Meng Duimo came home to find Lin Shanyan on the balcony, feeding the birds.
Their balcony was spacious, with the dining area divided into eastern and western sections. One side held grains like millet, foxtail millet, and rice, while the other was stocked with strips of bloody meat.
There was something absurdly imperial about the way Lin Shanyan handled this task, like an emperor holding court as his subjects paid homage.
The laughing falcon was notoriously territorial, aggressive to a fault.
Even someone as busy as Prosecutor Lin, working through the night, would spend his sleep time patrolling his domain, cursing out any clueless newcomers.
It wasn’t that no living creatures were allowed in his territory—rather, they had better fear him and behave obediently.
A few dusky thrushes he’d offended in the past loved to launch projectile attacks, leaving Meng Duimo’s car the victim of five or six undeserved disasters.
Now the obedient subjects had arrived for their rations.
A few feather descendants wearing ankle rings were even mixed in among them. The young man turned a blind eye, letting them chow down happily on the all-you-can-eat buffet.
Beef ribs, venison, frog legs, chicken breasts, fresh fish, and shrimp.
Birds like goshawks, shrikes, and kingfishers were rare visitors, coming only in twos or threes to snatch a bite before fleeing. They had a mutual non-aggression pact with this ill-tempered laughing falcon.
Doves, sparrows, and blue magpies, on the other hand, preferred breadworms and dried crickets, though they’d symbolically peck at a few grains.
Some kid’s pet bird must have slipped out to play. It scarfed down a few mouthfuls of sorghum, then twisted around and glided back through an open window.
Meng Duimo kept his scent carefully suppressed as he stood at a distance, his gaze settling on a blue magpie with its long tail cocked high, devouring its meal.
“…Looks delicious.”
Lin Shanyan clearly knew he wasn’t talking about the millet.
The diminutive king of this mini-zoo gave him a slow glance.
“So what?” The man was utterly unconcerned, his appetite sharpening instead. “If I don’t eat it, some other snake will.”
Lin Shanyan used the barbecue tongs to add a few more pieces of bloody beef diaphragm, then irritably stopped chatting with his husband.
He’d been acting strangely these past few days.
It had started with the prolonged calls.
When he fell asleep and shifted into bird form, his consciousness would sometimes linger, while other times it sank into dreams.
It wasn’t until someone in the owners’ group complained about the noisy bird calls one day that he realized something was off.
[Amber Vista Court Owners Group]
Owners Suspicion: Is there a crow nest around here or something? Middle of the night and 4-5 a.m., that endless aaaaaah-ing is driving me insane!
Zihan Mom: Could it be some machine malfunction? Bird calls don’t sound that awful—my kid couldn’t even sleep.
AAA Wholesale Building Materials Wang Bro: Making a big fuss over nothing. It just means the complex has good landscaping. (speechless)
Make Hailan Study Let Hailan Study: Sounds like it’s haunted… that creepy, spine-chilling laughter… always right at dawn…
Lin Shanyan immediately reinforced all the windows at home, ensuring no further disturbances.
But he hadn’t acted like this before.
Not long after, the haul from his wild hunts around the house increased dramatically.
When Meng Duimo yawned his way out of bed, he’d find a fresh snake gall soaking in his toothbrush cup.
Sometimes fresh trophies would dangle from the bay window or the dining table.
Grass snakes, tree snakes—all manner of species, neatly gutted with precise incisions that made them both practical for eating and visually appealing.
It was like the behavior of a house cat dragging five dead mice to its owner’s bedside overnight to prove its prowess.
But as a snake descendant, Officer Meng still felt his eyebrow twitch.
While Lin Shanyan was washing his face, he calmly called out, “Baby.”
“Hm?”
“I haven’t done anything to upset you lately, have I?” Officer Meng opted for friendly communication. “Marriage is all about communication between husband and husband—no room for misunderstandings.”
Lin Shanyan looked at him in bewilderment as he handed over the snake gall from the rinse cup.
Dark green, like a small piece of chilled jade.
“…”
The young man managed to come up with an explanation.
“Maybe I didn’t finish it and brought it back wrapped up.”
Meng Duimo said mildly, “No problem—the fridge is all yours. Just promise me you’ll eat your fill every day, okay?”
Lin Shanyan smiled and kicked him lightly.
The all-you-can-eat spread lasted three hours.
Once the fun of playing emperor wore off, he shut the balcony doors, letting the birds divvy up the leftovers on their own without refilling the buffet.
Light chopping sounds came from the kitchen as Meng Duimo tied on an apron to cook dinner: three dishes and a soup.
Lin Shanyan spent a good while petting a dove before washing his hands and sidling over to hug him.
He buried his face in the crook of Meng Duimo’s neck, inhaling deeply without thinking.
Meng Duimo casually chatted about the major case they’d recently cracked.
The suspect had three lairs like a crafty rabbit, but modern smart algorithms were insanely powerful—case-solving assistance like nothing else.
Lin Shanyan barely registered a word of it.
He wrapped his arms around the man’s waist, his nose trailing slowly from the nape of his neck to his shoulder blades and down his spine. His breaths came long and warm.
He was simply sniffing, slowly and without pause, unable to stop himself.
Meng Duimo paused in his movements for a long moment.
“Shanyan.”
“…?”
“Are you in mating season?”
Lin Shanyan opened his eyes, as if only just realizing what he was doing.
“Probably not,” he replied on instinct. “I’m just, uh, getting close to you?”
“These past two weeks, the stuff by the bedside has been going through at three times the usual rate.” Meng Duimo took a sip of the rib soup. “I don’t mind. We can call it extra stamina training.”
“If you’re not feeling well, we can head to OAC’s medical department anytime for a checkup.”
Lin Shanyan’s cheeks flushed with uncharacteristic shyness.
He buried his face against his lover’s back, refusing to loosen his embrace or admit just how clingy he was being—even as the other man juggled the heat on two pots and stirred their contents.
“Probably not,” he insisted earnestly. “We’re married… I only like you. How could I possibly have a mating season?”
Meng Duimo chuckled instead.
“You sure about that?”
The fish head and tofu stew had reached perfection.
With a casual flick, the man turned off the burner and drew Lin Shanyan into his arms. Leaning close to his ear, he murmured, “If the breeding phase never kicks in… it just gets stuck in limbo.”
“I heard from the doctor at OAC that some male birds even end up laying eggs…”
Lin Shanyan pinched him wordlessly.
The condition only deepened from there.
It was like coming down with a fever—rising so gradually and subtly that it left him feeling utterly out of sorts.
Outwardly, he carried on as if nothing were amiss, coming across as detached, even cool, with his colleagues.
But in the lulls between meetings, he found himself firing off casual messages to Meng Duimo.
Up on stage, the speaker droned passionately about some tedious city charm evaluation program, exhorting every department to pitch in with the tourism office on image-boosting promotions.
Meng Duimo’s phone buzzed. He tapped it open discreetly, instinctively shielding the screen.
Then he shifted his angle for another look.
It was a strikingly delicate collarbone, slender and elegant.
The photo must have been snapped in the shower—still glistening with water droplets.
Lin Shanyan’s skin had always been that ghostly pale, almost colorless white. Even the slightest careless scratch would leave it faintly pink.
Meng Duimo snapped his phone shut and nodded politely to the colleague prattling on about tourism promo.
Inwardly, though, he was grinning.
Rare to see you like this.
It took Lin Shanyan a good ten minutes or so to snap out of it and realize what he’d been up to.
He was peacocking.
Someone glowered darkly to himself: Just how long is this damn mating season going to last?
His head had already gone fuzzy more than once.
When the meeting wrapped, the group decided to grab a bite together. Meng Duimo and Lin Shanyan trailed along in the crowd, one just behind the other.
“Don’t wander off—it’s been ages since we did a cross-department dinner!”
“Man, I’m craving karaoke tonight~”
Lin Shanyan’s phone buzzed twice.
[Hubby]: Head down and ignoring everyone?
The young man halted abruptly and glanced back over his shoulder.
They were in a secret marriage.
The colleagues chattered on about a new barbecue joint nearby and that viral influencer milk tea everyone was raving about.
He gazed at him, seized by a sudden urge to call out “Hubby.”
Even though he had nothing particular to say.
A faint sound escaped his throat before he swallowed it back down.
Meng Duimo didn’t seem to notice the little moment, continuing ahead with the others.
Lin Shanyan found himself at the tail end of the pack when his phone buzzed twice more.
“You look like you’re suffering.”
“Poor baby.”
He lingered behind the group, thumbing out a reply.
[Yan]: Hubby…
Part of him didn’t want to keep walking.
But right then, the man turned on his heel, wove back through the crowd, and approached him.
Lin Shanyan wore his usual aloof expression.
His eyes were still and deep as an ancient well, his lips pale—but his breathing came uneven.
Meng Duimo drew near, letting the group pull farther ahead without a care.
The distance between them and the others stretched wider.
“You can say it now,” Meng Duimo murmured softly.
Resisting the impulse to bury his face in the man’s chest, Lin Shanyan whispered, “Hubby…”
Meng Duimo ruffled his hair.
“I like you.”
“I’m right here.”
