Chapter Text
Sui Zhou arrives home, as he so often does now, with enough food for two.
He’s rarely home from the restaurant before midnight, and tonight is no exception. By midnight, Tang Fan should be fed and asleep. Most people should be, Sui Zhou thinks, but Tang Fan especially—Tang Fan before and after food and sleep is like two different people.
But Sui Zhou is not surprised at all when he finds Tang Fan awake on the couch, surrounded by books and papers, notebook propped up on his knees, scratching his own writing out like it’s wronged him. The apartment lights are off, which can’t be good for his eyes, even if light filters in the window from the streetlights and the cluster of stores across the street. The bars of light highlight the faint purple bags under Tang Fan’s eyes and the hair escaping his ponytail from repeated encounters with anxious hands.
Something in Sui Zhou settles.
He doesn’t mind the hot, crowded kitchen at Dong-gu’s or the short walk back home through Xuhui District, but the click of his apartment door behind him and Tang Fan in front of him always makes him feel his calmest. When he talks to Laolao on the phone—the only person in his family he still speaks to on any kind of regular basis—she tells him to leave Shanghai, to come back north. He doesn’t know how to tell her that the quiet of the countryside is worse than the noise of the city. He needs to be certain he isn’t the only one alive.
It is hard to think you’re the only one alive when Tang Fan is around.
Sui Zhou turns on the light.
Tang Fan startles and yelps, his pen slashing so hard along the page he tears through it. He grabs The Complete Works of Yuan Hongdao: Annotated and Collated and raises it above his head like he intends to use it as a weapon.
“Sui Zhou!” he says breathlessly when he processes who’s standing in front of him. His eyes are wide and bright, his cheeks flushed. “Do you want to kill me?”
Eyeing the heft of Tang Fan’s poetry book, Sui Zhou raises an eyebrow.
“This is self defense,” says Tang Fan, still breathing hard. He brings the book to his chest, clutching it like a child’s toy. “Sui Zhou. I almost died.” He collapses onto his back. “Ow, my eyes.” He throws an arm over his face. The book falls to the floor with a clunk. “Hmph. Maybe it would have been best if I had died.”
After two years of living with Tang Fan, Sui Zhou now knows when to ignore him. He takes off his backpack, an old utilitarian thing nothing like Tang Fan’s big canvas bags, to fish out two takeout containers of majiang mian. Tang Fan shifts conspicuously on the couch and peeks over his arm, one eye squinting open to make sure Sui Zhou has not left the room. “It would be better,” he insists, “If I had died.”
“Hm,” says Sui Zhou.
“Don’t ‘hm’ at me,” says Tang Fan. He sits up again, mouth pulled into a determined pout.
Two years ago, all of Tang Fan’s pouting and whining was annoying, baffling. Sui Zhou had never met anyone like him. He questioned Wang Zhi’s judgement regarding the compatibility of strangers.
Now, Sui Zhou fights the urge to smile.
“I mean it,” Tang Fan insists. “Everything is a disaster.”
“Everything?” Sui Zhou places Tang Fan’s food on the table in front of the couch.
“Everything! School, writing, Huanyi—now my roommate is trying to kill me—oh, noodles!” Tang Fan lights up like the buildings outside and grabs the chopsticks Sui Zhou is holding out for him. “What would I do without you?” Tang Fan sighs before stuffing a mound of noodles and sesame paste into his mouth.
“I don’t know,” Sui Zhou says honestly. To hear his sister tell it, before he started grad school, Tang Fan spent every yuan he made from livestreaming and pay-per-chapter erotica on takeout and bath bombs. People make fun of Tang Fan’s appetite, and he is well known by most hole-in-the-wall restaurant owners in the neighborhood, but Sui Zhou knows Tang Fan is equally as likely to get hyper-focused on Ming poetry or unsolved crime podcasts and forget to eat. If Sui Zhou did not cook here or bring his cooking home from Dong-gu’s, Tang Fan would spend a lot more time angry and self-destructive until he managed to get a vegetable in him.
Mouth full with a second heap of majiang mian, Tang Fan says something along the lines of, “Sui Zhou, you’re supposed to say no, I’m very self sufficient.” He swallows and pouts again.
“I’m very self sufficient,” says Sui Zhou.
“Aiyo,” says Tang Fan, slapping him on the arm. It has, as usual, little impact. “Shut up. Eat your dinner.”
Sui Zhou smiles at his own noodles and begins to eat.
Tang Fan, of course, does not shut up, mouth full or no. As they eat together on the couch, he regails Sui Zhou with all the reasons he would be better off dead—his next exam is going to go horribly, he can’t figure out how to get from one point to another in his latest melodramatic romance novel, he thinks his look for the contest at the club he frequents is coming together but Cui Mama said something bitchy about his wig last weekend and maybe she was right. As he talks, half the time incomprehensible through his noodles, Sui Zhou lets himself relax into the cadence of Tang Fan’s voice, nodding and humming just the amount Tang Fan needs, allowing himself to become pleasantly full.
By the time Tang Fan has finished his dinner, he’s wound himself down, slumped into a posture of sleepy contentment. “I feel better,” he says.
“Wow,” says Sui Zhou dryly.
“Hm,” Tang Fan sniffs, prim, and then he smiles, wide and unreserved like Tang Fan does, his dimples on full display. He slumps over further, curling his legs underneath himself and burrowing up against Sui Zhou’s arm. He places his chin on Sui Zhou’s shoulder. “Sui Zhou,” he murmurs, and his breath against Sui Zhou’s neck is enough of a surprise to send a little shiver down Sui Zhou’s spine. He jumps. Tang Fan laughs and murmurs, “Sorry.”
“What?” says Sui Zhou.
“You don’t have to go,” says Tang Fan. “If you don’t want.”
Sui Zhou frowns. He turns his head and finds his face a lot closer to Tang Fan’s than he expected, which, in retrospect, seems stupid—he just felt his breath on his neck. But he twitches in surprise again, and Tang Fan lets out another laugh and backs away, patting Sui Zhou’s shoulder in apparent apology. “To the contest?” Sui Zhou confirms.
“Yeah,” says Tang Fan. “You don’t have to go. I won’t be offended.”
“I know I don’t have to,” says Sui Zhou, searching Tang Fan’s expression. He just looks earnest, sleepy, his head now turned to rest against the back of the couch instead of Sui Zhou. “I want to.”
“Okay,” says Tang Fan. “It’s just…” He sighs again, his eyes drifting in the direction of the window. A car horn blares outside. The muffled sound of a television drifts in from elsewhere in the building.
“What?” says Sui Zhou. “Do you not...want me to see?”
Tang Fan has never hidden this part of himself from Sui Zhou. Sui Zhou has known Tang Fan is gay from the moment he moved in, because Wang Zhi recommended Sui Zhou to Tang Fan as someone “cool,” someone safe. It didn’t take him long after that to find out Tang Fan likes to go to his favorite club dressed like a woman. He does it at least twice a month, leaving late Friday or Saturday for Qing Ge’s place with a dress bag over his arm and getting back in the wee hours of the morning or late the next day. Tang Fan is not the only one who does this; it’s expected, where he goes. There are parties, contests. This weekend’s contest, apparently, is a big deal.
Sui Zhou has seen many of Tang Fan’s outfits in his room—bright glittery dresses, modern hanfu in pretty pinks and purples, heels so high Sui Zhou’s ankles hurt looking at them—but he’s never seen him in one. He knows he used to post pictures and videos on Blued and Xiandanjia, before it got banned, but it seemed invasive to look for them. Even if Tang Fan is not exactly secretive about it, it seems—personal. Like something private, or at least private when it comes to people like Sui Zhou—straight men, men who have never felt wrong in this role they’ve been given.
And if Tang Fan doesn’t want Sui Zhou to see anymore of it than he already has—that’s okay. He doesn’t know why he feels quite as disappointed as he does, but that’s not Tang Fan’s fault or Tang Fan’s business.
“No, no,” says Tang Fan. “It’s not that. I know you’re not an asshole. I just...need to be sure you know.”
“That I’m not an asshole?”
“No,” says Tang Fan. “Let me get to the point!” He slaps Sui Zhou’s bicep in irritation. He doesn’t lift his hand away before saying with solemn eye contact, “Men are going to hit on you, Sui Zhou.”
Sui Zhou blinks.
“You have to know that.” The hand on Sui Zhou’s bicep squeezes, and suddenly he feels very warm about the neck. “You work out.” Tang Fan removes his hand. “You are hou zi bait.”
Sui Zhou does not know what Tang Fan is talking about, but he has a strong feeling he is not literally being called monkey bait.
Tang Fan is right to assume Sui Zhou has not considered this. This is not out of any insecurity about his appearance; Sui Zhou is fine with his appearance. He works out so his body will do the things he wants it to do, but he is, generally, satisfied enough with the results. He knows straight girls tend to get very giggly around him. It’s just never occurred to him to put himself in this context––a gay one. Tang Fan’s queer friends come over frequently, and some of them Sui Zhou even considers his own friends now, but those are, well, friends. Their sexuality is not particularly relevant to Sui Zhou’s life.
“Huh,” says Sui Zhou. He shrugs.
“That won’t be weird for you?” says Tang Fan, biting his lip.
Sui Zhou shrugs again. “No,” he says. “I know how to turn people down gently.”
Tang Fan snorts.
“What?”
Tang Fan shakes his head with a little mischievous smile. “Handsome Sui Zhou, always fending off the ladies,” Tang Fan coos in an obnoxious, high voice, grabbing Sui Zhou’s cheek and pinching it.
Sui Zhou grabs Tang Fan’s wrist and applies enough force to prove he’s stronger but not enough force (he hopes) to hurt, pulling Tang Fan off him. Tang Fan, satisfyingly, lets out a little squeak. “Shut up,” says Sui Zhou.
“Ugh, okay, okay, peace before force,” says Tang Fan. He is pouting again. He is always pouting. It should look so much stupider than it does. He reaches up and pulls his messed up ponytail all the way out, his hair falling over his bony shoulders. It’s a little frizzy, a little tangled, but Sui Zhou is always weirdly fascinated by Tang Fan’s hair, and his eyes track it as Tang Fan combs through it thoughtfully. It’s weird, because Sui Zhou’s hair is pretty long, too—in recent months, it’s gone enough past his shoulders he can get a decent enough bun out of it. But when Tang Fan takes down his hair, Sui Zhou always finds himself looking.
“Then, fine, if there’s no problem,” says Tang Fan, “come admire me,” and Sui Zhou’s neck feels hot again, like he’s been caught at something, though he’s not really sure what. “And turn all the men to me.” He throws back his head and laughs. “Okay, no, I don’t think the same men will want anything to do with my chopstick legs. Turn them to Wuyun.”
“Noted,” says Sui Zhou. He realizes his shoulders are starting to get tense again, though he can’t imagine why; he rolls them, rubs the back of his neck.
Tang Fan stands up, fingers still combing through his hair. “Maybe Cui Mama was right,” he murmurs to himself, and Sui Zhou knows Tang Fan is now lost to another train of thought, another private dimension. He watches his roommate, his friend, drift off towards his bedroom.
“Good night, Tang Fan,” Sui Zhou calls. He picks up Tang Fan’s empty dinner container, knowing it left Tang Fan’s mind the moment it was no longer full of food.
“What?” says Tang Fan, who is gazing at himself in the mirror. “Oh, good night!” He does not look over to notice the container Sui Zhou’s holding up pointedly.
Sui Zhou shakes his head and brings it to the kitchen with his own.
***
Sui Zhou is walking with Zhang Bojing. They ate most of their lunch in comfortable silence. Now they are on their way back to the construction site, talking about whether they have plans for their day off. Bojing is going to go hiking. Sui Zhou is going to cook for Xiulian.
Something makes Sui Zhou stop.
“What?” asks Bojing.
Sui Zhou frowns. He pats his pockets. “Did I forget my wallet?”
“Didn’t see it,” says Bojing.
Sui Zhou does not typically do things like leave his wallet places. He is not yet as vigilant as he will become, but he is not nearly as flighty as Tang Fan, who he has not yet met. Still—something feels wrong. He will never be able to explain this. His wallet, he found later, was tucked in his back pocket the whole time.
“Do you want to go back?” asks Bojing.
“You can go on without me,” says Sui Zhou.
Bojing shrugs. The corner of his mouth lifts in a small half smile. “I’m not in a rush,” he says.
They turn around, back in the direction of the noodle stand. They walk a few steps.
It happens so fast. It’s the loudest thing Sui Zhou’s heard in his life, louder than anything he’s heard since. It’s so hot, suddenly. The sun is gone. There’s dirt in his nostrils, in his throat. His ears are ringing.
He thinks for a few long seconds he is dead.
He is not.
But he is alone.
***
Sui Zhou wakes up gasping for breath.
Like always, it takes a few minutes of panic for him to figure out he is not on the street in the rubble of the last build he ever worked, that he is in his apartment in Shanghai, tangled in sweaty bed sheets. It takes a few extra moments of disorientation for Sui Zhou to connect “my bedside lamp is shattered on the floor,” “the ceiling light is on,” and “Tang Fan is hovering in the open doorway” into something coherent.
“Fuck,” Sui Zhou spits.
He tries to rip off his sheets.
When he finds his legs trapped, he grunts in frustration, and Tang Fan says, “Hey, hey.” He flutters over to the side of the bed, hands grasping at nothing like they do when he doesn’t know what to do with them. “It’s fine,” says Tang Fan. “You’re fine.”
Sui Zhou snorts, harsh, his breaths still coming faster and harder than he’d like. “Yeah, just.” He waves a hand toward the broken lamp, and Tang Fan flinches. The words “just breaking my shit” don’t manage to leave Sui Zhou’s mouth in the face of Tang Fan’s fear.
“Don’t!” Tang Fan says hurriedly. Tang Fan might seem like he’s always in his own world, and he often is, but he’s shockingly observant when he wants to be. It isn’t, Sui Zhou has learned, that Tang Fan doesn’t pay attention—it’s that Tang Fan pays attention to what he wants to pay attention to, and then his attention is like a spotlight, a laser. Too much, sometimes. “I’m a flincher, I flinch all the time, Sui Zhou, come on, I flinch when I get a text, you know that. I’m going to make tea. Don’t go anywhere, breathe for a second before you fix the sheets, okay, just take a second, I’ll be right back. I’m a flincher.” He scurries out of the room.
Right, Sui Zhou thinks. A flincher. His stomach feels sour, curled in on itself.
He closes his eyes.
His bedtime routine helps. Shower, yoga, sleep sounds with a guided meditation. He knows “help” doesn’t mean “cure.” He knows things are better than they once were. He knows this is all he can ask for.
But it’s been five years. Five. Childishly, he thinks he’s tired of recovering. He wants to be recovered. He wants, at least, for that to be possible.
For a while, Sui Zhou focuses on the sounds of Tang Fan puttering around the kitchen, clinking and soft curses, and then, eventually, Tang Fan’s voice returns to the bedroom. “Sui Zhou,” he says, careful, tentative, like he only is at moments like this. Sui Zhou hates it when Tang Fan is like this.
He opens his eyes.
Tang Fan is holding a cup of tea. He is wearing a gray t-shirt that might, in fact, be Sui Zhou’s, because it’s far too big. Tang Fan is actually a few centimeters taller than Sui Zhou, but where Sui Zhou has muscles that actually fill out his clothes, Tang Fan is a string bean; the collar of the shirt falls down, revealing one bony shoulder. His sweatpants are too short. His feet, large and clumsy, are bare.
Tang Fan is made to be a whirlpool, to swirl endlessly with activity, to pull everything to him. He is not supposed to be gentle. He is not supposed to be a caretaker. That’s for Sui Zhou to do. That’s how Sui Zhou feels like a person.
Carefully, Tang Fan steps around the shards of lamp and lightbulb on the floor and places it on the bedside table. “Drink it,” he says.
Sui Zhou grunts. Tang Fan watches as Sui Zhou finally manages to untangle himself from the sheets, the wires in his brain rearranging themselves into something—well, if not normal, then functional. He reaches for the undoubtedly oversteeped tea.
“If you want me to to piss off,” Tang Fan says, “I can.” He fidgets. “But I’ll stay if you want.”
“Can you just…” Sui Zhou grips the hot ceramic. He doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to admit it. But he manages, “Just for a few minutes.”
He’s not the only one alive. Tang Fan is standing there. His hair is tangled. His eyes are sleepy.
Tang Fan clambers onto the bed immediately. “Ugh,” he says, “You’re so sweaty,” and already some tension eases from Sui Zhou’s shoulders. This is what he wants. This is Tang Fan. “What shall I talk about?” he asks, grabbing one of Sui Zhou’s pillows and settling into it. Sui Zhou doesn’t know, doesn’t really care, so he doesn’t answer. He just watches Tang Fan’s mouth stretch wide with a yawn. He makes an exaggerated noise along with it, and Sui Zhou catches it.
Tang Fan settles further into the bed, his feet pressing against Sui Zhou’s ankles. Sui Zhou sips his tea. It is, as expected, oversteeped.
“I was thinking,” says Tang Fan, gaze on the ceiling, “Maybe I won’t wear a wig at all. I have good hair. I have great hair. Did I tell you about my look?”
“No,” says Sui Zhou. Tang Fan shares most things—Sui Zhou thinks he is chronically compelled to—but he doesn’t usually tell Sui Zhou all the details of his drag looks.
“I’m doing a whole 1930s Shanghai thing,” says Tang Fan. “Jiejie found the qipao and fixed it up. It fits me perfectly. Qing-jie is so jealous. Anyway, I thought a short wig, obviously, but Cui Mama said––”
Sui Zhou does not understand half of what Tang Fan is saying, despite the “obviously.” But he listens. He listens to the rise and fall of his voice, to his animated outrage at Cui Mama’s insults and adoration of his outfit, and he loses track of time. Eventually Tang Fan’s voice becomes soft and slurred with sleep, and Sui Zhou sinks down onto his pillow, and the last thing he remembers is Tang Fan saying, “Good boy,” and maybe there’s a hand tapping his cheek, a sleepy smile over his face, but he’s too tired to be sure.
***
Sui Zhou wakes up to the sound of Tang Fan’s snores.
He’s groggy like he always is after sleep interrupted by nightmares, his eyes heavy and sore, his throat dry and thick. He tries to swallow and coughs instead. The only thing next to his bed is last night’s tea, bitter and cold, but he sits up and swallows it with a grimace. It’s something.
He looks down at his feet.
Tang Fan is curled up there like a cat. It can’t be comfortable—he’s too long to fit on the bed this way, two feet and an arm dangling off despite how much he’s curled into himself. His mouth is wide open in a pool of drool. His (Sui Zhou’s) shirt is halfway up his stomach, and his tangled hair covers his eyes.
Sui Zhou’s not sure when Tang Fan got there. He remembers falling asleep with Tang Fan’s presence at his side.
He thinks of the way Tang Fan flinched away from him last night, and he looks at the remnants of the lamp, still on the floor. He winces.
When Tang Fan first moved in, Sui Zhou’s nightmares were worse. He told Tang Fan about them before he even decided to move in, told him he should let Sui Zhou be if he heard anything, but he must have sounded particularly bad one night several months in, because Tang Fan checked on him anyway. When he woke up, he found he’d grabbed Tang Fan by the throat.
He thought Tang Fan would move out. He was sick with guilt, the way he used to feel when he’d have an outburst and yell at his last girlfriend. He apologized every way he knew how, bought Tang Fan his favorite breakfast foods, made him dinner. But Tang Fan insisted he’d been warned, that he hadn’t listened, that it was his fault. It was the first time Sui Zhou ever saw him so earnest. “I know you wouldn’t really hurt me,” Tang Fan said. “I know you,” he said, and Sui Zhou realized then that…he did. Somehow, they’d grown to know each other.
Still. He didn’t know how to take Tang Fan saying, “I know you wouldn’t really hurt me” after Sui Zhou had his hand around his neck. But I did, he kept repeating to himself. Sometimes he can’t help but think this, still. But I did.
He just never stopped making dinner for Tang Fan after that. Now he makes him lunch, too. Often, he makes him breakfast. It’s not out of penance, though, not anymore. It’s just what Sui Zhou does. He takes care of people. He takes care of people and he feels like a person.
Tang Fan makes a smacking noise with his mouth, like he’s eating. He does this a lot in sleep. He mumbles a little, the only distinguishable sound, “Zhuerduo.” Sui Zhou wonders if Tang Fan dreams of anything but food.
He sighs heavily and slides out of the bed to check the time on his phone, avoiding the pieces of lamp on the floor. Tang Fan has class in an hour and a half. If he doesn’t have time for breakfast, caffeine, and an approximately thirty minute shower, he will undoubtedly be a nightmare to all he encounters, so for the public good, Sui Zhou grabs him by the ankle and says, “Tang Fan.”
Tang Fan kicks out, but Sui Zhou is expecting this. He is much stronger. He keeps his grip firm and backs away before dropping Tang Fan’s foot. “Tang Fan,” Sui Zhou repeats.
Tang Fan groans, sends another ineffective kick in Sui Zhou’s direction for good measure, and places his face directly into his puddle of drool. His head jerks back up with an “mmph,” his nose wrinkling.
“I’ll get breakfast,” says Sui Zhou.
Tang Fan swipes his hair out of his eyes and squints at him hopefully.
“But you have to shower. You have class.”
“Nooo,” Tang Fan whines. “You don’t know anything.” He feels around for something, probably blankets or a pillow, and upon finding nothing, he groans again, covers his drool with his arms, and pillows his head there.
“I’ll get whatever you want,” says Sui Zhou, and he leaves to get the dustpan while Tang Fan considers this.
He’s nearly done sweeping up the shards on the floor when Tang Fan lets out a loud, grumpy “mmm” as if decompressing, then murmurs, “Cifan?”
“If you get up,” says Sui Zhou, straightening up.
“You’re not my boss,” Tang Fan murmurs into his folded arms.
“Hm,” says Sui Zhou, and he stands there, one hand on his hip, the other holding the dustpan, until Tang Fan rolls out of bed muttering darkly about his nagging wife. Sometimes he does this. Sui Zhou just rolls his eyes about it. One day, Tang Fan will find a boyfriend, and then he’ll have to…
Sui Zhou swallows at the unsteadiness that sweeps over him. He must be hungrier than he thought.
Sui Zhou waits until he hears the shower to leave the apartment.
He’s glad to do it. He has a task to focus on, and being outside will clear his head. He’s going to disappear into a city crowd, hear and smell the inevitable presence of people, and he is going to return with something that will make his friend smile. Being around people is good. Making Tang Fan smile is good.
He’s just gotten to the stairs when he hears the voice of their twelve year old neighbor. “Sui-gege!” she calls, “Wait for me!,” and he turns to see Dong’er running towards him, her hair in a long braid bouncing at her back. She is not wearing her school uniform.
Sui Zhou looks at his phone screen, confirming that it is, in fact, 9 AM on a Thursday. He frowns, thinking of the tofu waiting in his kitchen for her lunch break. Dong’er is usually left in charge of her own lunch; when Sui Zhou found this out, he started making extra food. He often leaves for the restaurant when Dong’er is arriving home for lunch—the perfect time to pass food along. Dong’er might be perfectly capable of making or buying lunch, but there is nothing wrong with feeding people who need to be fed.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asks.
Dong’er completely ignores him. “Are you going to get breakfast?” she asks. “I’m going to get breakfast. I have money.”
“Dong’er.”
Dong’er looks at the ceiling and heaves an enormous sigh. “Sui-ge,” she whines. “You’re not my mom.”
Sui Zhou does not say what he wants to say—that Dong’er’s mom is not really being much of her mom at the moment, either. He knows it isn’t really his business. He thinks Dong’er’s parents might be mortified if they knew she shared the details of their ongoing divorce with her neighbors. But her parents are wrapped up in each other, angry and stressed, and Dong’er is all alone. Sui Zhou knows what it’s like to be all alone in your family’s home.
Sui Zhou shakes his head. “Come on,” he says, and he exits the building with Dong’er at his side, talking his ear off the moment he indicates she’s welcome.
Dong’er often reminds him of someone else he knows.
“Is Tang-ge home today? Are you getting him breakfast?” she asks as they make their way from their side street to more bustling roads. Cars honk. People hurry past, talking on phones, and tourists stop abruptly to read signs and check maps.
Sui Zhou feels safe and steady as he walks with Dong’er, making sure she stays close. He knows she’s out on her own all the time, but he can’t help it. “Yes,” he says.
She sighs dreamily, perhaps at the thought of food. “Ah, Sui-ge,” she says. “You’re a good man. Can I say hi to Tang-ge?”
“He has class,” says Sui Zhou, glad to have a reason to bypass the semi-baffling praise. “He can’t be late.”
“I’ll say hi so quickly,” says Dong’er. “You won’t even know I was there.” Before he can answer, she begins chattering about what she’s going to buy, and Sui Zhou is swept along in a conversation about the merits of various breakfast foods and who makes the best, a drama Dong’er has been watching recently, and whatever it is she’s been doing on minecraft. He’s never been much of a TV person, and he has still not quite figured out minecraft, but he listens all the same. She barely quiets down long enough for Sui Zhou to greet the folks at the breakfast stands and buy the food (he insists on buying Dong’er’s, too). She is barely phased when she’s scolded by the auntie selling baozi for very clearly skipping school.
“If you’re too good for school, maybe you should be put to work,” the woman threatens.
“Sui-gege will put me to work,” Dong’er lies sweetly before the next customer closes in. The woman gives Sui Zhou a sharp look like she knows very well this is a lie.
Dong’er is silenced only by a mouthful of warm pork bun on the way back.
Sui Zhou takes this moment to say, “Dong’er, you have to go to school.”
She pouts at him, cheeks full of food. Sui Zhou thinks perhaps he shouldn’t let her say hello to Tang Fan. Perhaps she’s said hello to Tang Fan enough.
“You’re very smart,” he says. “You can be very successful. You could be my boss one day. You could be Tang Fan’s boss. But you have to go to school.”
Dong’er swallows loudly. Her shoulders slump, but she says, “Wellll. I do think it would be fun to be Tang-ge’s boss.”
Sui Zhou smiles. “If you went to school where I grew up, you’d be in school even longer every day.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dong’er sighs. “But I’m not missing anything, Sui-ge. I already know all that stuff.”
“There’s always more to learn,” Sui Zhou says firmly.
“Okay, okay, old man,” says Dong’er.
Sui Zhou thinks perhaps Dong’er isn’t being challenged enough. He wonders if there’s anything he can do about it, or if trying would be one step too far.
He’ll ask Tang Fan how she’s doing with her homework.
When Sui Zhou opens the door to the apartment, Tang Fan shouts, “Finally!” from the bathroom.
“I wasn’t long,” says Sui Zhou, because he wasn’t.
He hears the sound of spitting and running water. “Tell that to my stomach!” Tang Fan shouts, and then he bustles into the room with hands ready to grab breakfast. His hair is pulled neatly into a top knot, and he’s wearing his own clothes now, looking leggier than ever in jeans rolled up above his ankles.
“My hero,” says Tang Fan, faux breathless, and he pretends to swoon onto Sui Zhou.
Sui Zhou sighs. Dong’er giggles.
“Dong’er!” says Tang Fan, frowning and straightening up. “We talked about this.” He looks away pointedly. “I don’t see you. Sui Zhou, do you remember the little girl who used to live in our building?”
Dong’er pouts. “Tang-ge!”
Tang Fan, eyes turned to the ceiling, holds his hand out to Sui Zhou for his breakfast.
Sui Zhou places it on the counter instead, just to be annoying.
Tang Fan clucks like the auntie selling baozi and grabs the cifan himself. “Dong’er. If you don’t go to school you’ll never get away from your parents.”
“Tang Fan,” Sui Zhou scolds.
“We don’t have to pretend,” says Tang Fan. “You should know what it’s like.” He takes a large bite of sticky rice and dough and moans happily. “Heaven,” he says, mouth full. “Dong’er. Get your homework somehow and you and I are doing it together this afternoon.” He swallows. “I better see your little butt here the moment I get back from class.”
“I don’t need three moms!” Dong’er insists.
“Then stop showing up on my doorstep,” says Tang Fan.
Dong’er huffs. “Maybe I don’t want my parents to notice what I’m doing!” she says. “All you do is nag and nag!” Sui Zhou has a strong and not entirely pleasant feeling she picked this one up from her parents’ arguments. “Nobody wants to be normal anymore! Can’t anybody just be normal?”
“No,” says Tang Fan.
Dong’er stomps out of the apartment with a pointed slam of the door, at which Tang Fan calls, “Hey! Watch yourself!”
“Tang Fan,” says Sui Zhou.
Tang Fan shrugs, taking another large bite of his breakfast. “She’ll be here,” he says, cheeks stuffed exactly like Dong’er’s were in the street.
“She’s having a hard time.”
“Doesn’t mean she can skip school whenever she feels like it.”
“We already talked about it.”
“Yeah, while you bought her breakfast.”
Sui Zhou thinks it would be pointless to point out he never said he bought her breakfast.
Tang Fan swallows his food. “Sometimes if you want someone to stop doing something, you have to make sure it’s really annoying for them,” he says.
Sui Zhou is struck by what a Tang Fan thing this is to say.
It’s also not entirely wrong.
“I should go,” says Tang Fan. He scurries into his bedroom and returns with one of his big canvas bags, stuffed with poetry books and history books and notebooks and his laptop. He shoves the bag into Sui Zhou’s arms without asking, grabs a sweater off the back of the couch, sniffs the armpits, and throws it on before grabbing his bag back.
“Is that my sweater?” Sui Zhou asks, eyeing it. He is pretty certain that’s one of his go-to sweaters, black and chunky and a little too big for him, let alone Tang Fan.
Tang Fan shrugs, rolling up the sleeves as he shakes his bag back onto his shoulder. “I can’t go get another one now,” he whines, “I’ll be late,” and when Sui Zhou just shakes his head, Tang Fan pats him on the arm and blusters out of the apartment like a hurricane, as Tang Fan does.
As usual, the place feels so quiet the moment he’s gone.
Sui Zhou heads to the fridge to begin making lunch for Tang Fan and Dong’er, who he knows will show up for homework time, just like Tang Fan said.
***
Saturday night arrives quickly. Sui Zhou takes the lunch shift at work so he can get to Huanyi around nine, an hour before the contest is set to begin. By the time he arrives home from Dong-gu’s, Tang Fan has already left for Qing Ge’s to get ready, and Sui Zhou is left alone in front of the mirror wondering what to wear.
This is not typically something Sui Zhou worries about. His wardrobe is not particularly extensive or varied. He has jeans. He has t-shirts. He has sweaters. He doesn’t really go out, not to clubs, and he can’t exactly make a judgement of the appropriate Huanyi wardrobe from Tang Fan—least of all because Tang Fan always leaves the apartment before he’s dressed up.
He supposes it’s probably hot inside the club despite the remaining spring chill, and he has a general idea that black might be an appropriate color for this sort of thing, so he grabs a black t-shirt and dark jeans and hopes he doesn’t look like an idiot.
He is not sure why he is worried about looking stupid. He’s going to be there to watch, not to be watched. He’s just going to sit with his friends and see what it is Tang Fan does with his weekends.
Still, he feels better when he grabs the bomber jacket Tang Fan always praises him in and puts that on, too, and he feels even better when he’s no longer alone, even if it means being on the metro.
Sui Zhou doesn’t like to listen to music or read on the metro; he likes to be aware of his surroundings. He stands holding a pole and keeps an eye on the people around him, the laughing university students, the tourists, the lone people on their phones. Right near him, some women are shaking with giggles at something they’re watching, and a couple around his age lean against each other, sharing a pair of earbuds. They look cozy, happy.
Sui Zhou hasn’t dated since Yu Xiulian. Things fell apart rapidly after the explosion. She tried her best, but what they had was not strong enough to withstand the black hole the accident carved into Sui Zhou’s life.
Sui Zhou worked construction. The equipment malfunction that led to the explosion was a freak accident. It left no one to blame but the universe. He wasn’t the only person to survive, but he was the only one of his friends.
For at least a year, he was such a different person it was like Sui Zhou did not exist, like perhaps he never had. He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat, he didn’t cook, he didn’t talk. He became belligerent in ways he’d never been—angry, even violent. He never hit Xiulian. He would never lay a hand on a woman, never, no matter how angry he became, but he still scared himself, with the way he was not himself, with the way he broke things or shouted. He knew he was scaring her, too. “This isn’t good for you,” he told her. “I have to go.” So he went.
He moved to Shanghai. He started therapy. He picked up kung fu. He started cooking more. He got his job at Dong-gu’s. He started volunteering to bring food to older folks without families to help them, and there he met another volunteer, Wang Zhi, and Wang Zhi introduced him to Tang Fan.
He’s more Sui Zhou than he’s been in five years, and yet...the thought of dating still rouses nothing at all in him. If he’s honest...it never really has. He doesn’t like to think about it because it makes him feel mean, cold, but when he remembers the women he’s dated, the most he recalls is a sense of, “This will do.” It’s not that it’s never been nice. It’s nice to take care of someone, to have someone around. Kissing is nice. Sex is nice, too.
But maybe it’s true that dramas and movies and music set everyone up for disappointment. Maybe he expects too much.
The train stops and the couple gets off, replaced by a group of women speaking English loudly, and Sui Zhou tries to shake off his stupid, maudlin thoughts. He is happy. He is doing well. He had a nightmare this week, but Tang Fan was there, and that was okay, that was all he needed, and now he is going to see his friends and do something new.
The walk from the metro to Huanyi is short. From outside, it looks like all the other clubs he passes on the way there; only the small neon rainbow in the window makes any reference to its intended audience. There’s a line of people outside already, and Sui Zhou scans it for any familiar faces. Wang Zhi texted him not long ago saying someone would meet him outside.
Wang Zhi is a weird one. Sui Zhou does not share this thought with anyone, but he thinks it a lot. Wang Zhi is always smiling, but not like Tang Fan, who smiles because he is happy; Wang Zhi smiles in a way that hides things. Sui Zhou thought an introduction to Wang Zhi’s friends would mean finding out more about him, but it turns out no one knows what he does for work, where he lives, if he has any family, or even how old he is. He always has money, and he’s almost always with Ding Rong or Jia Kiu or both, and he seems to know everyone and everything––“Wang Zhi introduced us” is not a unique story in their circle—but that is about the extent of it. According to Tang Fan, nobody even knows if Wang Zhi is dating Ding Rong or Jia Kiu or both of them, or if they’re all just friends. They may or may not live together. Ostensibly, nobody even knows if he likes men or does drag. He may even be like Qing Ge, who started doing drag but now lives her whole life as a woman, taking hormones and fondly helping out people like her and people like Tang Fan in turn. Wang Zhi’s constant presence at Huanyi is the only clue anyone has for this sort of thing.
But Wang Zhi introduced Sui Zhou to Tang Fan, and for that he is grateful. For that, he’s happy to see Wang Zhi when he does.
“Sui Zhou!” a voice calls, and Sui Zhou turns to see Duo’erla, Tang Fan’s best friend, waving frantically. Her leather jacket is not new, but he’s surprised by the bright red lipstick; he’s not sure he has ever seen Duo’erla wear makeup.
He lifts a hand in greeting and heads her way, accepting a hug when she pulls him into one. Sui Zhou is not a big hugger, but he lets Duo’erla hug him. He figures Duo’erla has two sides: hugging you or kicking the shit out of you with her ubiquitous combat boots, and he is glad to be on the former side.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she says. “Feifei is so happy.”
Sui Zhou realizes he was not given any sort of primer on how to refer to Tang Fan in drag. He notes the name and says, honestly, “I’m glad I’m here.”
“Let’s go, Tang-jie and Pei Huai are already here,” she beams, and she grabs his wrist and pulls him right to the front of the line. Duo’erla ignores the looks they get from some of the people in line and cheerfully greets the bouncer, asking after his daughter. Though Duo’erla’s crowd is more likely found at Roxie, she’s been a fixture at Huanyi for a while, according to Tang Fan—especially since she started dating Qing Ge, who is something of a celebrity here. Duo’erla gestures to Sui Zhou with, “Feifei’s friend.”
The bouncer gives Sui Zhou the kind of appreciative look that makes him remember Tang Fan’s warning about being hit on. “Oh,” says the bouncer, “Feifei’s friend,” and Sui Zhou smiles politely. “Go on in.”
Sui Zhou thinks he is not supposed to notice the look the bouncer gives Duo’erla as they walk inside, eyes wide with the delight of gossip in a way Sui Zhou has seen Tang Fan’s and Dong’er’s many times, so he pretends he didn’t. It genuinely does not bother him; in fact, he realizes as he and Duo’erla enter the low lights and loud music of the club, he feels kind of excited, like maybe tonight will, in fact, be a lot of fun, even if clubs aren’t normally his thing.
“Wang Zhi has a booth,” Duo’erla shouts over the music, an endless loop of pop and disco mashed together, lyrics in multiple languages weaving in and out of heavy beats. She gestures, and Sui Zhou spots a booth at what he imagines is the ideal vantage point—the entire club, particularly the dancefloor and the entrance, is easily visible.
Wang Zhi is holding court there. There is no other way to describe the way he is sitting in a red velvet sport coat, one arm slung over the back of the booth, surrounded by people. On either side of him are Ding Rong in a shiny silver bomber jacket and Jia Kui in all black. Ding Rong is nodding seriously at the words of someone in a blue wig leaning over the back of the seat, and Jia Kui is scanning the dancefloor as if looking for something. Sui Zhou spots Tang Yu and Pei Huai, heads close in a private conversation, and Wuyun, now laughing uproariously at whatever the person in the blue wig has said while Ding Rong shakes his head, but he doesn’t see Tang Fan anywhere. He is pretty sure Tang Fan is not wearing a blue wig tonight, and anyway, he’d recognize Tang Fan’s shoulders—this person’s are bare in their dress.
When Wang Zhi spots Duo’erla and Sui Zhou, he raises a hand in greeting like a baby-faced emperor, gesturing for them to come forward.
“Wang Zhi’s kind of a big deal!” Duo’erla yells, but when Sui Zhou looks at her, she rolls her eyes.
He laughs.
Yes, tonight will be fun.
The person in the blue wig has left by the time they get through the crush of people and to the booth. “Hello, hello,” says Wang Zhi, “Sit.”
Sui Zhou slides in after Duo’erla, who is next to Wuyun. Wuyun, bigger and beardier than Sui Zhou, leans around Duo’erla to slap Sui Zhou on the shoulder. “You really came,” he says. “You’re in for it tonight.”
Before Sui Zhou can respond, someone calls Wang Zhi’s name, and Wang Zhi leans over to clasp hands with someone in a dress like nothing Sui Zhou’s ever seen. For one, there are cones over their breasts. Very pointy cones. “Baobei,” says Wang Zhi. “I love it.”
“I love you,” they say. “Both of you, of course,” they add as Ding Rong opens his coat to reveal, to Sui Zhou’s surprise, a neat row of small boxes. He slips one across the table, and Cone Dress pockets it, winking at Sui Zhou when they see him looking. “What would the girls do without you?”
“Remain as beautiful as ever, I’m sure,” says Wang Zhi, and Sui Zhou remembers who it is that provides Qing Ge’s hormones.
“Oh, stop,” the stranger says with a light slap to Wang Zhi’s shoulder. “Wuyun, please, when are you going to perform again?”
Wuyun waves a hand, dismissive. “I’m not shaving again.”
“So don’t shave,” says Cone Dress. “Ms. Cream doesn’t shave. The girls need you.”
Wuyun is already shaking his head before Cone Dress is finished.
They turn to Duo’erla and say, “Work on him, will you?”
“I will,” says Duo’erla brightly, and Wuyun groans and gives her a shove, pushing her against Sui Zhou. Duo’erla slides back over to tug on his beard, and he says, “Aiyo,” clicking his tongue.
“I will, too,” Wang Zhi promises, eyes assessing, and this, Sui Zhou thinks, is probably what Wuyun should be afraid of.
“We’ll get you yet,” Cone Dress promises sternly, and then they blow one last kiss to Wang Zhi and Ding Rong before melting back into the crowd.
“Apparently we’re sitting in the VIP section,” Pei Huai says to Sui Zhou, his eyes alight with amusement.
“I just know a lot of people,” says Wang Zhi, shrugging and picking up his drink. He waves to another group of people by the bar in elaborate outfits, mouthing a greeting with his charming smile, then turns back to Sui Zhou with a nod. “Sui Zhou. Feifei will be delighted.”
“Feifei knew I was coming,” says Sui Zhou. “Where is she?” He thinks he has made the right choice, using this name, because he gets a lot of smiles in response.
“I left her with Qing Ge in the back,” says Tang Yu, sipping her own drink, something far brighter and more colorful than Wang Zhi’s whiskey. Pei Huai, Sui Zhou notices, appears to be drinking the same thing. “She’s obsessed with her hair tonight.”
“She’s always obsessed with her hair,” says Pei Huai. Pei Huai used to help Tang Fan take pictures to post online. Tang Yu, apparently, found out about Feifei after an excruciating misunderstanding regarding a pair of heels left under Pei Huai’s bed. All three of them tell the story frequently now, always laughing about it, but Sui Zhou knows Tang Fan was sick with worry about his sister finding out what he does. Sui Zhou is glad Tang Yu helps Tang Fan with his outfits now. She is a good person, kind and loyal.
Sui Zhou remembers Tang Fan’s monologues about whether or not he was going to wear a wig. Before he can contribute this to the conversation, a loud, grand voice interrupts them.
“Here are my angels!” A very tall person in a long, glittering gown stops in front of the booth in a posture that suggests they’re looking for applause.
“Cui Mama,” says Wang Zhi, pressing his hands together and bowing his head slightly.
So this is Cui Mama.
She is, the way Tang Fan tells it, a bit of a legend. Whenever Sui Zhou suggests Tang Fan doesn’t need to worry about her criticism, Tang Fan gets defensive, insisting, “She started this in Shanghai. She’s the Queen, Sui Zhou, I can’t ignore her. She knows what she’s talking about.”
She does seem to command respect with her towering stature, made more imposing by a tall wig and heels so skinny and sharp Sui Zhou thinks he could slice meat with them. Probably kill a man, too. Tang Fan says nobody knows her real name or even what she looks like out of drag, but she isn’t a woman like Qing Ge. She is a drag queen—the drag queen, according to Tang Fan. She is just a master of mystery.
“Tell me,” she says, placing a hand on Wang Zhi’s shoulder and fixing her eyes on Sui Zhou across the table. “I know everyone there is to know, so why don’t I know you?”
“This is Feifei’s friend, Mama,” says Wang Zhi. He says this in a pointed way that makes Sui Zhou bristle a little; he does not want anyone to make it seem like he needs people chased away from him here. He’s straight, but he’s not a jerk. It is flattering to be looked at. He doesn’t mind.
He also wonders if anyone plans to introduce him with his actual name.
“Ah,” says Cui Mama. “This is Feifei’s friend.” Her eyes move over the parts of Sui Zhou visible over the table, assessing. “Will you look at that,” she says, and then, not bothering to introduce herself any further or ask anything at all of Sui Zhou himself, she looks down at Wang Zhi and says, “Have you seen her dress yet?”
“I have,” says Wang Zhi.
“Just gorgeous,” says Cui Mama, “And she took my advice with the hair. She knows her assets, that one, but oh—I don’t pick favorites, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” says Wang Zhi.
They both throw their heads back and burst out laughing.
Duo’erla leans toward Sui Zhou and murmurs, “They’re judging the contest.” Sui Zhou knew Cui Mama was a judge, but he’s surprised by this commentary on Tang Fan, who, from the way he talks, seems to believe she dislikes him. He wonders if Cui Mama only says nice things behind people’s backs. He can’t say he understands that.
He wants to say something, to actually introduce himself by name, feel like a part of the conversation, but again, before he can speak, Cui Mama interrupts. “Well, I’ll see you soon, Wang Zhi,” she says. “It was nice meeting you, Feifei’s friend.” She winks.
“It’s Sui Zhou,” he says.
Cui Mama exchanges an incomprehensible look with Wang Zhi. “Sui Zhou,” she repeats. “Nice to meet you, Sui Zhou. Now, you be good, boys.” This last comment appears to be directed at Wang Zhi, Ding Rong, and Jia Kiu.
“Always,” says Ding Rong, at the same time Jia Kiu says, “Yes, Mama,” and then Cui Mama is loudly calling someone else’s name and strutting towards a group of queens at the bar with open arms. Wang Zhi is looking at Sui Zhou with a raised eyebrow, which does not seem necessary. He only introduced himself.
“There she is,” says Wuyun, and for a moment, Sui Zhou thinks he’s still talking about Cui Mama, but then he takes his eyes off Cui Mama and sees Qing Ge and a stranger in a suit walking towards them with…Tang Fan.
Or—Feifei.
Tang Fan spent all that time describing his look to Sui Zhou, and still, it feels like a surprise.
The qipao is a pale gold with pink flowers. Sui Zhou has, obviously, seen a qipao before, and yet he is taken aback by the tight cling of the material, the long slit up the side. The slit definitely goes up higher than any Sui Zhou’s seen, deliberately revealing the tops of lacy thigh-highs and flashes of smooth, hairless thigh as Feifei walks. She’s done something to her hair to make it look—fuller, shinier, pushed to one side, but it is, like Tang Fan said it would be, her own hair, flowing down her back. Sui Zhou thinks there might be glitter in it.
The most striking part, however, is that Feifei is...still Tang Fan.
Somehow, Sui Zhou thought Tang Fan would be totally different like this, but despite the glitter and the heavy makeup and the high heels...those are Tang Fan’s dimples. Tang Fan’s hands. Tang Fan’s ears.
Duo’erla puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles.
Feifei takes the hand of the person in a suit and, though she is several centimeters taller—especially in heels—has them spin her around for her friends’ appraisal, laughing Tang Fan’s laugh when she has to duck to get under their arm properly.
There is scattered applause from her friends, Duo’erla and Wuyun most of all.
“Thank you, thank you,” says Feifei, bowing. “Thank you, Jin San.”
The person in the suit lifts Feifei’s hand to kiss it, and she giggles.
She looks... Sui Zhou was feeling fine, really, a little miffed at Cui Mama’s dismissive attitude, but that was all, and now he feels...weird, like everything’s tipped just slightly to the left. When he searches for the source of the discombobulation, the only thought he can find is, Tang Fan looks so happy as Feifei.
That’s the only one that makes any sense, anyway.
“You look so good, meimei,” Tang Yu gushes, and Feifei beams at the address, preening. “Qing-jie, you’re too good with makeup.”
Qing Ge thanks her and nods at Sui Zhou in greeting. Qing Ge might be a quiet person, but it’s impossible not to notice her. She’s beautiful and competent at everything she does. Tang Fan adores her. With the way he gushes, Sui Zhou’d think he had a crush, if he didn’t know Tang Fan is pretty exclusively into men. Tang Fan does insist everyone in the world who’s into women is into Qing Ge, but Sui Zhou, aside from a vague aesthetic awareness, has never felt particularly into Qing Ge. Perhaps they’d be far too quiet together. Perhaps he can’t bring himself to feel particularly into someone whose girlfriend he respects.
He realizes Qing Ge might want to sit next to her girlfriend and stands up, gesturing for her to sit. “Here.” He tries to blink away his off feelings and smile.
“What a gentleman,” says Qing Ge, patting him on the shoulder before sliding in the booth to place a kiss on Duo’erla’s cheek. Duo’erla moves to whisper something in her ear that makes her laugh.
“Sui Zhou!” says Feifei, as if surprised to see him. Why do people seem surprised he came? Of course he came. Tang Fan, at least, should have expected this. Feifei strides over to him and taps his cheeks fondly with both hands. Her lips are bright pink, her eyes caked with all kinds of makeup Sui Zhou has no hope of identifying or describing. It’s colorful. It makes her eyelashes look longer. “You have to meet Jin San.” She reaches behind her, wiggling her hand, and says, “Jin San, Jin San, come here!”
The person in the suit reaches over for Feifei’s hand so she can drag them forward. “This is Sui Zhou,” says Feifei. “Sui Zhou, this is Jin San, he’s my very special favorite drag king.”
“Ah, Sui Zhou,” says Jin San, eyes sweeping over him. The suit fits him well, as if tailored, but it also appears to contain shoulder pads. He has drawn on a mustache. “Feifei has told us all about you.” Ostensibly, these are kind words, but the way Jin San drawls makes it hard for Sui Zhou to tell if he’s being made fun of somehow.
“Stop, gege, you’re the only man for me,” Feifei coos, draping herself over Jin San’s shoulders. Jin San slides his arm around Feifei’s waist, his hand tight on Feifei’s hip, and—Tang Fan is skinny, it’s not like he has curves, but the qipao is so tight and clingy at the waist and Sui Zhou’s never seen anybody touch Tang Fan—there, like that.
He thinks it’s about time to take off his jacket; he was right to assume it would get too warm in here.
“Good to meet you,” says Sui Zhou, bowing his head and trying to ignore the way Jin San’s hand slides over the smooth material of his friend’s qipao.
“Sit, sit, let’s sit,” says Feifei. “Are you staying with us, Jin-gege?”
“Hmm,” says Jin San. “I have some people I need to talk to.”
Feifei pouts, and it might be covered in lipstick, but it is very much the same pout Tang Fan directs at Sui Zhou when he wants something. “Some other girls, you mean,” she says with an air of great drama, tossing back her hair. “This is what he does, Sui Zhou, he toys with me. He’s a womanizer.”
“I think you like that,” says Jin San, and Sui Zhou watches in alarm as Jin San’s hand snakes down to the slit in the qipao and grabs Feifei’s bare thigh.
She shrieks, and Jin San cackles and runs off into the crowd with a wink in Sui Zhou’s direction.
“Jin San!” Feifei calls after him. “I am a chaste woman!” But she still looks so happy, dimples on full display, eyes bright in the low lighting of the club.
Qing Ge snorts delicately.
Feifei lets out a little gasp and covers her mouth in faux-shock. “Qing-jie, don’t you dare, my sister is here. Jiejie, don’t listen to anything she says about my honor. I am a virginal––”
“I think Jin San knows exactly how virginal you are, from what I’ve heard,” says Wang Zhi, smirking over his drink. Ding Rong and Jia Kui exchange amused glances from either side of him.
“Slander,” says Feifei, tossing back her hair again, but her ears are going pink. “Rumors. Jie, Lao Pei, Sui Zhou, cover your ears. Also, sit, Sui Zhou—oh, are you waiting for the lady to sit first, what a gentleman.” She flutters her eyelashes at him and slides into the booth, pulling him after her.
Now that the booth’s stuffed with people, this means they are very close.
Feifei smells like something floral and sweet, and something powdery, too, and it’s a little much.
Suddenly, everything feels like it’s a little much.
He’s not...Sui Zhou’s not...this is normal. Feifei, Jin San...this is fine. Nothing about this has ever been a problem.
It’s just very hot in here, and there are a lot of people in a very small place, and the music is very loud.
Feifei leans closer to Sui Zhou, and he realizes her smile has faded, just a little. She looks...shy, like Sui Zhou’s never seen Tang Fan look before. “Is this weird?” she asks, biting her lip. Sui Zhou thinks of Tang Fan biting his lip with nerves when they discussed Sui Zhou coming tonight.
He will not let Tang Fan think he’s changed his mind.
“No,” says Sui Zhou quickly. He doesn’t know what else to say, how to make it real, so he repeats himself. “No.”
“Good,” she says, dimples returning.
“If you keep biting your lip,” says Sui Zhou, and he realizes he’s reached up to press a hand to Feifei’s jaw, as if to stop her. She has stilled, her eyes wide, smile fading again. For a moment, Sui Zhou is distracted by the shape of her jaw under his thumb, and then it occurs to him that if nothing else is weird, this probably is, and he jerks his hand away. There’s powder on his fingers. “You’ll mess up your…” He gestures. “Like I just did, I guess,” he says weakly, and Feifei laughs.
“Let me see your phone,” she says, holding out a hand and wiggling her fingers. She’s smiling again, but her ears are pink. Maybe it’s the lighting. “Qing Ge has mine. I have no room in here for anything else.”
Sui Zhou swallows. The fabric of the qipao stretches tight over whatever it is Tang Fan’s doing to give the impression of breasts, tight over his skinny hips. There is indeed no room in it for anything else.
When Sui Zhou places his phone in Feifei’s hand and she turns on the camera to examine the angles of her face, he realizes Jia Kiu is staring at him from across the table. He stares back. He’s not sure what this is meant to accomplish because he is not entirely sure what’s going on, but he’s not going to just be stared at.
“No harm done,” says Feifei, sliding Sui Zhou’s phone back to him, and it occurs to Sui Zhou again that he can take his jacket off if it’s going to be this hot in here, so he does.
“Sorry,” Sui Zhou mumbles, his eyes on the table as he stuffs his jacket behind him. It does feel a little better to have his arms free.
“Hmm?” says Feifei.
He looks up to find her gazing somewhere to the right of his face, one finger twirling her hair.
“About the…” He gestures to her face, and the movement of his hand seems to startle her back into the present.
“Oh!” she says, laughing. “I told you, no harm done.”
“You look…” He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Everything he thinks to say seems like a weird thing to say to your friend. But maybe that’s the...the heteronormativity speaking, or whatever.
She pats him on the shoulder. “You don’t need to come up with a compliment, ge. I won’t torture you.”
“No,” says Sui Zhou. “I’m not––”
“Feifei, you look so good!” someone shrieks, interrupting him, and Feifei gasps and leans over Sui Zhou to greet another queen in what appears to be a mermaid inspired outfit, and this is how the night continues to go. Pei Huai was right, Sui Zhou thinks, when he said they were in the “VIP section.” People continue to come up and chat with Wang Zhi as if he’s hosting the event, which he is not, as far as Sui Zhou knows. Feifei is showered with praise, and she is obviously loving it, preening and talking a mile a minute, admiring people’s nails and shoes and hair, trading gossip and jokes, speculating about newcomers and missing faces.
Sui Zhou’s always been under the impression that Tang Fan is wholly himself all the time—whether he wants to be or not. And in some ways, this is true. But seeing Feifei is something else. Sui Zhou didn’t realize Tang Fan ever had a second thought about anything until now, until he’s seen Feifei having no second thoughts at all about the way she sits and stands and moves her hands. Feifei doesn’t have to stand up straight, feet firmly apart. Feifei doesn’t have to keep her wrists stiff. Tang Fan is not particularly good at doing these things anyway, but until now Sui Zhou didn’t realize he ever tried.
It makes him sad. It makes him...he doesn’t know what. He feels protective, and he feels honored to be here, and he feels upset with himself for feeling off, and mostly he has a lot of trouble looking anywhere but directly at Feifei, who keeps smiling at him and introducing him to people he doesn’t have a hope of remembering.
Sui Zhou possibly drinks a little more than he should.
Wang Zhi keeps buying drinks for everyone. A stranger buys Sui Zhou a drink, too, and he feels guilty drinking it, but the man insists he should even if he is straight, and when he leaves Qing Ge tests it and says it’s safe. Sui Zhou never would have considered this, and he’s so rattled by how ready she is to do this, at how surprised he is to be a potential target of something like that, that he just drinks it.
When Feifei leaves just before the start of the contest, Sui Zhou gets up for her to leave the booth, and she leans in to say over the music, “Try not to break too many hearts.”
“Shut up,” says Sui Zhou. This close and standing, it strikes him that she has several more centimeters on him while in heels.
Feifei pinches Sui Zhou’s cheek like Tang Fan did the other night when he called him “handsome Sui Zhou,” and Sui Zhou feels lightheaded and thinks maybe the extra drink was a mistake.
“Stop,” Sui Zhou says weakly, and Feifei laughs and pats him on the shoulder before striding off. Sui Zhou sits down and watches her leave, marveling over the height of her heels. He does not know how it is possible to walk in them. They are probably, he thinks, his eyes sweeping over the length of Feifei’s legs, a good workout.
Duo’erla leans over and says in Sui Zhou’s ear, “Are you okay?”
He looks back at everyone else. Qing Ge is showing Wuyun something on her phone that is cracking him up, and Wang Zhi, Ding Rong, and Jia Kiu have their heads together in some kind of serious, secret conversation. Tang Yu and Pei Huai smile at Sui Zhou.
He smiles back. “I’m fine,” he says.
“Wuyun and I were going to go out for a smoke in a minute, if you want some air,” says Duo’erla, patting his arm. “We don’t have to worry about anything starting until Wang Zhi leaves.”
“That sounds good,” Sui Zhou admits.
This choice is a mixed bag. The cool air is nice on his skin, and it’s nice to give his ears a break from the pounding music, but it also means Sui Zhou realizes exactly how drunk he is. The ground seems further away than it should be. This was not his plan for the evening.
He closes his eyes on the sidewalk and hopes the air will do...something. He listens to the muffled music and the sounds of the people walking by, chatting and laughing and shouting to one another as they move to and from other clubs and bars and restaurants.
“You sure you’re okay?” says Wuyun.
“Yes,” says Sui Zhou, opening his eyes. He realizes one of the things he is feeling is guilt. This is what Tang Fan and his friends do. This is where they feel at home. What does it look like if Sui Zhou is visibly uncomfortable? “You don’t have to keep checking,” he adds.
Wuyun holds up his hands in surrender and leans against the wall of the club, bringing his cigarette back up to his mouth.
“Don’t be stupid,” says Duo’erla. “You’re our friend.”
None of them have ever referred to Sui Zhou as their friend, not in any way separate from his attachment to Tang Fan. “Oh,” says Sui Zhou.
Duo’erla sucks her teeth and gives him a one armed hug, the other arm holding her cigarette up and away from him. “Should I cut you off?” she asks sternly as she steps back.
Sui Zhou coughs a little from the smoke. “I’m okay,” he insists.
“Okay,” says Duo’erla, patting his forearm in apology. “But if you’re not.” She leans against the wall with Wuyun and points at him like a scolding auntie. “You better say so.”
“I’ll say so,” he says, and, apparently satisfied, Duo’erla nods and takes another drag of her cigarette.
They go back inside when they hear Wang Zhi speaking over a mic, signaling the contest’s start. Ding Rong has gotten another round of drinks for everyone, so...Sui Zhou drinks. It’s fine. He’s fine. The air helped, and Duo’erla and Wuyun helped, and he is going to have fun.
And he does. It is fun. Everyone participating shows off their look and lip syncs to a song. People choose older ballads and disco hits that remind Sui Zhou of his parents, K-pop hits, American Top 40. When it’s Feifei’s turn, she does something jazzy and slow to go along with her 1930s look. There is a lot of coy thigh flashing involved. The crowd loves it; they whistle and call her name and make crude jokes by which she pretends to be scandalized.
Sui Zhou is not surprised at all by Tang Fan loving this. Tang Fan loves praise and romance and drama. He loves to be silly, and he commits fully to everything he does. For the few minutes Feifei is the center of attention, she soaks it in like a sponge, posing and blowing kisses and absolutely glowing.
It overwhelms Sui Zhou in a way he didn’t expect. For a moment, as Feifei slinks around with a mic, Sui Zhou is filled with a rush of wanting, a strange and bittersweet pulse of something deep in the pit of his stomach. He is at once so glad to know Tang Fan and so... something else. Something wistful. Something painful. Something almost like jealousy.
He is fairly certain he does not want to perform in drag. He doesn’t know what there is to be jealous of. He doesn’t know why Tang Fan’s open happiness should make him feel almost weepy, as though he is Tang Fan’s proud, emotional mother. Not that he knows very much about proud, emotional mothers.
Maybe he should have let Duo’erla cut him off.
In the end, Feifei wins third place. Sui Zhou thinks this is stupid. Could Wang Zhi, Cui Mama, and the other judges not see the way she belonged up there, the work she put into her outfit, the way she smiled? But Tang Fan does not seem to care. Feifei is cheerful when she returns to her friends for hugs, basking in the attention. Wang Zhi gives her flowers. She hands them to Sui Zhou and says with a pout, “Hold these?” He does.
“You do whatever she asks,” says Qing Ge as Feifei darts over to be praised by someone else.
Sui Zhou turns to find Qing Ge at his side. He feels as though he is moving very slowly; it takes him a moment to follow her eyes and understand she’s watching Feifei, too. Feifei has found Jin San, and she is draping herself all over him again. Jin San puts his hands on Feifei’s hips.
Again, the wistful something pulls at Sui Zhou’s gut. He doesn’t know how to respond to Qing Ge. His brain is not working fast enough to figure out if she has further implications and, if so, what they might be.
“I don’t mind,” he says finally.
“Mm,” says Qing Ge. She reaches out. “Here.” It takes Sui Zhou a moment to realize she’s offering to take the flowers. He glances back at Feifei, who is still getting groped by Jin San, and quickly glances away again. He lets Qing Ge take the flowers.
“Sui Zhou,” says Qing Ge.
He looks at her, waiting.
“Tang-mei is…” She sighs. “Tang Fan can be selfish.”
This is true. This is something Sui Zhou has told Tang Fan himself. And yet he bristles. “He’s––”
He doesn’t have anything ready to finish this sentence.
“I don’t think he knows, though, sometimes,” says Qing Ge. “He thinks everyone can read his mind. And I think...he doesn’t realize people care about what he does.”
Lost by the solemnity of this conversation, by Qing Ge’s switch from “Feifei” to “Tang Fan,” Sui Zhou says, “I don’t care if he hands me things.”
Qing Ge nods. “Okay,” she says gently. “I’ll take the flowers, though.” She pauses as if contemplating her next words with caution, then says, “If you ever need anything, Tang-mei has my number. Don’t hesitate. Okay? I like you, Sui Zhou.”
“Okay,” says Sui Zhou. This has illuminated nothing for him. It isn’t until she leaves that he thinks perhaps he should have told her he likes her, too.
When he looks back around, Feifei has disappeared into the crowd, so he wanders back to the booth. At the moment, only Wang Zhi is there, nursing another drink as he looks down at his phone with an eyebrow raised. Sui Zhou can see Tang Yu and Pei Huai nearby dancing badly, and Wuyun appears to have picked up a foreigner in very short shorts. Ding Rong and Jia Kui are at the bar. He doesn’t know where Duo’erla is, but she’s probably wherever Qing Ge disappeared to with Feifei’s flowers.
When Sui Zhou sits down, Wang Zhi looks up and stares at him with eyes far too clear for this point in the night.
“Sui Zhou,” he says, setting his phone down. “How is your night going?”
“Good,” says Sui Zhou. He thinks he is telling the truth. He has been having fun at some points of the night. Duo’erla said they were friends. Qing Ge said she liked him. Tang Fan smiled a lot.
“It’s not all too much for you?” says Wang Zhi.
“Of course not,” Sui Zhou says hotly.
“Of course not,” Wang Zhi repeats. He leans on his elbow and gazes toward the bar, chin in hand. “If you were feeling tired,” he says, “Nobody would fault you. I don’t think you need to wait up for Feifei, if you know what I mean.”
Sui Zhou blinks. “What do you mean?”
Wang Zhi laughs. He nods in the direction of his pointed gaze, and Sui Zhou looks.
First he just sees Ding Rong and Jia Kiu, and then his eyes find Feifei just beyond them, against the wall off to the side of the bar. Jin San has disappeared again, and Feifei is talking to a man with a beard and tattoos, and she’s doing the thing Tang Fan does when he wants Sui Zhou to do heavy lifting for him, pouting and slumping so he looks smaller than he really is. In the context of the club, with the lipstick and exposed thigh and muscular man in a thin white shirt boxing her in, Feifei is, it seems, going for something a bit different this time.
As Sui Zhou watches, Feifei’s pout dissolves into giggles, and she delivers a little smack to the man’s arm, near a tattoo winding with flowers, and then the man is leaning closer to her, as if to press her further into the wall, and their mouths are very close, and Tang Fan’s eyes close, and suddenly Sui Zhou’s mouth is filled with saliva and he is certain that he is going to throw up.
He tears his eyes away, swallowing hard.
It takes a moment for the nausea to pass. When he looks back up, Wang Zhi is staring at him thoughtfully. Wang Zhi is not a person Sui Zhou wants staring at him thoughtfully, especially when he himself does not know what’s going on.
“Everything okay?” asks Wang Zhi.
“I’m fine,” says Sui Zhou, and thankfully it comes out as firmly as he hoped it would.
“You looked a little…” Wang Zhi’s fingers trace the rim of his glass. “Upset. For a minute there.”
“No,” says Sui Zhou. At Wang Zhi’s pointed look, Sui Zhou says, “Just—nauseous. I think I...I haven’t had much to drink in a while.”
“I see,” says Wang Zhi. “Well, like I said. I don’t think you need to wait up for Feifei.”
Sui Zhou swallows back another wave of—something. Heartburn. “No,” he manages. “Probably not.”
“Do you need a didi?” asks Wang Zhi.
“I can get it myself,” says Sui Zhou.
“If you insist,” says Wang Zhi. “Shall I tell Feifei you weren’t feeling well? If she doesn’t leave now.”
If she doesn’t leave now. Sui Zhou pointedly does not look back over at the bar, because...because privacy, but at the same time his mind provides him with a slideshow of images of what it would mean if Tang Fan did leave now. Tang Fan’s dimpled smile in a strange bed, his long hair swept over bare, bony shoulders. That stranger’s big hand on Tang Fan’s thigh. Why am I thinking of this, he asks himself despairingly, why can’t I mind my own business, it’s not my business. He has absolutely, definitely had too much to drink. It is not his concern that men sleep with each other. He has never thought it was any of his concern.
Tang Fan is his friend. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that he dresses like a woman and lets tall, muscled men kiss him in clubs.
Sui Zhou has no business feeling sick.
How would he feel, if his friend looked at him doing something he loved, if his friend looked at him with someone, and felt sick?
Not that he’s ever with someone.
Maybe he wishes he was with someone. Maybe it has been too long. Maybe it isn’t as unappealing as he thought it was, and this explains all the twists and turns in his brain tonight.
But to feel sick?
“Ah,” Wang Zhi says suddenly, and then Tang Fan’s voice, sing-song and slurred with alcohol, bursts into Sui Zhou’s thoughts.
“Sui Zhou!” Sui Zhou jumps at the surprise. “Oh no, oops, I’m sorry.” Feifei stumbles into the booth next to him, draping herself over his shoulders, and Sui Zhou stiffens, heart racing, and looks in the direction of the bar. The man is gone. Where is the other man? “Sorry, sorry,” Feifei murmurs, patting his cheek. Her breath smells like liquor. “Are you––”
It’s too much. Firmly, Sui Zhou grips Feifei’s arms and removes them from around his neck.
Feifei stares at him. She looks dazed. Her lipstick is smudged.
“I’m going home,” says Sui Zhou.
“Oh no,” says Feifei. “But I just turned down a very handsome man!”
Sui Zhou does not know what to say to that.
“I was not very nice to my dick, Sui Zhou, because I wanted to be with my friends!” Feifei pouts. She grabs Sui Zhou’s arm with both of hers. “His arms were very big. You have to stay.”
A rush of anger hits Sui Zhou so hard it hurts his chest, his throat. “Don’t pout at me,” he snaps, “Nobody asked you to do that,” and he shoves her back off his arm with more force than he intended.
Feifei blinks, and her expression melts from one of drunk mischief to one of drunk confusion.
“Okay,” Wang Zhi says. His voice has gone icy in a way Sui Zhou’s never heard. When he looks up, Ding Rong and Jia Kiu have returned from the bar, and the three of them have eyes locked intensely on Sui Zhou. “Let’s relax, shall we?” Wang Zhi continues, and Sui Zhou understands this is directed very pointedly at him, and he’s struck with a deep, sick shame. He pushed Tang Fan. It was only a little, but still, he didn’t mean to...he didn’t want to…
“What are you so pissy about?” Feifei gripes.
“Tang Fan,” Wang Zhi says sharply, and Feifei looks up, startled, at the use of this name.
“I feel sick,” says Sui Zhou. Wang Zhi’s concern for Tang Fan is a weight in his gut. “I’m going home. I’m calling a didi.”
“Oh,” says Feifei, her shoulders dropping. “Okay.”
She looks helplessly at Wang Zhi, Ding Rong, and Jia Kui. They don’t say anything.
“I’ll go with you, then,” says Feifei. “I have to change, though, I can’t get a didi like this—but you can come with––”
“No,” Sui Zhou says, and he doesn’t mean to say it so harshly, but he says it with such conviction that Feifei’s shoulders stiffen again and her eyebrows, lined heavily with makeup, furrow. “Stay here,” Sui Zhou says, trying to speak normally, his gut twisting further with guilt. “Have fun, don’t—let me ruin your night. Find that guy again, if you want. I’m sure he’s still here. I’m sorry I—I shouldn’t have shoved you.”
Feifei slumps and returns to her pout. “Now I don’t want to find him,” she says.
“Okay,” says Sui Zhou. He tries hard not to sound testy, but he knows he isn’t doing a great job. “I don’t care what you do. Can I get up now?”
With a huff, Feifei slides out of the booth again, and Sui Zhou follows. Feifei stumbles a little in her tipsiness, and out of instinct, Sui Zhou places a steadying hand on her lower back. “I think I’m drunk,” Feifei announces, and Sui Zhou’s fairly certain she doesn’t know how loudly she’s speaking.
“I think you are,” says Sui Zhou. “I think I’m drunk too.” He doesn’t remove his hand from Feifei’s back. “I just…” He looks at Wang Zhi and his maybe-boyfriends, maybe-accomplices, maybe-bodyguards and instantly regrets it; they don’t look angry anymore, necessarily, but they look as if Sui Zhou has just done something extremely embarrassing. He can’t think straight enough to figure out what it might be.
It’s okay to leave. He stayed for a long time. He and Tang Fan are not attached at the hip. If Tang Fan wants to go have some stranger put his hands all over his waist and his legs, that’s not—he swallows and removes his hand from Feifei’s back. It’s not his business.
“I just don’t feel well,” Sui Zhou says. “I drank too much. I’m sorry. Please stay.”
Feifei blinks. “I can’t get fucked now,” she says, blatant, loud, still pouting, “I’ll just worry about you,” and Sui Zhou feels another rush of nausea, this time more intense. He does not want to look at Wang Zhi and company’s reaction to this declaration.
“Don’t,” says Sui Zhou. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you later—tomorrow—whatever. I’m sorry.”
He turns on his heel and leaves before he can say anything else.
He doesn’t say goodbye to anyone.
It’s fine. It’s okay. They won’t miss him. This isn’t his crowd, his scene. They are all happy here, but Sui Zhou is...maybe Sui Zhou should not be here. Maybe he’s exactly the kind of person who shouldn’t be here.
In the back of the didi, this thought combines with memory of the ache in his chest when he watched Feifei perform, and with the way he pushed her, when he didn’t mean to, and it was barely a push, sure, but...together, these thoughts bring tears springing to the corner of his eyes. He is a grown man with a stranger in public. He doesn’t even cry when he’s alone. He is never drinking again.
When he gets home, the apartment feels so incredibly empty.
He has WeChat notifications, but he doesn’t look at them. He puts his phone face down on his bedside table instead. He is going to sleep. He is going to sleep and not think about anything anymore, especially not Tang Fan saying, “I can’t get fucked now, I’ll just worry about you,” especially not Tang Fan’s thigh highs, and especially not that wistful feeling climbing up his throat.
***
Sui Zhou is walking with Tang Fan-as-Feifei. They are on the road back to the build.
Something makes Sui Zhou stop.
“What is it?” asks Feifei.
Sui Zhou frowns. He pats his pockets. “Did I forget my wallet?”
Feifei laughs, high and clear. Her thighs are...right there, and they’re going back to a place filled with men doing hard labor, and suddenly Sui Zhou is wondering why on earth Feifei is here. They’re going to look at her. They’re going to look at her thighs, and her lips, and the delicate line of her neck, and what if they think—if they realize she’s Tang Fan, will they—he cannot bear the thought of Tang Fan hurt.
Tang Fan hurt.
“Do you want to go back?” asks Feifei.
“You can go on without me,” says Sui Zhou. A feeling of urgency is building in his gut. “Go on without me.”
Feifei shrugs. She smiles, and despite everything, Sui Zhou loves to see it. “I’m not in a rush,” she says, and something seems to unlock in Sui Zhou’s mind in that moment— she’s beautiful, that’s what it is, Sui Zhou doesn’t know if he’s ever thought anyone was so—and then it happens like it always happens.
The noise. The dirt. The heat. His ears ringing, the sky dark.
He is alone.