Good things come to those who...

...Wait.

Shao Fei had never been good at waiting.

He had too much unbridled energy bubbling beneath his skin, itching to escape in some form of movement or vocalisation. He essentially had the most extreme form of 'restless leg syndrome', except it was his entire body instead. Even his hair seemed to buzz with some unrestrained level of excitement when he's forced to wait for longer than 5 seconds.

Surprisingly, though, the restlessness in waiting for Tang Yi didn't settle in him until a year into his sentence.

The day dawned normally, with him rolling out of bed in a desperate hurry to get ready for work, until he suddenly became very aware of the empty space at his table.

The thing is, it's not as if he hadn't missed Tang Yi in all this time. He missed him every day until he could visit him, and then missed him some more 3 minutes after leaving the prison. But this was something else entirely, this was something lying on the surface of his skin, like a thin layer of perspiration, which caused his whole body to half shudder.

In that moment he felt so helpless, so desperate to see Tang Yi, that he was almost tempted to phone into work claiming he was sick (which Zhao Zi would found particularly suspect, given they had spent the night before together watching films and eating copious amounts of junk food). He quickly dismissed the thought with the last remaining braincell in his head that was still thinking straight.

That day was impossibly long, each hour stretching the length of a millennium, the clocks at the precinct mocking Shao Fei with its slow ticking. If Zhao Zi and Yi Qi noticed he was less of himself that day, they didn't say anything (although Zhao Zi had cornered him in the bathroom with a surprisingly stern look claiming that said they'll 'talk about this later', but other than that everyone had been thankfully very normal with him).

The work day finally ended and Shao Fei honestly could feel his eyeballs vibrating in their sockets, and he ran from the station to the prison in a record breaking time (he would usually have taken a taxi, but considering he was now filled with enough energy to power an electric car, he thought the run might do him some good). Desperately out of breath, he reaches the entrance of the prison, gasping some sort of sequence of words to the warden before he finds himself in the familiar space of the prison meeting room.

Tang Yi wasn't there yet, which made Shao Fei even more impatient. He began bouncing his leg rather ferociously, causing the woman to his right (who was holding a half-asleep baby in her arms) to glare at him. He promptly stopped, only to find his hands were now just as jittery.

Then, finally, finally, there he was. Still dressed in the awful prison uniform, hair still a messy flat mop on the top of his head, eyes still lined with dark circles (truly the biggest punishment about jail was having to get up so goddamn early every day, it really had had a strong effect on Tang Yi's temperament).

He was still Tang Yi, of course.

But for some reason, Shao Fei felt like he was seeing him for the first time in so long. And the need to touch and hold the other man brewed up in him like smoke, filling his lungs and cutting off his airways. One of the police officers in the room beckoned Shao Fei forward, gesturing to the phone, which Tang Yi was already hold up against his ear. Shao Fei tried to not let the shake in his hands show as he picked up the receiver and pulled it to his own ear.

'Hey' Shao Fei didn't realise his voice could get that breathless sounding, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. 'H-How are things?'

Tang Yi smiled at him then, a gentle and unassuming thing that still made Shao Fei's heart soar whenever he saw it.

'I miss you' He then blurted out without meaning to. The smile on Tang Yi's face faded to a frown, which made his heart hurt even more.

'What's wrong?' He asked with a concerned tone. 'What happened?'

'Nothing... nothing happened I just...' Shao Fei took a deep breath before continuing. 'I'm just tired of waiting... Because I miss you... So much...'

Realisation dawned on Tang Yi's face and the smile returned, making Shao Fei silently rejoice.

'I understand completely... Sometimes I feel like I miss you so much that I'm going to explode.' Tang Yi confesses. 'Almost like I have been asleep the entire day until I get to see you, and only then do I wake up...'

Shao Fei could feel his eyes watering up, the receiver pressed almost painfully against his ear in the hope it would make Tang Yi feel closer.

'Do we really have another two years of this?' Shao Fei asked softly.

'I'm afraid so...' Tang Yi sighed defeatedly. 'But you know what they say?'

Shao Fei shook his head.

'Good things come to those who wait' Tang Yi said with a smile.

And for once, Shao Fei could maybe learn to be a little better at waiting.