes those little tubs of blood often looked a lot like jam, much to Yifan’s queasy stomach’s dismay.
The drive to the lab was shorter than his journey to where the body was and he could feel a little excitement bubbling up within him at the idea of spending the rest of his shift with Yixing. But, Yifan would be staying firmly behind the glass screen that would separate them. Yixing, hopefully, would be far enough away for him to be less of an issue for Yifan. If he wasn’t within reaching distance, then there was no chance of Yifan becoming a bumbling idiot.
Yifan was fully settled in the chair that looked into the dull grey room Yixing did most of his work in, the metal table cleaned and primed for the body to be placed on. One of the nightly assistants placing all the tools and devices needed to complete an autopsy and she exited with a silent bow towards Yifan, who was already prepping the report to file. Yixing’s and the rest of the other forensics team’s initial scene notes were what would be needed to hand the case over to those with more authority.
Yixing came in with his scrubs on, the body on a trolley and he barely even looked at Yifan before he started talking to the assistant who followed him in, with a camera in her hand. Not that the elder minded, the more he could get written down in the report but it was ten minutes in that Yixing started speaking over the clicks of the photographs being taken.
“There are thirty eight incised wounds on the forearms and sixteen penetrating wounds on the torso, neck and sternum,” Yixing’s voice started to say, his grey recording device laying down on the table empty table and Yifan tried to block it out, even though he should be listening. “Clear indications of a struggle to fend off an attacker with scratches on the hands and wrists. The closeness of the wounds lending itself to a fast and brutal attack, the splatter at the scene backs that up.”
Yifan closed his eyes, drawing in a breath and exhaling slowly, he didn’t want to look up. He knew he shouldn’t have. But this was Yifan and it was Yixing, he couldn’t stop his eyes from moving to the man he loved and lived with. He simply made the mistake of looking when he did, right when Yixing was cutting open the body.
The detective had seen this process numerous times before and never been affected by it, his eyes falling on Yixing’s lips that cased the tongue which had poked itself out in concentration. The younger pointing the tip of the appendage adorably and Yifan wanted to break through the glass to draw him into his arms, giving him the opportunity to coo over him.
“The cuts are thin, so I am going to guess a knife was used,” Yixing’s hands were shaking as he held his scalpel, fingers loosening and rewrapping around it constantly, which only made Yifan want to close his own hands around Yixing’s to steady him. As Yixing peeled the body open, eyes scouring the insides before he hummed in confusion. “Oh, I saw something like this in med school.”
“What?” Yifan asked, shaking his head softly to clear his head.
“The small intestine, it’s almost bright purple.” Yixing was poking where Yifan couldn’t see, his brows furrowed as he pushed things around and Yifan should have been grossed out by how easily he did everything with a victim’s body. Yet, there he was, having those feelings again. “I’ve only seen this when I studied self-medicating as part of my thesis, some people use Bovine Diazepam to do that and it dyes the small intestine’s lining purple.”
Yixing’s expression turned thoughtful, “Was there any ID on the victim? Or, are you waiting on DNA.”
“DNA,” Yifan replied, watching as Yixing stood completely upright, his mouth moving as he spoke softly to himself and it reminded Yifan of when he’d watch Yixing’s mouth open and close while he slept. The gentle popping sounds of his lips meeting and the hushed breathing that sounded like slurred words. “Why?”
“Very few people, other than those on antipsychotics, take them,” Yixing’s lips pouted out, his gloved hand’s resting on the edge of the body’s table. “My guess is that he will be in the database.”
“That’s the hope,” Yifan replied, watching how Yixing shifted from foot to foot nervously and wanted to say something relaxing but he knew Yixing’s recording would pick it up. And Yixing’s nerves shouldn’t be aired, in case they played the tape back in court. Yifan did not want to be the reason why Yixing’s professional integrity was brought into question. “So, do you think he died from an overdose or stabbing?”
“The stabbing,” Yixing affirmed, almost instantly, his gaze turning serious from its glazed over state. He thinned his lips out as he pointed to things on the body with his little finger for the assistant to photograph. “None of the wounds are post-mortem, all have damage to the epithelium and there’s definite coagulation around the wounds. I am certain they were all ante-mortem.”
“Can you work out the killing blow?”
“There are three deeper lacerations on the neck,” Yixing’s voice cracked slightly and his eyes darted up to Yifan, who helpfully told him to take deep breaths and the doctor followed his directions. Yifan found pride in the fact that Yixing seemed to relax a little more, his confidence filling his shoulders to replace the tension. “One cutting almost perfectly through the jugular, this victim definitely died from the blood loss.”
Yifan looked down at his report, quickly tapping away on the keys to record what Yixing had said and he heard a small clatter, the quiet squeak from Yixing making Yifan frown. He saw the assistant running straight out the door, Yixing stood with his eyes closed and his stance completely stressed again.
Yifan cleared his throat, hands gesturing to the recorder on the table when Yixing finally looked at him and the younger immediately turned it off and walked to the glass screen.
“You’re doing great, okay?” Yifan whispered quietly, his hand pressing against the clear panel between them, Yixing pressing his forehead to the other side and he pouted slightly.
“I’m so nervous,” Yixing worried, his lip drawing between his teeth to be chewed on and Yifan had the urge to press his lips against the glass, in hopes it would disappear and he’s reach Yixing. “What if I get everything wrong and something bad happens to somebody because of me? I mean, I dropped my scalpel and I never drop it.”
“It’s okay, Xing, nothing will be your fault if things go wrong,” Yifan assured, “You can always get a second opinion or rely on the scene evidence to back up what you say. Rely on me to make sure nothing false happens in this case. I would never want your first solo autopsy to be something bad for you, so don’t think about what could happen after you’ve done this, leave that to me, only focus on what’s in front of you.”
Yixing hummed, moving his head from side to side and looking as though he was nuzzling into Yifan’s pale. To that, the detective mentally cursed his boyfriend but didn’t say anything aloud and they stayed like that until the assistant returned to the room with a scalpel in a packet.
She eyed them knowingly as she put on new gloves, her being the one who had caught Yifan and Yixing out on an anniversary date, something that they couldn’t deny because Yifan had his lips plastered to Yixing’s for most of the night. It was safe to say that the rest of the department had quickly found out, many teasing comments being thrown Yifan’s way whenever Yixing turned up at his office to pick him up.
Yixing turned the recording device back on, popping the scalpel out and working with a little more comfort. His eyes would wander to Yifan when he got nervous again, to which the elder gave him an encouraging smile or blew him a kiss. Yixing blushed when the latter happened; his usual comments of Yifan being gross held back as he swabbed stab marks and inspected organs for blade damage.
Yifan found himself staring at Yixing a few too many times, his heart beating fast when Yixing crinkled his nose as he thought, blinked slowly as he spoke about wound lengths and the breathy sighs that would leave his mouth as he tried to work out the stabbing pattern by eye. The detective only smiled when Yixing determined that the assailant would have been left handed and gave Yifan an approximate height in regards to how the assailant had gone about attacking the unnamed victim.
It took three hours to fully go through everything they needed to, Yixing often doing double checks or asking the assistant’s opinion as she took her photos, but Yifan didn’t mind waiting. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to go home with Yixing, to escape to the place where he could trap his boyfriend in his arms to kiss him for hours. The detective e-mailed the reports to the man who would be clocking in as he left; waiting in the reception area of Yixing’s building for the man who was showering away all of the grime from his body. It was when the elevator doors opened, that Yifan finally smiled at the cuteness in front of him and his eyes had to be forcefully torn away from the dimple that greeted him.
“Are you ready to go home?” Yixing asked as a greeting, his own clothes making him Yifan’s boyfriend again and not the pathologist he had been all night. It made them Yifan and Yixing, not the doctor and the detective, “I’ve got leftovers in the fridge and some beers in there too, if you’re interested?”
“Sounds good to me,” Yifan hummed, finally letting his hand lace with Yixing’s and his lips to press softly onto his freshly cleaned head. “But, you did great today, Xing, and I’m really proud of you. So, why don’t we go out for breakfast instead? I think you deserve it.”
“If you’re paying, I’ll eat anything,” Yixing was looking up at Yifan with the brightest expression in the world, the detective melting enough to capture to smiling lips between his own and ignore the soft whistles from Lu Han, who should have been busy processing DNA on clothing.
Yixing had a dazed look on his face when Yifan pulled away and Yifan thought he was cute. Too cute.
Rating: R
Length: 3.4K
Warnings: Some gory scenes, but none in excessive detail
Summary: Yixing is cute, maybe a little too cute for Yifan to handle, but always in the worst of times.
Yifan knew how to work a case; he had been in the police force since he’d turned eighteen and managed to become a detective at twenty-nine. He was never sure why he was so good at being an officer, maybe it was because it was all he had worked towards in his life. The minor detail of his mother being a district lawyer may have also helped his extensive knowledge of the law. He always knew his morality and compassion were unwavering. He was always the perfect person for the job, his steeled stomach meaning that he could handle the more gruesome murders given to his department.
However, he had begun to dread each call his desk received. The problem he hadn’t anticipated in all his years of preparation and training was Zhang Yixing. As harmless as he sounded, Yixing was lethal with his rounded almond eyes, styled black hair and godforsaken dimple. He was no murderer, drug dealer or gang member. He was so much worse. He was the Forensic Pathologist Yifan had to work with. Many were confused as to why the detective wouldn’t want to go to the lab to see boyfriend as much as he could. If anything, Yifan avoided any contact with the doctor as he could in their work times.
At home, he couldn’t get enough of Yixing. They were always connected by something when they were in the same room; their hands wrapped around each other’s, arms hung loosely around waists and bodies fully tangled together as they slept.
At work, he couldn’t get away from Yixing fast enough.
The two had met while Yixing was still in university, the younger having stumbled across the Yifan who was lost on the university campus while he was searching for his mother. She was being a keynote speaker in some lecture and had forgotten her laptop. Knowing Yifan would be in the area of her office, she had called upon him to take it to her. He managed to ask the man out on a date to say thank you (without stuttering, which was a shock to him) and it was from there that things progressed.
Yifan knew how cute Yixing was from the beginning but was still delighted when Yixing said he would be going to the lab Yifan’s division used most frequently. It meant that they’d be able to see each other with Yifan’s sporadic shift pattern with no excuses. Things didn’t turn out how Yifan expected.
It was just his luck that he had been placed on the graveyard shift as Yixing was placed on his night rotation. That meant any bodies passing through for processing had to go through the couple.
Yifan would have been happy with the six month shift arrangement, so happy, if it wasn’t for the fact that Yixing was cute at all times. That even meant as he was cutting open bodies with his scalpels, knives and small electric saws. It was very difficult to listen to what the smaller male was saying about entry wounds and exit wounds when his lips were pushed out in the same way they did when he was cooking. And, when he couldn’t reach for some of the tools hung up above the sink and had to use a stool to get them down it drove Yifan insane, because at home he would get them. There was even a time when he was removing a liver for testing and all Yifan had wanted to do was kiss him because he had yawned in the exact same way that a puppy would.
It was a Thursday night, pretty early on in his midnight to six AM shift, when the call of a body being found under some bridge on the edge of Yifan’s district came in. The whole week had been quiet, no need to consult with Yixing at all or even tap the third speed dial button on his phone to inform the lab that there was anybody coming in. Until that night. He made the call, thankful that it was one of the assistants who answered and said they’d inform Dr Zhang to head out to the site immediately, he couldn’t deal with the way he could hear Yixing’s tongue click adorably when he spoke on the phone.
Yifan got there a few minutes before Yixing, allowing some time to process the scene and talk to his officers without having to worry about the urge to touch his adorable boyfriend. He was making sure that any witnesses had their statements taken and that notes on everything were written up by those that were there already, thankful that there was no beautiful smile to turn his head to mush. He had only just managed to delegate the last of the people of the site off as he heard a soft, “I’m here, Detective Wu.”
Yixing knew how awkward Yifan got when he called him that in public, as the younger had a small (inexplicably huge) fetish for role-playing as one of Yifan’s suspects in bed, and it never failed in making the taller man’s back tense.
“Yixing,” Yifan greeted and the man dressed in plastic disposable overalls, which were an unflattering shade of blue, pouted.
“I didn’t go to med school to be a pathologist for nothing, detective. I am coroner on this case,” Yixing was making his way over, his lips discreetly pressing gently to Yifan’s cheek as soon as he was close enough to. “There is a title before my name, just as there is yours.”
Yifan stepped back to show his boyfriend the way, “I’m sorry, doctor.”
“I like it when you call me that, maybe we should add it to the list of bedroom games we have.”
“Yixing,” Yifan warned as they grew closer to where there were other people. “Please don’t start that here.”
“But it is so fun watching you get all flustered,” Yixing whined, his body bending to crouch down and inspect the John Doe on the floor. “Ugh, how long has he been here?”
“It’s your job to determine that, not mine,” Yifan quipped, keeping his eyes on the traffic moving a little way down the road in the hopes of not catching a glimpse of Yixing. “So, can you tell me anything yet?”
“Give me a minute, Yifan,” Yixing mumbled, “I’ve literally just got here and I’ve not even opened my tool kit yet.”
“Stick your thermometer up his ass and get it over with,” Yifan hadn’t meant to sound so crude but he couldn’t help it, it was cold and his jacket was doing nothing to keep off the chill.
“You may want me to do that to you, detective, but I’m not going to do that right here when I can feel that rigor has set in about half way; giving an approximate T.O.D at between ten and fifteen hours ago.” Yixing allowed the rest of the forensics team to take their photographs of the body and Yifan still didn’t look down. “I can give a more accurate recording back at the lab because I’ve forgotten my thermometer anyway.”
Yifan wanted to scream, how could his boyfriend forget something as important as that? He made note to bring it up when they both got home in the morning. “Am I needed for anything else or can I go back to the office and start writing this up for the morning shift?”
“Can you do that at the lab? Given the lacerations on the arms, I think you’re going to want to be there for the autopsy.” Yixing hummed, his overalls crinkling as he stood up. “Unless, you’re not wanting to, because I can always email you the results once I have them. Or I could tell you at home, if it is going to take that long.”
Once again, he screamed silently in his head as Yixing whispered the latter comments and Yifan knew he was going to end up at the lab. Firstly, he could always pick up on the subtle hints that Yixing wanted to spend time with him. Secondly, they had a no talking about work rule as soon as they stepped over their apartment’s threshold. Thirdly, Yifan knew this was Yixing’s first solo case.
It had been a big enough deal that they’d gone out to dinner to celebrate how Yixing would be unleashed upon all those dead bodies on his own. Yifan had wanted to buy a congratulations card, as had Yixing’s best friend, but both he and Lu Han struggled to work out what to write in it. ‘Well done on cutting up bodies well enough to do it without supervision,’ just didn’t have the right ring to it. They had both decided on different celebrations, Lu Han got Yixing drunk and Yifan took Yixing to seventh heaven in their bedroom a few times. But, all three had been present at the dinner to witness Yixing try to shake off his forty eight hour hangover and the limp he’d had almost all day. There were few times that Yifan and Lu Han high fived but it happened every time Yixing complained about whether or not his head or ass hurt more. All events had been a great success but Yifan knew the nerves were beginning to set in. Hence the forgotten thermometer, Yifan guessed.
“No,” Yifan moved close enough for his body heat to pass to Yixing, “I’ll go straight to the lab and set up in the observation room, you’ve still got my laptop, right?”
“Yes,” Yixing was beaming and Yifan couldn’t help but look at him, the impulse to kiss those teeth parted lips became unbearable. “It's in the left drawer of my desk.”
Yifan wasted no time in leaving the scene, his forte was not looking at the bodies but finding the killers. He had no problems with Yixing doing it; it was what the younger was both good at and wanted to do. Yifan was fully supportive of him, in fact, but sometimes he wished he could go home and not find one of Yixing’s experiments in their fridge. Sometimes those little tubs of blood often looked a lot like jam, much to Yifan’s queasy stomach’s dismay.
The drive to the lab was shorter than his journey to where the body was and he could feel a little excitement bubbling up within him at the idea of spending the rest of his shift with Yixing. But, Yifan would be staying firmly behind the glass screen that would separate them. Yixing, hopefully, would be far enough away for him to be less of an issue for Yifan. If he wasn’t within reaching distance, then there was no chance of Yifan becoming a bumbling idiot.
Yifan was fully settled in the chair that looked into the dull grey room Yixing did most of his work in, the metal table cleaned and primed for the body to be placed on. One of the nightly assistants placing all the tools and devices needed to complete an autopsy and she exited with a silent bow towards Yifan, who was already prepping the report to file. Yixing’s and the rest of the other forensics team’s initial scene notes were what would be needed to hand the case over to those with more authority.
Yixing came in with his scrubs on, the body on a trolley and he barely even looked at Yifan before he started talking to the assistant who followed him in, with a camera in her hand. Not that the elder minded, the more he could get written down in the report but it was ten minutes in that Yixing started speaking over the clicks of the photographs being taken.
“There are thirty eight incised wounds on the forearms and sixteen penetrating wounds on the torso, neck and sternum,” Yixing’s voice started to say, his grey recording device laying down on the table empty table and Yifan tried to block it out, even though he should be listening. “Clear indications of a struggle to fend off an attacker with scratches on the hands and wrists. The closeness of the wounds lending itself to a fast and brutal attack, the splatter at the scene backs that up.”
Yifan closed his eyes, drawing in a breath and exhaling slowly, he didn’t want to look up. He knew he shouldn’t have. But this was Yifan and it was Yixing, he couldn’t stop his eyes from moving to the man he loved and lived with. He simply made the mistake of looking when he did, right when Yixing was cutting open the body.
The detective had seen this process numerous times before and never been affected by it, his eyes falling on Yixing’s lips that cased the tongue which had poked itself out in concentration. The younger pointing the tip of the appendage adorably and Yifan wanted to break through the glass to draw him into his arms, giving him the opportunity to coo over him.
“The cuts are thin, so I am going to guess a knife was used,” Yixing’s hands were shaking as he held his scalpel, fingers loosening and rewrapping around it constantly, which only made Yifan want to close his own hands around Yixing’s to steady him. As Yixing peeled the body open, eyes scouring the insides before he hummed in confusion. “Oh, I saw something like this in med school.”
“What?” Yifan asked, shaking his head softly to clear his head.
“The small intestine, it’s almost bright purple.” Yixing was poking where Yifan couldn’t see, his brows furrowed as he pushed things around and Yifan should have been grossed out by how easily he did everything with a victim’s body. Yet, there he was, having those feelings again. “I’ve only seen this when I studied self-medicating as part of my thesis, some people use Bovine Diazepam to do that and it dyes the small intestine’s lining purple.”
Yixing’s expression turned thoughtful, “Was there any ID on the victim? Or, are you waiting on DNA.”
“DNA,” Yifan replied, watching as Yixing stood completely upright, his mouth moving as he spoke softly to himself and it reminded Yifan of when he’d watch Yixing’s mouth open and close while he slept. The gentle popping sounds of his lips meeting and the hushed breathing that sounded like slurred words. “Why?”
“Very few people, other than those on antipsychotics, take them,” Yixing’s lips pouted out, his gloved hand’s resting on the edge of the body’s table. “My guess is that he will be in the database.”
“That’s the hope,” Yifan replied, watching how Yixing shifted from foot to foot nervously and wanted to say something relaxing but he knew Yixing’s recording would pick it up. And Yixing’s nerves shouldn’t be aired, in case they played the tape back in court. Yifan did not want to be the reason why Yixing’s professional integrity was brought into question. “So, do you think he died from an overdose or stabbing?”
“The stabbing,” Yixing affirmed, almost instantly, his gaze turning serious from its glazed over state. He thinned his lips out as he pointed to things on the body with his little finger for the assistant to photograph. “None of the wounds are post-mortem, all have damage to the epithelium and there’s definite coagulation around the wounds. I am certain they were all ante-mortem.”
“Can you work out the killing blow?”
“There are three deeper lacerations on the neck,” Yixing’s voice cracked slightly and his eyes darted up to Yifan, who helpfully told him to take deep breaths and the doctor followed his directions. Yifan found pride in the fact that Yixing seemed to relax a little more, his confidence filling his shoulders to replace the tension. “One cutting almost perfectly through the jugular, this victim definitely died from the blood loss.”
Yifan looked down at his report, quickly tapping away on the keys to record what Yixing had said and he heard a small clatter, the quiet squeak from Yixing making Yifan frown. He saw the assistant running straight out the door, Yixing stood with his eyes closed and his stance completely stressed again.
Yifan cleared his throat, hands gesturing to the recorder on the table when Yixing finally looked at him and the younger immediately turned it off and walked to the glass screen.
“You’re doing great, okay?” Yifan whispered quietly, his hand pressing against the clear panel between them, Yixing pressing his forehead to the other side and he pouted slightly.
“I’m so nervous,” Yixing worried, his lip drawing between his teeth to be chewed on and Yifan had the urge to press his lips against the glass, in hopes it would disappear and he’s reach Yixing. “What if I get everything wrong and something bad happens to somebody because of me? I mean, I dropped my scalpel and I never drop it.”
“It’s okay, Xing, nothing will be your fault if things go wrong,” Yifan assured, “You can always get a second opinion or rely on the scene evidence to back up what you say. Rely on me to make sure nothing false happens in this case. I would never want your first solo autopsy to be something bad for you, so don’t think about what could happen after you’ve done this, leave that to me, only focus on what’s in front of you.”
Yixing hummed, moving his head from side to side and looking as though he was nuzzling into Yifan’s pale. To that, the detective mentally cursed his boyfriend but didn’t say anything aloud and they stayed like that until the assistant returned to the room with a scalpel in a packet.
She eyed them knowingly as she put on new gloves, her being the one who had caught Yifan and Yixing out on an anniversary date, something that they couldn’t deny because Yifan had his lips plastered to Yixing’s for most of the night. It was safe to say that the rest of the department had quickly found out, many teasing comments being thrown Yifan’s way whenever Yixing turned up at his office to pick him up.
Yixing turned the recording device back on, popping the scalpel out and working with a little more comfort. His eyes would wander to Yifan when he got nervous again, to which the elder gave him an encouraging smile or blew him a kiss. Yixing blushed when the latter happened; his usual comments of Yifan being gross held back as he swabbed stab marks and inspected organs for blade damage.
Yifan found himself staring at Yixing a few too many times, his heart beating fast when Yixing crinkled his nose as he thought, blinked slowly as he spoke about wound lengths and the breathy sighs that would leave his mouth as he tried to work out the stabbing pattern by eye. The detective only smiled when Yixing determined that the assailant would have been left handed and gave Yifan an approximate height in regards to how the assailant had gone about attacking the unnamed victim.
It took three hours to fully go through everything they needed to, Yixing often doing double checks or asking the assistant’s opinion as she took her photos, but Yifan didn’t mind waiting. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to go home with Yixing, to escape to the place where he could trap his boyfriend in his arms to kiss him for hours. The detective e-mailed the reports to the man who would be clocking in as he left; waiting in the reception area of Yixing’s building for the man who was showering away all of the grime from his body. It was when the elevator doors opened, that Yifan finally smiled at the cuteness in front of him and his eyes had to be forcefully torn away from the dimple that greeted him.
“Are you ready to go home?” Yixing asked as a greeting, his own clothes making him Yifan’s boyfriend again and not the pathologist he had been all night. It made them Yifan and Yixing, not the doctor and the detective, “I’ve got leftovers in the fridge and some beers in there too, if you’re interested?”
“Sounds good to me,” Yifan hummed, finally letting his hand lace with Yixing’s and his lips to press softly onto his freshly cleaned head. “But, you did great today, Xing, and I’m really proud of you. So, why don’t we go out for breakfast instead? I think you deserve it.”
“If you’re paying, I’ll eat anything,” Yixing was looking up at Yifan with the brightest expression in the world, the detective melting enough to capture to smiling lips between his own and ignore the soft whistles from Lu Han, who should have been busy processing DNA on clothing.
Yixing had a dazed look on his face when Yifan pulled away and Yifan thought he was cute. Too cute.