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Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
- William Earnest Henley, “Invictus”
***
Chi Cheng is a boy, though he wants desperately to be a man.
A man would not have to sit through fifth grade.
A man would not be made to listen to grammar lessons and long division and other ten year olds.
They’re all sitting at their desks and listening to the teacher. Well, most of them are. Not Chi Cheng, that’s for sure. He’s drawing in his textbook. There was a rhabdophis subminatus on a vine that he saw on his way to school. Which was rare and special for that time of day, and Chi Cheng wanted it to mean that there would be luck in store for him today. Maybe if he drew it, fixed it into place there on the page, it would stay with him. Keep him company.
“How many presents did you get for Valentine’s Day?”
“I got three - what about you, what about you, what about you?”
Some boys ahead of him are whispering to each other, just out of range of the teacher’s hearing. They’re too quiet for her but much too loud for him. His head hurts. Why do they talk so often, and so quickly, and so incessantly?
“Seven,” he murmurs, hoping that a one-word answer will make them shut up. Hoping his lucky snake will be lucky for him now.
“Seven? How did you get seven??”
“He’s rich, idiot, of course he got seven.”
“Ow!”
“Have the chocolate if you want it,” Chi Cheng sighs.
“Don’t you want to keep it? You’ll make them feel bad! Then you won’t get any next year!”
“I don’t want it.”
An eager whisper, behind some sweaty, snotty hand that doesn’t hide the sound.“Just take it! The girls won’t like him anymore. Then we’ll get more next year!”
“Why don’t you want it?” This from the biggest boy in class, the loudest too. Yue Gotao. The one who burns anthills with his magnifying glass during recess and tears the wings off of grasshoppers when the teacher isn’t looking. He’s twisted around his seat - he sits in front of Chi Cheng, so that Chi Cheng has to stare at his sweaty hair and the rolls of fat on the back of his neck all day - to not-whisper, “Who doesn’t like chocolate? Or maybe it’s not the chocolate. Maybe it’s the girls you don’t like. Hahahaha.”
Chi Cheng remains silent. A man doesn’t have to talk if he doesn’t want to. But if he did want to talk, he would tell Yue Gotao that the girls were kind but forgettable and the boys were cute but not kind. So he didn’t like anyone right now and why should he be forced to pretend that he does?
“He does! Chi Cheng likes boys! Chi Cheng is gaaaaaaaayyyyy!”
Wheezes of laughter erupt behind dirty hands. Much of it comes from the smallest boys, the ones in crisp navy uniforms, whose parents are newly rich and unaware of the prestige of wearing the uniforms that are worn and older, passed down from father-to-son. The ones who would not survive if their wings were to be plucked.
Chi Cheng remains silent. His father’s school jacket is too wide for him in the shoulders.
He knows what being ‘gay’ is. Knows that those rare movies that have a boy kissing another boy result in his mother turning off the screen or leaving the theater. Knows that his father coughs - a disapproving short bark - when the subject of ‘gay’ marriage appears in the newspapers he gets from Hong Kong. Knows that ‘gay’ flags are being ripped off of streets and sidewalks and burned in red, red, red.
What he doesn’t know is why. Because sometimes girls are pretty and sometimes boys are pretty too and surely everyone can see that?
Chi Cheng’s silence isn’t stopping the laughter. It is louder now. They aren’t trying so hard to hide it from the teacher. They nudge each other, eyes on him, narrowing with contemptuous glee.
He wishes he were a man. A man could buy this school and burn it down.
“Hey!” hisses a voice behind him. It sounds out above the laughter, high above the shouts, louder even than Yue Gotao. “I like boys too.”
Chi Cheng turns to see a boy who’s also in a legacy uniform. It’s a little too big for him, like Chi Cheng’s own, hanging around his middle like more of a blanket than a jacket. But it has the old crest from 1977. The boy has pale skin and a pointed chin, which he aims squarely at Yue Gotao. His small, dark eyes are like pieces of flint in a cave: ready to spark. The boy’s hands are on his hips and his words are thrown forward without the slightest hesitation.
“Not you, of course, you’re way too gross - but some boys are nice and sweet and smart and I could have ten of them if I wanted - I could have ten! But you’ll only ever have your own hand and bugs.”
This boy is rash. The teacher will hear him.
And so she does. She comes near, harsh perfume invading Chi Cheng’s nose, and there's a flurry of scolding.
“Guo Chengyu! That is not appropriate! Not in any way! Talking in the middle of lessons! You and Chi Cheng will be going to the principal’s office right now.”
Chi Cheng sputters, looking up at the teacher, trying to protest this injustice. But he’s too late. She grabs him by his ear - Guo Chengyu as well - and marches them right out of the classroom.
They’re made to sit in a room that smells like old magazines and stale cheese.
“Your parents will be coming to collect you! That’s how serious this is!”
The boy, Guo Chengyu, actually laughs at this. Chi Cheng wouldn’t believe it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
“It’s not funny, Mr. Guo!”
But he laughs again, cutting his fire-flint eyes over to Chi Cheng. Like he’s letting him in on a private joke.
When the teacher stomps away, he leans over into Chi Cheng’s space and says, “My parents told me they love me more than the whole world and all the people in it. So everything else is negotable.”
“Negotiable,” Chi Cheng corrects quietly.
“Yeah, that. Negotiable.”
Guo Chengyu leans back in his chair, crossing his legs, and starts to hum something that sounds happy.
Chi Cheng can only stare.
“What? Your parents are the same too, I’m sure,” he says, and then goes back to his humming.
Chi Cheng’s parents are not the same.
“Thank you,” he says, instead of talking about families. He hopes he doesn’t have to explain what he’s thanking Guo Chengyu for.
Guo Chengyu shrugs. “I only told the truth.”
At this rate, Chi Cheng’s eyes will bug out of his head. Who is this boy?
“Hey, when is your birthday?” Guo Chengyu asks suddenly, sitting up straight.
“November 18.”
“Mine’s June 3rd. That means I’m older. You can call me Guo-gege.”
Chi Cheng snorts. “I will not.”
“Fine,” Guo Chengyu says, shrugging again. “But I’m not calling you Chi-didi.”
“Fine.”
When they’re called into the principal’s office, they are subjected to a long lecture about the importance of paying attention to the teacher. Of getting along with their classmates. Of speaking only when they are allowed to.
It sounds like a bunch of rules that men don’t have to follow. Why would anyone want to follow them? Wouldn’t it just be acting like a pushover?
Guo Chengyu uses the principal’s distraction in giving this long lecture to shoot a paper ball - suspiciously wet - into his mug of coffee.
He does it without being seen, grinning at Chi Cheng.
Chi Cheng is impressed.
The whole thing is interrupted by a tall - very tall - man coming into the office. He’s wearing a suit and shiny black shoes and his voice carries easily, just like Guo Chengyu’s.
“Oh, Haoran, Haoran, so good to see you again. Hey! How was that symphony last week? Good seats or good seats, huh?”
“Dad!” Chengyu jumps out of his seat, running to the tall man and grabbing him around the thigh.
“Oh, son, what are we to do with you?” the man says, laughing. He reaches down and Chi Cheng flinches automatically. But instead of cuffing him on the jaw or slapping his cheek, the man ruffles Guo Chengyu’s hair. Like Guo Chengyu is a naughty but adorable puppy. “You know how boys are, Haoran. What can you do, eh?”
“Well, Mr. Guo, as unfortunate as it is, we - ”
“Haoran. Haoran,” the man says, holding up one hand. “You don’t even need to explain. I know my son. Yes, I do.” He looks down at Chengyu, mouth flat and disapproving. But Chi Cheng notices that his eyes are dancing. “You were chatty again, weren’t you? Couldn’t keep your words inside?”
Guo Chengyu nods, looking appropriately sorrowful.
The man turns back to the principal.
“He’s a born CEO, I’m telling you,” he says, laughing. “There won’t be any boring board rooms with this one at the helm! Just gotta get him through grade school first. His mother and I keep saying - ”
The office door opens again. This time, Chi Cheng really does flinch.
“Son,” his father says, looking down at him through his shiny glasses. “Principal Wang. What seems to be the trouble?”
“Chairman Chi!” Guo Chengyu’s father looks delighted. Chi Cheng wonders if he’s ever been unhappy one day in his life. “Fancy seeing you here! This your boy? Would you look at that! Like father, like son, eh? Too headstrong for the classroom, isn’t he? Our Chengyu couldn’t keep himself quiet either. Hey! You should swing by the company - we just finished digital golf. I’m telling you, nobody has anything like this. Not even you!” He laughs like having fun is the only real point of living. “What say we take care of this here and now and send the boys off back to class, hmm? I’m sure we’re both late for some meeting or other at the moment anyway.”
Chi Cheng freezes. Nobody interrupts Father. What will happen to this man? Principal Wang would never be able to break it up if it came to a fight.
But as Guo Chengyu’s father pulls out a checkbook and begins scribbling something, Chi Cheng sees that he is worried for nothing.
Father laughs, putting his hands into his pockets. He does glance Chi Cheng’s way with a flash of disapproval, but after that, he says, “You’re certainly right about that. I know the Academy has been needing some new clubs. Maybe make it a double order - donate some to that new course of yours. Even virtual golfers need clubs, right?”
Guo Chengyu’s father laughs with him, launching into a story about a hole in one and a famous model, and Principal Wang coughs. He looks away, scratching at his ear.
Guo Chengyu leans around his father’s leg and gives Chi Cheng a thumbs up. He smiles hugely too, winking at him.
Father lays a check atop the one Guo Chengyu's father already placed on the principal’s desk.
“Good man, Principal,” Father says, nodding.
Principal Wang coughs again. He clasps his hands together. “Well, then...ahem. Boys, go on ahead back to class. Let this be a warning to you.”
Guo Chengyu bows to the principal, hiding his smile behind a fake sneeze, and then hugs his father.
“Bye, Dad!”
Chi Cheng bows to the principal too. And then to Father.
Father looks away.
Chi Cheng follows Guo Chengyu out of the office. They spend the rest of the day trading jokes on rolled up pieces of scrap paper.
The teacher pretends not to see.
***
When Guo Chengyu invites Chi Cheng to his parents’ house for his twelfth birthday party, Chi Cheng’s parents have the housekeeper wrap a pair of Tom Ford oxfords in shiny silver paper for his gift.
“Guo Chengyu will hate them,” Chi Cheng bites out. He’s not keen to reveal just how much the thought of losing Guo Chengyu’s friendship distresses him. But this gift is like a grenade under his feet. One wrong step and Chi Cheng will be alone against the world again.
“His father has a partnership with that company,” Mother says, turning the page of her book. “It’s flattering.”
“It’s revolting,” Chi Cheng argues. His words earn him the pain of ten switches, and still he is sent to the Guo household with the stupid oxfords.
He finds a garden snake outside that he keeps inside of a styrofoam takeout container. He’ll add that to the oxfords and hopefully Guo Chengyu won’t laugh at him.
The party is unlike anything Chi Cheng has ever seen. It’s not really a party at all. Guo Chengyu is in jeans, with uncombed hair, stirring a massive bowl of some kind of batter. There are cartoons blasting from a nearby television, and Guo Chengyu’s dad and mom (she must be his mother, she looks just like him) are in the kitchen with several cups of multicolored…something…in front of them.
There are no men in suits. No women with glasses of champagne. No powerpoint presentations.
“I’m making the cake!” Guo Chengyu says happily. There’s a purple apron around his waist. A little rainbow flower is tucked behind his ear.
“You must be Chi-er,” the woman says, smiling sweetly. “Care for an experimental icing?”
She holds out one of the cups in Chi Cheng’s direction.
Having no idea what else to do, Chi Cheng sets the present on the kitchen counter and takes the cup. The stuff inside is thick and creamy-looking, the exact shade of the sky.
“Our YuYu loves to try new flavors every year,” Guo Chengyu’s father explains, dipping his finger into a cup of pink stuff and licking it curiously. “Hmmm…gardenia? Rose?”
“It’s lilac, Baba,” Guo Chengyu says, rolling his eyes like his father is hopelessly inept.
“Ah, lilac. I see. Did you hear that, dear?”
“I did, indeed. What do you suppose Chi-er has over there? Bubblegum?”
“Try it, kid,” says Guo Chengyu’s father, nodding at the cup. He smiles at Chi Cheng too.
“Chi Cheng will guess right,” Guo Chengyu pronounces. “He’s smart.”
Hesitantly, Chi Cheng touches the icing with the tip of his pinky finger. It is smooth and cold on his tongue.
Chi Cheng pauses, considering. Then he pronounces, “Cotton candy.”
“Yes!” Guo Chengyu cries. The gap between his two front teeth is fully visible in his smile.
They eat the cake, Guo Chengyu actually does like the oxfords (“They’re so shiny!”) but Chi Cheng was right that he likes the snake more.
They name it Dwayne Johnson because Guo Chengyu thinks having a tiny garden snake named after an American wrestler is the funniest thing ever.
After that, Guo Chengyu’s parents take them out to a pet store to buy Dwayne Johnson a tank and some supplies.
“Oh look!” Guo-aiyi says, taking a rainbow-colored rock hide from a shelf. “Do you want this for his tank?”
Guo Chengyu does want it, very much. For years after that, Dwayne Johnson lives inside of the gayest rock that Chi Cheng has ever seen.
In the back seat of the car that evening, when Guo Chengyu’s parents are taking him back home, Chi Cheng’s curiosity finally gets the better of him.
“Do your parents know?” He whispers. “About…”
He points his eyes at the rainbow flower still tucked behind Guo Chengyu’s ear.
Guo Chengyu nods easily, curling and uncurling his seatbelt.
“YuYu, wear that properly,” Guo-aiyi says from the front seat.
“Yes, Mama,” Guo Chengyu sighs. But he releases the belt.
“And they aren’t mad??” Chi Cheng whispers.
Guo Chengyu leans over, whispering into Chi Cheng’s ear. “They told me that it’s normal. It’s the rest of the world that isn’t.”
He pulls back, bouncing along to a song on the radio.
Chi Cheng wonders why Guo Chengyu’s parents believe that, when his own parents don’t.
***
When Chi Cheng thinks back on his childhood, Guo Chengyu is always there. They become very familiar with getting into trouble and getting out of it again (and not always with the help of their father’s pocketbooks, either). They are never far away from each other. Whether it’s because their families operate in the same circles, or because of their various academies, or just because they are oddly similar, Chi Cheng doesn’t know. All he knows is that Guo Chengyu’s presence in his young life was a constant, like the reliable ticking of an ancient clock.
“You’re pretty much a quiet version of me,” Guo Chengyu tells him one day, when they’re ditching algebra. Both of them have an A+ already, and they calculated that they could afford to skip this exam and still maintain a 90% average.
So what was the point of sitting through another test?
“You’re a loud version of me.”
That’s not exactly true. They do have some differences. Guo Chengyu loves to cook, and enjoys the taste of sweets. Chi Cheng finds sugar cloying and cooking dreadful. His mother likes to scold him for burning toast. Also, Guo Chengyu has an appalling affinity for huge, flashy cars. SUVs. Chi Cheng only wants a car dark as night, fast enough to spirit him away whenever he wants. That means something smaller. More aerodynamic.
But in most other ways, yes…they are like variations on the same theme.
“Nope,” Guo Chengyu argues, smiling hugely. “I’m older. So I’m the original.”
“Yeah, and I’m version 2.0 - new and improved.”
“Hey!” Guo Chengyu shouts, leaping onto Chi Cheng and squeezing him so hard that Chi Cheng’s ribs hurt. Then he pulls a pack of Marlboro Golds out of his pocket.
“Look at these,” he says, nodding his chin at them. He wants Chi Cheng to be impressed.
Chi Cheng is impressed, but he won’t say so. “Where did you get those?”
“Around,” shrugs Guo Chengyu, all faux-nonchalance. Like a fourteen year old with smokes is perfectly normal.
They each light one up, using a lighter they find in Coach Yue’s desk, and spend the next hour coughing up their lungs.
But when Yue Gotao calls them fags that day, they have convenient ammunition.
“Fags, huh?” Guo Chengyu asks, still and whisper-quiet. “Hmm. Fags.”
Chi Cheng has learned that this is the most dangerous version of Guo Chengyu. It means that he’s lost his humor, at least for the moment.
“Where have I heard that before? ....hmm. What do they call cigarettes in the United Kingdom, Chi Cheng?”
Chi Cheng lights another one, blowing it red-hot and sparkling. The smoke curls around his fingers. It wraps around his wrist like a delicate viper.
“Fags,” he says, blowing a puff of smoke right into Yue Gotao's face.
"You prick!" Yue Gotao shouts. He throws a punch.
Chi Cheng easily dodges it. It isn’t hard for him and Guo Chengyu to rope their arms around Yue Gotao and shove his face into the dirt. His squirming is nothing under their combined weight.
“Don’t you ever assume that being straight makes you a man,” Chi Cheng spits out. “Don’t you ever think that we’re not. We are the men here, and you will die before I let you forget it.”
There is something Chi Cheng cannot forget. It’s that word. Fag. It followed him and Guo Chengyu for so long during their junior high years that it comes to mind often, like a terrible but still catchy song. Harsh and cutting, a single syllable of hatefulness. It was meant to diminish them. Meant to unman them. No matter how hard he tries, Chi Cheng can't forget.
But that little shit Yue Gotao never did find a way to remove the cigarette burns from the back of his neck, either.
So to Chi Cheng's mind, they're even.
***
“We’re taking your laptop,” his father announces one day, as Chi Cheng is on his way to school. “And your phone.”
The ‘we’ in that sentence means ‘your mother and I.’ But Mother is off on some trip or other - France or Switzerland or Spain - and Chi Cheng doesn’t know when she’ll be back. Sister used to share the weight of their father’s disapproval, but ever since she left to America for school, it has been Chi Cheng bearing all of it. Alone.
“What for?” demands Chi Cheng. His backpack falls to the floor, rolling pitifully down the staircase.
“Your Internet history,” says his father, not looking at him, sipping from his coffee cup like he isn’t ruining Chi Cheng’s entire life.
Chi Cheng’s heart stills in his chest.
He only got curious. And if that curiosity led him down some less than reputable paths, it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t hurting anyone. In fact, those people in the videos seemed to really like what was happening. Even if they were tied up with collars and chains. The girls and the boys alike.
A man is not afraid.
“I need my computer for school,” says Chi Cheng, not bothering to promise that he won’t look up such things again. He knows he will. And he knows his father knows it too.
“You’ll use the school computers. Or pen and paper. It was good enough for me, it’ll be good enough for you too.” His father coughs in that way he has when he’s about to say something he wishes he doesn’t have to say. He sets down his cup and crosses his legs. “Sticking to women was good enough for me too. Do we understand each other?”
Chi Cheng hates, hates, hates how tears well in his eyes. He swipes at them before his father can see. Yanks his backpack up off the floor and leaves. Slams the door on his way out. Doesn’t look back.
If it were not for Guo Chengyu, Chi Cheng is not sure he would have survived adolescence.
Guo Chengyu buys him a replacement laptop. A phone, too.
“It’s no big deal,” he says, politely ignoring the gratitude that pools in the corners of Chi Cheng’s eyes. “Just get me the number for that twink in English, alright?”
Chi Cheng huffs out a laugh. “Alright.”
He gets the number easily. Somewhere between the hell of junior high and the slightly less hellish experience of high school, Chi Cheng had discovered that he was attractive.
Girls would burst into giggles when he walked past. Some boys would hate him, seemingly immediately, while others would blush and scurry out of his way.
It wasn’t difficult for him to find someone with whom to learn kissing, and then to learn more than kissing. By the time he leaves for college, he is fully confident that he won’t have to spend one night alone if he doesn’t want to.
Guo Chengyu is much the same. He starts to dress in this bizarre, loud way that draws eyes and appreciative glances. Bright colors and dizzying patterns that make Chi Cheng think of tropical birds, showing off their feathers for mates. Always a different partner on his arm.
Chi Cheng concluded later that cigarettes were only Guo Chengyu’s starter habit. His true addiction is love. And he’s been hungry for it ever since the crash. Never full.
“Would it kill you to wear something that’s not black?” Guo Chengyu asks, gesturing at their reflections in the mirror. It’s the night of New Year’s, and there’s a party.
“Yes,” Chi Cheng says, and elbows Guo Chengyu out of the way so he can take up all the reflection.
“Asshole,” Guo Chengyu bites back, soft and warm.
Their dates are at the same place. The same house, actually, because they’re twins. It’s so convenient. But it’s also embarrassing because sometimes Chi Cheng can’t tell who is whose date. The twins are identical and they have very similar quiet, sweet personalities. Even their names are similar: Lin Jia and Lin Jian.
But he and Guo Chengyu have a system for when this happens.
“It’s been so long since I’ve been kissed,” Guo Chengyu will sigh dramatically.
One of the twins - or both - will giggle. Usually Jia (that’s Guo Chengyu’s) will come over and peck him on the lips. But even if he doesn’t, Chi Cheng has a backup plan.
He just leans in close and pretends he’s about to kiss Guo Chengyu. Then his own twin (Jian) will either smack him or yank him back.
Then they’re clear again on who is who. Simple.
The party does what it’s supposed to: they both get laid that night. Guo Chengyu in the upstairs bathroom (“How classy,” Chi Cheng snorts the next day, hungover and irritable), and Chi Cheng in the master bedroom (“You fucked him on his parents’ bed? Shameless,” snipes Guo Chengyu, ripping the cap off an aspirin bottle.).
It’s a good thing Chi Cheng is intelligent. Otherwise, he’s not sure he would have gotten to college at all. He spends most of his high school years chasing skirt or chasing shorts. He likes sex so much.
***
The night of the crash, he and Guo Chengyu are using fake IDs to get into a kink club. They are seventeen, but standing 190cm tall and wearing a black suit opens many doors.
Guo Chengyu is popping the cork out of a bottle of something overpriced when his phone rings. And rings again. And rings again.
Chi Cheng takes the bottle from him, jerking his chin at the bright screen. He can’t stand the tinny sound of the phone clashing with the club music.
Guo Chengyu sighs. He’d picked up the phone with an impatient hmm? sound. Seconds later, he was still as a tombstone, completely stuck into place.
Even under the terrible lighting, Chi Cheng can see that his face has gone pale. Chi Cheng will never forget how Guo Chengyu looked that night. It was like the whole world and all the people in it had fallen away. It was like in the movies, when the background fades, and the main character is thrown into sharp relief - unprepared for the next narrative arc.
“What happened?” Chi Cheng asks.
Guo Chengyu won’t answer. He’s still got the phone held up to his ear, but he’s not speaking.
“What happened?” Chi Cheng asks again. His heart kicks up. He doesn’t like this at all. Not at all.
But Guo Chengyu still won’t speak. He won’t even look at Chi Cheng; he just stares into the middle distance.
Chi Cheng cannot endure the stillness of him. Needing to do something, anything, he rips the phone out of Guo Chengyu’s hand.
It’s even more alarming, how Guo Chengyu just lets him do it.
“What happened?” Chi Cheng asks into the phone.
He hears a gaggle of sounds in the background: crying babies and the insistent beeping of alarms and hurried footsteps against tiled floors.
“Are you family as well? Please, you must come to the hospital. The accident was…please come quickly.”
Chi Cheng’s eyes laser in on Guo Chengyu’s ashen face. He doesn’t need to ask who the accident involved.
“We’re on our way,” he says, then hangs up.
Guo Chengyu doesn’t look like he has any intention of doing anything at all. So Chi Cheng takes him under the arm and lifts him bodily up. Steers him to the door.
Outside, the wind howls around them, whipping their coats this way and that.
Chi Cheng yanks the keys from the valet’s hands. He manages to get all of Guo Chengyu’s gangly limbs into the passenger seat, hastily buckling him in before getting under the wheel and speeding them in the direction of Hongshan General.
He speeds through the streets like the hounds of hell are snapping at his back tires.
He screeches to a halt right outside the emergency room doors. It’s all he can do not to push Guo Chengyu out of the vehicle.
“Go,” Chi Cheng snaps at him. “For god’s sake, go!”
That apparently gets some kind of gear in Guo Chengyu’s clock to turn again. He stumbles out, then races inside.
By the time Chi Cheng gets the car parked and gets the information from a nurse at the emergency room desk, it’s too late.
He finds Guo Chengyu in one of the private back rooms. There is low lighting, new age music….pamphlets on grief and phone numbers for support groups. Guo Chengyu is crying, crying buckets. There are two gurneys in front of him, both covered with crisp, white sheets.
A doctor steps in. Explains that it was a drunk driver. A head-on collision. That the staff did their very best to save them. That both of them had only minutes when the ambulance brought them in. That it was a miracle they had lasted that long.
“I…assume you are their sons?” the doctor asks haltingly.
Chi Cheng speaks for Guo Chengyu, who is in no condition for it. He probably didn’t hear a word the doctor said.
“Yes. Thank you for your efforts,” he says, bowing. He wraps up the conversation as quickly as he can. Guo Chengyu wouldn’t want to hear any more.
The two of them stay in that small, dimly lit room all night. Guo Chengyu goes through three boxes of hospital tissues. Chi Cheng holds his hand.
When dawn comes, two nurses come in, explaining in uncomfortable whispers that the remains must be taken to a morgue. Belongings must be taken home with Guo Chengyu and Chi Cheng. Funeral arrangements must be made. Forms must be filled out.
“What service should we direct the authorities to?” one of the nurses asks.
Guo Chengyu only stares at the white sheets, so Chi Cheng makes the decisions. He doesn’t know what the Guos had imagined for themselves, but he knows that Guo Chengyu would want the best for them. Guo Chengyu would spare no expense. So neither does Chi Cheng.
After that, waves of people start to come in, groups of businessmen expressing their shock and condolences. Groups of their wives, trying to pat Guo Chengyu’s shoulder. Groups of middle managers, office workers, janitors, even. They all express their sorrow. Some are openly crying.
“Guo-dongshi was a good man,” one says. “I have never had a boss like him.”
Would anyone ever say something like that about Chi Cheng’s father? Chi Cheng doubts it.
Guo Chengyu swipes at his face, stands up, makes his bows to these people. And if he stumbles at times, if his hands shake, they graciously say nothing.
After the funeral services and the cremations are performed, Chi Cheng basically moves into the Guo house.
“You can’t stay there all the time,” his father texted him at one point. “You have your own responsibilities.”
Chi Cheng had turned his phone off, and then ordered Guo Chengyu food.
It was weeks before he would eat properly again. There was a light that had gone out inside him. Chi Cheng didn’t know what it felt like, to be suddenly orphaned, but he did know what it felt like to be alone in the world.
So he stayed mostly quiet. Made sure that he didn’t leave Guo Chengyu by himself in the house. Sometimes he would try to take him out for drives, just to have him dwell in a place that didn’t constantly bear the scent of Guo-aiyi’s perfume or Guo-shushu’s aftershave.
One day, three weeks after the accident, Chi Cheng is watching Youtube while Guo Chengyu sits in front of the television. A bad drama is playing there for him. But Chi Cheng needs to know what to do about his ball python that isn’t eating, and there’s a Youtuber who specializes in ill ones.
Something about it must catch Guo Chengyu’s ear, because he drifts over and watches the video over Chi Cheng’s shoulder.
“Pythons can go for a month without meals?” he asks. His voice has become paper-thin. He hasn’t spoken much since the accident. Chi Cheng wonders if his throat needs to re-learn how to speak.
“They can,” Chi Cheng nods, listening to the careful instructions the Youtuber is giving. “Cold-blooded creatures need less calories than us…”
“I wish I were cold-blooded,” Guo Chengyu sighs.
But he sits down next to Chi Cheng, abandoning the drama, and together they watch hours of Youtube videos about snake health, snake behavior, snake habitats…everything, basically. Guo Chengyu even takes the mouse eventually, choosing what to watch next.
When they come across a video on snake fights, he even sits up in his seat a little.
“People fight them?”
Chi Cheng nods, clicking on the link. “They can draw huge crowds. If you’ve got a strong one.”
“We could do that,” Guo Chengyu murmurs, gesturing at the screen. “We’d be so much cooler than these guys. We’d be badass about it. Cash bets. Events. Clubs. You know?”
Chi Cheng does know.
A week later is when Guo Chengyu starts to eat normally again. He drives again after that, going to a breeder in the countryside with Chi Cheng to evaluate some Burmese pythons for sale. They buy two, thinking they show some fighting spirit.
They decide to fight them, and film the fights for Youtube. It’s bloody and ruthless, but they’re not half bad at it. The channel grows. So does their snake collection. He and Guo Chengyu buy and sell and buy again. Keep making their Youtube videos. They document the victories as well as the losses. They’re honest about what snake fighting really is, in all of its gritty brutality.
People online seem to love it.
They start to make money. Real money. Chi Cheng stops asking his parents for allowance. He doesn’t need it any more. He buys his own clothes. His own food. His own cigarettes (technically those are bought by a college dropout that Chi Cheng pays for the purpose, but still). Guo Chengyu goes to his father’s company and takes over where his old man left off. He does well.
“Just like Dad always taught me,” Guo Chengyu would say, smiling sadly, when he broke a new sales record, or widened a profit margin.
Guo Chengyu was still wounded, but he was healing.
And for the first time in his life, Chi Cheng sees what success looks like. Chi Cheng feels like a man.
***
It’s not until he meets Wang Shou that Chi Cheng realizes he would like to be a husband one day.
They meet in Poli Sci 122. Wang Shou asks questions of the professor that the professor can’t answer. Chi Cheng likes that. Likes even more the way that Wang Shou’s eyes flirt at him from across the room. The way he lets his shorts slip just enough for Chi Cheng to see the jutting top of his hipbone when he raises his hand.
“Instead of buying all these expensive snakes to fight, wouldn’t it be better to raise them yourselves?” Wang Shou asks one day, after he and Chi Cheng are very well acquainted. More precisely, after they have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around the dwindling supply of lube or the placement of a pillow. “You’d save a lot of expense. And you could breed for exactly what you want. Get a genuine badass fighter in a clutch that could win every fight. Then you’d be set.”
Chi Cheng looks at Guo Chengyu. Finds him looking back at him, surprise and wonder reflected in his eyes.
They buy incubators. Find a breeder who gives them a sweet deal on bulk feeder mice. And then they spend all the profits they’ve saved so far on a pair of Burmese Pythons that have won five hundred fights between them. A breeding pair.
On the night that their first clutch of eggs arrives, Wang Shou gifts Chi Cheng a hatchling. Not a python, but a king snake. The hatchling is male, a little beauty, a black heart of scales on his tiny forehead.
“Because you’re in charge of my black heart,” Wang Shou explains, his smile sharp and teasing. “Take good care of him, now. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Chi Cheng does. The hatchling is named Little Jealous One - a nickname that Guo Chengyu laughs about and calls ‘entirely too accurate’ - and he goes everywhere that Chi Cheng goes. Professors scold him when he has Little Jealous One around his neck in class, but the Chi name protects him from any real consequences. And the professors stop protesting after a while, grudgingly acknowledging that Little Jealous One doesn’t make any noise or create any mess.
“They can’t part me from my emotional support animal,” Chi Cheng says mildly, and Wang Shou laughs and laughs.
Little Jealous One is not their only baby. That first clutch hatches well - 35 eggs in total, only one lost - and Yellow Dragon appears among them. Born under a burning sun in the height of summer, she is lemon yellow and gorgeous. Twice the size of her nest-mates. She bites Chi Cheng’s wrist right out of the egg, drawing blood, and Chi Cheng crows.
She grows quickly. Wang Shou feeds her whatever she wants whenever she wants it. Cradles her in his arms when they go to bed every night. Speaks to her about strength and dedication and endurance. Like she’s a boxer he’s needs to train with inspiring speeches.
In a way, she is. Yellow Dragon is the strongest snake Chi Cheng has ever seen. She’s incredible. Nothing stands in front of her. She doesn’t take shit from anyone, man or beast. He once saw her take down a python with ten pounds on her in a single strike. And that was before she started laying. That was when she got vicious.
They nearly get her taken away from them when an idiot at a fight reaches out to pet her. She bites, he develops gangrene, and Chi Cheng has to pay the guy an obscene amount of money to stop him from going to the police. Or animal control.
He must keep her caged in steel when others are near. Only Chi Cheng and Wang Shou are safe from her jaws. When she is fully grown, seventeen feet long and large enough to eat chinchilla rabbits, she sleeps peacefully in their bed. (Wang Shou gives her the chinchilla rabbits as treats Chi Cheng doesn’t question him about it. Chi Cheng doesn’t think it would be wise to ask where Wang Shou is getting them.)
“Our family of four,” Wang Shou murmurs softly, half-asleep in Chi Cheng’s arms. Little Jealous One - adult now but still delicate, still withdrawn - wrapped around Chi Cheng’s wrist.
Not even Guo Chengyu can steer clear of Yellow Dragon’s fangs.
“I don’t get it,” he snaps, cradling his elbow. “She’s as much mine as yours! We split the investment equally!”
Chi Cheng chuckles, holding antiseptic gauze to his wound. “It’s because you won’t sleep with her. She’s angry with you.”
Guo Chengyu scoffs. “You know I respect women too much to sleep with them.” He looks down at Yellow Dragon. “Honey, it’s not you. It’s me. Really. Can’t we just be friends?”
Yellow Dragon remains coiled in her steel crate, eyes glinting red. She’s quite focused.
Wang Shou watches Guo Chengyu’s little theater show from the couch. There’s a beer bottle hanging in his hand, almost empty, condensation dripping from the rim.
“If you slept with Little Jealous One, he wouldn’t bite,” says Wang Shou. He’s tipsy but his words hang in the air, strangely heavy.
“He wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Chi Cheng agrees. “Barely eats at all.” He ties off the bandage he’s working on, kissing Guo Chengyu’s elbow. “There, princess. All better?”
“Yes, good sir, thank you,” Guo Chengyu nods, all solemn and formal, giving him a deep bow.
Wang Shou drops his beer. It takes hours for the three of them to find all the little shards of broken glass.
Wang Shou was always wild. Unpredictable. Completely unafraid. Vibrant and chaotic in a way that captivates Chi Cheng. But he’s so painfully gentle too. So sweet. In love with domesticity - of having a home - the same way Chi Cheng is. Wang Shou feels all the pain of living but all the joy of it too. He takes Chi Cheng’s mind and bends it forcefully to the present. It’s hard to dwell on all the ways that life disappoints him when Wang Shou is taking his hands and filling them with tiny snake hatchlings and huge dreams.
Wang Shou brings Chi Cheng curiosity, purpose, and so much comfort. Belonging.
Until he doesn’t, that is.
Until everything breaks.
***
Discovering the love of his life and his best friend in bed together is not the worst part.
You’d think it would be. The betrayal of it all. The exquisite torture of the two people you love best in the world taking it upon themselves to ruin your life. Taking your heart and breaking it - all for the sake of one impulsive lay.
But that really isn’t the worst part. The worst part is their reactions. Guo Chengyu acts like he doesn’t know how it happened, acts like he can’t remember anything, but Chi Cheng knows he’s lying. That man hasn’t gotten black out drunk ever in his life. He has a liver of iron. And the one night he fucks Chi Cheng’s boyfriend is the night he conveniently had so much cheap beer that it wiped his memory? Bullshit.
And Wang Shou….Wang Shou just smiles at him. Teeth glinting in the lamplight like some vampire has made a home inside his body, settling in to watch a terrible bloodbath.
“You kiss him. Can’t I kiss him too? Can’t we play together?” He asks, like sleeping with Guo Chengyu was nothing but a game. Like it was poker on a Wednesday night.
Chi Cheng doesn’t remember exactly what he said to that. His memories of that night are hazy and distorted, like they were recorded on one of those old VHS tapes his father keeps in the attic: home movies that made their family look so polished and pleasant and sane.
Maybe it was time for Chi Cheng to go insane.
Maybe that’s why he did it. Let his mind just…break.
The hotel sends him an outrageous bill for the damage he causes. He'd cracked a mirror when he threw a beer bottle into it. Punched a hole (or seven) through the sheetrock. He’d even managed to rip open the mattress, expensive goose down pillow-top feathers fluttering everywhere. He’s sure he looked quite a sight that night - raging with those white feathers in his hair and stuck to his lips. But he hated that mattress. He would have set fire to it if Guo Chengyu hadn’t ripped the lighter out of his hands.
Oh, how he would have loved to watch it burn.
Wang Shou uses the scuffle with the lighter to pretend outrage, to pretend fear, to pretend…Chi Cheng doesn’t even know what. To pretend that he ever loved him?
“You care more about making a scene than fixing what you broke!” Wang Shou shouts.
“What I broke?” Chi Cheng has never been angrier in his entire life. It roils in his gut and makes him an animal. “What I fucking broke??”
Wang Shou’s eyes gleam with something unholy. His face contorts. There’s a shelf of generic art prints on the wall and he rips it down.
“Wang Shou!” Chengyu shouts, trying to grab him.
Wang Shou shakes him off with a strength he’s never shown before. Guo Chengyu gets thrown back onto his ass. And then Wang Shou throws the shelf too.
The frames on it shatter, raining down glass, and the pictures of wheat fields and gardenias flutter down after. The shelf itself goes flying out of the hotel window.
“Of course you broke us! It’s all your fault!” screams Wang Shou. He pulls at his clothes, rakes his nails down his own arms. Angry red lines bloom in neat parallel rows. Chi Cheng watches them turn brighter and brighter, as if they’re fueled by Wang Shou’s own emotions.
He scratches at himself again, this time his face, and Chi Cheng lurches to pull his hands away.
“Don’t touch me! DON’T TOUCH ME!”
And then Wang Shou runs.
That was the last time Chi Cheng saw him. Wang Shou wouldn’t call. Wouldn’t text. Wouldn’t leave a comment on a fucking Weibo story. Nothing. He just vanished. Like their relationship was only wrapping paper: something pretty but cheap. Easily discarded.
That was the way their glorious love died. It was wrapped in the body of a hidden constrictor and strangled silent.
Guo Chengyu…
Guo Chengyu was - somehow - even worse.
He would cry. Openly. He would beg forgiveness. He always stuck to that same stupid-ass story - that he didn’t know how it happened. That he couldn’t remember ever touching Wang Shou. That he didn’t know how he could betray Chi Cheng. Not after all they’d been through.
“You’re my didi,” Guo Chengyu pleaded. It was like he had wanted to slice open Chi Cheng’s heart and watch the blood ooze out. Like stomping on it wasn’t enough. “Please don’t do this. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll make amends. Just tell me what to do.”
“Get the fuck out of my sight,” Chi Cheng had bit out. All he could see was Wang Shou’s nakedness there in that bed, and what Guo Chengyu must have done to him. To his one and only love.
Guo Chengyu went.
***
He doesn’t stop calling through. Reaching out. Orchestrating elaborate ways to catch Chi Cheng at the smoke shop, or in the laundry room of his dorm, or in the fucking bathroom.
He’s always so sad-looking. Eyes sunken and dull. Voice raspy like he’s got a cold or outright fucking pneumonia. And he doesn’t smile or bounce around the way he used to. He just…drifts.
He really does seem remorseful. But that doesn’t make it okay.
After a time - many weeks of feral silence, during which his father tries to badger him into the company boardroom and his mother introduces him to four different heiresses - Chi Cheng does actually come up with a way for him to make amends.
Or at least, a way to make things even.
He’s at a club. Some sleazy place with private rooms in the back and dim lighting. Spilled beer on the floors. Couches that have seen better days.
Well. Chi Cheng has seen better days himself. He slumps into one of the couches, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
He’s been smoking too much lately. He can feel the cravings hit him at odd hours. He can’t even sleep through the night anymore without leaving his bed and lighting up. Or just lighting up right there in the sheets.
There’s a fight tonight. That’s the only reason Chi Cheng is here. He wants to watch Yellow Dragon rip into something and tear it apart. He wants to watch her win and show no mercy. These days, she’s the only thing that makes him smile.
When the winnings pour in, as Chi Cheng knew they would, he sees a familiar hand try to rake half of them to one side. Chi Cheng doesn’t even know when he came in. Guo Chengyu would just appear in places like that. Like a ghost.
“Just what in hell do you think you’re doing?” he whispers.
“Half the investment and half the profits,” Guo Chengyu says. “That was the deal.”
Chi Cheng jumps up. The old couch rocks back with the force of it.
“He was my boyfriend and that was the deal.” Chi Cheng kicks over the table, watching the cash scatter and fall into puddles of old beer. He steps into Guo Chengyu’s space and yanks him forward by the shirtfront. “Take your money if you want it so badly. You’re good at that. Taking things.”
With that, he turns and heads for the door. He’s so sick of life and all the bullshit it throws at him that he never asked for.
He’s about halfway to gone when he hears that sad, raspy voice say, “Wait.”
And damn Guo Chengyu straight to hell but Chi Cheng does wait. He doesn’t turn around, though, thank fuck.
“What.” It’s not a question.
“You’re right,” Guo Chengyu says. “…you’re right. You’re entitled to….you’re right. She’s yours now. Keep her. And whatever she wins.”
Chi Cheng whirls on him. “You think that will fix what you did to me? You betrayed me!”
He pushes at Guo Chengyu’s chest. He’s not really trying to fight him but if Guo Chengyu will throw a punch, Chi Cheng will gladly throw one back.
“What else is there?” he asks, all pathetic. “What else can I do?”
“There’s fuck all you can do,” Chi Cheng tells him. He collapses onto that same shitty couch and lights up a cigar. Why the hell not? Maybe he’ll get cancer and end this whole stupid charade faster. But with his luck and his parents’ stupid-ass genetics, he’ll probably live to 100.
Guo Chengyu sits down next to him, and Chi Cheng glowers at him until he scoots away to the other end.
They watch a few other matches in silence. All the other snakes are weak, badly bred and badly trained.
Then a short guy with a delicate waist comes and sits between them. He drapes himself over Guo Chengyu like he wants to be the blanket Guo Chengyu never knew he needed.
Chi Cheng rolls his eyes. Already on to the next. Of course.
They start making out and Chi Cheng wants to vomit. He makes gagging noises, bizarrely delighted when the guy gets up and says he’s leaving.
“Don’t mind him,” Guo Chengyu cajoles, holding onto the guy’s wrist. “Stay. You’re too pretty to leave me like this, hmm?”
“The atmosphere’s all wrong,” says the guy, patting Guo Chengyu’s shoulder. “Call me later.”
He strides away, hips swaying. He’s got some kind of jewelry where a belt would normally go. It tinkles as he goes.
Chi Cheng tilts his head. Considers. Then he stubs out his cigar and stands.
“Where are you going?” demands Guo Chengyu.
“He’s hot,” Chi Cheng says. He really doesn’t even deserve that much of an explanation, but Chi Cheng wants to see his reaction.
“He’s my date!” Guo Chengyu shrieks. As if he has any right to possess someone. As if possessing were something he could even understand.
“You know a man seeks revenge when he’s wronged,” Chi Cheng snarls, then stalks after the pretty boy, licking his lips.
He’s still good at sex, he’s pleased to discover, the guy moaning sweetly into his ear in the back of an alley later that night.
His father’s goons will see him - will tell - but fuck it, thinks Chi Cheng.
He’s tired of keeping all this in.
***
There’s another fight the next Friday. Chi Cheng gives Yellow Dragon a well-deserved rest (and the largest guinea pig he can find) and takes one of her siblings with him instead. Reaper, one of her nest-mates. All of them from that clutch are strong. He’s sure he’ll win.
When he arrives, Guo Chengyu is already there with a new boy. Faceless and wearing some kind of corset. Not much else. He’s got his cheek against Guo Chengyu’s knee, sitting on the floor, watching him adoringly.
Guo Chengyu gives Chi Cheng a single nod. He looks away quickly after that, like he’s frustrated at the sight of him.
“What?” Chi Cheng asks. If Guo Chengyu says anything about Chi Cheng fucking his last guy, Chi Cheng really will punch him.
“Nothing,” Guo Chengyu mutters.
Chi Cheng has half a mind to push things. Start another fight. He looks around the club, finding drunk college kids and drunk single businessmen around a tank on a platform in the center.
There’s an inky black python in there, coiled up tight. Its eyes are like cold charcoal.
“Yours?” Chi Cheng asks, jerking his chin at the snake.
“Maybe,” Guo Chengyu says. “I’m putting up the entry fee for the owner.”
Chi Cheng snorts, shaking his head. “How about you just give me your money now and spare the poor thing?”
Chi Cheng’s team is bringing Reaper inside now. It takes a team because Reaper is no lightweight. Three guys have to heave the cage onto the platform in the middle of the club. Reaper hisses inside, thrashing. The bang of steel against steel echoes around the club.
“Thought Yellow Dragon was tired?” Guo Chengyu asks.
“I thought she was unnecessary for this,” snaps Chi Cheng. “And I was right.”
He was. That snake wasn’t bred for this. Guo Chengyu must know it. He must be doing this as some kind of perverse display of money for that twink at his knee.
Guo Chengyu strokes his boytoy’s hair and then glances up at Chi Cheng carefully. “Care to put some extra cash on that?”
“If you want to make my wallet fatter, be my guest,” says Chi Cheng. He sets a stack of bills on the low table in front of Guo Chengyu. The bills sit right at his boy’s eye level. He looks at them with obvious shock.
Guo Chengyu lays a stack on top of that one. “You know I’m a good businessman.”
He is. His balance sheets are better than Chi Cheng’s. But Chi Cheng’s got a better eye for fighters.
He lays another stack of money on the table. “You’re going to lose this one.”
“I won’t,” Guo Chengyu snaps. He tosses out another wrapped stack of bills.
Over and over it goes, and the pile of money grows higher and higher, and Chi Cheng has to laugh cruelly when Guo Chengyu reaches for another stack only to find his hand empty.
“That’s too bad,” Chi Cheng says, showing teeth.
Guo Chengyu stills. “You know I’m good for it, asshole.”
“I do,” Chi Cheng admits. He flops onto the opposite end of the couch and lights up. “But that would mean I would have to see your face again to get the rest. And what if I don’t want to?”
It’s cutting, Chi Cheng knows, but he’s not done being pissed at Guo Chengyu. He doesn’t think he ever will be.
A man doesn’t forget.
Guo Chengyu huffs out a sigh, looking away. His glance falls to his boy.
Then he looks at Chi Cheng pointedly.
Chi Cheng makes an impatient ‘what’ sort of gesture.
Guo Chengyu’s eyes widen, pointing them at the boy again.
“You’re shitting me,” Chi Cheng says, not sure that Guo Chengyu hasn’t lost his mind.
Guo Chengyu shrugs minutely. His mouth is flat.
The boy sees nothing of any of it, watching Reaper being carefully lowered into the glass tank. The black python remains coiled in one corner, barely flicking its tail.
Chi Cheng nearly refuses. His impulse is to shake Guo Chengyu by the lapels, scream at him that this isn’t right, that it doesn’t fix anything, that Chi Cheng will never be okay, that nothing will even the score, that Chi Cheng’s heart is far away in a place he can’t get to or even see and Guo Chengyu is responsible for every second of agony that Chi Cheng has endured since that night, when the well of their friendship ran dry.
“Spoils of war?” He asks instead. He makes his eyes hard as he waits for the reaction.
“…spoils of war,” Guo Chengyu agrees. He looks away quickly.
Reaper pulls the guts out of that black python. The tank turns red with its blood. Yellow where its innards get plastered to the sides.
“Be good to my friend Chi Cheng,” Guo Chengyu says, standing. He nudges the boy in Chi Cheng’s direction, then turns on his heel and leaves. Doesn’t even look back. Doesn’t wait for the boy to question, or protest.
Chi Cheng curls his hand around the boy’s jaw and brings him closer.
***
The years of this kind of half-life leave Chi Cheng more exhausted than angry. He’s always running from something, it feels like. Running from his father. Running from Guo Chengyu. Running from memories of when he had love.
Alcohol and cigarettes and orgasms in dark rooms do nothing for him, but abandoning them feels like giving up completely, so he keeps at it.
Until he meets Wu Suowei.
Wu Suowei, who, for all his slight build and full moon eyes, models masculinity much more healthily than Chi Cheng.
He seeks to improve himself. To build. He’s got a clean, pure heart of red instead of solid black. And his heart is large enough, seemingly, to encompass even someone like Chi Cheng.
Wu Suowei is petty, too, yes - they have that impulse in common. But Wu Suowei will bend before he breaks. He will run with others instead of crashing ahead alone, breaking things as he goes. He is wise enough to seek guidance when he needs it. Cautious enough to look before he leaps. Tenacious enough to keep going when something stands in his way.
Honest enough to tell Chi Cheng when something is too much for him.
“You know he’s straight,” Guo Chengyu texts him one night. “You’re hot, but you’re not that hot. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Fuck off,” Chi Cheng texts back.
But inside, he is just a little afraid. Guo Chengyu is smart. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Chi Cheng is wasting his time. Courting another heart break. Only this time, not even getting the falling in love part. Just the messy breakup. Just the wound.
And Guo Chengyu, for all his flaws, is trying to protect him. Chi Cheng knows that. If not for that golden core of him, Chi Cheng would have shed Guo Chengyu like an old skin years ago. Just sloughed him off and never looked back.
Sometimes Chi Cheng wishes he could outgrown him. Wishes he could just let go, slither off and live a solitary life in a jungle somewhere. Snakes do fine on their own in the wild. They only meet to fuck, then they go off back to their peace and quiet.
It must be nice.
But Chi Cheng isn’t a snake, no matter how much he wishes he could be. He needs others too much.
Inside, he realizes, he’s still that lonely little boy trying to keep it all in. Trying to be a man.
He texts Wei Suowei something lewd. Lights up another cigarette and waits for the response.
A gif file of someone vomiting pops up on screen.
Chi Cheng smiles.
***
It’s very fitting that Wei Wei was raised in a home with a loquat tree. Loquats are tangy, unexpectedly juicy, and precious.
Many people wouldn’t look twice at them. They would wish for a peach or a lychee, maybe. Something overtly sugary.
But the sweetness of a loquat is different.
First of all, it takes time to ripen. Tempting you with its bud, then its vibrant green skin. It transforms slowly into that rich orange that calls out your name.
And when you bite into a ripe one, the flesh of the fruit is firm, at first unyielding. You really have to sink your teeth into it. You have to bite. But once you do, you taste the lusciousness of it, how it fills your mouth and cheeks and leaves no room for anything else. And then you feel the juice burst onto your tongue. The sharp tang is a firework of flavor. You wonder how you ever lived without it.
That’s how Chi Cheng feels when Wei Wei finally comes to him with tears in his eyes and stakes his claim.
How did I ever live without this?
But Chi Cheng was not born under auspicious stars. Of course his precious loquat must be stolen away. The disastrous reappearance of Wang Shou nearly breaks them. And once they survive that, his loquat gets sliced open by a cruel knife: the loss of his devoted mother. Both events hit their new romance and batter it almost to the point of breaking. Maybe it is broken already.
Maybe it’s too late.
Chi Cheng is so, so afraid of losing Wei Wei.
That’s when Guo Chengyu steps in again, like he always does, holding a shield up in front of Chi Cheng’s vulnerable places. Protecting him from the storm.
“That boy adores you,” Guo Chengyu texts him one night. Actually, it’s a voice clip, because Guo Chengyu talks much faster than he can text. And he talks much more than he could text anyway, even if he could text well. Which he can’t. “He’s straight, for god’s sake. He never even kissed a man before you. And then you come in and he changes his everything, his entire self-image, because he wants to be with you. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you’re hot, but you’re not that hot. He’s in love with you, Chi Cheng, you stupid fuck.”
Chi Cheng sighs, puffing on his seventh cigarette and knocking back his second whiskey. He’s not that hot, it’s true. And when did whiskey get so damned weak?
Guo Chengyu sends another message.
“All that being said,” his voice is falsely pompous, parading pitches up and down like he’s a king giving a decree. Trying to make Chi Cheng laugh. “He’s still a scared, vulnerable, straight guy who’s convinced you fucked someone else while he waited up for you at home - in the middle of his mother’s terminal illness, might I add. You need to be there for him. He needs you. He’s alone right now. So if you love him and you want him back, you should go to him. And don’t tell me you don’t know what to do. You knew plenty of what to do when we were seventeen.”
Chi Cheng feels tears sting his eyes. Sometimes he wishes that Guo Chengyu didn’t know him so well.
“I never apologized,” he types out. He’s not going to say those words out loud right now. His voice will break.
There’s a few minutes of silence. Chi Cheng’s heart pounds.
“You never betrayed me,” he types out. It needs to be said. But the words ‘I’m sorry’ feel like both too little and too much for all that has passed between them these many years.
He just wants Guo Chengyu back.
“I would have been upset too,” Guo Chengyu replies.
It’s a text this time. Maybe Guo Chengyu is crying too.
He will receive a new, double oven, five-burner stove complete with power burner and industrial-range hood in the morning.
Chi Cheng won’t tell him who sent it, and Guo Chengyu won’t have to ask.
***
It’s only after he’s cooked (alright, attempted to cook) for Wei Wei that Chi Cheng realizes he had put on an apron to do it. A frilly one. A girly, womanly one, even.
His younger self would stare at him aghast if he ever time-travelled and saw it. His father would scold him roundly for it.
But Chi Cheng realizes that just as he found himself useful when Guo Chengyu was grieving, so too he finds himself useful now - in Wei Wei’s beloved mother’s apron, keeping her son fed and washed and present in the world, while Wei Wei grieves.
Chi Cheng doesn’t know what fate has planned for him, that he is the one sent to comfort the children bereft of their beloved parents. Especially when his relationship with his own parents is so fraught. Maybe he’s supposed to be learning something. Or maybe Guo Chengyu and Wei Wei have drawn unlucky cards in their emotional support options. Maybe it has nothing to do with him.
Either way, Chi Cheng thinks that he’s good at being a nursemaid to grief. Wei Wei improves slowly but steadily. He eats now, and will leave the house, and two weeks after the funeral, Chi Cheng actually manages to make him smile.
Wei Wei loved his mother, and Chi Cheng genuinely loved her too, and together they forge a new path with her memory.
Grief reminds him of a snake shedding its skin. There’s a new, tender layer underneath. And a new, tender layer under that one. And on and on and on. For the rest of the snake’s life, it will grow and change every time, but it will always remain the same snake.
***
“You’ve changed,” Guo Chengyu says one evening. Wei Wei and the doctor are at the table, talking about clinic revenue or something, and Chi Cheng is smoking a well-earned cigarette. Guo Chengyu has one too, out on the balcony.
They made a gentlemen’s agreement with each other to cut back on their smoking, starting with only doing it outdoors.
The balcony counts.
Next month, they will limit themselves to one pack per day. If they don’t, Wei Wei is threatening to make Chi Cheng see a doctor for nicotine patches or whatever they give to men who can’t control their own urges. Chi Cheng is not sticking “quitting aids” on his arms and talking to therapists about his “coping mechanisms.” He will do this on his own.
With Guo Chengyu.
“Have I?” asks Chi Cheng, watching the embers at the end of his cigarette glow.
Guo Chengyu makes that sound he does when he’s solidly agreeing to something.
“You have this certain aura now. Your aura has changed. This…is this what you’re like when you’re peaceful? Why have I never seen it before?”
Chi Cheng lowers his cigarette, pulling his eyes from the end of it to the dying sun on the horizon. No…not dying. Going to sleep. Ready to rise again in the morning.
He feels Guo Chengyu’s arm sling around his shoulders. He’s hugged Chi Cheng this way so many times. A string bean constant in all the shocking flashes of Chi Cheng’s life.
“I guess it’s the first time,” Chi Cheng admits. He feels the truth of the words once they leave his lips. Maybe he would feel other truths if he said more.
He takes a deep breath. Turns to his friend.
“Ge…”
But Guo Chengyu just squeezes Chi Cheng’s shoulders, turning to watch the last rays of that setting sun.
“I know. Me too.”
And that’s all they need to say. They finish their smokes, and feel the breeze on their faces, and return inside to find Wei Wei and the doctor waiting for them with identical knowing smiles.
“Look,” says the doctor. “They’re so cute, aren’t they?”
“Adorable,” Wei Wei agrees, a cheeky smile on his painfully beautiful face.
“Aiya! Snakes are not cute!” Guo Chengyu shouts. “Are they, Chi Cheng?”
“They are not.”
The pair of them strike, and their prey tastes sweet.