Archive of Our Own

It's one in the morning when Sizhui gets back to his dorm, but it's a Friday night so he lets himself take a long shower without worrying too much about the loud plumbing bothering the bookworms in the room closest to the bathrooms. He thinks they would understand, if they knew.

He scrubs his skin raw with cheap bar soap. His nice shea butter body wash turns his stomach tonight; it was a gift because he liked the smell of it on someone else's skin, and because that same someone else liked when Sizhui felt soft. He doesn't want to be soft anymore, and he doesn't want to smell like anyone but himself ever again. He doesn't even want that, actually, doesn't want to exist in his body anymore.

In four weeks, all his skin cells will be replaced, that's what he learned in anatomy. It will be like he's still the untouched boy he was six months ago, before he messed up.

And that's what he says to Papa on the phone, an hour later and vodka blurring the edges. Breathes into the silent darkness and says, "Papa, I messed up. I did a bad thing, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

He can picture it, Papa slipping out of bed, if he's even made it to bed yet, so as not to wake Sizhui's dad when he says, "Whatever happened, we'll get through it."

Sizhui says, "I know," in a way that doesn't sound convinced or convincing.

"Hey. Sizhui." A shushing noise, as if calming a scared child, and he knows that sound well. "Tell me what happened."

But Sizhui can't tell him, and he listens as Papa guesses one wrong possibility after another. No, Sizhui didn't fail any midterms, not that he knows of; wasn't caught cheating or plagiarizing, because he doesn't do those things; didn't wreck his friend's car or lose his wallet. Papa asks whether he got a girl pregnant, and he's so wrong that Sizhui laughs. It's a hollow sound, irony rather than mirth.

"How much have you had to drink?" Papa asks softly. Sizhui looks down at the bottle, but he can't see that well through the blue glass and the dark of the room.

"Dunno," he admits. "Enough." But it's not, not really. Fresh tears burn his eyes, and he presses his too warm cheek to the cool cinder block wall and thinks about how it will never be his once-lover's hand cradling his jaw, never again. He told Sizhui he needed to pursue someone he could have a future with. I'm sure you knew when you started this that we couldn't stay together, baby. Had he known that, though? He doesn't remember what he thought he knew at the start, only what tender words and tender touches convinced him of later as the nights turned to weeks and months.

Papa asks whether he took anything else and Sizhui tells him no. He doesn't need Papa to call him a car, he's already in his room, Jingyi left for the weekend with his girlfriend so it's just Sizhui. "If the R.A. catches me with vodka, though, we'll both be in trouble," Sizhui says. He's only twenty, underage as far as alcohol is concerned, so their room is required to be dry regardless of Jingyi's birthday earlier this year. He breathes shakily, says again, "I'm sorry, god, I keep messing up."

"No, Sizhui," Papa says, "you were right to call me." He's experienced in sneaking liquor around campuses, he assures Sizhui. "Just wrap the bottle in a towel and take it to the bathroom in the morning, drop it in the trash when no one's looking. The worst that will happen is an e-mail to the floor, but no one will get in trouble."

You don't want to get us into trouble, Sizhui. This is our secret. They wouldn't understand. Sizhui keeps doing bad things.

"You're a good boy," his Papa is saying. A good boy, just like that, you're so pretty on your knees. Sizhui tilts the bottle back, lets the poison in his throat burn away the memory. "Do you want me to wake your dad?"

Sizhui chokes. "No, please don't, don't, let him sleep, he'd just be disappointed in me." Never would have thought you'd be such a slut, Sizhui. But he isn't, he wasn't, and even the one person he did those things with, he'll never do them again, he's going to, "I'll be good from now on," he promises, maybe himself and maybe his fathers.

"I know," Papa is saying, and Sizhui realizes all at once that he misunderstood. He thinks the drinking was the mistake Sizhui made, that he was calling just to say he overindulged and ask for advice. He doesn't know, doesn't even suspect. Our secret, and the sound of flesh meeting flesh.

Papa tells him to drag the wastebasket close, to sleep on his side, to try to drink some water if he can. "You won't feel well tomorrow but at least it's Saturday," Papa tells him. I thought it best to have this conversation on a Friday, earlier tonight, I don't want however you might feel after to affect your studies, a teacher to the last, as if taking the train from campus into the city to visit so often didn't have that same potential.

"I love you," Papa says. I love you, so glad no one else has had you, and how that turned in a few months to of course I love you but that doesn't matter. Papa might not love him anymore if he knew, though, and Dad definitely wouldn't. Wangji would be furious with us both.

"Love you too, Papa," Sizhui says, in case he can't say it someday, in case he loses that right. "I'm sorry," he says again, preemptive.

"You haven't done anything wrong," Papa says, but Sizhui knows that isn't true: he remembers every word Xichen said, tonight and before. I never should have let you talk me into this, but you're irresistible.

He'd had no problem resisting him tonight, though, Sizhui crying the whole drive back to campus and begging him to reconsider. I love you, Sizhui said, because he does, and you love me, too, you said, you said you still want me. Xichen had even pulled over outside campus, pushed his seat back and fumbled in the glove box so Sizhui could ride him one last time the way Xichen taught him.

You should delete our text history, Xichen had said when he dropped Sizhui off. Just in case. A cleared throat then, Be well, and Sizhui swiping his way into the dorm, making it to the bend in the hall and out of sight of the street before his knees buckled.

Papa asks about spring break, seven days away, and Sizhui says he'll send his travel itinerary in the morning, he just wants to sleep. Papa's voice tucks him into bed, and Sizhui's last thought before the adrenaline crash and alcohol pull him under is that this kindness is undeserved.

-------

The morning is brutal. He'd drunk alcohol before, wine during dinner with Xichen, maybe a shot or two with his friends, but never before like last night.

Still, the hangover, his first, is nothing compared to the moment that he remembers last night. His heart breaks all over again in the half second he remembers why there's no good morning, beautiful text waiting for him.

He doesn't delete his text history the way Xichen suggested. It's all he has left.

-------

His papa picks him up at the train station when he gets home for spring break. "I didn't tell your dad about the other night, don't worry," Papa says with a conspiratorial wink. "He wouldn't be mad, he was younger than you the first time we drank too much in a dorm and I spent the whole night corralling him, but I kept your secret."

"Thanks," Sizhui says. Everyone's keeping each other's secrets from his dad, apparently.

It's not a long drive back home, but Sizhui drifts off anyway. It's the first time in a week that he's felt safe, closer to whole. Papa actually drives the speed limit with Sizhui in the car, protects him from the world, and Sizhui doesn't wake up until they're in the garage and Papa puts a hand on his shoulder.

Sizhui pulls away a little too quickly, just as he did from their hug at the station, but Papa doesn't seem to notice. "You're too big for me to carry inside," he jokes, and Sizhui thinks about how many times over the years he fell asleep in the car, only to be carried carefully through that door and placed gently in his bed. He wishes he were still small enough for Papa to take him upstairs, but he knows he can do it himself; he's a man now, after all, with all that entails.

He says something about pulling an all-nighter on a paper that was due at 7:59 that morning, just before his shuttle to the train had to leave, and Papa laughs and says, "No, no, I get it. Get some sleep, I'll call you when your dad gets home and it's time for dinner."

Sizhui doesn't go downstairs for dinner. He tells his fathers that he's worried he has a stomach virus, or that he maybe shouldn't have trusted that takeout in his mini fridge.

He keeps this up for three days before Dad says that he wants to make an appointment for Sizhui to see his Auntie Qing, that he's worried something must be wrong. Sizhui just wants to sleep, he wants to make the circuit from his bed to his bathroom and nowhere else, but the threat of wasting her time is enough to get him up and downstairs. He eats some rice and greens and sips his water. Dad is drinking the same red wine with dinner that Xichen favored, and the scent of it from across the table turns Sizhui's stomach for real. But he manages to eat, even has one of Aunt Yanli's cookies for dessert, nibbling at the edges.

He settles into the living room with his parents. It's Papa's turn to pick a movie, and it's some loud, almost hyper violent action movie, guns and yelling and explosions, and Sizhui, who normally doesn't care for such things, is glad to lose himself in it. For almost two hours, he doesn't think about the past week and a half, and he even finally answers his cousin's text as the credits run, tells Jin Ling that he'll be home until next Sunday and they can hang out if Jin Ling still wants to. He might regret it when the time comes to pull it together and act human, leave the house, but it will be nice to see him.

Jin Ling responds with a thumbs up emoji and a selfie with Fairy. Sizhui knows that Jin Ling debated and ultimately turned down a full ride to Cornell in the fall to stay closer to her; Caltech isn't exactly a bad backup school, and he really can't imagine Jin Ling spending four years away from her. Sizhui smiles, and for a moment feels a certain peace: he's going to be okay, he's going to get through this, he still has his family on Papa's side and his friends at school. Jingyi wasn't even mad about the vodka, just told Sizhui to let him know if he wanted to go for a drive and beat up Sizhui's ex, whoever he is. Sizhui is so, so loved, and tomorrow he'll get to pet a dog, and it's enough.

Then Dad heads for the piano, his way of winding down at the end of the night after a movie that didn't have the same calming effect on him that it did on Sizhui and Papa, and starts to play a familiar piece. It's not exactly the same one Xichen was playing that night, his leg pressed warm to Sizhui's on the narrow piano bench, while Sizhui played harmony and Xichen told him it was beautiful, just like that, and let Sizhui kiss him. But it's close.

Sizhui makes it to the guest bathroom off the foyer, but only just, and he's dry heaving, his dinner already gone, when Papa comes through the door. He has a bottle of water, a can of ginger ale, and a bottle of something pink, and he sets them all on the floor by Sizhui's knee. He takes one of Dad's nice guest towels and runs it under the tap, hands it to Sizhui with a quiet, "Here you go, kiddo."

He sobs into the damp fabric, presses it to his mouth to muffle the sounds. He's trying to talk, but his papa can't understand him, and maybe that's for the best; not maybe, of course that's for the best. Papa would tell Dad, and who would his dad choose: the brother who practically raised him, or the disgusting son who tried to come between them? And what if Papa took Sizhui's side instead, and then his parents split up, too, all because Sizhui couldn't keep his hands to himself and then got too attached? He can't have that.

"I thought he loved me," Sizhui murmurs, and Papa's hands go still for a long moment of surprise. Then he finishes opening the can, the crack of the metal and carbonation loud in the silent little room. Sizhui takes it from him, grateful for the coolness to ground him, the bite of the taste, something to hold in his hands.

Papa has been really lucky, he tells Sizhui, to have never had a breakup himself. Still, he adds, he should have known the signs, caring for his sister's heart over the years.

Sizhui can't tell him who, of course, but he says, "Yeah, you caught me."

His papa rolls with the new information, tries to give the typical comforting sentiments. Aunt Yanli has been married for nineteen years now, and even Uncle Cheng eventually found someone, so it's clearly been a while since Papa had to say any of this. Finally, he smiles, kind of sheepish, and says, "You know your dad and I don't care if you like men, right? You can tell him, he'll probably have more wisdom than I do. He usually does."

Sizhui shakes his head and says, "Don't, please don't tell him." He starts to cry again.

Papa hesitates then says, "I don't have to tell him tonight, but we should all talk this week. Okay?" Sizhui nods; it's not exactly being presented as a choice. "We love you so much, Sizhui. I'm sorry some dumb boy hurt you. Want me to beat him up?"

Sizhui sniffles. "Why is that everyone's answer?"

Papa pretends to consider. "You're right. We'll dig up our ancient coins and call a hitman instead." He grins, and Sizhui actually laughs.

"I think we can let him live," Sizhui says. "He's not a bad guy, I just wasn't good enough for him." Papa frowns, but before he can say anything, Sizhui adds, "Maybe ask Dad for no more piano this week."

Papa is clearly confused, but he nods. "Yeah, of course, I'll tell him."

Sizhui stays there for a while, kneeling on the bathmat. He takes the water and pink syrup Papa brought him, finds the acetaminophen in the medicine cabinet, carries all of that and what's left of the ginger ale up to his bedroom. His stomach is in knots, his head is pounding almost as bad as the morning of the hangover, and he can't focus on the tiny words on the label of either medicine to find out whether they interact, or even how much he's supposed to take.

In the end he gives up and takes a half-dozen pills with several long swallows of the stomach medicine and chases that with the rest of the ginger ale. "Whatever," he breathes into his dark bedroom. He knows Dad wouldn't do that to him, but as he falls asleep he would almost swear he can hear long fingers at the piano.

-------

He wakes up in the morning.

A shower and some toast, and he grabs a ride to Jin Ling's from his dad. Dad is so much worse with words than Papa. He doesn't ask how Sizhui is or anything, just gives him eighty dollars and an actual paper business card for a car service where the family has an account.

"If you're not feeling well," he explains, eyes on the traffic, "you don't need to wait for me to pick you up after work."

"I'll be okay," Sizhui says. He's not sure, but it's not exactly a lie.

Still, Dad looks over at him when traffic crawls to a stop. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to speak with a doctor? It doesn't have to be your aunt; your pediatrician can see you this week."

"I'm not sick," Sizhui says, because he's not in the way his dad means.

His cousin's house is chaos, as usual. Jin Ling is the eldest sibling by a large gap but he's not the only, and he rolls his eyes as his two much younger sisters take their turns greeting Sizhui with enthusiastic hugs. His Uncle Zixuan squeezes his shoulder on his way out the door, and Sizhui escapes the little girls when they follow him instead, calling, "Daddy, Daddy, you forgot to kiss Mommy goodbye!"

Zixuan, so dutiful, scoops up one in each arm and deposits them at his wife's feet before kissing her firmly.

"I love you," he says, and Yanli laughs and says it back. Their house, their family is so warm. Sizhui wonders how they did it; he's met both Jin Ling's grandmothers, and he knows that neither one kept this kind of messy, welcoming home.

"My parents are so embarrassing," Jin Ling complains as they climb the stairs to his bedroom. "They never stop, even after all these years. You know the girls are only eleven months apart?"

"I think it's nice," Sizhui says quietly. His parents have been together two decades, and they still hold hands on the couch. Jin Ling's parents clearly have sex still. Sizhui wonders what's wrong with him, that he couldn't keep Xichen's interest past six months.

"Ugh." Jin Ling tosses a controller to Sizhui; this is what they do when they've been apart, use a video game to get back into the rhythm of them, and in half an hour they won't be out of sync with each other anymore. "I just don't get it," he adds, clicking through menus, "it's like my friends: prom is in six weeks and they keep talking about what they're going to do after, and they all want me to--" He bites off the rest of the thought.

"Don't," Sizhui says, "ignore them, don't do anything you don't want to do. You can't take it back once you do, so make sure it's what you want. You're not going to see half those guys after June anyway."

Jin Ling pauses the game. He hesitates a moment, then says, "Siz? Are you okay?"

No. "Yeah, I'm fine, I just don't want you to let some 'bros' pressure you." He's just looking out for his cousin, that's his job, it's nothing more than that. That's all this is about. Sizhui wanted everything that happened, after all, didn't he? He kissed Xichen first. He certainly never said no, when he got the kisses and cuddles he wanted from the most beautiful man he knew, nor did he say no when Xichen showed him what came next. He was nineteen by then, plenty old enough for sex, too old to expect things to stop at making out.

He doesn't realize he's on the knife's edge of panic until Fairy is there, licking his hand and whining softly. This happens sometimes, though it's become much less frequent as he's grown from a child to a man. He doesn't remember what he's forgotten from the first few years of his life, before he became a Lan, and he can't work through what he can't identify, those presumed troubles sitting beneath the surface and occasionally rearing their ugly head in these vague shadows. He's overly emotional at times as a result and it's embarrassing, but he slides his fingers into the thick fur at Fairy's back and she grounds him.

"Do you want me to get my mom?" Jin Ling asks quietly, and Sizhui shakes his head. He's already feeling calmer as Fairy rests her head on his knee. No wonder Xichen liked it so much when Sizhui sat at his feet and did the same. He chokes on a laugh, and Fairy looks at him, curiosity and confusion and concern seeming to show in her too-intelligent eyes.

With time, Sizhui calms down, but he's still trembling with the excess adrenaline in his blood. Jin Ling tosses him a sweater, and they both end up on the bed, Fairy between them, and marathon all eight episodes of some weird sci-fi cartoon about found family.

"I hope there's another season," Sizhui says. It's something concrete to look forward to.

"They're working on it," Jin Ling says, "I read about it a while back." Sizhui smiles. Maybe it will be released by the time they're hanging out like this again after Jin Ling's freshman year.

In the end it's a nice enough visit. Sizhui ends up wearing Jin Ling's sweater home, and he's fidgeting with the cuff of one sleeve when he tells Dad in the car, "Papa found out last night, so. I have to tell you. I like men. I don't know whether it's just men or other people, too, but I know it was at least this one man."

Dad's brow moves the tiniest bit, and Sizhui can't read him. "That's fine," he says eventually. "It doesn't matter to us to whom you find yourself attracted, only that your potential partners treat you well and keep you safe."

Sizhui answers the implied questions, though his whole face burns. "He was great, it just didn't work out. And we were, yes, he kept me safe."

His dad nods. He's relieved, Sizhui realizes. Probably imagined all sorts of awful things, and he must be relieved to know that Sizhui had an all-too-short but ultimately very lovely relationship, even if it didn't end in marriage and a lasting love the way his fathers' had.

"I'm grateful," Dad says, "that your first relationship was a positive experience while it lasted."

Sizhui blinks a few times, keeps the tears at bay. He's envious but sincere when he says, "I'm glad that you and Papa found each other first."

Dad's hands tighten on the steering wheel, and he doesn't express his agreement. Strange, Sizhui thinks, since he knows from Papa's retelling as well as from Xichen's that Papa was Dad's first and only. He probably just doesn't want to discuss their sex life with their son, which is understandable.

Sizhui puts his hand in his pocket and fidgets with his keyring. It feels too light, down Xichen's apartment key now. Sizhui replaced it this morning with the soda can tab from the ginger ale Papa brought him last night. He's not sure why he wanted to keep it; maybe because it's better to have a reminder of the home and love he still has, the one where he retreated to lick his wounds, than just an absence representing the one he lost.

The one Xichen took back to give to someone else, Sizhui thinks, then scolds himself for being uncharitable. Xichen deserves to be happy with his first love.

Sizhui, who wanted the same, can hardly begrudge Xichen his happily ever after.

-------

He somehow tolerates his parents hugging him goodbye at the train station, but when Jingyi greets him the same way back at the dorms, he can't suppress a shudder.

"You okay, man?" Jingyi asks

Sizhui makes himself laugh. "Yeah, just hurt my shoulder play fighting with my little cousins, you know how kids are. It'll be fine in a day or two."

It's enough for Jingyi to keep his hands to himself, and not to question it further.

It's not fine in a day or two, of course. Play rehearsals resume Tuesday evening, and Sizhui's scene partners clearly want to be patient but the third time he freezes at a choreographed touch, forgetting his lines and stepping back out of the blocking, they snap at him. It's not hard, and they're right, it shouldn't be. People get dumped every day and they don't fall apart.

He walks out of rehearsal because he doesn't know these kids well enough to melt down in front of them. He'll e-mail in the morning that he's quitting theatre to focus on his studies; it's a club, not a course, and he has to prioritize his energy better if he wants any chance of a career in medicine. For tonight, he texts his parents the same thing, tells them not to come down here next month for the showcase because he won't be in it.

Every time someone in the troupe sends Sizhui a rude text about abandoning them, he texts Jin Ling for a dog pic. His favorite that week is his little cousins both asleep on her, and the caption reads, they're cute sometimes I GUESS dog thieves tho. He sets it as his new lockscreen.

Papa says something on the phone that implies that he thinks Sizhui quit because his ex is one of the boys in the troupe. Sizhui lets him believe that. Dad says it's good that Sizhui is focusing on his coursework, and Sizhui lets him believe that, too.

He tries. He does, but he has so little focus to apply. He usually goes to class but his notes never make any sense; he turns in papers without proofreading them. He sleepwalks through the rest of March and all of April this way. It seems like an eternity passes in some ways, and no time at all in others. He wakes up one morning and he's suddenly less than a week from the end of his sophomore year.

Jingyi doesn't ask any questions when Sizhui requests to put a few things in his storage unit for the summer, which is nice because then he doesn't have to explain why he can't leave anything at his uncle's place this year.

His finals all fall on the earlier part of the week, which wouldn't be ideal if he were actually planning to study between them, if he were even capable. He's not. He sits for his finals: writes essays on novels he hasn't read, does math with swimming numbers, tries to answer questions about anatomy even as his own betrays him.

He goes home.

The first few days home for the summer are much like they were after his freshman year, only amplified: it's a relief once again to eat his parents' cooking, to use his shower where he doesn't have to wear flipflops or hear anyone five feet away, to unpack his clothes and put them in his dresser drawers where they belong. He still has Jin Ling's sweater; he wore it home from his house back in March, and he didn't leave it for his dad to return to him. He'd hidden inside it on the train ride back to school, and he'd worn it more than not over the final weeks of the semester. It helped to hide his unintended weight loss from Jingyi. He should wash it this week and give it back to Jin Ling, but for now he hangs it on his desk chair, within easy reach.

He's been home for four days already when he gets the e-mail that semester grades are posted.

He had been hoping for some kind of academic miracle, or maybe a T.A. too burnt out to actually read their essays. His eyes burn.

How do I explain this to my parents? he texts Jingyi, along with a screenshot of his grades. Jingyi told him once that he was happy to be Sizhui's mentor in parental disappointment, if Sizhui ever decided to stop being perfect. It was Jingyi being self-deprecating after a disastrous winter holiday, of course, but Sizhui sincerely needs the advice.

Jingyi texts back pretty quickly with just tell em Cs and Ds get degrees bro.

Sizhui is dismayed. For the briefest of moments, he thinks that he would like to ask his Uncle Xichen for advice, to help him talk to Dad, then he remembers. Fuck.

His phone buzzes again, and he is somehow surprised when it's Jingyi. Who else? you had a like 3.9 your first three semesters, you'll pull your gpa back up before med school apps. Sizhui hadn't even thought about that, his future abstract at best when he could barely survive his present, but now it hits him. This is at least three of his top choices off his list.

He's weeping against his pillow when Papa comes to tell him it's time for dinner. His bedroom door was open, so Papa hadn't knocked, had just poked his head in. He calls for Sizhui's dad then comes over to the bed and sits down, pulls Sizhui close as if he's still small and having another nightmare. Sizhui wishes he were; he'd take the vague horrors he couldn't remember over this disaster, similarly self-inflicted but all too real.

He wishes Papa would let him go. He doesn't deserve to be comforted, and he doesn't want to be touched. Dad rushes into the room, clearly frightened by Papa's panicked yelling, and he says, "Sizhui, what happened?"

Sizhui cries harder. He's caught, he can't get away, and he has to tell them, he has to-- What comes out is true but certainly not the whole story. "I didn't make the dean's list," he says, "my name won't be in the paper for you to show anyone."

Papa laughs, soft and not unkind. "Geez, Lan Zhan, have we been that terrible to our son? Talk to him."

Dad says, "Your achievements have never been about showing others."

Sizhui can feel Papa shake his head. "You're more than your achievements, no matter their purpose. I know we've been hard on you, but I didn't know-- I'm sorry, Siz, we'll do better."

"I'm sorry," Sizhui says. "I told you that night that I wouldn't mess up anymore but I keep doing it."

"What--" Dad begins, but he must think better of the question. So Papa really hadn't told him about Sizhui and the bottle of vodka before spring break.

Sizhui manages to pull himself together. This display is a bit shameful in itself, after all. He tries to be temperate in his moods; he hadn't even raised his voice the night Xichen told him they were over.

He watches the silent exchange between his parents, then Papa says, "I know we haven't told you this, but I flunked out of college twice before I finally got a degree. It's okay if you take after me a tiny bit and not just after your dad's family." He laughs again. "Lan Zhan, do you remember how angry your uncle was that you didn't break off our engagement when it became clear that I would 'amount to nothing'?"

"I recall," Dad says, expression impassive, though there's a warmth in his eyes as there always seems to be when he looks at his husband.

"Your dad stayed with me," Papa tells Sizhui, "and he likes you way more than he ever liked me. Plus, falling below the dean's list for a semester isn't the same as getting kicked out of school. It just means you got, what, a 3.5 this semester instead?" He looks up at Dad. "That's the cutoff, right? I never had to worry about it." Papa was a genius, but he was a bit of a burnout in those days, by his own admission, though this is the first Sizhui is learning just how much.

"I'm sorry," Sizhui says again, because it's so much worse than a 3.5. His cumulative is probably hovering just shy of a 3.0 after today's news. Uncle Cheng's wife went to a school with an average admissions standard of 3.8. It's mathematically impossible for him to follow in her footsteps, and she was the one who made him want to be a doctor in the first place. He deliberately chose a less prestigious school for undergrad so that it would be easier to keep his grades up, and he still failed.

"Hey," Papa says. Then, "Siri, text Jin Ling. Any new fairy pictures question mark. Send."

Sizhui stares at him; Papa is notorious for barely tolerating even the most well-behaved dogs, for reasons he's never divulged to his son. "You do that, too?"

It's Dad who answers, though. "He knows that you do."

Jin Ling texts about a dozen, and Papa hands Sizhui his phone to look through the slideshow. He's seen most of these; they're probably new to Papa, but Jin Ling texts Sizhui more days than not, and Fairy is always a feature in their conversations.

Sizhui is looking at the newest picture. It must have been taken by a third party, maybe Aunt Yanli, because Jin Ling has both arms around Fairy and is making a heart against her fur with the thumb and first finger of each hand. Then Sizhui notices a little logo in the corner and realizes that this is a professional portrait, one of Jin Ling's senior photos. He's glad there's at least one featuring Fairy rather than trophies, ribbons, and a letter jacket. Jin Ling looks like himself here.

He's forwarding it to himself to save when a new message comes through. is siz okay? It's not Sizhui's place to answer; he wonders how Papa will, once the phone is back in his hand.

His parents leave him soon so he can collect himself and join them for dinner when he's ready. He hears Papa as he's walking down the hall: "Text yes comma but it's always a good time for doggos. Send."

It's funny, Sizhui thinks, that he was raised to value honesty as one of their family's core values, yet so many of them have turned out to be liars.

-------

He's been home a week and a half when he comes downstairs on Saturday morning to find five places set at the table rather than three. Papa is frying eggs, and Dad is chopping fruit, though he stops long enough to pour a glass of orange juice and set it at Sizhui's spot at the table.

"Morning," Sizhui mumbles.

Dad seems to understand that he's sleepy, not trying to be rude. "Good morning."

Sizhui hopes that it's not Uncle Cheng and Wen Qing joining them for breakfast. He doesn't think he can face his aunt today. There's no recommendation letter in the world that can get him into her alma mater now, and he feels like a disappointment even though he knows it was his dream, not hers. The best case scenario is Jin Ling and Aunt Yanli, but Sizhui isn't lucky enough lately for today to be some special daddy-and-daughter day for the Jins.

He drinks his orange juice and finally looks up to ask who is joining them for breakfast, but he doesn't have to ask. Fortunate, he thinks wildly, since he suddenly can't breathe.

It's Xichen. Sizhui had somehow forgotten that this was inevitable: an ex can disappear, but family is forever.

It's little comfort that Xichen looks just as surprised to see him. "Sizhui," he says, "I thought you were away at school."

Sizhui shakes his head, and Dad speaks up. "His school runs on a different schedule than the university. They get out a bit earlier."

"Right," Xichen says. "Well, it's good to see you again."

Sizhui nods and looks down at his phone. Dog pic????? he texts.

"Don't mind him," Papa says, teasing. "Early morning means no manners, apparently. Sizhui, introduce yourself to Nie Mingjue."

He manages an approximation of a respectful greeting for Xichen's partner. Nie Mingjue has a solid handshake, a calloused hand. His smile seems unpracticed but sincere when he says, "Good to meet you, young man. Although we met before, actually, many years ago."

Papa explains, "Mingjue and your uncle were together back in the day, too. His little brother even babysat you a few times when we double dated."

"I don't remember that," Sizhui says. His head is swimming. Blood sugar, he tells himself, and picks up the orange juice again.

"You were four or five when we moved back to Xingtai to take care of the family business," Mingjue explains.

"He broke your uncle's heart," Papa adds with a wink.

"Wei Ying," Dad says, a warning.

"All's well that ends well," Papa says. "Right, Xichen? You two seem to have picked right back up."

Xichen smiles, that placid quirk of his mouth that says nothing. Deniable, noncommittal.

Mingjue, though, bristles at the teasing. "It's not as if we didn't keep in touch," he tells Papa, "and once I knew for certain that we'd be opening the satellite office in the valley, I asked him for the chance to make it all up to him."

Sizhui's phone buzzes. It's Fairy asleep at the foot of Jin Ling's bed. Thanks, Sizhui texts. Then, he follows with, How long do you think it takes to establish a satellite office for a multinational tech corporation?

Xichen seems very interested in stirring the cream into his tea while Mingjue speaks surprisingly frankly about their rekindled romance. Embarrassing Papa in return, maybe, while the Lans in the room suffer in silence.

its eight oclock in the morning man, Jin Ling texts.

Sizhui has taken exactly one economics class to fill out a liberal arts requirement his freshman year. Humor me.

It takes a minute for the next text to come. gotta be at least a year with lawyers and contracts and real estate and staffing.....want me to ask my dad tonight?

No.

"If it were up to me," Mingjue is saying, "it would have been done already, but the lawyers all have opinions in a situation like this, and unlike Huaisang I'm not going to up and elope." He rolls his eyes.

"You're getting married?" Sizhui asks. Xichen nods without looking at him.

Papa frowns. "Were you not on that group text?"

"I think my phone misses stuff sometimes when I put it on silent for studying," Sizhui somehow says; it's another lie, knowing very well that he wasn't told.

Mingjue turns to Sizhui. "What are you studying?"

"Pre-med, sir," Sizhui says. "My undergraduate major is biology, but there are more co-reqs for healthcare professions students, more chemistry coursework than other bio majors." It's the first time this morning that his words have come easily; it all might be out of reach to him now, but his goals and dreams are a practiced recitation.

"Impressive," Mingjue says, and Sizhui ducks his head and murmurs a thank you. His uncle's fiancé is the impressive one, taking over a struggling company in his early twenties and growing it into something respected, successful; he's very handsome, too, Sizhui notices in a distant sort of way, and he drinks his coffee black. He's also a kind man, Sizhui realizes, gruff and warm in turns; he speaks openly of his affection for his brother and for Xichen, and he compliments Sizhui's parents sincerely on the fine young man they've raised.

If Sizhui were less kind himself, he would give voice to some of his hurt. He would ask whether Mingjue likes the satin sheets Sizhui gave Xichen for Christmas, just a few months ago; hopefully he washed them between saying goodbye to Sizhui and welcoming Mr. Nie home. If Sizhui were the type to ruin five lives in five seconds, or if he had Jin Ling's or Jiang Cheng's temper, he would ask if Mingjue likes the weight of Xichen in his mouth, or does he struggle to take him the way that Sizhui did. Would he care, Sizhui wonders, if he knew that his future nephew by marriage was the one keeping his husband-to-be sated while he ironed out the details to come back for him.

That's not fair, though, and Sizhui knows that. He didn't even ask Xichen whether he was available before he kissed him that night at the piano. That was Sizhui's fault, and the thought that he wronged Nie Mingjue, unknowingly perhaps but carelessly, selfishly, makes his stomach twist.

Sizhui started it. He created the need for secrecy when he created the secret. It's his responsibility now to keep it.

-------

Even if--

He knows: he has to keep their secret.

Even if it kills him.

-------

Sizhui was a good kid less than a year ago, so there's not much he needs to get rid of first. He flushes three pot gummies from Jingyi down the toilet in his bathroom. He takes out the trash from his bedroom, the biohazard mess of tissues filled with snot and whatever else. He does a load of laundry. He takes down his shower curtain and lays it inside the tub.

He doesn't have to worry about his phone, even though he never deleted anything the way Xichen asked. He changes his passcode from an easily guessed family date to some Latin phrase with 1s for Is and a zero for the O.

Dad is asleep, of course, given the late hour. Papa told Sizhui good night a while ago, too, griping with a smile that he was tired earlier than usual because he had to get up early for that little family breakfast.

("It's good that Uncle is happy," Sizhui said.

"Yeah," Papa agreed, "sometimes it just takes a while.")

He's alone now.

The note is short but still hard to write. He almost doesn't leave one at all, but he's worried that if he doesn't offer his parents answers then they'll go looking for them. One last lie, then: that school is the only reason. Two last truths: he loves his parents so much, and he's so sorry.

His phone buzzes shortly before midnight. It's a sideways selfie from Jin Ling, with Fairy's paws and loose hair all over a dark tux. thx for the advice before, did what you said and came home from the dance to my BEST girl and the only one i want to sleep with tonight.

Sizhui smiles. Proud of you, he types. It's too much, but it's true, so ultimately he sends it and locks his phone. Jin Ling's sweater is still on the back of the chair, and Sizhui folds it neatly and places it at the foot of his bed with a sticky note asking that they please return it to Jin Ling, thank you.

The water is warm, the metal sharp. He cries again, but not for very long.

At least he won't have to tell any more lies.

-------

When he wakes up the first time, he thinks distantly that someone should scold the EMTs for making such a mess after all. Sizhui had tried so hard to be considerate. To be good.

When he wakes the second time, his Aunt Qing is crying silently at his bedside, and he cries too. He cries for a very, very long time.

-------

A physician should never treat their family, and they both know that, but no one seems to realize they're related. Aunt Qing is a trauma surgeon, which means she's on call for the emergency room. The resident calls her down because it's a slow night, and because it's not exactly a superficial laceration.

"I can get someone else if you prefer, but I would like to do this for you." She's dried her eyes, washed her face and hands in the room's sink. She's already gathered the supplies she wants and put on gloves. She's a perfectionist, he knows: she closes every surgical incision she makes herself with her own hands, even though it's the simplest part of any operation. "I can minimize the scarring," she explains when Sizhui doesn't answer, "a little better than one of the residents."

He wonders what they gave him. He's so tired. "That doesn't matter," he says.

"It doesn't matter to you tonight, but it may someday." She's even quieter when she adds, "Sizhui, please."

He nods. He turns his head away as she drapes his arm, removes the temporary dressing, numbs the area. He barely winces even when the needle pierces his skin.

She works in silence. After a little time has passed, Sizhui speaks. "You won't say anything to Uncle Cheng, will you?"

"Of course not," she says. "We'll have an argument about it if he ever finds out I treated you tonight, then he'll apologize after two hours and say that he understands why I couldn't tell him anything." It sounds like even Jiang Cheng is learning to make a relationship work, despite having every obstacle against him: the constant strife in his childhood home, no love at all between his parents and not enough from them to their children, either.

"I'm glad he has you," Sizhui whispers. It must sound like a silly sentiment coming from an ignorant boy to a married woman, but he can see her nod from the corner of his eye.

"He's very fond of you," she tells him. "We both are. I know it doesn't fix anything, but I hope it helps to know that you're loved."

"Are my parents here?" he asks. He has to close his eyes because they suddenly hurt.

"Yes," she says, voice careful. "They're in the waiting room, but they can't see you until after you talk to psychiatry. That's not something I can circumvent."

"That's a stupid rule," he says, and now having his eyes closed isn't enough to keep the tears at bay.

"I understand the reasoning in some cases," she says, "but this isn't one of them." She's made it to the outermost layer, and she trades the sutures for a plastic adhesive wound closure. He's never seen anything like it, the way it pulls the skin together. No black threads, no Frankenstein scar. "It should just look like a surgical incision once it heals," she explains. "You can tell anyone who asks that you needed some work done."

I'm done lying, he thinks.

She places a final outer bandage over everything. "The good news is that there shouldn't be any major nerve damage."

"Doesn't matter," Sizhui says for the second time. "I'm not going to be a surgeon anyway. I blew it."

She's moved to the other side of the bed now. The wound on that side is a scratch by comparison, and she cleans it and is able to close it with just the plastic closure. It's only once it's placed and secured to her satisfaction that she says, "Nothing that happened tonight disqualifies you from practicing medicine. I can guarantee that."

"Not tonight." He tries to focus, though whatever they gave him to make him docile is making that a challenge. That's become something of a pattern. Eventually he explains, "The whole semester, my grades." He's going to have to repeat all of this to another doctor later, he realizes, and he doesn't want to do it twice. It's fine because Wen Qing will understand from those few words. She finished her undergrad summa cum laude, a lone B- in art history. She knows what one bad semester can do, and that's why she never had one.

She's tapping at her tablet, keeping his chart up to date for his team. She seems to weigh her words carefully as she sets the tablet on the counter. "I'm sorry to hear that. When you're feeling better, we can talk about other options. Until then…" She sighs. "Please be honest with the doctors and tell them whatever else has happened. They can't share anything with your family that you don't want them to know, so tell them the truth and let them help you sort it out."

He feels really exposed and he hates it. He's tired of baring himself and being seen, and now, here, he can't avoid it.

"Is there any way I can get clothes?" he asks. It's either that or another sedative, because he's suddenly aware of the thin hospital gown he's wearing and the blanket over the lower half of him, and they're insufficient. Wen Qing frowns at the ETA for the psych consult and thankfully makes the decision herself, and fifteen minutes later he has grey sweats and ugly green socks. He can't finish changing until his saline drip is declared complete, but he promises to drink anything they bring him if Wen Qing will just get the IV out of him and let him put on real clothes instead of the gown.

She's not as hard as everyone thinks she is, because she agrees to run it by the emergency attending for him. Once he's dressed and settled, she stands at the head of the bed and strokes his hair. It's the first human touch he's felt in two months that doesn't make his skin crawl.

"I'm scared," he admits.

"I know."

"My parents are going to be so mad at me." He sobs once.

"No, Sizhui." She wipes a tear off his cheek. "That's just your mind playing tricks."

She doesn't know, though. No one knows.

Not yet.

-------

He must sleep again at some point. The psychiatrist on call wakes him when she arrives to speak with him. He doesn't bother to argue when she gently insists on an admission.

He glimpses the sunrise when a nursing assistant pushes his wheelchair to the elevator. It's a day he had planned on not seeing. It's the first day of the rest of his life, as they say, and he has no idea what it will look like.

He wants to see his parents, but he can't face them alone. "I'll need them to bring my phone," he explains to the doctor assigned to him on day shift. "If I'm not allowed to keep it, whatever, I understand, but I'll need it when they visit."

Then he explains why. The doctor nods a lot, asks a few questions, takes many notes. Somehow he realizes that Sizhui missed breakfast when he transferred departments, and Sizhui has graham crackers and a juice box while he explains yesterday's breakfast.

Over the next few days and weeks, he'll learn terms like trauma and triggers, grooming and gaslighting, coerced consent, and so many more. He'll initially dismiss and ultimately claim the vocabulary of recovery. They won't all apply, of course -- his uncle had an opportunity, not a plan -- but knowing what it wasn't will be just as important. But he doesn't have any of those tools yet, doesn't know. For now, he only has the truth, so he just gives the facts and finishes, "I don't know why I overreacted the way I did. You asked what I want to figure out here, and I guess that's it."

It can't be a good sign that the doctor looks a little ashen. He must not be telling the story right, Sizhui thinks, if he's earning that kind of reaction. Maybe the doctor is just trying to figure out how to help this stupid kid when there's nothing wrong with him to start.

Or maybe not. He receives two pills with lunch, something for anxiety and something for depression. He wants to say that he's not depressed, but the 2.9 cumulative GPA and the bulk of gauze inside each sleeve undermine his argument. The pills won't hurt him for now, a weak starting dose. He'll explain better at his next session, and hopefully they'll realize that he doesn't really need them.

-------

Sizhui asks the doctor to stay with him when he talks to his parents. He's established himself as an ally in the short time since they've met, and without him Sizhui worries that he'll be outnumbered, two to one, once his parents know the truth.

Papa hugs him for too long, and Sizhui endures it because his papa really seems to need it. Dad's hug is shorter but still shocking for the rarity. He hands Sizhui his phone. It's been charged, but it's still locked.

"We didn't read the note you left, either," he says. "Your privacy isn't suddenly forfeit."

Papa is crying but laughing, too. "What he means is that I told him to leave your stuff alone until you could talk to us yourself." He doesn't grasp Sizhui's better hand, mindful of the bandage from the IV, but he strokes his fingers as if he can't bear to stop touching his son, feeling his warm skin. Sizhui hasn't asked but he can only assume that Papa was the one who found him last night. He was pretty much always the one to check on Sizhui at night when he was scared.

It doesn't leave a hand for his dad, since Sizhui is cradling the worse of the two to his chest as he has been since his papa came in for that first hug. The doctor gave him acetaminophen for the pain earlier when he had asked, sheepish and almost ashamed, whether he could have something, but it still hurts.

Of course it still hurts.

Sizhui sits his phone on the table so he can unlock it without denying his papa that touch. He has a few emails, two game notifications, and a text from Jin Ling. sizhui...you ok? cuz that was cheesy...but thx. you should be proud of you tho for giving good advice to my dumb ass! we should hang out this week if you want no hw for seniors this time of year but for now zzz night. It's a strange text, and Sizhui figures Jin Ling was either taken aback by the moment of affection or else very, very tired after prom.

"Jin Ling," he tells his parents, meaning to give him a moment. He texts back that he might be unavailable for the next few days but that they'll make plans soon. Then he navigates to his conversation with Jingyi, scrolls up past a week's worth of memes and pictures of his girlfriend's cat to find the screenshot of Sizhui's semester grades. He pushes it across the table to his parents and waits.

He expects Papa to speak first, but instead it's Dad's quiet voice that breaks the silence. "I've been a very poor father to you if I've caused you to feel that your schoolwork is more important to us than your wellbeing. I'm sorry, Sizhui."

Papa taps one of Sizhui's bitten down fingernails. "Was it the courses or the breakup?"

"The breakup," Sizhui says, because there's no other way to answer such a direct question. He was doing just fine for most of the semester even with his attention divided, studying on the train or at Xichen's, so he can't blame the workload.

"Drinking?" Papa asks. "I'm not going to judge you, that was, well, you wouldn't be the first."

Sizhui frowns. "Only that night I called you."

"Drugs?"

"No, Papa!" Sizhui shakes his head. "Ask Dr. Kramer, I--" He stops himself. He doesn't remember the last time he got stoned with Jingyi, and he doesn't know how long it would show up on the kind of tox screen they did last night, so maybe he shouldn't ask his doctor to share those results. "I've just been sad. There's no other excuse." And that is true. He doesn't have an excuse.

But he has an explanation.

"I was really sad after yesterday morning," he starts.

"Oh," Papa says, "I'm sorry, if I'd been thinking, if I knew how hard you were still taking actor boy's stupid change of heart, I would have warned you that you were about to be around two obnoxiously happy couples instead of just the usual one."

"Don't be mad at Uncle Xichen," Sizhui says softly.

"Why would we be mad at your uncle?" Papa asks. "He wasn't trying to make you feel bad by celebrating his engagement." That much at least is true. "It was just bad timing, that's-- Lan Zhan?"

Sizhui looks up at his dad. His lips are parted in silent surprise, eyes dark, jaw set. His knuckles are white where he's clenching the edge of the table. There's no way he could know, yet he's already angry. Sizhui starts to cry again. He can't do this, he can't.

"You never should have taken me in," he tells them.

Papa says, "Why would you say that? You were the best decision we ever made. Lan Zhan, tell him." There's a long pause, but Dad just stares past Sizhui and stays silent. "Hey," Papa prompts, "tell him how he completed our family."

"He did," Dad says. He's still not looking at either of them. "He does."

Sizhui shakes his head. "I didn't complete your family, I broke it."

Papa is starting to get agitated. "Why, because you got sad about a boy and now you might not get into UCLA Medical? Look, I don't care if you never make more than minimum wage and live in your childhood bedroom for the next fifty years, you're still my son, our son." He shakes Dad's shoulder. "Could you say more than three words, this isn't the time for your Lan language."

Not all Lans are as sparse with their words, though, and that gives Sizhui an idea that doesn't depend on his own voice either. He reaches for the phone where it's still sitting in front of his parents, and he finds his texts with Xichen. The very end of the thread is too humiliating to share -- five texts from Sizhui over those first few weeks and one from yesterday, all unanswered -- but he scrolls a little to back when he thought everything was good, somewhere in January or February judging by a picture he scrolled past of himself in a sweatshirt from Xichen's university, and nothing else. Then he passes the phone back.

Papa reads, face going red with embarrassment. His hand is over his mouth. "Why are you showing me this? And this conversation is mislabeled, Sizhui," he laughs, "it says these messages are from your uncle."

"Wei Ying," Dad says. He's looking at Sizhui, finally. He doesn't seem as surprised as Sizhui thinks he should. "It says they're from my brother because they are."

"No." Papa laughs again. "That's not. You're too smart to think something that stupid."

"It started in the fall," Sizhui says, and Papa's smile melting into confusion then horror sets Sizhui crying again. He feels like that's all he's done since yesterday. "If it weren't for me, none of this would have happened, he said that I--"

The doctor doesn't interrupt, but he clears his throat. Sizhui has been talking circles around that point in all their conversations.

"Shut up!" Sizhui says, surprising them all. "It is my fault. Uncle is a good man, but I kissed him, what was he supposed to do?"

"Not this!" Papa says, turning the phone facedown against the table.

Dad is crying now, no sounds or shaking but just big tears on his cheeks, and it scares Sizhui. His papa cries a lot -- when each of his nieces was born, when Sizhui graduated from high school, the opening scene of John Wick even though he's seen it a dozen times -- but his dad never has, at least not in front of Sizhui.

"I'm sorry, Dad." Sizhui is sobbing hard enough now for both of them. "I'm so sorry."

He's surprised when Dad walks around the table and pulls a chair beside Sizhui. He holds him close and sings an unfamiliar lullaby. Sizhui doesn't even know the language; Xichen was supposed to teach him, but they never got around to it, they didn't have enough time.

"What he was supposed to do, Sizhui," his dad says softly after he reaches the end of the song, "was to tell you no."

-------

Sizhui never said no either, though.

No matter what Xichen asked for.

He agreed to move to the bed when he wanted to kiss on the sofa.

He agreed to finish with his mouth what he started tentatively, curiously, with his hand on Xichen's erection.

He agreed to fingers and a toy and then finally his uncle inside of him when he'd never even touched himself there before.

He agreed to everything, so why did everyone look at him with such sympathy?

Why did everyone look at him like he was a victim?

-------

Wen Qing comes upstairs after her shift the second evening. It's past visiting hours, but she has her badge and white coat, so they let her in. It's ostensibly to cheek his wounds, but she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a tiny bag of onion rings and some M&Ms.

"I hit the vending machine in the break room," she says, "I hope these are still your favorites."

They are. Still, Sizhui can't quite meet her eye when he thanks her. He has to know, "Can you see my therapy notes when you check my chart?"

She shakes her head. "There might be broad strokes there, but I didn't check. I don't want to know anything you don't want to tell me." He nods, grateful.

She stays while he enjoys his contraband snack, and they share the M&Ms. His aunt has never been one for small talk, but the silence doesn't feel uncomfortable. It reminds him of the two of them meeting by accident on the porch at so many family gatherings, both overwhelmed by the overlapping conversations and voices inside. She wears overwhelmed better than he does, of course, with her age and experience; still, he's always recognized it for what it is, when she leaves the rest of them behind for a few minutes.

Before she heads out tonight, he asks her about the itching, whether it's normal.

"It's part of the healing process," she says. "There's nothing wrong, your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to."

"It sucks," he mutters. He is, after all, barely more than a teenager.

She smiles softly. "Oh, it's definitely unpleasant."

He feels buoyed by her visit, the sugar, the reassurance. He still has part of his family, at least. He's not alone.

-------

He's discharged after three days with three prescriptions, a safety contract, several appointment reminder cards, and a whole tree's worth of pamphlets and printouts. His parents bring him his own clothes, jeans and a white tee and pale blue button-down with his favorite boots.

They don't go straight home. Instead, they stop at his favorite little diner, his parents on one side of the booth. They look a lot better than the last time he saw them: after they visited him, they'd gone out to the corridor and Sizhui watched them talking on the other side of the glass, Dad saying something with stone-faced passivity that made Papa go pale, eyes wide. Sizhui can't help wondering what was said, whether his dad blamed him for everything that happened and his papa had disagreed. He doesn't know what else they could have been talking about, and he wishes he hadn't seen it.

They're waiting for their meals to arrive when Dad says, "I've made arrangements and they're holding a bed for you at a private inpatient treatment center if you feel you would benefit from longer in that type of environment."

Sizhui frowns and looks to Papa, who says, "We just want to make sure you have all the support you need. Don't worry, the food's supposed to be way better there than it was at the hospital."

He doesn't care about the food. He thought they were stopping at the diner as a treat, not an ambush point.

"I want to go home," he says. Do they not want him to? He clasps his hands in his lap so that his parents won't see them shake. He's grateful that the medicine has already started to build up enough to dull the edges of his feelings, because he doesn't want to cry in public. "Unless I'm no longer welcome there."

"Sizhui, of course you're welcome home," his dad says. Papa reaches across the table to squeeze his shoulder, coming dangerously close to knocking over two glasses of iced tea with his elbow. "We just wanted you to have options in case you weren't ready."

But he's more ready than reluctant to go home, and it's reassuring to get there and see that his parents were prepared for him to make that choice, too. Nothing downstairs looks too different, and why would it after only three days, but it still feels a little strange to walk back inside and find that it's his home, the same one he walked into sixteen years ago with nothing but one beat-up suitcase and a black trash bag with some extra clothes. He doesn't actually remember that day, of course, but he knows the story.

His bedroom is a bit different, though. The smells of bleach and paint from the adjoining bathroom are overwhelming, even with the door shut and the exhaust fan still running. There's a basket of clean, folded laundry sitting at the foot of his bed, beside Jin Ling's sweater with the note still on top. Sizhui's note is there, too, and he considers throwing it away but can't, and he settles on burying it in a desk drawer instead.

On top of his desk, he finds his phone, plugged in and charging. There's a new phone, too, still in the box and two models more recent. The receipt is sticking out from under the box, and he likes that they didn't decide for him and activate it already, that he can keep using the old one if he wants, even though it's tainted. There's a Barnes & Noble bag, too, and Sizhui recognizes the top three books as ones his temporary doctor at the hospital mentioned. Under that are several new Moleskine notebooks, two of them graph paper for science courses; he has physics next year with the other bio juniors, chem sophomores, and physics freshmen. There's an August to July planner, too, and under all of that is a Blu-ray of John Wick 3, which he never got around to seeing the previous summer when he was job shadowing at the hospital.

The bathroom is almost unrecognizable. The tile has been scrubbed clean and re-grouted, and the walls are a different shade of blue, or perhaps the same shade they once were but unfaded by the years. The shower curtain is new, a deep navy fabric now, but the liner is also new and reeks of plastic.

He regrets flushing the gummies. It might be nice to have one right now.

The only way out is through, and he finds the waterproof bandages his parents left on the counter and takes a shower. It's a box of twenty, which should be just enough. It feels nice to get properly clean: the water pressure is better at home, and no one is timing him. He doesn't really need to shave his face but he does anyway just because he can. The room smells less like paint and more like his soap when he's finished, and when he goes into his bedroom to get dressed in soft PJs and an even softer cardigan, he can smell dinner cooking downstairs.

It's the first time he's really had an appetite in days, maybe even months, and he eats his fill before retiring to the living room with his parents to watch his new movie. Papa has waited a year so that they could watch it together, he tells him proudly. "A rare instance of restraint on my part," he says, elbowing his husband, and Sizhui laughs. It feels good.

Dad turns the TV off during the credits, and Sizhui can feel an expectation in the silence.

"What?" he asks after a minute. "If you, if you want to play the piano then go play, I'm okay, honest."

"It's not that. I wanted to tell you that I called and spoke with Lan Xichen." He says it so formally, as if that isn't his brother he's talking about. "I told him in no uncertain terms that he's not permitted to contact any member of this family."

Oh. Sizhui nods.

Papa shakes his head a little. "I said that we should maybe leave it up to you to decide what you want to do, but your dad and I both, we don't want him anywhere near us." It's a raw admission. "And we really don't want him near you."

Sizhui nods again. He wasn't planning to contact his uncle, and he figured he wouldn't hear from him again. Xichen had ghosted him even before being found out, after all. But it's a heavy thought, that it's not just him affected.

"He's still your family," Sizhui tells his dad, "You shouldn't have to lose him over something that had nothing to do with you."

"It's clear my brother didn't prioritize preserving our fraternal relationship in the choices he's made," his dad says slowly. He looks down at Papa's hand on his knee and covers it with his own. "My decision is final, and he understands that."

Papa nods, smiling sad and soft at his husband, then turns to their son. "We can't stop you from contacting anyone you want to, but..." He doesn't finish. He doesn't need to.

-------

Sometimes the only closure, Sizhui reads, is to truly accept that one may never receive closure.

A very colorful young woman at group therapy back in the hospital put it another way. She was talking about her own situation, of course, but it felt profound somehow, and Sizhui jotted it down in his notebook: "The fucker is never going to admit he did anything wrong, so I just have to carry that knowledge for the both of us, I guess. Hooray for me."

Sizhui still believes sometimes that Xichen really didn't do anything wrong, and he likes to think that even if he did, then surely he knows that and surely he wouldn't deny it. But Sizhui can't ask him so he'll never know for sure.

Hooray for him.

-------

Technology is a great thing. Sizhui makes the rounds of his team after the suture device comes off on day fourteen, one appointment after another, and Sizhui's therapist says they can have their weekly "catch ups" over Skype, and his psychiatrist is happy with checking in the same way every four weeks as long as Sizhui promises to call sooner if he has any questions. So he and his parents head out to the little house in Maine that the Lan brothers inherited from their parents.

He wonders whether it's theirs now, whether his dad's phone call also addressed such matters. Did he fax Xichen paperwork for the deed when he told him he never wanted to hear from him again? Or did Xichen volunteer to have his lawyer take care of it? Or is it only de facto theirs, and his uncle still has the keys and the right to show up?

Sizhui doesn't ask, though. He just goes home and packs for the trip, gets on the plane, sleeps in the rental car between the airport and the house. He feels like he's the one on autopilot for the entire journey. Papa won't even let him carry his own suitcase, as if he thinks that all the layers of tissue that have knit back together will just come apart again with the slightest stress.

His parents must have hired someone to come open up the house for them. The floors are clean, the furniture dusted, and there are fresh groceries in the refrigerator and cabinets. The windows looking out over the bay are open, so whoever it was must have just been there earlier today.

He carries his backpack into the little bedroom that has always been "his." A red plush lobster rests on his freshly changed pillowcase, and he smiles back at it. He hasn't been here in two years now, and even then it was only for a few days' visit. But the little town has broadband now sufficient for his parents to work from here, and they can stay as long as they want. He does feel a little guilty about missing Jin Ling's high school graduation next week; his cousin had come to his, along with the rest of the family, and Sizhui hates that he's the reason that Jin Ling won't get the same treatment. His papa said, though, that this trip isn't only for Sizhui's benefit. We all need the break, I think. Your aunt will talk to Jin Ling, explain that we're all burnt out and fried, and he'll understand.

Sizhui still feels bad, though, even after Jin Ling texts who cares its gonna be boring wish i could skip it too. Failed-your-family is a hard feeling to shake, and Sizhui supposes that can be something to talk about in therapy this week.

-------

The house is tiny, just two bedrooms and a sleeper sofa in the living room. He can only remember them needing it once, a summer more than a decade ago when his uncle came with them, and it was all four of them staying here together. That had been an unusually quiet visit, something Sizhui could sense even then, though he didn't understand until years later that it was the result of two brothers together again in a place they'd visited as children.

He doesn't know much about his grandparents on the Lan side, who both died long before he was born. Complicated was the word his uncle used once. That word described Xichen and Sizhui pretty well in those days, too, and Sizhui was only too willing to be distracted when Xichen decided he didn't want to talk about something complicated.

Sizhui has looked through the photo album kept here many times, the pictures of his grandmother, his uncle, his dad. Just a beautiful young woman and her two little sons playing in the water, and Sizhui could stand on the back deck and hold the photos in line with the water to find exactly where his grandfather must have stood to take them. There's one photo that shows his uncle holding Dad's hand as they climb over the rocks below the deck, just like any good and protective big brother would.

"He's not a monster," Sizhui says when Papa finds him staring at the photos.

"You're right," Papa says, surprising him. Then: "A monster wouldn't have known any better. He doesn't have that excuse. He knew."

("But did he?" Sizhui will ask his therapist the next time they talk.

"What do you think?"

"I think that he tried to tell me it was a bad idea, and I didn't listen."

"Do you think it was your job to understand, or his job to hold his ground even if you didn't?"

A leading question, but Sizhui will know the answer. It's a little easier each day to take less of the blame.)

Dad looks at it a bit differently. "Xichen may not be a monster, but that's not the reason. Some monsters do know better. What makes them monsters is that they do evil despite the knowing."

There are no photos of Sizhui's grandfather, just empty spaces on certain pages. Sizhui thinks that he's beginning to understand just how complicated family can be.

-------

Aunt Yanli, despite Jin Ling's apparent protest, sends the photos from his graduation to the family text thread. He looks bored in his seat, hot and cranky walking the stage, and back to bored for most of the photos taken after, the various configurations of family members. He looks happiest in the one where he's sitting on a bench with an arm around either sister, and their parents are standing behind them.

A flurry of We're so proud! and Looking handsome and Is he taller than you now? texts come through, and Sizhui can imagine how annoyed Jin Ling probably is.

Dog pic? he texts just to him, less because Sizhui needs it himself right now than because he thinks Jin Ling might.

Thank you, everyone, Jin Ling texts the group chat, then to Sizhui, who wore it better??? and a picture of Fairy with a crooked graduation cap on her head, the tassel hanging down over one eye.

Definitely Fairy.

shut up hahaha wish you were still in town i miss your face

Sizhui texts, Skype, Facetime, Discord, Zoom, etc.

uuuuuuuugggggghhhh gross comes the reply, but an hour later Jin Ling video calls, and Sizhui stays on the line with him and Fairy until eventually they both have to go to dinner.

-------

Sizhui brushes his teeth, washes his face, and combs his hair each evening. He rubs vitamin E lotion onto the scars on his wrists even though he hates looking at them and feels skeptical at best that it's making any difference.

He eats three meals every day. He takes his medication. He keeps his appointments. He gets plenty of sleep, even though it's not always restful.

He invests in his future, little by little, because he still has one.

He probably won't be a surgeon, but he could still be something; his health professions advisor said that they can talk in the fall. He still has most of his family. Maybe someday he'll even feel ready to find a lover again, someone who won't ask for a mile when Sizhui offers an inch, and Sizhui can graft a little twig onto their family tree for himself.

-------

Sizhui knows that his dad does his best to compartmentalize his professional life, to not allow the pressure of having a dozen people directly under him or the hundreds under them to change who he is as a father to Sizhui or partner to Papa. But no one's perfect, and it's clear one evening that that day's closed-door conference calls are taking a toll. Sizhui hopes it's nothing too serious; their family would be fine even if his dad's organization closed tomorrow, but the same might not be true for everyone who works for him or the people who depend on the work they do in their communities.

After dinner, Sizhui and his papa play Battleship, one of the many board games in the cabinet tucked in the short hallway by the bedrooms. They offered to choose a game all three of them could play but Dad politely declined, and now he's reading, though Sizhui can't help seeing the tension he's holding.

Papa excuses himself to make tea after he loses his submarine, and Sizhui takes the opportunity to say, "You can play if you want." His dad's gaze flickers to his mother's piano in the corner, somehow knowing immediately that he meant that and not the board game, then he looks back to his son. "You must miss playing it," Sizhui explains, dropping his eyes, "and I know Papa misses hearing you play."

"Has he said that?" Dad asks.

Sizhui shakes his head. "But he doesn't have to." Even Sizhui misses it, or at least wishes he did. More than that, he knows how important it is to his dad, this instrument in particular. He has a thermometer and humidity sensor nearby set to alert both him and the caretaker if conditions ever put it in danger, and he pays a small fortune for the best of the best to travel from UMaine twice a year to service and tune it. This house still doesn't have a shower, only a bathtub, but his dad had top-tier central heating and cooling retrofit years ago more for the safety of the piano rather than the comfort of the people. It's precious to him, and he hasn't played a note on it in at least two years.

Dad nods. "I would like that," he admits. "Thank you."

Sizhui smiles and ducks his head. If this trip really is for all three of them, then they should each get to do what restores him.

By the time Papa returns with three mugs, balanced in his hands because he's not the type to grab a tray, his dad has settled at the piano and begun to play. Sizhui grabs three coasters from an end table and has them ready when Papa gets back at the table. He smiles up at Papa, who raises an eyebrow.

But Sizhui really is okay with the piano. It's nice, actually. It's normal. Removed by time and distance, he can't exactly understand why he got so upset the last time he heard his dad play, back in March. It was fresher then, he knows, a completely raw nerve. Maybe that was the whole reason.

They resume their Battleship game, calling out their coordinates quietly while his dad plays. Sizhui's tea is perfect, just the right amount of cream and sugar. His papa has always adjusted so well to Sizhui's changing tastes over the years, and Sizhui realizes that it was never in doubt that he would have his love and support no matter what awful thing he'd done.

Sizhui wins, and Papa asks to see his board. He turns it around, showing that all five of his ships are in the bottom right corner of his board, taking up as little room as possible and leaving a wide open section of his board for his papa to miss with most of his guesses.

"Here I thought I was just unlucky," Papa laughs, "but you were hiding!"

Sizhui smiles. "I learned this trick watching you play Dad years ago."

"It does look like something I'd do." Papa finishes his tea and goes to stand behind his husband, who leans his head back against his chest. It's such an innocent yet intimate gesture to witness, and Sizhui busies himself with putting the game pieces away.

The song changes, and Sizhui looks up when he hears his papa laugh. It's a faster arrangement, simpler, but it's not until Papa starts to sing that Sizhui realizes that it sounds different from his dad's usual fare because it's a few hundred years more recent. The song sounds vaguely familiar, and Sizhui looks to them for an explanation.

"Wei Ying made me a mixed CD when we were in school." His dad's lip twitches. "Terrible music." Yet he listened to it enough to learn to play at least one of the songs, clearly, and to still be playing it all these years later. He even silently mouths the words to the bridge while his husband sings.

Sizhui almost didn't have this moment, he realizes. Not just that he was nearly too nervous to ask his father to play tonight, but that he almost lost all his moments. He remembers and understands why he made the decision he made that night, he easily remembers feeling backed into a corner, trapped, with no other option.

But he failed. And for once, that was a good thing. He was forced to find a third option, something other than living or dying with his secret.

And it's the same thing with the piano, he realizes. He doesn't have to lose it entirely, doesn't have to be afraid that hearing the press of keys will instantly make him think of the hard wood of the piano bench and of the taste of scotch on a kiss he wishes now that he had never felt bold enough to initiate. Those memories might still wash over him, leave him feeling unsteady, but he can right himself again each time, with patience. He's learning, and he'll keep learning; he'll wake up every day, even if sometimes it's too hard to do anything more than go right back to sleep.

Sizhui walks out to the deck and leans on the railing where his papa's trunks and towel are hanging to dry from this morning. One of these days, soon, he'll join him for a swim; he can't hide his scars forever, and it's not as if Papa isn't the one who found him that night anyway. It might even be good for him to see them now, to see for himself how well his son is healing.

Because he is, he's getting better, he's fine. He's through the bulk of the grief and regret and the anger, and it's the past now, it's past, he's fine with it, he's fine.

He's at least mostly fine.

He's not exactly fine.

He wishes this were an empty stretch of beach because he really, really wants to scream.

Papa stands in the doorway and asks, "Do you want him to stop?"

"No." Sizhui shakes his head. He's surprised to feel with the movement that his cheeks are wet. "I want to yell."

"Then yell."

Sizhui turns to stare at him. "We have neighbors," he reminds him.

His papa shrugs. "It's a Thursday night." The houses on either side of them are rentals, and he's pointing out that they're probably empty. It's true that Sizhui can't see any lights on at either one, but still, he can't just-- "Here," Papa says, "I'll start."

He screams. It's a weird sound, a scream devoid of fear or anger, and he cuts it short with a cough and a laugh. Then he holds his hand out to Sizhui. "C'mon." He yells again, and Sizhui takes his hand. No lights have appeared, nor curious neighbors.

On the third yell, Sizhui joins in.

It's so satisfying. Other than a moment when he first talked to his parents in the hospital, he never raised his voice through all of this. Tried to reason away his feelings and blame whatever was left on himself. But it's not fair and it hurts, and he lets himself yell about it, wordless.

He doesn't even notice the music stop, just feels his dad take his other hand and hears him yell, too. From his other side, Papa chuckles, and Sizhui can tell by the sound, something in his breath, that he's crying, too.

It's a bonding moment, it's cathartic, it's beautiful: three orphans, victims, survivors, screaming their grief and pain into the infinite water.

-------

Papa's siblings rent the place next door for a week in July, and the entire family comes to stay. Even Fairy makes the trip.

It's the first time Yanli and her family have come to Maine. For so many summers she was too ill, then she was pregnant with her daughters, then she deemed traveling with an infant or two to be too much hassle. But now, with the girls older and with Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing coming along with Yanli and Zixuan, the workload seems a bit more manageable.

Sizhui and his papa manage to restrain themselves for about the first twenty minutes after the rented van pulls into the driveway next door, then they head over. On my way over with Papa. Can you put Fairy on her leash, please? Sizhui texts Jin Ling on the way, and he texts back a thumbs up.

There's a flurry of activity, of course, when they arrive at the house. Aunt Yanli gives the best hugs, and she immediately wants to feed everyone. "I brought some of those cookies you like," she tells Sizhui before she passes him off to Wen Qing, who surprises him with an almost equally warm hug. She looks relaxed in a loose red sundress, very bohemian and not at all her usual style. She feels different than he expects, too, but she shakes her head discreetly when he lets his confusion show on his face.

"We'll talk in a bit," she promises in a whisper. She squeezes his hand, then he's talking with his uncles and listening to his little cousins tell him about the great big airplane they flew on. He feels like he's run a gauntlet by the time he gets to Jin Ling, standing in the corner and holding Fairy's leash.

"Hey," Sizhui starts, but Jin Ling wraps the end of the leash twice in his fist then pulls Sizhui into a tight hug. He really has gotten taller since Sizhui saw him last, and Sizhui has to tilt his head up a little to ask, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Jin Ling says, stepping back from the hug reluctantly. "We're taking Fairy for a walk," he says, first to Sizhui before repeating it louder for the rest of the room.

Jin Ling is silent for a bit, concentrating on navigating the rocks. "It's not like a California beach," he says after a bit, "at least not the ones I've been on."

"No," Sizhui agrees. They've made their way by now back to the Lan house, the little stretch of water where he played as a child, where his father and uncle and grandmother once played, too. Sizhui climbs up onto his favorite boulder and pats the space beside him. Jin Ling lets Fairy off her leash to splash in the water, and he comes to sit beside him.

"Long flight with your sisters?" Sizhui asks. It's just a guess, but the sooner Jin Ling tells him what's bothering him, the sooner he'll forget about it and they can properly enjoy seeing each other for the first time in months.

"The flight was fine," Jin Ling says. "We took the company jet, which Dad never uses for personal stuff but he made an exception because of the girls and Fairy and because, did you know Aunt Qing gets airsickness or something? I'm glad she came with us but she was really sick and slept in the back the whole time between takeoff and landing."

Sizhui frowns. "I hope she's okay."

"You're okay," Jin Ling says. It sounds like an accusation, but before Sizhui can try to understand, Jin Ling explains, "I don't know why but I was so sure you had, you know, 'the big C.'"

Oh. Sizhui remembers the years that Aunt Yanli was in the hospital as much as she was home. How many times she lost her hair. The way that Jin Ling cried a lot. He complained later when his sisters came but they both know that their arrival meant that his mother's body was strong enough to bear a child, then another, and lucky enough to still be able; and that his parents' love for each other never went away through her illness, had grown stronger if anything.

Jin Ling was mostly raised by his various uncles during that time, especially Jiang Cheng and Jin Guangyao, who weren't busy with any children of their own. When Yanli recovered, Jin Ling gained his mother, and soon the first of his sisters, but lost Jin Guangyao soon after that. I can explain it to you when you're a little older, he'd told the crying boy, but I have someone else I need to protect now. He'd left Jin Ling with a puppy and a broken heart, and although Jin Ling eventually forgave him, he never understood why his favorite uncle had to move so far away just to get married.

"The way you and your parents just disappeared," Jin Ling says, "and I could tell our aunt knew something but she couldn't tell us, and then I started to research how many specialized cancer treatment centers there are on the east coast, maybe you were traveling to New York or Boston or something at one of the Ivy League universities, I don't know."

"I had a breakdown," Sizhui says. He hadn't necessarily planned to tell him, but Jin Ling is the one person who might be reassured by that explanation.

And he does seem to be, some of the tension leaving him. "Good. I mean, not good." He scowls a little out over the water as if the ocean itself has offended him. "Are you feeling better now?"

"A little bit." Sizhui takes the stick Fairy brings him from her mouth and throws it into the surf, watches her chase after it. "I don't think it's supposed to get better overnight."

"Well yeah. It's like a process or whatever." Jin Ling shrugs one shoulder when Sizhui stares. "My parents sent me off to 'talk to someone' a few years ago because I was 'volatile' and 'having trouble coping with change,' but it was some big secret or something, so we said I was taking violin twice a week instead of once." He rolls his eyes.

This must be the stigma thing that Sizhui has read so much about. It's different in his household: his own parents are each planning to do individual sessions as well as couples therapy in the fall once they're back home, and they've talked about virtual family therapy as well. We don't want to lose each other, or you, we want to figure this all out together. Of course, he doesn't know how public these intentions are outside of the three of them. Maybe they'll make up some explanation for their whereabouts, too.

"I didn't know that," Sizhui says, though that must be obvious.

"Yeah." Jin Ling brushes some sand from his foot, but then he looks up at Sizhui and smiles. "But one great thing about being a grown-up now is that I get to decide for myself what's a secret and what's not."

Sizhui laughs. "Yeah, it's one of the perks."

Jin Ling insists on a ton of selfies, and he makes an instagram post of Fairy with kelp on her head and the caption transcontinental jetsetting fashion model. Sizhui and his parents get to teach Jin Ling, Uncle Zixuan, and Uncle Cheng how to harvest fresh mussels. Jiang Cheng only needs a refresher from another time he visited them, but the Jin men both seem more than a little confused. Jin Ling openly complains about helping to remove the beards and scrub the shells once he and Sizhui are settled outside Aunt Yanli's temporary kitchen with a bucket and brushes because it's gross. She comes out after a bit, though, gives them each a big glass of iced tea and says, "Thank you, boys, I really appreciate your help with getting this huge family dinner together," and Jin Ling works twice as hard after that with half as many complaints.

They carry the prepared mussels inside later and Sizhui goes to the counter to help his dad, who has been dicing vegetables and talking with his sister-in-law.

She asks, "Will your brother be joining us?" and Sizhui is impressed that neither he nor his dad falters in their preparations.

"No," Dad answers immediately.

"Oh." She smiles and explains, "I texted him to offer that he could join our flight, but he never got back to me. I thought maybe he was already here with you."

"He's no longer in our lives," his dad explains. Sizhui glances up to see Jin Ling look up from raiding the fridge for pre-dinner snacks to meet his eyes. Sizhui just shakes his head gently, mouths, Later.

Yanli nods. "I apologize for extending the invitation to him, then, and for asking. I didn't realize. A-Xian hasn't said anything."

"It's recent, but permanent." His dad works another moment then says, "I've finished with the carrots. What more can I do to help?"

It seems to be that simple.

The girls eat sandwiches and apple slices at the coffee table, and Sizhui half expects that he and Jin Ling will be sitting with them for yet another family gathering. But Papa finds some extra folding chairs, probably left behind by one of the many groups of loud college partiers to cycle through the rental, and they manage to fit an extra two place settings at the main table, for a total of eight.

The food is delicious, of course. Everything Aunt Yanli makes is good, and she's so happy to have everyone together. There are several toasts, with Zixuan raising a glass to his wonderful wife, and Yanli toasting their children and congratulating Jin Ling once again on his high school graduation.

Uncle Cheng and Aunt Qing are whispering something on their side of the table, and after a minute of everyone waiting to see whether one of them wants to speak, Jiang Cheng says, "So, it's not exactly a toast."

Wen Qing adds, "It's not exactly an announcement, either." Aunt Yanli covers her laugh, and Dad looks like he's been expecting this. "It is, however, an acknowledgement, and we wanted to wait until we were all together to tell you. So if you could look inside your place cards, please."

It's an ultrasound picture. Sizhui immediately smiles up at his aunt. He doesn't even have a moment to congratulate her before his papa says, "Way to go, A-Cheng!"

Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes. "Don't say that, I didn't do anything."

"Awkward," Papa laughs. Uncle Cheng's face goes red and his brother makes a placating gesture. "No, I know. Congratulations to both of you." The conversation picks up with the usual questions, what they're having (a boy) when (November), where they're registered (nowhere yet), what they need ("I can provide for my own family," Jiang Cheng says indignantly, as if he hadn't showered Yanli with gifts during all three of her pregnancies).

"We know it's late to announce," Aunt Qing explains, "but we wanted everyone here, and we also wanted to make sure everything was okay with the pregnancy first," she pauses, then adds, "'given my age.'"

Aunt Yanli groans. "The dreaded g-word. I heard it the whole time with our youngest."

Wen Qing nods. "I told our doctor that I understand that it's not ideal, but that's not how life works."

Sizhui asks, "But you're both healthy, right? And you're happy?"

"Yes," Aunt Qing assures him, "to both."

Jin Ling seems to snap out of his shock. "Hey, we finally get another boy in the family, it's about time." He nudges Sizhui. "Don't worry, though, you'll always be my favorite."

Sizhui laughs. "I'm telling Fairy."

Jin Ling laughs, too. "Kinda rude, but I'm sure she already knows."

Soon it's time for his aunt and uncle to put their girls to bed, and Sizhui tells Jin Ling, "If you clear the table, I'll do the dishes," and Aunt Qing offers to dry them. Jiang Cheng insists on pulling one of the chairs over to the sink, and she shoos him away with the dish towel and tells him to stop fussing.

Once he's walked away, she tells Sizhui, "Don't tell him, but I appreciate the chair."

Sizhui smiles. "I feel kind of stupid for not realizing earlier, you're definitely showing." He blushes. "Which is a good thing! I did the math and you're pretty far along if you're due in November. So you should be showing by now."

She takes the plate he hands her. "Relax, I knew what you meant. I've been trying to hide it, but my height doesn't really give it anywhere to go but out. It's easier with scrubs and a white coat, and I don't have to worry about it at home, but I was sure everyone here would know before tonight."

"Aunt Yanli knew."

"Yanli has probably known for a while, but I wasn't sure she knew until the flight here. She brought me ginger ale and pretzels from the snack bar, and she rubbed my feet even though that's not a nausea treatment."

"There are acupressure points on the feet for nausea," Sizhui says.

She looks genuinely impressed. "That's true, but she wasn't finding them."

"I only know the one on the hand," he admits. "Our anatomy professor taught us LI-4 because it's good for headaches and stress, too. Oh, but she said it's not considered safe for pregnant people."

Aunt Qing laughs softly. "I wish I remembered more of them offhand, but I completed all the training and I know how to read the charts. It's just hard to remember the skills I don't use every day. I'll brush up on the points for infants at least before the baby comes."

"If you let me know which vaccine boosters you want visitors to have, I'll make sure I'm good to go in time for Thanksgiving break. I would really like to meet him then, if that's okay."

"Of course." She blinks a few times, then takes another plate. "We had just started to talk about whether to tell people, when." She nods toward where his sleeves are pushed up but his arms are mostly hidden by the soapy water. It's indelicate, blunt, and he loves her for it. "And I almost told you that night because I just kept thinking, 'I want my child to know their cousin,' but it wouldn't have been fair to put that on you."

"I'm not going anywhere," he says softly. "I'm sorry for scaring everyone."

She shakes her head. "We were scared, those of us who knew, but you don't need to apologize. It's our job to take care of you, not the other way around. Each generation keeps the next one safe."

For a moment, her words make him think that she knows, but it seems she's speaking in generalities. He ducks his head then says, "Well, I might be in the same generation as them, technically, but as the oldest I'll do my best to protect my little cousins, too."

"Just the little ones? Not Jin Ling?"

Sizhui smiles. "No, he protects me, if anything." Neither of them can remember exactly, but they've heard the stories enough times: that apparently Jin Ling, just a toddler but very much a big boy, had learned the word cousin when Sizhui was adopted and immediately paired it with my and been possessive and protective from the start, not understanding that Sizhui was the same size as him but nearly twice his age at that point.

She returns his smile, grimaces, then smiles again. "Speaking of little cousins, do you want to try to feel the baby? Your uncle has managed to catch him once or twice, but I guess it's still pretty faint from the outside."

Sizhui nods and quickly dries his hands on a dish towel, and she guides his palm to her stomach, pressing firmly against the red fabric hanging over her body. She moves his hand a little higher, and he feels something, just the tiniest flutter from here. "That's him?" he asks.

"Yes."

"This is very cool," he says, because it is. He feels awe. Two months ago when they were eating M&Ms together and Sizhui's whole world had just collapsed, he already had a place in this baby's life, carved out and held by his aunt. He was wanted there, here, despite whatever he may have done.

It's humbling, and a bit overwhelming.

"Don't spread this around too much," she says. "I don't intend to be one of those pregnant people who lets everyone put their hands on me, and I don't want it to turn into some dramatic jealousy thing."

He nods. This is a good secret to keep, and for a good reason. "Thank you," he says. While they're here, he turns his hand palm up, reluctantly pulling away from the baby for now, until November, and says, "Do you mind looking at my wrists?" She nods and he turns on the light above the range, lighting the kitchen a bit. It's definitely dark outside now.

"They look really good," she says after a minute's examination. "That probably sounds arrogant."

"It would only be arrogance if you weren't actually as good as you believe you are. It's not arrogant to know your worth." He feels his face go red. "Sorry, uh, channeling my therapist there, I think. But thank you, again, for taking care of me that night. It couldn't have been easy."

"It would have been harder to let someone else do it," she admits. "You're welcome."

They return to the dishes and join the others in the living room around the same time Aunt Yanli and Uncle Zixuan come back downstairs. Yanli sighs and says, "They're convinced that the only reason they've never seen a mermaid in California is that they're all here instead, so I'm worried they're going to have a disappointing trip."

His papa immediately looks thoughtful. "So we'll figure out a way to create a mermaid sighting."

Uncle Cheng groans. "This can't end well."

"Let me think!"

He's already sketching something, and Dad looks over his shoulder and says, "We're not renting a boat," and Papa groans and turns the paper over.

Sizhui asks permission for Jin Ling to sleep over at their place, and they head back while the adults stay to catch up and make mermaid plans. Sizhui catches his papa saying, "The quaint little craft store in this quaint little town isn't going to have biodegradable glitter, Lan Zhan," as he pulls the door closed behind them.

It's a weird age, old enough not to have a bedtime but young enough that they don't want to talk to their parents, aunts, and uncles about marriage and baby names. "What do you want to watch?" Jin Ling asks as they walk with Fairy between them, and Sizhui shrugs. He could watch anything from a dumb grossout comedy to low quality YouTube bootlegs of How It's Made and be equally content with his evening.

Jin Ling calls dibs on the bathroom first, changes into shorts and a Caltech tank top and gets Fairy settled with a bowl of water on Sizhui's bedroom floor. Sizhui takes his own clothes into the bathroom to change, trading out his jeans for flannel pajama bottoms. He leaves the sweatshirt as is, pulling the sleeves back down after rubbing his lotion in. He brushes his teeth even though they'll probably have snacks by the end of the night. He takes his medication, and chastises himself for having left it on the counter for Jin Ling to see.

When he gets back to his bedroom, though, Jin Ling doesn't say anything about it. Sizhui shuts the door behind him to keep Fairy from wandering the halls and scaring his papa later once he's home, and Jin Ling smiles up from the floor and says, "Did you know this is a, what do you call it, with the-- a trundle bed?"

"Yeah." Sizhui watches as Jin Ling pulls the lower bed out from the frame. "I've never needed it before, though. I don't know how old the mattress is."

"It's fine, we're putting blankets down anyway, and it's newer than the floor. Softer, too."

Sizhui smiles. "Yes, those are objective truths."

"I'm not as fussy as I used to be," Jin Ling says, looking away. "I can sleep on an old mattress. Obviously: I'm going to be living in a dorm next month."

Next month. August and the autumn it brings with it has never felt closer than when Jin Ling casually says those two words. "Are you ready for school to start?" Sizhui asks him, preferring the question to silence.

"I guess." Jin Ling pulls a bag of his mom's cookies out of his backpack and offers one to Sizhui. "Are you?"

Is he? His parents asked him the same question, told him that it was okay if he wasn't, that they would help him to gather the documents to take a semester or two off and would cover any shortfalls if it affected his scholarships. He wants to go back, though. He's been rereading some of the material from the two classes he'll eventually need to retake, and it makes a lot more sense to him now than it did in the spring, and that's even without the benefit of lectures and study groups. "Yeah, I'm ready," he answers, feeling the truth of it fully for the first time.

"It's cool that we'll both be taking Physics 101 and 102 this year," Jin Ling says. "I know, different schools and different profs mean different textbooks and stuff, but we'll be more or less lined up." Jin Ling explains that he got the expected 5 on the AP Physics exam when scores released last week, but he wants the most solid foundation possible for his engineering education, especially in lab work.

The trundle bed ends up going to Fairy because Jin Ling climbs onto Sizhui's bed with him to better see the laptop. After some debate and too many rounds of deferring to each other, they end up rewatching the same cartoon they watched back during spring break. It's really funny, and Sizhui remembers that as much as he remembers anything from that hazy week in March. He wants to make sure it's not ruined for him, wants to make positive associations just in case.

His phone buzzes sometime during the second episode, and he looks away to check it during a particularly gory scene. It's a text from Aunt Qing, and he can picture her typing it in the corner while her husband and brother-in-law argue about mermaids. It reads: Our conversation about acupressure has me thinking. You could explore osteopathic medical schools. Slightly less stringent admissions standards, which I know was a concern for you, and you could still pursue certain surgical tracks if that's where your interests remain. More importantly, what I understand of the approach honestly suits you better than allopathic ("normal," M.D.) study. You're special, Sizhui. If you are going to be a doctor, it should be on your own path. If you have any questions, I can find a D.O. colleague to speak with you. Just let me know. He's still processing that when a much shorter follow-up text arrives. My intention isn't to presume or to pressure. I think you know that. Sleep well.

He has a future. He has a family. It's become something of a mantra.

Jin Ling groans. "The foreshadowing," he laments. "This is only my second time watching this, did you rewatch it at all?" Sizhui shakes his head. He missed whatever moment Jin Ling is referring to, but it doesn't seem overly important right now. He's just pleased that he can enjoy the show, that it's no more ruined for him than hearing his dad play the piano.

With Jin Ling so close, the dog and two people and his laptop running in his small room with the door closed in July, it's a little too warm for the sweatshirt. Sizhui debates with himself for a while and then decides, hell, his aunt said his scars looked okay, it's not going to be some traumatic thing for Jin Ling, it's fine.

"Just don't say anything," Sizhui whispers, and pulls his sweatshirt off, leaving him in just a t-shirt.

"About what?" Jin Ling asks. "I'm not going to make fun of you because your pajamas don't match." He looks over then, probably trying to figure out what Sizhui could possibly have meant, and Sizhui knows the exact moment he sees. But he doesn't say a word, just turns back to the screen and stares straight ahead while he reaches to squeeze Sizhui's hand.

It's an unexpected touch, but it's not unwelcome. They last held hands like this when they were small. This time, instead of making sure they don't lose each other, it's about knowing that they haven't, that they won't.

They don't pull away until Sizhui's phone rings, and even then it's reluctant. It's his papa on the other end, and Sizhui can hear laughter in the background as his papa asks him to find their old refractor telescope. "It should be in your bedroom closet," he says, "I knew I'd never bother to get it down again if it went into the crawlspace."

"I saw it in there when I was unpacking," Sizhui says, "I'll get it out and put it in the hall for you."

"Perfect, thank you."

"Is this about the mermaid thing?" Sizhui asks, and Jin Ling laughs.

"Yes!" Papa laughs too. "We used it to spot whales, we can use it to spot mermaids."

Sizhui pauses before asking, "The whales I saw were real, right?" He never doubted it before now, but he remembers being so excited about them when he was a kid, and he suddenly wonders.

"Yeah, Sizhui, the whales were real. That's why we took you out of school for a week that spring, to get the timing right."

"Thank you," Sizhui says. He can better appreciate as an adult what a big deal that would have been, the hassle, the paperwork. "It was really special."

"You're welcome," his papa says, voice soft.

When Sizhui opens the closet to get the telescope down, Jin Ling asks, "Is that my sweater?"

It is. The color is hard to miss, hanging among Sizhui's blues and whites. "Yeah," he says, not turning around. He runs his hand over the sleeve. It's softer than anything he owns; it's not that his parents wouldn't buy him cashmere, especially now, but he would never have thought to ask for it. "You let me borrow it over spring break and I kept forgetting to get it back to you." It's a dumb excuse; it's not as if that explains how it got to Maine. Sizhui can't just say, It's been like a security blanket to me, though. He can check the tag, check online, see just how much it would cost to get one for himself, before he gives it back.

Sizhui opens his mouth to apologize, but Jin Ling says, "Don't. Just." Sizhui hears him toss himself dramatically back on the bed. He looks over his shoulder, and Jin Ling has his hands over his face. "I'm glad it could be there to help since I had no idea you were sad and we were like five-thousand miles apart anyway."

"More like three-thousand," Sizhui says. He's smiling.

"Shut up," Jin Ling says. "Keep the sweater."

Sizhui closes the closet door and comes back to watch more of the show, stopping to pet Fairy on the way. "We'll both be back in California in a few weeks," he says. "The train isn't bad for studying, and it's not that far from my school to yours, we'll visit."

"We better." Jin Ling sits up and reaches down to scratch behind Fairy's ears, and it's clear that she's enjoying having the attention of both of them at once.

"We will," Sizhui says again. He's taken the train farther for a less worthy person. He almost says that aloud, considers sharing the whole story here tonight. But then Fairy licks his hand and Jin Ling unpauses their cartoon, and he decides that the past can wait. For tonight, he'd much rather think about right now, this autumn, and whatever lies after.