Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Good evening, dear passengers. Welcome onboard flight HL888 with service from New York to London. This is your captain speaking. We’ve been requested to wait for a passenger who’s currently being transferred from terminal 2. This means that our departure time will be delayed for approximately ten minutes. Apologies for the inconvenience; we’ll do our best to get back on schedule once we’re in the air.

Sprawled rudely across two seats of the leather couch in the first class exclusive bar, Hua Cheng huffs. It’s a random Thursday night in the middle of low season, but the plane is fucking packed. So much so, that the airline decided to send their bravest flight attendant—a scrawny girl with the flattest face he’s ever seen, who introduced herself as Xiao Ying when she found him on the first class lounge like an hour ago, lazily scrolling down some video app while sipping red wine—to convince him to give up half of his first class couple’s pod to a stranger. 

“I’m gonna guess you lot decided not to take no for an answer,” he drawls scathingly, nodding towards the loudspeaker.

Xiao Ying bows until her body makes a perfect 90° angle, hiding her flaming red face from view. She did the same in the lounge, when Hua Cheng let her know that her unprompted arrival had made him accidentally refresh his feed and lose the video he was watching to the grubby hands of the void. He’s not the type to get worked up about things like that, but the guy in the video looked positively ethereal walking along the shore of the Love River in Taiwan, and he was talking about the legalisation of gay marriage over there with a lot of property, shining eyes and a sweet, sweet voice. He’s itching to scroll around until he finds him again.

“Please, sir, believe me when I tell you that the airline exhausted all options trying to avoid this situation,” Xiao Ying says, holding her awkward position, her eyes trained on the floor. “The case of this passenger is totally unprecedented.”

Hua Cheng clicks his tongue. “You can stop doing that.”

Xiao Ying straightens like a spring being released. They seem to come from the same country, which might be the reason why this stupid airline sent her to appease him with an attempt at culturally appropriate protocol. Too bad; Hua Cheng isn’t moved. This girl’s job and this airline’s business aren’t his problem. He’s only concerned with the fact that he treated himself to the couple’s first class pod to have some decent shut-eye after three weeks of gruelling work in the USA, but now he’s being told to suck it and cram himself into a single bed for no goddamn reason. He couldn’t care less about the astronomical compensation in both money and points that he’ll get for his troubles, and due to some nonsensical privacy reasons, Xiao Ying isn’t even allowed to give him details about his soon-to-be neighbour. It’s ridiculous. The least they owe him is to tell him who this person is!

Once again, he considers the alternative suggested by the airline, which is to switch places with a couple currently in business class. That way, Hua Cheng and the newcomer would have individual seats, mediocre but passable, while the lucky upgraded pair would get a once in a lifetime chance to join the mile high club.

Fuck that. If he suffers, everyone suffers.

“I’ll stay here during take off,” he decides, reaching for the seatbelt he knows is hidden somewhere in the fold of the couch. “Get that person sorted on the left side of the pod and raise the partition before making my bed.”

Xiao Ying bows again, briefly enough that Hua Cheng can’t protest, while getting to avoid his deadly gaze and discreetly breathe all the tension out of her body.

“Won’t you dine on the plane today, sir?” she asks once she straightens again, the fake grin plastered in her face looking almost painful. “I’m happy to bring your meal here.”

“I’ll have the wine list for now.”

“At once!” Xiao Ying twirls to take said list from the bar. “May I bring you something from your seat? Sleeping clothes, or the amenity kit, perhaps?”

Hua Cheng agrees to the latter. If he was by himself as planned, he’d put on the pyjamas. The flight will last around seven hours, barely long enough to justify a change of clothes, but even if the pants that they provide are always too short for him, it feels nice not to wear street clothes to bed. However, he doesn’t want to be in any state of undress while lying down next to some rando. The partition he asked Xiao Ying to pull out is thin and flimsy, mostly for show, as the pod is designed for couples. The resulting lack of privacy means that he’ll have to sleep with an adhesive eyepatch, too. He’s never allowed anyone to see his eye socket scar outside a surgery, and he’s not about to start now. It sucks, because he’d counted on the pod’s doors to keep both snoopers and flight attendants from seeing his bare face. 

Dear passengers, this is your captain again. I’m happy to inform you that we’ve finished boarding. We’re next in line for take-off and will be in the air in approximately six minutes time. Please pay attention to the indications of the cabin crew and the safety video. Thank you for your patience. Enjoy your flight.

The bartender gets into flight attendant mode and takes away his wine glass and the little plate where he’d previously been served some smoked salmon (decent) over cucumber (he didn’t eat any of it, arranging the sad slices in the shape of a flower instead) to snack on. Hua Cheng fiddles with the end of the seatbelt while the plane taxies. He regrets not having got off to demand a rescheduling while he still could, but considering how full the plane is, and that more people travel during weekends, delaying his departure wouldn’t have been an intelligent move.

The safety video plays on the side screens. The plane accelerates, and a baby starts crying just past the curtain that separates the bar from the passengers’ cabin. The prospect of staying there the whole flight, drinking while digging around for the lost video of the cute guy, becomes less appealing by the second.

The plane takes off. Hua Cheng watches the dark silhouettes of buildings become smaller until they fuse together to form the background of a constellation of city lights. He doesn’t like New York. He doesn’t like London either, but for one reason or another, it has become the most convenient place for him to have a residence. Not a home—Hua Cheng has no family there waiting for him, or anywhere, for that matter—but he has a nice enough place in Soho where he can relax and get reasonably authentic food if he wants to.

As soon as the seatbelt sign goes off, Xiao Ying comes to give him the amenity kit and the dinner menu. He’s not hungry, but the starter of roasted duck doesn’t sound bad. While he waits for the food, he connects to the plane’s WiFi and, at last, opens the video app to start his long-awaited search.

@kingdom_of_rain:
[A generic bar graph animation is followed by footage of a man loading an industrial grinder with crumpled paper]
“Producing one tonne of recycled paper uses 7000 fewer gallons of water than producing the same amount of non recycled pa—”
Caption: We can make a difference #reducereuserecycle

@redditsdeepwaters:
[Some Minecraft gameplay on a map with tons of water]
“AITAH for getting in a relationship with the younger sibling of the man who ruined my life? I (M26) used to work as a marine b—”
Caption: Should he have kept his distance? #redditstories #aitah

@mingguang_h0h0:
[A montage of many clips where the same middle-aged man smiles at the camera while holding a different woman by the waist every time]
“30 days, 30 dates: how I use SEO to get to the top of any dating app I w—”
Caption: Don’t be jealous, join me! Link in bio

@halfmoonhalfdeath:
[A small snake with glinting purple scales chills on a flat rock, while a black scorpion crawls on top of its body]
«Mii music»
Caption: A scorpion somehow got into my pet snake’s terrarium and they became friends?

Hua Cheng watches the full video of the animals interacting and has a look at the comment section, where people debate about which of the two are more dangerous, and how combining them would create the ultimate killing machine. The top comment, with two thousand likes, says the resulting beast should be called a ‘snarpion.’

What a stupid name.

Three old men come in and take a seat at the only other table in the bar. If more people follow, they’ll have to sit next to Hua Cheng. What’s the point of paying first class, if he can’t have a moment of peace? He’s had enough of being forced to interact with rich assholes over the past few weeks. If one more of them tries to socialise with him, he’ll become homicidal.

Xiao Ying arrives with his dinner, this time waiting for him to mute his earbuds so he can listen to her, as she should. However, something in her demeanour tells Hua Cheng that she’s also bringing bad news. With a sigh, he rests his face on his hand and looks at her, arching a brow to prompt her to speak.

“The bed is ready for you, sir,” she announces, clutching her tray as if her life depended on it. “The other passenger has already gone to sleep.”

That person either eats incredibly fast, or couldn’t be bothered with dinner. No matter, this sounds like a good development. Always that he doesn’t wake his neighbour up, Hua Cheng should be able to return to his seat and enjoy a few hours of privacy. 

“Right…” he starts, unsure of why Xiao Ying looks so nervous.

“The partition is stuck!”

“Wh—?”

“It’s not possible to pull it out!”

Hua Cheng’s body processes the information faster than his mind. A wave of tension clenches every single one of his muscles, the hand he’d been using to rest his head on closes into a fist. The men at the other table murmur something. They probably saw the other passenger in passing, and are now putting two and two together. Soon enough, they’ll be laughing at him.

He shuts them up with a vicious glare, punctuated by a crack of his jaw, and then looks back at Xiao Ying, making her cower in fear.

Honestly, this is what he gets for being a fucking idiot. If he’d used his brain, he’d be checking in the imperial suite of some fancy hotel in Manhattan, instead of being involved in this shit show. He could’ve spent the night star-fishing in an Alaskan king bed, make the airline pay for a weekend of decadence, and then fly in actual, real first class to London on Monday, commitments be damned. Why was he on a rush to go back to his shithole of a flat? Who told him to accept sharing his pod with someone he knows nothing about? They could be a bigoted granny who stinks of mould and dust, or an annoying tech bro in dire need of a shower, or a fashion influencer coated in eye-watering cheap perfume. 

He didn’t even know he could be this preoccupied with how other people smell!

Looking down at his roasted duck starter, Hua Cheng reasons that he must be thinking about that because the aroma of the dish is nothing short of heavenly. Perhaps he should eat it to clear his mind, and then breach the cockpit to make this poor excuse of a plane dive and join the wreck of the Titanic. That’s a solid plan. Taking the fork with one hand and the phone he’d left lying on the table with the other, he stabs a piece of duck with a bit too much force. Xiao Ying, who’s still standing next to him, lets out a little yelp.

“Scram,” he tells her with no ceremony, and she’s gone so fast that it feels like she blinked out of existence.

Unmuting his earbuds, Hua Cheng scrolls past dozens of videos without paying attention to any of them, chewing the tender duck pieces harder than necessary until he finishes his food. Where is that dreamy guy? If before Hua Cheng was just craving a distraction, now he’s fixated, obsessed like a hound after a wild hare. Why was he talking about gay marriage in Taiwan? Perhaps he wants to marry there someday. Hua Cheng saw him for a whole twelve seconds, enough to know that the guy is some flavour of LGBTQ. He’d bet his entire fortune and a hand that such is the case. He’d also bet that he’s a massive nerd (endearingly), and that he smells divine, not like whatever excuse of a person is encroaching Hua Cheng’s pod.

At some point, the bartender quietly takes his plate away and brings him a complimentary glass of red wine without asking. It’s not a bad gesture, but she should’ve brought something different, preferably stronger. Although Hua Cheng is the kind of drunk that breaks windows and starts fights against the police at train stations, it takes a lot of alcohol to get him drunk at all. Despite the risks, giving him interesting liquors is usually a good way to appease him.

To that effect, he pauses his crusade for the lost video to eye the bottles behind the bar. This allows him to notice when a man and a woman glance at the free seats at his table as soon as they come in. Great. Before he’s presented with an opportunity for second-degree murder too hard to resist, he downs the wine in a single go, grabs the amenity kit and locks himself in the nearest lavatory, which belongs to business class, planning to spend as much time as humanly possible on his night skincare routine. Unfortunately, he barely manages to wash his face and half-brush his teeth before one of the old geezers who sat at the other table starts knocking and shouting as if his life depended on it. Hua Cheng seriously considers leaving him out to shit his pants. There are like seven more lavatories in the plane. What’s the need to use this one, specifically? It occurs to him then that the fucker’s seat might be right across his pod. He’s worried enough about the smell of his pod mate (is that even a word? How sinister!) as it is, so he slaps his eyepatch back in place and storms out.

As expected, the newcomers took his table. The bar is now crowded and unpleasant; Hua Cheng can’t spend more time in it. There’s a space between premium and business class where he stops with the intention to loiter for a while, but then the captain announces that the plane is about to enter a zone of turbulence and asks all passengers to return to their seats.

When the seatbelt sign lights up, Hua Cheng accepts his defeat. It’s time to see with whom he’s doomed to spend the next six hours. Best case scenario, they’re still asleep and he’ll have the chance to put on the adhesive eyepatch, which should be in his handbag, right there on the bed. He’ll have to be quiet.

The doors of the pod are open and the screens are off. At first, all he can see of the other passenger is their right foot, clothed in a dark sock, peeking from the bottom edge of their quilt. Grateful for having left his heavy and noisy boots in a drawer before heading to the bar in slippers, Hua Cheng stealthily takes a step and leans to the side to check if this person is really asleep.

His pod mate, a young man by the looks of it, is indeed lost to the world, lying on his back with the quilt covering him from the abdomen down. He’s facing away from Hua Cheng, so all he can see is a cascade of luscious, long and dark hair sprawling like ink across the pillows. The top half is haphazardly tied up in a bun, while the rest of it is loose and left to its own devices. That’s a less than ideal style to wear in bed—Hua Cheng would know, his own hair reaching his middle back. Along with the fact that the stranger isn't wearing the complementary pyjama of the airline, but instead what appears to be a loose red Henley jumper, this suggests he had a long journey and went out like a light as soon as they boarded the plane. It’s unlikely he’s going to wake up soon.

All things considered, it could be worse. There’s no snoring, no tossing and turning, and no bad smells. His neighbour is well contained on his side of the bed, too, leaving plenty of space for Hua Cheng to relax without risking unwanted physical contact. Kind of amused by the fact that they both have long hair and favour the colour red, Hua Cheng turns towards the shelf to search for the adhesive eyepatches in his handbag, and realises that his own jumper, which should be there too, is nowhere to be seen.

That’s weird. He’s sure he left it on top of the handbag before heading to the bar. Where could that girl Xiao Ying put it? He turns around with the vague idea of looking under his pillows, and the realisation dawns on him as soon as his pod mate gets back into his range of vision: the red jumper the man is wearing isn’t loose, it’s just too big on him because it’s actually Hua Cheng’s!

Once again, his body catches up with the situation before his mind does, and he feels himself heat up until he’s boiling. At first, he thinks it’s outrage, the raw, primal fury that carried him through his grim childhood reigniting at the sight of someone taking what is his. No matter if he’s filthy rich now, or if it’s been at least a decade since he had to fight tooth and nail against his two older brothers and their asshole friends, Hua Cheng still feels the urge to bite. However, if what he’s feeling is wrath, then why isn’t he acting upon it? With the day he’s having, and the five or six glasses of wine already in his system, he should be halfway through earning a warm reception by the Scotland Yard upon landing, accompanied by an arrest order for physical assault. And yet, he remains where he is, staring silently, not to disturb the stranger.

There’s something about the image of the man wearing his jumper that’s scratching an itch in his mind. The heat swirling around his body starts to settle, becoming fuzzy, like some sort of alien satisfaction. He feels like he knows this person, but he doesn’t know anyone who makes him feel like this. The vague memory of luscious dark hair framing an angelic face with bright, kind eyes and a soft smile starts to form in his head.

Then, the stranger in his pod sighs and turns his face in his sleep, and Hua Cheng thinks he hears his sanity crack. This person is beautiful to the point that he doesn’t seem real. Under the neutral, soft light of the corridor, he looks like he could be anywhere from seventeen to thirty-seven, or maybe he’s a seven hundred years old immortal who enjoys to mess around with humans by, for example, sneaking his way into their beds on international flights after teasing them through nerdy videos about gay marriage in Taiwan.

He’s the dreamy guy from the video Hua Cheng has been looking for. He’s sure of it, just as sure as he is of having lost his goddamn mind!

Chapter Text

@handsomejades:
[Hua Cheng’s pod mate records his reflection in the mirror of what looks like a cheap hotel in a hot place. His long dark hair is tied in a low braid decorated with pearly flowers. He’s wearing a white dress shirt with matching slacks, a pale gold vest and fine linen moccasins.]
«Generic pop music»
Caption: A cutie on his wedding day~ Won’t you marry me instead, gege? 

Bingo.

Or not.

Hua Cheng squints hatefully at the username and the caption. ‘@handsomejades’ his ass! Reposters are a plague, miserable parasites who should die, which they probably would rather do than give credit, anyway. Pieces of trash. He scrolls down the comments, opening every thread of replies in search of a name, a hint, anything, but to no avail. There isn’t even a watermark. He’s back to square one, and the bland music loop in his earbuds is becoming annoying.

Next to him, the presumed newly-wed rests peacefully. At a glance, it looks to Hua Cheng like the wedding took place not long ago. His pod mate’s eyes are puffy, his lips are dry and he’s a tad too pale, but that’s easily attributable to whatever airport insanity he had to face before being shoved into Hua Cheng’s flight and bed at the last minute. Beyond those signs of exhaustion, his appearance hasn’t changed. 

Of course, there’s a glaring issue if that’s indeed the case, which is that this gege—Hua Cheng is tired of not having a name for him, so the monicker used by the stupid reposter will have to do—is sleeping next to him instead of cuddling with whoever he married. Where’s his husband? It’s got to be a husband, with whom he presumably travelled to Taiwan in order to get married. Hua Cheng is sure gege isn’t from there, because he started the video next to the Love River saying that he felt blessed to be in the country, as he feared that his Exit and Entry Permit wouldn’t be issued on time. Going by that information, and the fact that gege recorded the video in English and directly in the app Hua Cheng is using (which is only available in the West), it’s safe to assume that he was born in Mainland China and has been living somewhere on the other side of the globe for a while. In the USA, from where they departed? In the UK, where they’re going? Gay marriage is legal in both places, so why would he choose to fight bureaucracy and travel all that far? Unless the husband is Taiwanese, or his family…

Something doesn’t add up. Hua Cheng scrutinises the video, unsure of what he’s even looking for. If he’s being honest, he couldn’t possibly guess that gege was in Taiwan if he didn’t have the context of the other video. The hopelessly nondescript room in the background could be located in Kaohsiung as much as it could be in Miami. It’s a shitty place, either way. The bed is barely wider than a single, and the only other piece of furniture is a plastic chair that hosts a camping backpack. The windows aren’t big enough to allow air in, nor small enough to prevent the scorching sunlight from invading the room. The curtains are flimsy, obviously lacking heat-reflective properties, and there’s no AC. Instead, a fan that threatens to ruin gege’s hairstyle can be seen above the mirror whenever he angles the camera upwards enough. Even if his outfit looks light and fresh, how he managed to stay in that man-sized oven for more than ten seconds without collapsing is a mystery to Hua Cheng.

It’s a shame; gege sounded really hopeful in the video he took next to the Love River. He probably dreamed of a fairytale wedding and had to settle for less. He looks like the optimistic type, and his smile beams in both videos despite the circumstances, but that only makes them sadder, in a way. Now, he’s inexplicably alone, with no wedding ring in sight, wearing a stranger’s jumper and sleeping as if it was the first time he could rest his head in a month. Hua Cheng doesn’t understand, and it really rubs him the wrong way.

He’s baffled by the bizarre protective urge growing in his heart. He doesn’t know gege. Technically, they haven’t even seen each other yet, because his beautiful pod mate has been asleep the entire time. Hua Cheng has spent the last ten minutes sat in bed next to him, with the screen of his phone set on the second-lowest brightness to make it unobtrusive, and that’s it. 

He should stop calling him gege and go to sleep. But what else could he call him, if not gege?

Closing the app to get rid of the annoying song, Hua Cheng removes his earbuds and puts them and his phone aside. There are around five hours and a half of flight left, and he hasn’t changed his eyepatch. Both his real eye and the prosthetic one, which is only there to prevent his stupidly long surviving eyelashes to curl inwards and poke his brain, are itching for eye drops. Now that he knows who he’s sharing the bed with, he wouldn’t mind changing into pyjamas, but he closed the doors at either side of the pod and set them to “do not disturb” before getting under the quilt, and now he feels too lazy to get up and go to the lavatory. His street clothes will have to do. As for his eyes, he decides to risk it and take care of them there. It’s not as if gege will wake up, although Hua Cheng turns his back on him, just in case.

Once he’s done, he switches the reading light off and lies on his back. As the hum of the plane’s engine fails to lull him to sleep, he stares at the ceiling while idly contracting and relaxing the muscles around his right eye socket, making the adhesive eyepatch pull weakly at his skin. Gege sighs quietly, attracting his attention against his best efforts, and when he looks to the side, he finds him sort of clinging to his jumper ( Hua Cheng’s jumper) by gripping the hem of the sleeves. It’s adorable. Gege is probably very sweet and affectionate, the type who’s always holding hands, cuddling and snuggling, asking to be warmed up and laughing when his cold feet make his partner shiver. Or maybe he's none of that. Hua Cheng wouldn’t mind, either way; the bitter resentment he feels against gege’s trash of an absent husband would remain unchanged.

It’s weird, for him to be thinking like this. Kind of terrifying. Hua Cheng has known since forever that he’s gay, but before gege, there hasn't been any man who could actually make him give a shit, never mind genuinely care. What an unfortunate way to become enlightened, with a newly-wed who seems to have fallen down the cracks of international air traffic and right into a coma.

After two or three minutes of silent torment, he sighs deeply and sits up. Fluffing the pillows to make a better backrest, he reaches for his phone and earbuds, and braces himself for an eternity of searching.

Changing strategies, he forgoes scrolling further up his feed in favour of browsing the most recent posts under the Kaohsiung and Love River tags. There are amateurs rating restaurants, obnoxious tourists who are way too excited about standing at the top of a skyscraper, about six hundred too many videos showing the Pop Music Centre from the same three angles, boat tours, more boat tours, and an unjustifiable amount of videos of Taipei. There’s even one video that opens with the welcome sign of Bangkok’s airport, probably taken by some imbecile who thinks that Taiwan and Thailand are the same country, and also dreams to go on a kangaroo safari in Austria.

Would gege find that funny or mean? Maybe both. Hua Cheng looks at him, trying to imagine his reaction, and gets lost in the gentle curves of his cheekbones and nose. The white and gold outfit that gege was wearing in the reposted video was really the perfect choice for his wedding. It complimented his sun-kissed skin wonderfully, while the pearls in his hair looked like stars in the warm summer night sky. He must’ve looked radiant at the ceremony itself. Hopefully, the cheap hotel was just the product of his and his husband’s decision to save on accommodation in favour of getting a venue worthy of such beauty. Did he marry somewhere with views to the Love River? Aboard a yacht, perhaps? On a beach directly at the riverside sounds more plausible, but Hua Cheng hasn’t been to Kaohsiung personally, and he doesn’t know if there are portions of the river’s shore where something like a wedding could be organised. Perhaps it’d be easier by the nearby sea. Having nothing to lose, he types “Kaohsiung beach wedding” in the search bar.

A bunch of panoramic views of the sunset and some restaurant recommendations come up. For some reason, they all use the exact same type of song, blending together in a mirage of utter boredom. After a while, Hua Cheng opts to trust his luck and closes his eye without stopping scrolling. He only opens it again when he reaches a video with a different audio.

@taihua-king2b:

[An athletic-looking young man with strong eyebrows and the smile of a tiger records himself while walking out of a plane, through the immigration line, and past the baggage claim area. Two people are waiting for him at arrivals: a tall man whose face looks permanently fixed into a scowl, and a younger one with a curly mane of black hair like a lion, who brightens up and waves enthusiastically upon seeing his friend]

“Hello, Taiwan! It’s October 12th, 11:27am local time, and your boy has made it to Kaohsiung City. The wedding is in two days, and I scheduled all the good rock climbing stuff for after the ceremony, so we’re gonna spend this time getting used to the climate and sightseeing a little. I made a list with y’all’s recommendations, thank you so much for sending them to me!”

[The young man records the passing view of the city through the window of a taxi he takes with his companions. This cuts to them arriving at the front of a building, where another tall man rolls his eyes upon seeing them messily getting off the car. Next to him, gege laughs well-naturedly]

Pause.

Hua Cheng saves the video in a new private collection. He learned his lesson, so he only allows himself a moment to celebrate when the clip is secure in his hold.

Jackpot. Fucking finally!

[A woman with the same hair and face as the eye-rolling man welcomes the group into her home, and everybody sits around a table filled with food. The next cut shows the woman saying something to gege while he gets progressively red in the face and everybody laughs]

“We’re all staying at the family home of one of the grooms, who I’ll call Xuan Zhen to make it easier for everybody, so of course we started our adventure by meeting his legendary mother. Now I know where he got his sharp tongue from, hahaha, we’re lucky she likes to bully jiaolian more!”

Pause.

Alright, then this Xuan Zhen guy is gege’s shit husband. The man is handsome enough, although he’d look better if his face wasn’t perpetually stuck in a sneer. He’s Taiwanese, as Hua Cheng deduced, but having confirmation of that fact only makes him think of more questions.

On the other hand, sports coach was definitely not at the top of his guesses for gege’s line of work. Hua Cheng rarely remembers the profession exists, as the lack of depth perception caused by his missing eye is a disadvantage that deters him from practising basically anything besides swimming. He also dislikes jock types like the tiger boy who made the video, which constitute the majority of sportspeople, so he tends to steer clear of gyms and the like in favour of private pools. However, he thinks that he could be persuaded to pick up anything, even rock climbing, by someone like gege. Tiger Boy and his friend, Lion Boy, are probably his best climbers, hence why they were invited to his wedding. Lucky bastards.

Anyway. 

[Tiger Boy and Lion Boy flex their arms and make handstands in front of a big lake. Temples and pagodas sprout from different points of the shore, and there are many people walking around. The next clip shows the group approaching an impressive temple, and then Tiger Boy and Lion Boy race each other down a long set of stairs towards the scowling man, who seems to be judging their competition. Behind him, Xuan Zhen drags gege by the sleeve while nagging him]

“Lotus Pond is so cool! The hot weather is really challenging, but I could beat Qi Ying in three races out of eight anyway, which is a good mark because he’s a beast, as y'all know. I wanted jiaolian to race us too, but he’d rather explore the shore instead and kept wandering away until Xuan Zhen had to go look for him to herd him back, hahaha.”

[The video transitions to a series of stills showing different snacks, cups of bubble tea, a selfie of Tiger Boy grimacing comically while Xuan Zhen and the scowling man bicker in the background, a photo of the same two men yelling at gege, some more nonsense with Lion Boy (who's apparently called Qi Ying but Hua Cheng doesn't care) and then a photo taken much later, at night, where Tiger Boy grins with an arm thrown over gege’s shoulders. Gege looks tired and his smile is brittle. There’s a bit of text in a corner that says «jiaolian is too sentimental lol»]

“The snacks in this city are top tier, and of course we ordered the craziest bubble tea we could think of. It was really good! Taiwan is already winning and I haven’t even climbed anything, hahaha!”

Caption: Wedding in Taiwan part 1! Everybody arrives in Kaohsiung City and we visit the Lotus Pond. I love it here!

Hua Cheng navigates through the video and stares at every frame featuring gege, the glee of finding something valuable souring and souring until he thinks he's tasting bile. Gege doesn’t look happy. There’s no trace of the shine in his eyes that was so evident in the videos where he was alone. Instead, he looks burdened, putting on a front that weakened and weakened until it crumbled at the end of the day, when that last photo was taken. Tiger Boy is such a brute. Hua Cheng can see that they have a close and amicable relationship, and he understands that sports coaches aren’t usually treated with the ceremony of a university professor, but still, he can’t comprehend the kid’s audacity. Above all, what the fuck was that “jiaolian is too sentimental lol” he wrote at the end? They were there because of his wedding! He could get as sentimental as he fucking wanted, and Xuan Zhen should’ve been there for him instead of leaving him at the mercy of a wild child with muscles for brains.

The whole thing looks abysmal. According to what Tiger Boy said, the ceremony took place on October 14th, barely five days ago. There aren’t many reasons why a newly-wed would fly to London by himself, just a couple of days after returning to the USA from Taiwan (assuming that gege lives somewhere in the USA). It must have been something bad. Maybe his American visa was compromised? Perhaps it was a familial crisis, like one of his parents having a nearly fatal accident or falling dangerously ill. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they attend their son’s wedding? Unless they oppose his marriage because he's gay.

Did he elope? Is he running away? The words of Xiao Ying come back to haunt Hua Cheng’s thoughts. She said gege’s case was unprecedented, and it really had to be for the airline to force their hand on a first class paying customer like Hua Cheng. What the hell happened?!

He opens the comment section, praying for answers, and immediately understands the dumb influencer tone of Tiger Boy. It's like every gym rat on the planet follows this guy and will die if they don't leave him a barely intelligible comment peppered with emojis of flexed arms and legs, fire and explosions. Also, only Lion Boy is tagged. Hua Cheng’s jaw cracks.

Tiger Boy's profile includes his name (Lang Qianqiu), age (19), pronouns (he/him), orientation (if "ally" counts as orientation), relationship status (although "focused on success" definitely doesn't count as relationship status) and proclaims his intention to break a rock climbing record at Mount Hua. The videoblog entry he made of the next day starts saying that the “grown-ups” told him and Lion Boy to sightsee on their own, because there were last minute arrangements they had to take care of. The next has a before and after the bachelor parties that mostly features the two boys being ridiculous, but that includes a clip of gege carrying Xuan Zhen like a bride, or at least trying to, as the man behaves every bit like an outraged cat fighting tooth and nail to avoid the bathtub.

Inconsiderate. Xuan Zhen is taller than gege by around ten centimetres. No matter how strong gege evidently is, he could’ve hurt him. He had to hurt him, somehow, or gege wouldn’t be in Hua Cheng’s flight.

The comments are once again a cesspool of illiteracy and emojis. Some people praise gege for his strength, many others laugh at Xuan Zhen for flailing so much. Most are interested in knowing what mountains Tiger Boy will visit after the wedding. Just before Hua Cheng clicks out to continue his search, one thread catches his attention.

“lmfao I got the vid of the coach rating airport chairs right b4 this”

“Whut?”

“what vid?”

“A coach rating chairs, call it the furnichelor :V”

“Not Onlyfans but Onlyseats”

“Sjhfdsjd FURNICHELOR”

"ONLYSEATS"

“Context?!?!”

“does this mean u have the @ of Qianqiu’s coach?  bc SHARING IS CARING”

“OP Y U LET US HANGIN”

“srry I dont have the @ u kno how the app eats everythin but its a vid of Qianqius coach rating benches of lk 5 airports he had 2 sleep on”

Hua Cheng stops breathing. Five airports?! He risks a glance towards gege, finding that he turned in his sleep, giving his back to him, and curled on himself in a way that makes him look particularly vulnerable. That number better be an exaggeration. It has to be. While a direct connection between Kaohsiung and New York is unlikely, at most the trip must require a stop in Taipei, Hong Kong or somewhere in Japan. The layovers shouldn't be long enough for having to sleep at any airport on the way.

At least gege has a decent bed now, although Hua Cheng feels horribly guilty, knowing now that he did everything in his power to deprive him of some desperately needed rest. What would’ve happened if the airline had given up, and decided to make gege wait for the next flight? Could he have forced them to pay for his hotel, or would he have added JFK’s smelly benches to his ranking? And once again, what happened for him to be trapped in this hell, to begin with?

Torn between looking for that video and keeping up with his stalking of Tiger Boy’s account, Hua Cheng reasons that he should at least finish reading the thread and see if there are any more clues in it.

“me, who has never had a passport: if I don’t learn what is the best airport to sleep at, I might die” 

“is2g if this app doesnt fix the fyp soon so i can stop losin cute guys 2 the void”

“OP what airports were in the video? It’s for a friend (it’s me, I’m the friend)”

“uuuuh i rembr lax ohare and lk taiwan and also other asian countrys??? Idk which has bangkok but that was @ the statr” 

Bangkok. Hua Cheng’s body, always so helpful, twists his nerves until his teeth chatter and he feels like his blood is flowing in reverse, pushing him to go back to that video of Bangkok’s airport he saw while browsing the Kaohsiung tag. The one that he dismissed as bullshit made by some clueless Western tourist, and then wondered if gege would laugh at said imbecile along with him.

Shit, shit, shit!

Quickly saving the current video in his private collection, he goes to his history and scrolls up, praying to the gods he doesn’t believe in for the damn algorithm not to betray him again. He zooms past the sunsets and the boat trips, the views of the Pop Music Centre, the restaurants and the skyscrapers, until he finally, blessedly, finds it.

@immortalscraps 

[The welcome sign of Bangkok’s airport is followed by a panoramic view of the departures' concourse, an area with restaurants, and the seats of a gate’s waiting lounge. Gege’s reflection appears on the massive windows a couple of times]

“The name of Suvarnabhumi airport means ‘land of gold.’ I found it quite fitting, as walking past the gates feels like stepping in a crystal world bathed in the golden light of the Thai sun. The chairs are overall clean, cushioned and very comfortable. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to sleep on them, so I’ll have to put this beautiful airport at the bottom of the ranking.”

[A take of the giant LAX sign is followed by a panoramic view of the Theme Building and some shots inside the airport, mostly showing restaurants and luxury brand shops]

“As expected, arriving in LAX feels like landing inside a movie, especially because of the otherworldly Theme Building, which has a restaurant at the top. Following up with the fun name facts, the X in LAX doesn’t mean anything in particular, it was only added to comply with airport identifier standards. This airport is low on the list because most chairs are reserved for restaurant customers, and despite my best efforts, I’m unable to eat and sleep at the same time.”

[As usual, Chicago’s airport is packed. People are crammed together in every nook and cranny, shouting and getting in the way, making it difficult to walk and impossible to stop anywhere. The camera shakes constantly, as if gege didn’t have the strength to hold it steady any longer]

“Chicago’s airport gets its name from Lieutenant Commander Edward Henry O’Hare, who got awarded a Medal of Honour for his service during the Second World War. Nowadays, the airport is considered the most connected in the world, and seeing how busy it is, I can believe that. Finding an available seat is quite difficult, and even a space in the floor is a bit of a rarity, but I got to snatch a chair for some time before my flight to London was cancelled, and it was quite nice!”

[Different from Tiger Boy, gege isn’t obsessed with his own face (which is a shame, really), so his video provides a better and more detailed view of Kaohsiung’s airport. There’s a big sculpture somewhere outside the building, curling like a snake, and nothing outstanding about the interior] 

“Kaohsiung’s airport is located in Siaogang district, the name of which roughly means ‘little harbour.’ I learned that the origin of the word Kaohsiung itself isn’t too clear, but it seems to come from the language of the indigenous Siraya people of Taiwan. This is the only airport I decided to spend the night on, instead of having to, and while I had to relocate once or twice, and struggled a little to find chairs without armrests, I got some decent sleep.”

[A panoramic view of the arrivals area of Taipei’s airport is followed by a series of waiting lounges themed after different brands. Many have colourful ambient lights, custom columns, decorated corners for people to take selfies, and seats with funky designs]

“For a change, I didn’t have to research the meaning of this airport’s name. Taoyuan means ‘peach garden’! I had enough time to explore all the lounges in both terminals. They are creative and fun, and some of them have quite luxurious reclinable chairs. This airport also counts with a number of quiet corners, where I could get almost four hours of uninterrupted sleep.”

[A giant cylindrical waterfall falls from a glass dome into a jungle of tropical plants that conceal the fronts of dozens of shops. The video proceeds to show close-ups of various flowers and colourful leaves, and a number of attractions, including a glass bridge and a jumping net. Then, a red butterfly lands on gege’s hand, happily exploring his fingers, which seem to be sticky with nectar from some pineapples in the background]

“There’s some debate over the exact etymology of Changi, which is both the name of the airport and the district where it’s located, but most point at diverse native plants as its possible origin. The airport’s design seems to pay tribute to this and to Singapore's tropic rainforest climate. Isn’t it wonderful? All the plants I checked were real. There’s a free entry butterfly garden too, where I stayed for so long that some kids thought I was an employee, hahaha. I didn’t spend the night there, but I took the best nap of all my layovers on a long, cushioned bench near the waterfall.”

[Gege sits in the floor, knees to his chest to occupy the least space possible, looking one second away from passing out. He holds the mic of a wired set of earphones close to his mouth while talking.]

“So there you have it, that’s my ranking of the airports I’ve slept on during this trip, made with love while waiting in O’Hare for some news. I was hoping to take the final flight and get to London from here, but it seems that it won’t be possible, so there’s a chance this video will get a follow up in order to rank one additional airport: New York’s John F. Kennedy or Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, we'll see. All I hope is that it doesn't end up being both!”

Caption: Returning home from Kaohsiung City after attending the #FXMQWedding is proving more challenging than expected. As I had to sleep on seats at KHH, BKK, SIN, TPE, LAX and ORD, I thought it’d be fun to rank them. Which one do you think is at the top? 

The video starts again and Hua Cheng pauses it, unable to stand it. The overload of information is going to fry his brain, if the vortex of outrage, relief, surprise, horror and many other emotions he doesn’t have a name for doesn’t make his heart explode first. 

First of all, gege didn’t travel to Taiwan to marry Xuan Zhen, but to attend the wedding of Xuan Zhen with someone else, most likely the scowling man. FX and MQ must be the initials of the grooms’ real names.

Secondly, gege’s home is in the UK, and he had no business in the USA. He ended up there for what has to be the biggest fumble in the history of international travel. How and why the fuck would anyone send someone from Taiwan to the UK via America? All the good connections, all the obvious connections worth of consideration, fly over Eurasia!  Assuming that gege listed the airports on his caption in order of visit, he flew from Taiwan to Thailand, from there to Singapore and back to Taiwan, to then be sent to America. It makes zero sense. Not in a million years will anyone be able to convince Hua Cheng that this shameful excuse of a trip was the only option. For fuck’s sake, there are daily direct flights to London Heathrow from Taipei, Bangkok and Singapore!

There’s more to it, there has to. Saving that video as well, Hua Cheng clicks on gege's username, vaguely wondering what it means, and finds an account with the following and follower counts in zero, no buttons for following or messaging on sight, and a wall of grey thumbnails with a system message that says ‘this content is age restricted.’

This is getting beyond ridiculous.

By some stroke of luck, the bio is still visible, even if “the blue sea turns into mulberry fields, yet the verses of immortality are written with ink made from the red dust of the mortal world” isn’t terribly informative. Along with the explanation of the airports’ names, it supports Hua Cheng’s idea of gege being a nerd, though, which is very endearing. Knowing what he knows now, he'd first jump off the plane than waking gege up, but oh, how he wishes they could talk. He's a bookworm himself, and that makes most people annoying and boring. Gege is everything except annoying or boring. And he’s not married, either…

Hua Cheng scrunches his eye shut. Idiot. He's plenty aware of how self-centred he is, but even for him, this level of delusion is too much. Besides, there’s no solid evidence of gege being queer now. He could’ve been happy about gay rights in Taiwan because of his friends’ relationship, or just because he's a good person who cares for humanity and has a kind heart. Even if Hua Cheng’s gay radar isn’t wrong, gege has enough on his plate for some disfigured creep—who’s been stalking him on social media while he sleeps, no less!—to randomly hit on him right before finally making it home.

He regrets everything, and knows he should leave it at that and stop invading gege’s privacy, but he can’t possibly stop until he understands exactly what happened.

For some reason, there’s no way to remove the age restriction block. It must be some sort of censorship in disguise. Thanking his lucky star because at least the whole account wasn’t nuked, he scrolls down and notices visible videos down the line. Some of the thumbnails show gege’s face, but most are of his hand holding random objects, with a rocky shore as the background. Hua Cheng arches a brow, sorts the videos by posting date, oldest first, and clicks on the first one.

@immortalscraps 

[Gege records his hand holding a licence with logos of different English organisations and the words ‘THAMES FORESHORE PERMIT’ written in bold letters. He covers the bottom of the card with his thumb, probably to hide his name and other identifying information, and what’s most likely a photo of himself with the rest of the hand. After a while, he takes the licence out of the frame, showing the rocky shore of the River Thames where he’s walking]

“At last, I’m officially a mudlark! Which is something none of the original mudlarks would’ve declared with such enthusiasm at the time this occupation got its name, I suppose. As you can imagine, scavenging along the shores of the Thames wasn’t a leisure activity, but rather a strenuous search for valuables to sell in order to secure a meal. Nowadays, the treasures found by mudlarkers are taken to museums and other institutions involved with historical preservation, like the faculty where I’m doing my PhD. That’s how I learned about all this! I’m excited to join this collective effort to unearth stories from the river bank, so I made this account to sort of document my findings. If you are still watching, thank you for your interest, and I hope I can show you something beautiful soon.”

Caption: Welcome to my mudlarking account! I picked the name “immortal scraps” because the treasures hidden along the river shore are just that, pieces of history that have been discarded yet refuse to die out. My idea is to post weekly, but it depends on whether I get enough free time. Wish me luck~

With a chuckle, Hua Cheng thinks that all gege had to do to show his audience something beautiful was switching to the front camera. As if reacting to his shameless thoughts, gege grunts softly and curls even more on himself, like a cat. He's so cute, and the situation is so absurd. They’re sharing the bed only because gege has been forced to travel for four or five days across seven different airports in the most illogical direction, and Hua Cheng decided to buy two first class seats on a whim. What are the odds? Gege should’ve arrived in London on Monday. Hua Cheng could have got off the plane. They live in the same city, but if even one thing about this whole ordeal had happened differently, Hua Cheng would’ve never known that this extraordinary man was hiding among the millions of people who walk down London’s streets.

“If you are still watching, thank you for your interest, and I hope I can show you something beautiful soon.”

Hua Cheng smiles in a gooey way that feels strange on his face, and swipes to check the next video.

Chapter Text

During the next hour or two, Hua Cheng learns a few things about gege, and many, many things about London: from the basics of the Thames’ hydrology and its substrate composition, to the history of the local trade unions, the unique characteristics of the city’s urban development, the conservation efforts to preserve the scarce native fauna, and the rubbish management policies put in place after the Chinese ban on recyclables imports. Even the process to report the finding of human remains to the police gets described in detail, motivated by half a human hipbone protruding from the mud that gege noticed somehow. He has a very sharp eye. 

Some explanations are given on the spot, while others are recorded as voiceovers, probably because gege felt like corroborating or expanding on the information that he had. It’s fascinating to learn about what sort of topics he’s confident in. His PhD seems to have something to do with cultural studies or history, but there’s a video where he finds a broken shard of painted porcelain and describes the mineral composition of antique ceramics with the property of a chemist. Upon noticing a plastic ring in the mud, he explains how to tell genuine gemstones apart from fake ones without stuttering, too. Hua Cheng is helplessly engrossed. He devours batch after batch of fascinating information, however irrelevant it might be to his profession and circumstances, and commits it to memory just because it’s being presented to him by that sweet, enthusiastic voice that feels like a warm blanket wrapped around his heart.

Sadly, when put together, the little things that gege reveals about his life form a rather bleak picture. His family history is shrouded in gloom. Any mention of his parents or his only aunt is tinted with melancholy and longing, making it difficult to tell whether they disowned him or are straight up dead. There’s no indication of him having any siblings, and he mentions a cousin only once, with a surprisingly strong animosity. Hua Cheng has to wonder how much of an asshole that guy must be to make gege, who only talks about the good he sees in others and takes all offences in stride, hate him. 

Speaking of assholes, gege’s colleagues at the university sound like scum, and if he has friends, they’re fakes who are nowhere to be seen and never lend him a helping hand. To think that he crossed half the planet to attend the wedding of those two dickheads after they shone for their absence during literal years of trouble. Utter pieces of trash. Gege wouldn’t have gone to such lengths if they hadn’t been friends for ages, most likely since childhood, and yet they are only vaguely alluded to whenever gege laughs at how nobody he knows cares about mudlarking.

If only they had pulled their heads out of their asses and troubled themselves with watching one fucking video, they would’ve realised that gege needed them. For what Hua Cheng has been able to thread together, he moved to England after being awarded some sort of scholarship, perhaps a grant, that was supposed to cover his life expenses and the costs associated to his PhD. However, something happened during the first year of his studies and he lost it, which in turn put into question whether he could afford living in the city and compromised his visa. There’s a three months long gap with no videos in his account around that time, probably because he had his hands full, trying to continue his research work at the university while struggling to get out of bureaucratic hell. A little after resuming his posting, he casually mentions having discovered an interesting dry chamber inside the old sewage system while looking for a safe enough place to spend the night. Shouldn’t that have raised an alarm? Even if his so-called friends lived far away, couldn’t they at least send some money, do something?

It sucks. That gege is so candid about admitting to things like homelessness, not to mention his attitude in regard to the awful mistreatment he’s suffered during his airport odyssey, is a good indicator of the fact that he doesn’t actually expect anyone to listen to what he has to say. And the worst part is that he’s not wrong. As terribly interesting and beautifully produced as it is, his work receives close to no attention. Most videos have zero comments and rarely surpass ten likes. Even the views remain in the realm of two digits. 

The account is a treasure trove filled to the brim with the results of truly thankless effort, and it pains Hua Cheng that he can’t remedy it immediately. Due to the strange soft ban put in place over the account, at the moment it’s not possible to follow it nor to like or comment any video. Even if it were, it wouldn’t be too clever to love-bomb it and clue gege into the stalking he’s been subjected to while he sleeps. It’ll have to wait a little longer, at least until the restriction is lifted and gege introduces his work to Hua Cheng by himself, during a lovely conversation that they most definitely will have in the near future.

He’s determined. It’s late, his eye burns and the quiet peace of the plane beckons him to sleep, but he’s a greedy man, and the happy coincidences have piled up too high now: he can’t let his miraculous pod mate just go away and disappear once they land in London. The more he watches, the more he learns, and the more he knows about gege by the time he wakes up, the better his chances become. As the circumstances are less than ideal, he needs to have everything else in his favour.

A strategic skip of breakfast, justified by the wish of giving his pretty neighbour a few more minutes of sleep, will give him the perfect excuse to treat him to a good meal at the airport. However, there's a critical moment before that, when the flight attendants come to undo their beds in preparation for the plane's descent. That tiny timeframe, in which gege won't have a choice but to be awake and next to Hua Cheng, is all he has for the most challenging sales pitch of his life, and he won’t fuck it up.

It’s a tricky thing. Gege looks very approachable and easygoing on camera, but that doesn’t mean that he’s the same face to face. People who have gone through shit learn to be mistrustful, Hua Cheng should know. On the other hand, due to the convoluted way they ended up sharing the couple’s pod, and depending on what the airline told him about it, gege might perceive Hua Cheng as someone dangerous, and try to be pleasant and accommodating to avoid being tormented by an irate rich asshole. To his credit, that’s the smart thing to do; Hua Cheng is indeed an irate rich asshole, and any other person should be ready to at minimum lick his boots clean if they wanted him to let go of this mess with no consequence. However, finding in gege’s eyes the same apprehension he finds on everybody else’s would probably kill him.

He has high hopes on his jumper as an ice-breaker. If gege understands that Hua Cheng doesn’t mind that he took it, which arguably is the only thing gege himself “did wrong,” then he won’t have much trouble accepting that the big thing outside his control—sleeping in Hua Cheng’s pod—isn’t an issue either. From that point onwards, it’s a matter of showing interest, of which Hua Cheng has plenty, and being helpful.

Yeah, that should cut it. And he’d better stop scheming about how to win gege over before he starts feeling like a predator who's trying to ensnare him instead. 

After a throughout introduction to numismatics, prompted by the finding of a halfpenny coin from 1858, comes a hilarious one-sided discussion with a very loud swan about why chocolate biscuits aren’t good for birds. Then, there’s a quiet video of the city lights reflecting on the river, captioned with an invitation to take a break and rest from the rush of life. Hua Cheng uses the moment to look at gege. He’s lying on his back again, looking content and even drooling a little. It’s funny in an endearing way.

Blinking hard a couple of times to soothe the sensation of dryness in his eye, Hua Cheng rolls his shoulders and neck to loosen them up, swipes up and silently punches the air in a gesture of victory when he realises that the next video is a life update.

@immortalscraps:

[Gege sits on the floor at a slope near the riverbank. The camera shows his extended legs from the knees onwards, his feet swaying inwards and outwards in a rather cute way, sometimes colliding at the top with a quiet thud of his white sneakers. Dark clouds make the Thames look almost black, and it’s a windy day]

“Time for some news! I got a job under a three years fixed term contract, which is the time I need to finish my PhD now that I switched from full-time to part-time. Even if I’m about to become very busy, this turn of events is quite a relief! I try not to speak much about such things, but to be honest, the last year hasn’t been easy. In a way, this is a real stroke of serendipity. I never thought that London and gymnastics would come together to give me another chance after what happened ten years ago, but fate does have a sense of humour.”

Pause. 

Pause, pause. Stop right there and wait a motherfucking second. Gymnastics and London, ten years before the publication date of the video. What year was that? 2012. What gymnastics competition took place in London during 2012? Hua Cheng doesn’t know anything about gymnastics, but the answer is easy enough: that was the year of the London Summer Olympics. 

Was gege an Olympic level gymnast?!

The meagre relaxation Hua Cheng had achieved with his mediocre stretching a minute before leaves him in an instant. Just how many surprises are waiting inside this man’s life for the opportunity to sucker-punch him in the face? On one hand, it kind of makes sense now that gege coaches the likes of Tiger Boy, who’s evidently a high-performing athlete despite the fact that the performance of his brain is rather lacking. On the other hand, how did an Olympic gymnast end up struggling through a PhD in human sciences and spending his free time collecting scraps by the foreshore? What the hell happened?!

Hua Cheng presses the heel of his palm against the space between his brows. A part of his brain begs him to quit and go the fuck to sleep before he learns another world-shattering piece of information. At this rate, he’ll be completely unable of interacting with gege like a normal human being when the time comes. For fuck’s sake, he’s running wild with assumptions without even corroborating if gege participated in the London Summer Olympics, which he can do with just a few clicks!

If it’s true, he’ll learn his name, which feels illicit, for some reason. But they’re sharing beds and gege is wearing his jumper, so what line is left to cross? To be frank, at this point, Hua Cheng is pretty sure he could get away with something as outrageous as cuddling gege in his sleep and justify it by saying that he did it out of habit because he hugs a pillow to sleep at home—which, of course, he doesn’t do.

Baffled at his own deranged train of thought, Hua Cheng drags his hand down his face, hard enough that it hurts a little. He’s really lost it now, hasn’t he? Fuck, he should be locked up! Somehow, he manages to press play instead of pressing his face against the pillow in an attempt to smother himself.

“Although, well, I’m not really coming back to competitive gymnastics, I just performed some old tricks on the trampoline while accompanying a friend who wanted to check out a multipurpose training facility, and I happened to catch the owners’ eyes. I’m nervous because I don’t have experience coaching, but I’ll receive instruction, and I’ll also start as an assistant, you know, guiding people through warm-ups and stretching, checking on their form, but not taking charge of anyone’s whole process. That’s for the future! Anyway, I wanted to tell you guys about it, and also say that I’m going to post less frequently in this account as a result. I don’t want to abandon it completely—I really enjoy making videos!—but beyond the time I need to mudlark, there’s also the research for the voiceovers and other things that take time I won’t have starting next week. Many apologies if this is disappointing to hear. I hope to update at least once a month! Thank you for watching.”

Caption: Life update~

Hua Cheng inhales as much air as he can and takes a long, long time exhaling, feeling his former confidence in befriending gege deflate along with his lungs. The man has it all: a brilliant mind with an eloquent mouth, sharp eyes filled with kindness, the strongest heart in the face of adversity, and infinitely generous hands. He’s gorgeous and clever and apparently a former Olympian too. By contrast, all Hua Cheng has going for him is money. How boring. Inadequate. He should’ve given gege the entire bed and slept on the floor, or even better, he should’ve stayed at the bar with the other boring, rich assholes, where he belongs.

He tries to focus on the videos again, but his mind is buzzing. Giving up, he opens his browser and gets bulldozed by the amount of disciplines included in Olympic artistic gymnastics. Vault, rings, bars in every direction, something about a horse? Trampoline gymnastics is listed separately, for some reason, but as gege mentioned doing tricks in one, Hua Cheng surmises it’s the best place to start. There’s a handy search engine for athletes who participated in the most recent games, but nothing of the sort for London 2012. However, he doesn’t need to dig up any old database or do much effort. A quick search of the keywords gives him answers right away.

Athlete no-show sets the PRC back at the Olympics: the USA stays at the lead after the Chinese promise of men’s individual trampoline gymnastics doesn’t arrive to the finals.

Three years worth of gold medals earned at international competitions since his debut at 17 guaranteed that Chinese trampoline gymnast Xie Lian would reach the top of the podium in London, adding to the gold count of the PRC to finally catch up with the USA. However, the athlete left the Olympic Villa at some point during the night before the finals and didn’t make it to the competition for reasons still unknown. Without his main rival participating, the already twice Olympic medallist Noah Kislykh took the gold for Russia. The silver went to the USA in the hands of Lang Ying, whose Chinese origin makes the situation even more awkward for the PRC team. As for the bronze medal, the newcomer Mu Qing, who allegedly trained in the same team as Xie Lian for some time, went beyond expectations and seized it for TPE. 

At the moment, the USA is at the top of the ranking with 89 medals, with PRC falling behind in second place at 85, and the UK following with 63. As the majority of upcoming finals belong to the track and field category, in which the USA has historically dominated, the men’s trampoline gymnastics competition was one of the last chances that the PRC had to secure medals and close the gap. 

The country’s delegation released a short statement to report that Xie Lian was found in good health and is back at the Olympic Villa. It is unclear whether he’ll be sanctioned, and if he’ll be allowed to stay in London until the closing ceremony. His coach, the three times Olympic medallist in all-around gymnastics Jun Wu, declined to comment on the situation.

Xie Lian. The situation sounds horrible, and there’s something very fishy about it, but Hua Cheng can only focus on that name. It’s beautiful, it suits gege very well. The photo they added to the article is mesmerising, too. It captures him mid-air, his body describing a gentle curve of harmonious muscles in a gesture that looks completely effortless. He had short hair at the time, which looks good on him, but not as much as the long tresses he sports now (although Hua Cheng can admit he’s biased). His face is flushed by the effort of the jump and he smiles with his mouth open, making him look a little like an overtly exited toddler. It’s excruciatingly adorable. Hua Cheng fears that this man will be the death of him.

After an undetermined amount of time staring at the ceiling, half in shock and half in contemplation, he decides that trying to find out more about the incident at the Olympics would be pointless and counterproductive. The past is in the past, and even if he’d been aware of Xie Lian’s existence at the time, he was just a 14 years old brat that year, so there was nothing he could’ve done. Besides, Hua Cheng despises both those who idolise him because he’s rich and successful and those who look down on him because of his humble origins. If he were Xie Lian, he’d prefer others to approach him without bringing such stuff up, either. Best case scenario, his lovely pod mate is now about to finish his PhD while working at a place where he could reconnect with his sport and move on from whatever bad blood remained, and he should be treated as such: not like a former star of gymnastics nor like someone struggling with poverty and hardship, but just a normal person who’s living his life the best way he can. 

With that settled, Hua Cheng feels a bit reassured, enough to open the video app again. True to his word, Xie Lian posted quite less frequently from that point onwards, so there are just a handful of clips left before the censorship starts. The last of them is the first video Hua Cheng found, back at the airport’s VIP lounge. 

@immortalscraps:

[Xie Lian walks along the waterfront of the Love River, smiling widely while holding the mic of his wired earphones close to his mouth. The weather is nice and clear, and the breeze keeps toying with his hair]

“The river you can see next to me is the famous Love River of Kaohsiung’s City in Taiwan. I can barely believe I made it here! It was looking like my Exit and Entry Permit wouldn’t be issued in time, but fortune smiled upon me at the last minute. I’ve always wanted to visit Taiwan, so I’m ecstatic!”

“Legend has it that a typhoon broke the sign of a boat rental shop in 1948, leaving only the words ‘Love River’ still standing, and that’s how the river got its current name. At the time, sodomy had just been decriminalised, but the LGBT community had to wait at least forty more years for their rights to start being recognised. The fight, the endurance and the sacrifices were worth it, though: in 2019, Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage. Same-sex unions, or ‘partnerships,’ could be registered regionally since a few years prior, and court rulings afterwards…” 

This is roughly where Hua Cheng got distracted by Xiao Ying and lost the video. With a shiver, he saves the post in his private collection, just to feel safe. 

“...opened the door to international same-sex marriages and the adoption of unrelated children by same-sex couples. The former is what brings me here today, in fact: after a long legal process, my two best friends from childhood, one of whom is from Taiwan while the other is from the mainland, are getting married this weekend on a beautiful beach near Kaohsiung Port, where the Love River meets the ocean, vast because it embraces all the waters that come to it. I like the symbolism of openness and love, and I’m so happy for my friends!”

“Anyway, I should stop rambling. If you’re still watching, I thank you for your tolerance. After all, this account is dedicated to mudlarking, which as you may understand, I’m not allowed to do in the Love River’s foreshore. If it serves as any consolation, there’s nothing stopping me from helping clean the beaches, and if I find something interesting while I’m at it, I’ll definitely show you!”

Caption: I’m in Taiwan! #LGBT #LGBTrights #loveislove #loveriver #FXMQwedding

If only Xiao Ying had arrived one minute later, Hua Cheng could’ve saved himself literal hours of stupid speculation. He had almost forgiven her, but his annoyance is back in full force. As if agreeing with him, Xie Lian grunts in his sleep and shuffles a little, arranging himself somehow diagonally, which makes his legs inch closer to Hua Cheng’s. He’s tempted to touch feet, but that could wake him out and make things awkward, so he stretches instead, sliding a little down his pillows.

Now that there aren’t more videos to watch on Xie Lian’s account, there’s not a lot of preparation left for Hua Cheng to do. He could go back to Tiger Boy’s account and watch more clips of the wedding, but he finds the mere idea of learning more about the dickhead newly-weds annoying, and the temptation to sleep instead has become almost irresistible. With a big yawn, he checks the interactions of the video out of habit, and is surprised to see a high comment count. Intrigued, he clicks on the speech bubble and finds a wall of “comment deleted by account owner” signs. 

That’s even weirder. Scrolling down, he finds a single surviving comment at the bottom, which consists of the very eloquent question “lmfao dis u?” and a link to a post by someone else. The thumbnail shows an armoured vehicle parked at a beach, partially obscured by bold red letters that say ‘instant karma.’

@The33theLegangster:

[A shaky camera zooms in to the max, trying to peek in between an armoured vehicle and some soldiers positioned around a big rock at the beach]

“Ok, so, we found this spot at the beach on our first day and have come religiously ever since, but today we weren’t allowed in because of a wedding? Who the fuck would want to get married in this shithole? We thought about pranking them in revenge for taking our beach, but something happened first and the Taiwanese army came.”

“Brooo, I didn’t even know Taiwan had an army, hahahaha.

“What the fuck, for real.”

“For real, for real.”

“Locals won’t tell us what’s up, but they look super shocked, so it’s gotta be serious.”

“Heh, what if the family of the groom sent the army to deal with the bridezilla?”

“Hahaha, imagi—

[There’s a small explosion behind the soldiers and the person recording runs away with his friends]

“AAAAH! OH MY GOD! AAAH! OH, DAMN, AAAHAHAHA!!”

Caption: Random wedding gets blasted after taking over our beach IJBOL #welived

Hua Cheng doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The date, the location, there’s no way this isn’t the wedding of Xie Lian’s friends. What the fuck, really? How is this man’s life so damn eventful? He can’t help but facepalm with a groan, and then regret all his life choices when Xie Lian starts to stir up in response to the noise.

Petrified to the point he doesn’t even think of turning his screen off, Hua Cheng holds his breath and prays to all the gods and buddhas he doesn’t believe in so that his pod mate doesn’t wake up. For a few excruciating seconds, it looks like a lost cause. Xie Lian mumbles something unintelligible and waves one hand aimlessly in front of him, then pushes the quilt down, apparently feeling too warm. Not happy with that, he proceeds to kick the bottom end of the quilt with his right leg, and shuffles until his foot bumps against Hua Cheng’s legs. The little grumpy sound of dissatisfaction that follows almost makes him fling himself out of bed, but before he can do anything, Xie Lian shuffles again, lifts his leg and lays it across Hua Cheng’s, trapping him in place.

Then, satisfied and utterly unaware of the crisis he has caused, he sighs and settles back into a deep slumber.

Hua Cheng waits, waits and then waits some more, his eye darting between Xie Lian’s peaceful face, the drop of drool very slowly making its way down his chin, the glimpse he can get of his collarbones and the even more preposterous sliver of midriff that the jumper has left uncovered after the movement. This is it. This is the end and he’s going to die. He’s going to explode like whatever exploded in the fucking beach where Xie Lian’s friends got married.

The explosion! Yes, the explosion, that’s a good thing to focus on. It’s clear that Xie Lian wasn’t wounded, so there’s nothing to worry about, but still, it’d be cool to know what happened, right? Perhaps that incident is behind the strange censorship on his account, with the intervention of the army and all. Better to check it out.

Doing the utmost to ignore the warmth of Xie Lian’s leg on top of his, Hua Cheng opens the comment section and reads through thick layers of bigotry and stupidity, which isn’t surprising considering that both the account that posted the video and the ones that interact the most with it seem to be the alts of a bunch of frat boys. They take good care of not including any identifying information that could clearly link them with their college and get them in trouble. There are no faces visible either. It’s clear that they know how horrible and disgusting they are, but as they’re able to get away with it, they celebrate it rather than repent.

The world is filled with vermin like that. Hua Cheng doesn’t even grant them his disdain. Unfortunately, Xie Lian seems to think it’s possible to reason with such imbeciles. Albeit censored now, there are multiple comments left by him in different videos. It takes some deciphering, but Hua Cheng can deduce his poor gege was trying to dispel rumours and stop people from shitting on Taiwan and gay people alike. It becomes evident that a good number if not all of his restricted videos are about clarifying what happened and trying to educate the mob. The soft ban on his account must have been caused then by mass reporting, or maybe whoever or whatever moderates the platform identified too many trigger words. 

The slurs alone should be enough to ban all the accounts involved. Bitterly, Hua Cheng wonders why Xie Lian is the one being dogpiled when he wasn’t even one of the grooms, but then someone links a video by Lion Boy that makes him go full circle and land right into the answer.

@QiYing:
[Lion Boy stands next to a rack with a bunch of weights of different sizes. The mirror behind him reflects a mostly empty hotel gym and reveals that he’s recording with his phone precariously propped against a bottle of water. He does alternate bicep curls without saying anything. There’s a textbox reading «Stop The Nonsense» at the top of the screen]
«Generic hip-hop»
Caption: everybody told me to stay quiet but im tired of seeing people make false claims and being mean. facts in comments ↓

“(1/9) yes, there was a expl0si0n at the beach in kaohsiung where my friends got married, but it was before the ceremony and it had nothing to do with it. it wasnt an att4ck or h0m0phobia or x3n0phobia or nothing”

“(2/9) ppl in taiwan have been nothing but awesome to us and everybody, they dont deserve any badmouthing or the horrible things some ppl are saying here”

“(3/9) some of us came early to clean the beach bc we noticed ppl kept littering it with c1garettes and bottles at night, and one of us noticed a half-buried sus thing that—”

“(4/9) ended up being an old non-det0nated hand gr3nad3. we called the emergency line to report it and the 4rmy came to check it out”

“(5/9) they said it was very old, maybe from some c0nflict that happened in the past, and said it was safer to det0nate it there, which they did”

“(6/9) the gr3nade had been there for decades and it never exploded, if we hadnt noticed it would be still there”

“(7/9) the 4rmy expert said it would only be a risk if someone dug the beach like to build something which isnt allowed in that area anyway”

“(8/9) no one was in serious danger and all that happened was that the ceremony got delayed 2 hours. ppl find old b0mbs in europe all the time and nobody says anything, so—”

“(9/9) why r so many ppl here ready to spew r4c1st and h0m0ph0bic things about taiwan and about my friends? this better be the last time i hear any of these things”

“(10/9) in fact whoever brings it up again or tries to spread rumours here or during a stream will get banned, and anyone who really believes those things can fight me if they dare”

Kudos to Lion Boy for not being a cowardly piece of shit. It’s very possible that Xie Lian was among the ones who advised him not to get involved, but Hua Cheng commends him for deciding to make a post anyway.

Now, it’s just so easy to know who noticed the hand grenade, way easier than figuring out the specific conflict such a thing could come from. While Taiwan’s history isn’t precisely a ballad of peace and love, most of the clashes it has been involved with have occurred in the Taiwan Strait rather than the island. Regardless, it wouldn’t be strange for Xie Lian, who’s obviously too good for his own good, to feel responsible for the chaos, given that he was the one who noticed the grenade in the first place. Throwing himself to the wolves, so his newly-wed friends weren’t harassed or doxxed, sounds like something he’d do. For the looks of it, he succeeded thoroughly in diverting the mob’s attention, because the names and accounts of the grooms, in this platform or another, aren’t cited anywhere, even despite the fact that their faces are visible on Tiger Boy’s account and their initials are in Xie Lian’s hashtags. The other guests of the wedding weren’t found by the rats either.

That’s all fine and dandy, but Hua Cheng hates it, and he’d rather die than let the matter go. With calculating rage, he screenshots everything and digs around until he identifies the college of the motherfuckers from the first video. He then skims through its institutional code of conduct and uses it to write an e-mail from his professional address—in this instance, the weight of his reputation comes in handy, and he’s got nothing to hide—to all the people who hold power over them, going in vicious detail. Once he schedules it to be sent on Friday at 08:00 GMT - 7, he feels a little more at peace.

With another big yawn, he moves his legs minutely to make Xie Lian’s sway a little, just because he can. It’s almost funny how quickly he went from panicking over the contact of that leg to feeling like it has always belonged there. Sadly, the comforting pressure is bound to disappear soon. He can already hear the flight attendants preparing the food carts. His doors are still in “do not disturb” mode, which will give him and Xie Lian around half an hour before someone, most likely Xiao Ying, comes to wake them up. 

The lack of sleep weighs on him from every direction. If he feels like this with just one all-nighter, Xie Lian must really be dead inside after almost a week of switching timezones and catching naps on awkward seats and hard benches. It’s totally understandably that, after going through such an ordeal, he managed to sleep so deeply while sharing the bed with a complete stranger. Even so, Hua Cheng can’t help but consider the sight of his utterly relaxed face some sort of privilege he’s earned. This is a man who has had to sleep on the street, yet doesn’t curl in on himself. Naturally, the pod offers comfort and a sense of safety that are miles away from some dirty alley, but Xie Lian could still be wary, not open and vulnerable like he’s now, with his leg still resting on top of Hua Cheng’s shins.

The least he can do in return is to expose his own soft underbelly. Besides, it’d be awkward for Xie Lian to wake up and find him awake, with an awfully bloodshot eye and the countenance of a week-old corpse. Twenty minutes of sleep won’t help much, but they’re better than nothing. Without realising that he’s smiling, Hua Cheng leaves his earbuds and phone aside, and lays his head on the pillow so he’s facing Xie Lian before closing his eye.

Chapter Text

Mu Qing and Feng Xin look gorgeous in red. Xie Lian follows their movements, up and down, up and down, and estimates that they'll soon reach the minimum height required to start the marriage trampoline routine. Feng Xin is a little off-centre, and Mu Qing is losing some momentum because he's too tense, but it's nothing so bad that it could compromise the wedding.

Lang Qianqiu and Quan Yizhen are about to reach the rafters, too. Xie Lian is very impressed by their ability to climb the sports temple’s tile wall, which is so smooth and polished that it reflects the pristine beach like a mirror. Well, not so pristine; there's something vaguely green peeking from the sand. Xie Lian wants to check it out, but Jun-jiaolian told him not to check on anything or anyone, not even his parents, before the competition.

He frowns. He's at a wedding, not a competition. Although, seeing how furiously Feng Xin and Mu Qing are trying to surpass each other with every jump, it might as well be the world championship. If they aren't careful, they'll hit their heads against the ceiling. 

“Sir, sir!” calls Quan Yizhen, hanging from the rafters. “Sir!”

Xie Lian feels the urge to laugh. When has Quan Yizhen used the word ‘sir’ to refer to anyone? He has his famous shixiong from the mixed martial arts academy, and that's it. Before he can think more about it, Feng Xin and Mu Qing finally start their routine with a beautifully coordinated full-in quadriff that brings a smile to his face. It’s amazing how far Feng Xin has got as a trampolinist. Back in the day, he was happy to work as a spotter for his friends whenever he wasn’t trying tricks on the pommel horse, but he refused to try it himself. 

The things that people do for love.

A warm breeze comes from the ocean and uncovers more of the strange object. Squinting a little, Xie Lian can see that the green hue comes from a swirling pattern with white edges spreading all across its surface. Is that bronze disease? What poor artifact was left to the elements until it got corroded to that extreme? The shape and size of it make him think of a small plate, or perhaps a medal.

Oh no, it's Mu Qing’s Olympic medal!

“Sir, please, sir!” Lang Qianqiu calls desperately, but Xie Lian can't pay him any mind.

Bronze disease is no joke. There's no reliable way to treat it. At most, affected objects can be stored in a desiccating environment to stop the corrosion from spreading, but the object preservation community is still trying to figure out how to revert the corrosion process itself. This is horrible news, Xie Lian has to take the medal to his professor at once. She might have an appropriate safe to isolate it from humidity. He should also enquire with the British Olympic Association for a replacement, just in case, and he’d better hurry, before Mu Qing realises what happened.

“Sir, sir!” the boys call in urgent, high-pitched whispers.

Xie Lian runs towards the medal. The laminate flooring turns into a trampoline that shivers under his weight, the tension moving in the wrong way and propelling him backwards. Undeterred, he focuses on his posture and manages to bounce back, landing in the sand so forcefully that the momentum sends him rolling. 

“Where's the spotter?” Mei Nianqing, the former coordinator of the PRC Olympic male gymnastics delegation, yells. “You can't get married without a spotter, young men!”

“We have a spotter!” Feng Xin roars right as Xie Lian shakes the sand off his clothes and reaches for the medal. 

To his bewilderment, it isn't a medal, but a cannonball, most likely from a Barbary Corsair ship that operated in North Africa at the beginning of the 17th century of the Gregorian calendar. They received a few of those at the faculty last month, it was a very interesting finding! But what is this one doing in Taiwan?

“He promised not to go looking for random shit at the beach!” Feng Xin shouts next, still arguing with Mei Nianqing.

Xie Lian's heart sinks. He promised, didn't he? But he thought it was Mu Qing's medal, and—

“Xianle always knows better,” laments Jun-jiaolian.

“I'm sorry!” He shouts, leaving the cannonball behind. “Don't call off the wedding!”

“Sir, sir!”

“I'm going!”

Xie Lian tries to run back towards the sports temple, but the sand is now wet and sticky like the muddy shores of the Thames at the beginning of low tide, and he can't find his footing. A sinister clicking intensifies behind him, sounding like the neurotic tapping of a pen against a board, or the ticking of a clock. Startled, he turns his head and sees that the cannonball isn't a cannonball, but a bomb.

“Get on the plane!” Xie Lian screams, because he somehow knows there's a plane waiting for them at the other side of the sports temple. “There's a Hello Kitty lounge at Taoyuan airport, we can continue the ceremony there!”

“Where are you going?!” Mu Qing shouts back, while Feng Xin catches him mid-air to take him to the aircraft. “These are the finals, Xie Lian! I don't need you to drop in order to win, don’t you dare look down on me!”

“I never thought that!” Xie Lian despairs, barely able to hear his friend over the clicking and the plane's engine. “That's not why I left!”

“Sir! Sir!” Lang Qianqiu and Quan Yizhen yell at each other, taking advantage of the bouncy terrain inside the sports temple to practically fly past everybody else.

“Settle down, you unruly children!” Mei Nianqing nags, dressed like a flight attendant. “The track and field competitions are in two days!”

“Dear passengers, this is your captain speaking,” says Jun-jiaolian from somewhere near the bomb. “We’ll soon start our descent. Please, return to your seats at your earliest convenience.”

“You’re next, Xie Lian!” Mu Qing insists.

“It’s your turn!” Feng Xin adds, already running up the metallic stairs that the plane’s crew put in place for the passengers. “Don’t miss your chance!”

“I’ll see you at Hello Kitty’s lounge!” Xie Lian promises, and then remembers that the police won’t let him board the plane until the issue with the grenade is cleared up. “It’s two hours by train from here to Taipei, wait for me!”

The plane’s door shuts closed. Xie Lian inhales sharply, bracing himself for the double impact of the deafening explosion and the massive wave that will surely follow. Jun-jiaolian pulls the grenade’s ring and the explosive goes off with the soft, somewhat futuristic ‘ding’ of the seatbelt sign lighting up.

Xie Lian opens his eyes and sees a ceiling made of long, dimly lit grey panels.

“Sir, are you awake?” comes a whisper from his left.

Acutely aware of how thousands of cells in his body are collapsing and crumbling alongside his ridiculous dream right there and then, Xie Lian inhales deeply, blinks hard and exhales slowly. 

This really is how it feels to be dying.

“I’m so sorry, but the beds must be undone before we start our descent,” says the little voice. “It’s for safety reasons.”

A sound of acknowledgement that reverberates like the gurgle of a dying swamp creature manages to make its way up his throat. He should attempt a more decent reply, but it’s like his veins have gone stagnant and all his organs are slowly sinking in jelly. His limbs are numb and sore, his right leg weirdly hot for some reason, and he can’t push himself to structure a coherent sentence. In fact, he’s not even sure of what language the little voice is using to address him.

“Now, if you could please lift your right leg very carefully and roll to this side without making any noise…” said voice continues, and Xie Lian suddenly realises how anxious the person sounds.

The memory of the explosion in his dream makes an alarm go off in his head. Is his right leg on top of something just as dangerous? He’s too weak to run. Never mind that, this is a plane, there’s nowhere to run! Swallowing painfully because his throat is hopelessly dry, he steels himself, looks towards the right, and concludes that he’s still dreaming.

There’s no bomb. Instead, a wildly handsome young man sleeps peacefully. His raven black hair looks like the finest silk, cascading down his face to partially hide an adhesive eyepatch covering his right eye. The lashes of the left are incredibly long and elegant, not unlike butterfly wings. Fluttering his own to see if that clears his vision, Xie Lian takes note of this stranger’s stylish widow’s peak, his sharp brows, high cheekbones, straight and strong nose, thin lips and defined jawline. Then, he notices that the white button-up his unexpected neighbour is wearing partially unfastened during his sleep, leaving the top of his pale, toned chest exposed.

This last detail makes Xie Lian’s face burn. Quickly averting his gaze, he looks down and understands, finally, why the little voice gave him those peculiar instructions, and why his leg feels warm. He put it on top of his neighbour’s legs at some point during the night!

Atrocious. If this beautiful apparition wakes up and realises he’s been trapped under Xie Lian’s dead weight of a leg, he’ll have no option but to die right there and then. He wasn’t so wrong, after all: there was indeed something dangerous to his right, and nowhere to run. With more care than ever before in his life, he lifts his offensive limb and moves it quietly aside.

“I’ll wake him up when you’re out of sight,” says the little voice behind him, sounding pretty much like a terrified shepherd trying to coax a clueless lamb out of a wolf’s den.

To be fair, ‘clueless’ is an apt description of Xie Lian right now. He doesn’t want to be a bother to the person talking to him, most likely a flight attendant, but he can’t move under the weight of his unsurmountable befuddlement. 

Slowly, he tries to make sense of his situation. He remembers that he’s in first class because the (fourth, fifth?) airline he had to deal with said he could either agree to an upgrade—the cost of which is going to be communicated to him at some point in the future that he’s not looking forward to—or go on a journey through Atlanta and Miami, from where he’d finally be able to fly to the UK, but landing in Manchester. As the airline declared that they weren’t responsible for him once he reached British territory, he’d then have to book another flight, a train or a bus ride on his own in order to reach London. 

Xie Lian is a healthy and strong thirty-something former athlete and current sports coach and personal trainer, who’s used to endure hardships and can withstand big physical challenges. Exactly due to all of this, when presented with the two options at a tiny, dark office in the back of Chicago’s airport, he knew for a fact that he’d die if he tried the long route. Maybe the upgrade bill will fulminate him later on, but at least he’ll be near friends who, he hopes, will be willing to take care of his funerary arrangements.

How did that lead to him sharing a bed with this handsome stranger in first class, though, he has no idea. He didn’t even know that there were double beds in first class, he just assumed that the extravagant size of this bed was the standard. Maybe someone told him something about having a neighbour, but people across the corridor are neighbours, aren't they? How was he supposed to understand that they meant someone in the same bed?!

“Sir, please hurry,” says the flight attendant.

“W-Wh…?” he rasps, trying to support himself in his elbows to turn towards her, just to accidentally yank his own hair when he presses on a long lock with his forearm.

Since he decided to let his hair grow, this happens frequently enough that he doesn’t react to it any longer, yet this time a sudden shock of pain, like a lightning breaking through his skull, wrenches a whimper out of him that sounds like if he’d just been shot. To his and the voice’s horror, it’s loud enough to wake his neighbour up.

There’s a reason for red-eye flights to be called that way. The young man’s iris is a pure black mirror that reflects the lights of the plane like shooting stars in the night sky, and framed by the bloodshot sclera and those unbelievable lashes, it makes the eye slowly blinking open look supernatural. He’s more of a dragon than a wolf, Xie Lian thinks stupidly, and then feels his whole body tense up when that otherworldly gaze zeroes on him.

“Hello, neighbour,” the stranger greets with a low, rough voice, his lazy smirk sharpening slowly.

Xie Lian blinks. He understood the words just fine, but as it has happened since he woke up—assuming he did wake up—he can’t quite identify the language being used. If he’s about to land in London, and this is an airline based in the USA, it should be English, but it didn’t sound like it. And he hasn’t even begun to contemplate why this man’s expression is so…

“Sorry to interrupt,” says the flight attendant. The stranger’s eye darts to look at her with startlingly deep annoyance. “It’s just that we’re almost out of time to undo the beds.”

“And whose fault is that?” the young man drawls, rising to a sitting position.

The sight is so that, once again, Xie Lian wonders if he’s still dreaming. The proportions of this person are mythological. How tall can he be? Hidden under the quilt, his legs seem to be endless. His snow-white hands are so harmonious that they look sculpted and painted rather than organic, with a level of detail that would make the best artisans of the world break their tools. The rippling of his silky hair when he shakes his head is improbable under the laws of physics. And that still very much exposed chest!

“I’m very sorry!” she yelps, and Xie Lian finally identifies the language being used.

“Oh, no.”

Was he accidentally put in a flight back to Asia? He must have been. Why else would both the staff and the passengers speak Chinese?!

“Sir?”

He must have picked a cursed object during one of his mudlarking expeditions, or offended someone’s ancestors, or pissed off a river spirit. There’s no other explanation for this level of misfortune. Not only will a 15 hours long flight in first class be way more expensive than a 7 hours long flight, after they land, he won’t be even remotely closer to London than if he’d flown to Atlanta instead!

This is catastrophic, but panicking will only make it worse: he must focus on what he can do. Disturbing Mu Qing and Feng Xin’s honeymoon is out of the question, but if Xie Lian’s plane is going back to Taiwan or landing in Guangzhou, he might be able to crash at the former’s mother’s or the latter’s parents’, respectively. If they’re going to Hong Kong, Quan Yizhen may know someone who can lend a helping hand, but it’ll be hard to reach him, now that he’s in the midst of the climbing circuit with Lang Qianqiu. One thing is for sure, he won’t contact his cousin if they land in Shanghai. He’d rather sleep on the street. Fortunately, Shanghai’s autumn is mild.

Xie Lian lets himself fall back on the bed. He doesn’t want to sleep on the street ever again.

“What’s wrong?” the young man asks when Xie Lian covers his face with both hands. “Are you feeling ill?”

There are no words that can convey what Xie Lian is feeling. 

“I’ll never get home,” he chokes out and curls on his side towards his neighbour. His body is trying to cry, he thinks, but what he struggles to hold down is an explosion of maniacal laughter. As a result, he just shakes awkwardly.

The young man and the flight attendant exchange a few words above him, but he can’t quite focus on what they’re saying. Then, he feels a warm hand on his shoulder that, somehow, helps him settle down a little.

“Hey, it’s alright,” the young man says quietly. “We’ll land soon, you’ll be home in no time.”

“I…” Xie Lian’s throat still feels like made out of sandpaper. “I live in London.”

“Do you mean in the City proper? I live in Soho. If you don’t want to take the tube, my driver can drop you there before taking me home.”

Upon hearing those words, Xie Lian lifts his gaze towards the young man so fast that a burst of colourful lights flood his vision.

“We’re landing in London?!”

“Uhm, yes?”

A wave of relief washes over him, so strong that he sheds an actual tear, feeling it run down his cheek while a stray little laugh bubbles up his chest and escapes his lips. He must look completely insane.

“Did gege think we were going somewhere else?” the young man asks, and Xie Lian is so shaken that he doesn't stop to think about the way he's being addressed.

“I heard everybody talking Chinese and thought I was in the wrong plane!”

He laughs, or rather wheezes humorously, still on the verge of crying. He can feel his neighbour’s eye on him.

“Let’s get off the bed first, or the flight attendants will go crazy,” the young man says after a moment, and changes his grip on Xie Lian’s shoulder to gently guide him towards his side of the pod. “I’m sorry for causing confusion, should we switch to English?”

“No, it’s alright,” Xie Lian assures, secretly thankful for his neighbour’s support. “Chinese is nice.”

Chinese is nice. Incredibly intelligent statement. If Xie Lian drank, he’d need a galloon of beer to get over all of this.

As soon as he’s off the bed, a whirlwind of blankets and pillows raises behind him. Leaning on the young man’s hand, which is still in his shoulder, Xie Lian turns to watch two flight attendants work faster than a Formula 1 pit crew. He guesses the little voice belongs to the shorter of the pair, and thinks of apologising to her. As she’s quite busy at the moment, though, he turns to his friendly neighbour. It’s a bit of a mistake because, as expected, the young man is significantly taller than him. The beautiful divot between his collarbones and the strong column of his neck are at Xie Lian’s eye level. It’s terribly distracting.

“I’m sorry for being out of sorts…” he starts after an awkward amount of time and idle staring. “I haven’t had the chance to sleep much this week.”

“I assumed as much,” he says, and Xie Lian lifts his gaze in an attempt at civilised behaviour, just to realise that this man is so handsome that it’s legitimately hard to look at his face for more than a couple of seconds at a time. “I was at the bar when we took off, but came here pretty much as soon as we reached cruise altitude, and you were already out like a light. One must be dead tired to fall asleep so fast, despite knowing that the bed is going to be shared with a stranger.”

“Oh, I had no idea.”

The change in the young man’s expression is minute, but it explains instantly why the flight attendant sounded so terrified. The annoyance before was one thing, but now there’s a shine of deadly rage, cold but all-consuming, behind that bloodshot eye that Xie Lian would never, ever want to have directed at him. He hopes, selfishly, maybe wistfully, that it appeared on his behalf. 

“Gentlemen, please take a seat,” the tall flight attendant says.

Fleeing the mesmerising sight in front of him, Xie Lian turns abruptly to thank them and sit down, as his stiffened body has been begging him to. A stabbing pain in the back of his skull almost knocks him off his feet, then something behind his eye contracts in a way it shouldn’t. Persevering, he staggers to his seat while pressing a hand to his face, which makes him realise that his cheek is sticky with a combination of his random tear and drool.

“This is embarrassing,” he says out loud, because he has apparently lost the ability to keep his thoughts inside his brain.

“Sir?”

It’s the short flight attendant and yes, she’s definitely the little voice from before. She’s also the reason why Quan Yizhen and Lang Qianqiu kept saying “sir, sir, sir” in his dreams, most likely. The memory makes him laugh, to which she knits her brows, worried. Xie Lian sighs.

“Bring hot towels, will you?” Xie Lian’s neighbour asks the flight attendant, and she’s gone in the blink of an eye. “Do you want to sleep some more, gege?”

“Why do you call me gege?”

“Do you dislike it?” the young man asks, and Xie Lian blinks. He’s not sure, actually. “I just don’t know your name.”

“I don’t dislike my name…” Xie Lian says, then frowns. That’s not what he wanted to say. 

“Well, I happen to dislike mine,” the young man plays along, which, added to his bewitching smile and still exposed chest, does nothing to help Xie Lian’s brain kick into gear. “You can call me San Lang.”

“San Lang,” Xie Lian repeats, the words pleasing in his mouth. “I’m Xie Lian, but I like that you call me gege.”

This time, he says what he wanted to say, but definitely not how he wanted to say it. Why does he have to make everything weird? Feng Xin told him in the dream not to miss his chance, but apparently he can’t help but fumbling every single opportunity he gets. He doesn’t even know what is it that he’s ruining right now, he just knows that he’s messing up.

Good morning, dear passengers. We’re about to start our descent into London Heathrow. Please make sure that your phones are set to flight mode. All other portable electronic devices must be turned off and stowed until we have arrived at the gate. In preparation for landing, be certain your seat back is straight up and your seat belt is fastened. Please secure your carry-on items, ensure that your window’s blind is open, stow your tray table, and pass any remaining service items and unwanted reading materials to the flight attendants. Thank you.

Following the instructions gives Xie Lian a chance to clear his mind a little, and also to take in how big, comfy and luxurious his pod is. He’s almost sad he slept the whole journey, instead of at least enjoying some of the amenities that he’ll surely have to pay for. Not even in his golden years as a gymnast of the national team did he fly first class. How does the bar that San Lang mentioned look like? Are the lavatories different? He’s heard that some planes have showers on board for first class passengers. Ah, a shower sounds like heaven right now.

“Here are your towels,” announces the short flight attendant, as if summoned by his thoughts.

“Many thanks!”

The towel is bliss. The warmth makes the pulling behind his eye subside, and he finally feels like his blood is flowing again. While he scrubs his face way more than necessary or recommendable, San Lang says something to the flight attendant that seems to startle her. When Xie Lian lifts his gaze to see what happened, she has already disappeared.

“Another towel?” San Lang asks, holding one in each hand.

“Thank you.”

Xie Lian wipes his neck all around, sighing contently at the warmth seeping behind his ears. The plane starts losing altitude, and the uncomfortable pressure in his stomach makes him vaguely dizzy. He’d rather not spend one second more than necessary in Heathrow or any other airport ever again, but he doesn’t think that he can make the long journey home while in this state. At minimum, he’ll have to eat something first. If only he could avoid airport prices… 

“San Lang, I don’t live in the City,” he blurts, suddenly remembering the offer to get a ride with his driver.

“Where do you live, then?”

“Uhm, far,” Xie Lian says, and kind of crumples when San Lang arches a brow. “In Woolwich.”

That’s at the opposite side of the metropolitan area from Heathrow. It’d take almost two hours to go by car all the way there, and it’s at least one hour away from Soho, where San Lang said he lives. Soho is a cool area. Considering the fact that he flies first class and has a private chauffeur, San Lang must have a very nice home there as well.

Once again, Xie Lian laments having slept the whole journey.

“I’ve been out of town for weeks, so I’m sure my driver won’t mind the extra money,” San Lang rebukes easily, taking Xie Lian’s towels and stuffing them with his own in the waste bag that the flight attendant—who just appeared, which seems to Xie Lian like a confirmation of her ability to read minds—offered to him in perfect synchrony. “I’d like to grab breakfast at the lounge first, though. Will gege join me?”

“I don’t think I can pay for it, I’m afraid.”

“No need to worry about that. Food and drinks are complimentary when flying first class.”

“Ah, you see, my case is a little convoluted…”

“But you’re first class, aren’t you?” San Lang has still not buttoned up his shirt, and Xie Lian can’t not focus on that. “If they try to stop you or ask you anything, I’ll deal with them. What do you say?”

San Lang’s eye isn’t as red any longer, and it shines with an amicability that Xie Lian can’t comprehend.

“Can I ask a weird question first?”

“Sure.”

“Do we… know each other?”

San Lang tilts his head slightly, his extraordinary eye shining with a hint of amusement. Xie Lian doesn’t know if the sensation of falling that clenches his stomach is due to the increasingly speedy descent of the plane, or the vortex of incoherent thoughts and unexpected emotions swirling in his chest.

“Why do you ask?” San Lang sends the ball back to Xie Lian’s court.

“Just an impression,” he says, unsure of how to play the game presented to him.

There’s a moment of silence. He can feel San Lang’s gaze on him and feels his cheeks heat. The luxurious couple’s pod is planted in the middle of the plane, with doors to the corridors at both sides, so there’s no window to look out of to pass the awkwardness. Their screens are off, too.

“We haven’t met personally,” San Lang says at last. “But I happen to have watched some of your mudlarking videos.”

Of all things!

“Really?!”

“Yeah. I like them.”

Another of Xie Lian’s awkward giggles, this time of disbelief, escapes him before he can stop it.

“Quite serendipitous, don’t you think?” San Lang continues, supporting one elbow in the armrest to lean his chin on his hand. “There I was, wondering what happened to gege’s account to be mysteriously censored, just to find out that he’d be my neighbour for the flight.”

Right. His account.

“It’s not censored, I don’t think. At least it wasn’t the last time I checked.” Which was in Chicago, when he uploaded the airport benches review after realising he could post again. Did San Lang watch that video? He hopes he didn’t. In retrospective, it’s rather pathetic. “I just got a bunch of videos reported because of an… incident, so my profile is under review and will have some functions limited until the…”

“The…?”

He can’t just say ‘until the police investigation is over’! 

“It’s a long story,” he deflects, fiddling with the end of his seat belt. “Which may get in the way of your generous invitations, now that I think about it.”

“How so?”

“I probably have to clarify some things at immigration, and with the airline, too.”

San Lang snorts. “Let them wait.”

Such arrogance. It should be off-putting, but Xie Lian finds it oddly comforting. When he was young, he was happy to stand his ground in a similar way. He still defends what he thinks is right with conviction, but is way more prone to compromising... which explains rather well how he ended up taking seven flights in six days (technically five, as he flew across the international day limit, but that’s beyond the point).

“I do think I need something to eat, or at least to get hydrated,” he concedes, trying to remember if there are drinking fountains in Heathrow. He’s not above drinking tap water, but most public toilets sinks in the UK have it scalding hot. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

San Lang hums. His expression is neutral, pointedly so. It occurs to Xie Lian that his neighbour must be the kind of man who doesn’t ever get ‘no’ for an answer. That considered, though, there’s something he can’t wrap his mind around.

“San Lang, did you know that I’d be your neighbour for the flight?”

“No,” he replies and squints his eye, shooting a hateful glare towards the front of the plane. “In fact, they refused to tell me anything about you, citing privacy concerns or something like that.”

“And is it always like this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like… Do you book half the couple’s pod and wait to see who’s going to be in the other half, like a surprise?”

San Lang arches his brows, blinks once, twice, then bursts laughing.

“Gege, what sort of kinky game would that be?” he asks, and Xie Lian feels the sudden urge to run towards the emergency exit and eject himself out of the plane. “I booked the whole pod for myself, and then they decided to give half of it to you.”

What’s the deal with this airline?! Xie Lian really doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. His mind, very used to factor financial concerns before anything else, can’t decide which is the worst scenario: that the airline trampled over San Lang’s rights as a paying customer just to sell a first class seat twice, scamming them both, or that there’s a fat chance of whatever compensation San Lang was offered for his troubles coming from Xie Lian’s pockets as the price of his upgrade, which would explain why they didn’t give him a concrete number in Chicago. Going by what he’s seen of San Lang’s temperament so far, if that’s really the case, the sum they’ll ask Xie Lian will definitely make him become destitute. Again.

“Gege, gege, don’t make that face,” San Lang coos. “It’s no problem, really, and if it were, it’d be the airline’s fault, not yours.”

“I’m so sorry,” Xie Lian put his elbows on his thighs and bends so he can hold his head with both hands. “I’m a very unlucky person, and it seems that I brought some of that to you.”

“Nonsense. I think it’s very lucky that we got to meet like this. Considering the odds, it almost feels like destiny.”

Someone gives indications to the crew through the speakers. The plane drops at vertiginous speed, making Xie Lian’s vague nausea collide against the weight of his despair. Defeated, he folds even more, until he can press his face against his knees, and groans. A gentle hand comes to rub his back.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” San Lang says in the most comforting tone of voice that he has ever heard. 

Xie Lian isn’t afraid of anything regarding planes—and if he was, surely the shock therapy that the last week has been would’ve cured him already—so he pretends that San Lang is referring to the bottomless pit of problems in which he’ll stumble as soon as he crosses the airport’s gates. As the plane’s undercarriage unfolds somewhere below him, Xie Lian focuses on the gentle fingers going up and down between his shoulder blades, and finds solace in thinking that, at least, he’s got in San Lang an unexpected new friend who, for some reason, seems happy to help him withstand the fall.

Chapter Text

[…] passengers, welcome to London. The local time is 9:26 a.m., which means that […] from our slight delay […] 

San Lang’s gentle strokes on Xie Lian’s back are so calming that they lull him almost back to sleep mid-landing manoeuvre, to the point that he doesn’t notice the plane’s touchdown. 

[...] 11°C with mostly cloudy skies and […] strong winds starting at 11:00am […] safety of those around you, please remain seated […] fastened […] Please use caution […] overhead compartments and removing items, since articles […] Thank you for flying with us.

There’s beeping of signals being turned off and phones being turned on. A clank announces that someone opened one of the fancy compartments for storing hand luggage. Hushed voices speak in at least five different languages, but the rustling of coats and scarfs is the same for everybody. 

“Gege,” San Lang calls in a whisper.

Xie Lian grumbles. He feels safe and comfortable like an ostrich hiding his head in the sand, even if he’s plenty aware of the fact that actual ostriches don’t do such a thing.

“Do you need assistance?” a flight attendant asks in English, somewhere above him. “Is he unwell?”

“He’s alright,” San Lang replies. “Leave it to me.”

Xie Lian stirs sluggishly when the reassuring weight of his neighbour’s hand leaves him. First class passengers probably have the luxury of disembarking at their own pace, but even so, he shouldn’t linger. He doesn’t want to be kicked out before he can put on his shoes.

“You know? My neighbour on a flight before this one took the plane’s blanket with her,” he says rather out of nowhere, looking at the linens nicely tucked away in an open upper compartment near the front exit. “She suggested I did the same.”

“And did you?” San Lang asks, deftly buckling the many silver chains that decorate a heavy pair of leather boots he changed the airline’s grey slippers for at some point.

“No.”

“Do you wish you had?”

That was the flight between Taipei and Los Angeles. Xie Lian didn’t need any blanket in Los Angeles, although it would’ve come in handy in Chicago. Even so…

“Not really.”

Nowadays, he’s blessed to be in a position where he can buy a blanket if he needs to. Probably not for much longer, but he doesn’t want to think about that right now. With a sigh, he pinches the airline’s pyjama top he’s still wearing, admiring the exquisite softness of the material. The economy class blankets were nothing special, but this top may be worth the misdemeanour. He could think of it as a pre-emptive measure to prepare for an uncertain winter.

With his boots neatly put together, San Lang stands up to fetch his other belongings from the compartments under the screen at his side of the pod. Realising he’s dragging behind, Xie Lian shakes off the temptation (things won’t get that bad this time, he’s just catastrophizing!) and gets on his feet as well.

“Do you know where I should leave this?” he asks San Lang, pulling from the hem of the top’s sleeve. “It was on the seat when I arrived, so I didn’t see where they keep it.”

For some reason, the question pulls at the corners of San Lang’s mouth, forming a playful smile that makes Xie Lian start fidgeting in place.

“You should leave it on.”

Xie Lian knits his brows. Is it a joke? It could be a humorous follow-up to the story about the blanket, but he struggles to find it funny. He has too many things to settle with the airline. Stealing their first class amenities, which are actually high-end and expensive, right in front of their noses would only make things worse. In any case, he forces a chuckle so San Lang doesn’t feel like he did something wrong.

He sets out to do the logical thing, which is to leave the top where he found it. Working customer service isn’t easy, but hopefully the flight attendants won’t mind having to pick one stray, incomplete pyjama up. Now that he thinks about it, though, it’s a little weird that the airline didn’t provide trousers. It could be an honest mistake, or more likely, they only brought one set of pyjamas for this pod because they accounted for just one passenger sleeping in it. But shouldn’t San Lang have the trousers, then?

Xie Lian could ask him. No, it’s a weird question. He should just leave the top on the seat and get ready to disembark. He tries to make himself take the top off to do just that, but an increasing sense of bewilderment nails him in place. Looking for answers, he stares down at his own torso.

“Gege, I meant it,” San Lang says, probably taking his confusion for something else. “The airline isn’t going to miss it.”

“How could they not?” he asks, trying to keep his tone light. The design of the top doesn’t really look like part of a pyjama. It’s a Henley jumper, better suited for street wear. “This looks like some expensive cashmere.”

“It’s angora.”

The random fact is the clue that he needs to understand what’s going on, but it gets lodged in the gears of his brain like a stubborn stick and stumps him completely. When he turns his head towards San Lang, he finds a sort of meaningful look in his face. The last piece of the puzzle is there, clearly, but for the life of him, Xie Lian can’t figure out where it goes. Why doesn’t San Lang just say it? At this point, he should know better than expecting Xie Lian to read between the lines or crack encrypted messages while so abysmally sleep-deprived. The silence gets uncomfortably long, so he flails his hands a little, attempting to convey the depths of his tribulation.

“I’m sorry, gege, I just don’t want you to feel bad.”

“Bad?” He already feels so terrible in almost every sense of the word that the sentiment, as nice as it is, almost makes him laugh. “Whatever for?”

San Lang lets out a short sigh and combs his hair with the fingers of one hand, making it ripple again in that anti-gravitational way that Xie Lian cannot comprehend.

“The airline won’t miss that jumper because it’s not theirs,” he clarifies at last, and offers a slightly coy smile of devastating effect. “It’s mine.”

Oh.

OH, FUCK.

If, upon waking up, Xie Lian thought that he understood how it felt to be dying, that doesn’t hold a candle to the ponderous dread that falls on his shoulders at the revelation. He crumples until he’s crouching in the tight space between his luxurious seat and the screen panel, head in hands. It makes perfect sense, how did it take him so long to realise?! Absurdly, he wishes he was back at the beach in Kaohsiung, where he could hide in the sand, not like the proverbial ostrich, but rather like the hand grenade: forgotten in a peaceful dream with his nefarious nature tucked away.

“Ah, gege,” San Lang says somewhere above him.

Do they have to do this? Must a nosy mudlark notice the abandoned artifact of death against all odds, taking it out of its slumber to unleash the calamity it was built for? Is the explosion inevitable?

San Lang isn’t only taller than Xie Lian; he also has a larger build, his back wide and strong like that of a swimmer. He definitely shouldn’t fit in the narrow space where Xie Lian is hiding for dear life, but somehow, he manages to kneel.

“It’s really alright,” he says, and the earnestness in his voice compels Xie Lian to steal a glance of his equally earnest face. “It’s a rather funny occurrence, and having a laugh never hurt anybody. Don’t you agree?”

“The corporate colours of this airline are blue and grey.”

“You didn’t know you’d share the bed, and if I understood correctly, you hadn’t flown first class with these people before, either. How could you possibly know the jumper wasn’t part of the amenities?”

In hindsight, Xie Lian can think of many hints that could’ve clued him up, but what’s done is done. With a heavy sigh, he moves from crouching to kneeling in order to give himself some room, and takes the jumper off without looking at San Lang, who, this time, makes no attempt to stop him.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“No need to apologise,” San Lang says at the same volume. “It’s only a jumper, and you didn’t do anything to it.”

Xie Lian turns the jumper in his hands. It looks alright, but he knows that he drools in his sleep. Ah, this is so incredibly embarrassing. What if he sweated too much during the night? The quilt was very thick, he remembers he felt warm.

“Is it alright if I wash it first?” he asks, following an impulse, and rises his gaze towards San Lang, finding his handsome face coloured in delighted surprise, his blush even creeping down towards that toned and still very exposed chest. “Oh, nevermind, the captain said it’s cold outside today, you’ll need it on your way home.”

“No, no, I won’t get cold,” San Lang assures with a toothy smile. “If it’ll make you feel better, then it’s alright with me.”

Yet another embarrassed little laugh escapes Xie Lian. He did this to himself, didn’t he? What’s most scandalous is that, behind the mortification, a part of him is genuinely happy and relieved to have an excuse to speak with San Lang after they part ways. Was that his subconscious’ intention when he offered to wash the jumper? If so, he didn’t know he could be this shameless. He’s supposed to be contrite, but instead, here’s he making wild offers without even knowing how to properly wash garments made of angora wool. 

“G-Good,” he says and pats the jumper, if only to occupy his hands. 

San Lang squints a little, as if pondering something. Xie Lian braces himself, inadvertently hugging the fateful piece of clothing tightly to his chest in the process. 

“Why don’t you bring it to my place when it’s done?” San Lang suggests and then tilts his head a little with a darling smile, which reads as his version of a wink. “You can stay for dinner.”

At this point, no amount of sleep deprivation nor lack of experience would be enough for Xie Lian not to understand what is going on. What he’s not even close to figure out, though, is how he isn’t bolting away like a startled hare, as he has always done whenever he catches the faintest scent of flirting.

“S-sounds good to me,” he stammers in agreement, unsure of where these words are even coming from. “I’ll cook something to bring along, if that’s fine?”

What is he saying? Everybody hates his cooking!

“Of course! I’ll look forward to it.” San Lang stands up, looking every inch like the cat who got the canary. “Are you going to be cold once we get off the plane? You can put the jumper back on, if you want to.”

Even if they weren’t doing… whatever they’re doing, Xie Lian’s flimsy jacket has little to offer against the low temperature and strong winds awaiting them. Already quite familiar with the unpredictability of London’s weather, he packed a winter coat in his checked bag, but said checked bag got stuck or misplaced between Los Angeles and Chicago, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see it again (he doesn’t have high hopes).

“Yes, it’s a good idea, yes,” he mumbles, rushing to stand up and giving his back to San Lang, so he doesn’t see how red he’s got in the face while he puts the jumper on. “Thank you.”

Hastened by the need to breathe fresh air, Xie Lian almost strangles himself with his plush scarf and grabs his meagre things at record speed. Hurriedly thanking the flight attendants for their infinite patience, he leaves the plane at a brisk pace that somehow San Lang has no trouble keeping up with, his movements so relaxed that they look languid. The perks of being fabulously tall.

Xie Lian feared that someone from the airline would be waiting for him on land, but no one stops them while disembarking. The officer in charge of express passport control for first class passengers doesn’t tell him anything either. When they arrive at the baggage claim area undisturbed, he dares to hope he won’t have to deal with anything before going home. 

“Priority baggage is a scam,” San Lang complains after a quick glance at the still empty carousel. “Did you check a bag too, gege?”

“I…” he starts, then realises his stupidity and sighs so deeply that it feels like he’s physically deflating. They’re not looking for him because they know he’ll have to go to them in order to determine the possible whereabouts of his checked bag. “I lost it.”

“Lost it?”

“It’s a long story.”

“These people are so inefficient that I’m sure we have enough time.”

“Well…” Xie Lian rubs his forehead. 

Truth be told, he doesn’t have to tell him the whole story. Just saying that he had multiple connections and the bag disappeared during one of them would be enough. However, now that they’re getting involved—no, that’s too much! Now that they’re getting to know each other, and Xie Lian will see him again to give him back the jumper that he took without permission (like a dumbass), he’d rather know sooner than latter whether they’re meant to be. Not meant to be, compatible. No, that’s also not it. 

The thing is that every single person who has heard about what happened has scolded him for it, accusing him of being either a reckless busybody, or a paranoic party-pooper who almost ruined his best friends’ wedding over an ancient grenade that would in no way explode if left alone. When the story disseminated on social media, some people went as far as claiming that he’d planted the explosive on purpose to sabotage the wedding, speculating that he was secretly a homophobe, a mainland extremist, or an incel corroded by resentment. A few more suggested he wanted to use the chaos to snatch one of the grooms for himself, which Xie Lian is sure wouldn’t work anywhere outside a TV drama.

After the Olympics fiasco and everything that came afterwards, there’s practically nothing that can get under his skin, yet he fears that, if he tells San Lang what happened and he rakes him over the coals too, it’ll be particularly sad. It’s the first time that he experiences this sort of… chemistry, and he doesn’t want their little bubble to burst. 

“Hey, why that face?” San Lang asks while gently pulling Xie Lian’s hand away from his forehead by the wrist. He’s been rubbing for so long that his skin must be about to catch fire. “There’s no need to worry. You can tell me anything, or nothing, as you prefer.” 

Xie Lian breathes deeply. Who would’ve known that lack of sleep and a little bit of chat up could make someone become this dramatic? He’s being absurd. San Lang lets go of his wrist to hold him by the opposite shoulder instead, like a half embrace. It’s overly familiar, the kind of gesture that would have Feng Xin throwing punches, but it seems to be the level of proximity that San Lang likes, and Xie Lian doesn’t mind. In fact, he’s not that steady on his feet at the moment, so he allows himself the liberty of leaning on San Lang a little. When a scandalised voice that sounds suspiciously like Mu Qing starts berating him in his head, he shuts it up by mentally appreciating the fact that, at least, San Lang’s collar shirt is finally, blessedly, buttoned-up.

“I don’t know if you watched my videos about it, but I’m coming back from Taiwan after attending the wedding of two dear friends of my youth,” he begins, looking at the curtain of the carousel just to look at something. “The beach where the ceremony would take place was frequented by young tourists at night, and they kept littering, so I went with two other guests to clean it in the morning of the big day, and I ended up finding a decades-old explosive artifact in the sand.”

“An explosive?” San Lang asks with less alarm or surprise in his voice than Xie Lian expected, which makes him feel optimistic.

“A hand grenade, to be precise. I thought it was a steel cup at first.”

“That sounds terribly dangerous.”

His tone is neutral, but Xie Lian tenses anyway.

“It’d been sitting there for a long time,” he explains, trying and failing not to sound defensive. “When the army arrived and decided to detonate it on the spot, they struggled to do it because it was jammed.”

San Lang hums. The carousel whirrs to life, and the first bag that appears through the curtain is a glossy crimson trolley of moderate size. Xie Lian isn’t surprised to feel the body next to him move in order to pick it up, although he feels a little bereft without it.

“All things considered…” San Lang takes the trolley off the carousel, places it on the floor, and brings the handle out with one fluid motion that speaks of the possibly hundreds of times he’s gone through this routine before. “It’s fortunate that you were the one who noticed it.”

Xie Lian looks up at him in disbelief. He thought that, best case scenario, he’d get a neutral reaction, like Quan Yizhen’s, who wasn’t happy about what happened but didn’t hold it against him. The word ‘fortunate’ being used in a sentence that also includes him, though, with no sarcastic tone to be heard? Unbelievable.

“Why do you think so?” he can’t help but ask.

“You said it yourself, it looked like a steel cup or some other rubbish. Someone who’s not used to observe from a distance first, as you are because of mudlarking, could’ve picked it up without paying attention, and while it sounds like the probability of an accidental detonation was very low, it wasn’t zero.”

It’s jarring to hear someone talking with property about what he does in his mudlarking videos. Seeing his views or likes count go up a few digits is one thing; talking with an actual member of his audience, another entirely.

“I guess so…” he concedes. It isn’t a bad argument. If it had occurred to him, he could’ve used it to defend himself these past few days.

“Are you sure your bag wasn’t on the plane?” San Lang asks, nodding towards the carousel and saving him from falling into the abyss of self-deprecation.

“I’m sure,” Xie Lian confirms, stepping aside so a young woman can fish a battered camping backpack that’s reminiscent of his own lost one. “I think the baggage service desk is in the arrivals' hall.”

“We can go after breakfast,” San Lang says, gesturing for Xie Lian to follow him. “Gege must be starving.”

He should, but exhaustion and worry have his guts twisted in a knot. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to stomach anything. San Lang must be hungry, though, and Xie Lian could use a drink.

“Back to the story, I’m guessing you were the one who thought of having the grenade checked by the competent authorities,” San Lang continues once they’re on the move. “You do that whenever you find something that needs special attention here in the Thames.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s also fortunate. You see, I’m sure other people noticed it before you. Perhaps they didn’t realise that it was a grenade, exactly, but they saw it and knew that it was out of the ordinary. Yet, for whatever reason, none of them did anything about it. Isn’t that selfish and dangerous? You were the only one who took care of the problem, and prevented a tragedy waiting to happen.”

Xie Lian’s eyes sting. How he wishes that someone had said that to him when everything went down. 

“Perhaps they wanted to save themselves the trouble,” he reasons, mindlessly following San Lang through endless hallways of pristine glass and shiny steel. “Now that I know exactly what the trouble is, I can’t blame them.”

“What happened?”

“The police opened a routine investigation to try to determine the origin of the grenade, and their initial reports included my name and information because I was the one who found it. They don’t accuse me of anything anywhere in these documents, but I guess the fact that my name appears in a police report set an automatic alarm off. My original flight back only had one connection in Bangkok, but they didn’t allow me to board the second plane because I appeared to have an active criminal record.”

“Talk about incompetence.”

“I think part of it was lost in translation.” A sizeable amount of Thai people speak Chinese, English, or both, but as Xie Lian’s luck would have it, none of the officials in charge of his case were fluent in either. “Do you mind if we stop by these toilets?”

“I’d rather go to the ones at the lounge, if that’s okay,” San Lang replies, suddenly a little bashful. “I want to change my eyepatch.”

“Oh, of course!” Xie Lian rushes to reassure him. “Never mind, it’s not urgent.”

“We’re almost there, anyway.”

“Great!”

“So, what happened after they denied you in Bangkok?”

“It was a lot of back and forth until my original airline admitted that I hadn’t committed any crime, but they declared that their safety policy forbade them from bringing me to the UK anyway. They compensated me with a flight to Singapore to proceed with another airline, but there was some miscommunication and this second airline didn’t receive any payment for my booking, so they refused to let me embark as well.”

“What a bunch of idiots,” San Lang grumbles. “Did they bring the police report up?”

“No, they had the correct information, they were just waiting for the money. After half a day, they decided that it’d be easier and cheaper to send me to Taipei to solve the issue at the first airline’s headquarters than have me spending the night at a hotel in Changi. This happened very shortly before the last flight of the day departed, so I arrived in Taipei when the airline’s office had already closed, and had to spend the night at the airport.”

“They better compensate you to the moon for that.” San Lang’s voice drops low with indignation, and Xie Lian feels a little bad for the person at the entrance of the first class lounge when they get blasted with the same ominous tone. “Let us in.”

“Good morning, gentlemen,” they say with a tight customer service smile. “Can I see your boarding passes?”

“We just landed,” San Lang replies, fishing his wallet out.

“I’m sorry, sir, but use of the lounge is limited to passengers with a valid boarding pass for a scheduled flight.”

San Lang stills for a beat, his mouth becoming a thin line, and then glares at the employee in a way that has Xie Lian thanking the universe for the fact that looks can’t kill.

“The trash company you work for owes me fifteen thousand platinum points and your salary and benefits for the next six months, give or take, just for the shit flight that we had to endure.” San Lang brandishes a silver card. “I already have more of your stupid points that I could cash in during the rest of my lifetime, and you’re telling me that I don’t even get to have a cup of the dirty water you call tea?”

The employee is smart enough to quickly throw the hot potato to their supervisor and remove themselves from the scene. The supervisor tries to enforce the policy and deny them entry, but the moment San Lang hears the man calling him “Mr. Cheng,” he pounces at the chance to shame him within an inch of his life for not knowing the position of Chinese first and last names, and they get in.

“Sorry about that,” he says while storing his trolley on a locker that activates with his silver card. “They don’t normally stop me like this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Xie Lian replies, convinced that he and his awful luck are to blame. “You know? For someone who claims not to like the name ‘Hua Cheng’, you defended it with a lot of conviction.”

Hua Cheng shrugs. “I still prefer it if you call me San Lang.”

“Of course,” Xie Lian smiles easily. “Where are the toilets, again?”

The beautiful light of the lounge’s private vanities, designed to flatter all sorts of facial features in their elegant mirrors, can’t do miracles. Xie Lian cringes at himself. His lips are chipped, his skin is dry, and he fears the dark circles under his eyes are there to stay forever. The only good news is that his hair is mostly alright. He went to great lengths in order to care for it during most of the trip. Truly, he only dropped the ball on the last flight, but the pillowcases were made of a silky material that compensated the neglect. Tying it in a loose high bun to keep it out of the way, and being really careful so no water reaches Hua Cheng’s jumper, he splashes some water in his face.

The sound of the showers to his left is like a siren’s call. His last one was in Taipei. Wet wipes help, and the hot towel of the plane was like a balm sent directly from the heavens, yet he can’t help but feel gross. The doors towards the bathing and spa areas have a card reader to the side, probably for membership cards like the one Hua Cheng holds. If he were shameless enough to ask, Hua Cheng surely would lend him his card, but this whole thing is already his treat, and Xie Lian doesn’t want to abuse his position. 

He looks at his reflection again. What is said position, and how did he get there? Any attention of this… type that he’s got in the past has come from his looks, which he’d describe as conventionally attractive, and it has always gone away shortly after he’s given the chance to start yapping. However, neither his current wretched state nor his disgraceful behaviour have deterred Hua Cheng from taking him under his wing. Could his interest come from watching Xie Lian’s videos? The implications of this possibility unleash butterflies in his belly, but he knows better: no one develops a parasocial crush on some guy who keeps making videos about the hazardous waste that washes ashore, and insists on explaining Weil’s Disease whenever he comes across a rat, which is every single time.

Splashing some more water in his face to snap out of his delusions, Xie Lian reties his hair in a neat half-bun. Turning his back on the spa’s entrance by consoling himself with the thought of spending a decadent amount of time in his tiny bathtub once he arrives home, he goes back to the restaurant.

Hua Cheng arrives shortly after, sporting a black leather eyepatch instead of the adhesive one he wore in the plane. It makes him look like the gallant protagonist of a movie. Perhaps he’s an actor? A model? Only someone like that would know how to style themselves to look this unreal.

Realising that he doesn’t know anything about Hua Cheng’s life yet, because he’s spent the whole time whining about his own bad luck, Xie Lian lets himself slide off his chair until he almost falls under the table.

“Gege!” Hua Cheng calls when he spots him, and the way his previously aloof expression turns into a smile only makes Xie Lian’s befuddlement grow. “Did you have a look at the menu already?”

At Hua Cheng’s insistence that he eats something, Xie Lian orders a bowl of fruit alongside his green tea. After some more gentle nudging, he accepts a hard-boiled egg, which seems to open his appetite. Before he notices it, he’s eating what pretty much constitutes a full English breakfast that Hua Cheng put together for him when he went to the buffet, allegedly to look for more maple syrup for his pancakes. There’s something about such an imposing man having a sweet tooth that Xie Lian finds adorable.

“So, you arrived back in Taiwan and slept at the airport,” Hua Cheng prompts at some point, thwarting Xie Lian’s plans of steering the conversation away from his sob story. “How did you end up in America from there? If you were coming here, that route makes no sense.”

Xie Lian pinches a vegan sausage with his fork. He prefers chopsticks, but neither the menu nor the cutlery of the restaurant are too accommodating in that regard.

“It was a sum of several factors.”

The police catching wind of the dog-piling happening on social media and questioning Xie Lian about it. The airlines with connections in Qatar and Dubai refusing to take the risk of a passenger involved in an open investigation. An officer with little appreciation for mainland Chinese citizens making things hard. The confusion about the failed payment to the airline in Singapore snowballing to the point of threatening someone’s job. The aforementioned someone typing US instead of UK while searching for connections to finally send Xie Lian home.

“You can’t be serious.” Hua Cheng looks like he’s about to suffer an aneurysm.

“She was very stressed,” Xie Lian argues feebly. “And both Los Angeles’ and all London’s airports have a code that starts with an L.”

“Why did you accept?”

“I happen to have a valid American visa, and I just wanted to leave.”

“I don’t believe you.” Hua Cheng pours Xie Lian more coconut lemonade. “You did it to save that donkey’s ass, didn’t you?”

Against his best judgement and famished sense of dignity, Xie Lian pouts.

“There,” Hua Cheng accuses and, leaving the jar aside, grabs his own mug of black coffee. “You took the risk of getting stranded in the US because you didn’t want her superiors to give her more trouble after she got you a ticket to the wrong country.”

“That wasn’t the entire reason.” Xie Lian decides he wants to cut the sausages in little cubes, and gets to work. “I truly was in a hurry to leave.” 

The airline that took over his case in Los Angeles told him that his ticket didn’t include checked baggage. He agreed to pay 70 dollars to solve the hiccup and thought that’d be the end of the matter, but when he arrived in Chicago and the backpack never appeared on the carousel, it became clear that something had gone wrong. 

“Then the airline lost it, not you.”

“I think I paid for it to be delivered to my destination, not for it to be loaded into my plane.”

“The destination being Chicago, London, or…?”

Xie Lian focuses on skewering all the sausages bits he can fit together in his fork. 

“Did they give you a document, or a tracking number?”

“I didn’t think of asking for one.”

Hua Cheng grunts. He must have surmised the depths of Xie Lian’s stupidity by now.

“You shouldn’t have to ask for one,” he says with a frown, toying with some blueberries still in his plate. “It’s their job to give it to you.”

“That’s what the officer at O’Hare said when the flight to London got cancelled and I had to go to his office to look for an alternative,” Xie Lian admits, assessing his obnoxiously stuffed fork. “He said that he couldn’t help me figure out what happened if I didn’t have any receipt.”

“And then he sent you to New York?”

Xie Lian puts the fork in his mouth and nods. He’s acting like an alien with only a vague grasp on how human beings are supposed to eat, but Hua Cheng doesn’t give any indication of finding such behaviour off-putting. He’s a truly undecipherable man.

“I had two options,” he explains once his mouth is free again, and uses his fork to skewer more bits of sausage as a way to punctuate every place he mentions: “O’Hare to Atlanta, to Miami, to Manchester, all in economy and free of charge.”

“Free of—?”

“Or O’Hare to JFK in economy, and JFK to Heathrow in first class, if I paid for the upgrade.”

Hua Cheng stabs a blueberry so forcefully that it’s a miracle he doesn’t break the plate underneath. A couple of guests send them indignant looks, and a waiter does a very poor job at concealing his abrupt change of direction in order to avoid their table.

“Pay for the upgrade,” Hua Cheng drawls, and only the conviction that his rage is directed to someone other than Xie Lian makes him able to stay in his chair instead of running for the hills. “How much?”

“I don’t know yet, they told me they’d notify me.”

“Notify you when? Based on what?”

Xie Lian takes a deep breath. He’s aware of the fact that any normal, functioning adult would’ve made those questions in Chicago, but he didn’t. He was tired and overwhelmed, but those aren’t good excuses.

“This is only speculation,” he prefaces, doing his best not to wither under Hua Cheng’s blazing gaze. “But I think perhaps they wanted to wait until they knew how much it’d be to buy one of your seats back from you.”

“You’re not paying that.”

“San L—”

“It was eight thousand pounds and some other twenty thousand worth of points, gege.” Xie Lian knew the number would be outrageous, but hearing it makes his soul attempt to leave his body. “You’re not paying that, you hear me? You’re not paying a dime for the fuck-ups of literally everybody else involved in this shit show. These pieces of trash are gonna pay you, pay you again, and then find your checked bag, even if it’s lost in the middle of Alaska.”

“That’s very considerate of you, San Lang, but it’s o—”

“Would you like a massage?”

“Huh?”

“A massage in the spa,” Hua Cheng extends his silver card towards him. “You can stay here and relax while I take care of this.”

Instead of taking the card, Xie Lian reaches for the hand holding it with both his own.

“Don’t be angry,” he pleads, anxious because Hua Cheng is positively fuming. “I appreciate that you want to help, but please, don’t let it get on your nerves, it’s not good for you.”

Hua Cheng looks at their hands. Xie Lian prays he didn’t cross a line. Then, he gets bamboozled by the sharpest, most dangerous smile, and long fingers that intertwine with his own.

“Gege, I’m an evil man,” Hua Cheng says, and really, it’s unfair that such a declaration can make Xie Lian feel like jelly. “Dragging assholes into the mud brings me joy. Will you deny me the entertainment?”

“Whoever you find at the baggage service desk or in the airline’s office has nothing to do with what happened,” Xie Lian manages to argue, rubbing soothing circles on the side of Hua Cheng’s hand (soothing for who between them, though, he couldn’t say), and stupidly wishing that the card wasn’t stuck in the middle. “It has been my carelessness which has got so many people involved.”

“Not carelessness; you’re just fixated on paying the consequences of everybody else’s mistakes.” Hua Cheng uses his other hand to finally take the card out of the way, and takes both Xie Lian’s in his, completely enveloping them. “I’m not going to ask you why, but I’m not allowing you to pay me for anything either. I wanted you to stay here so I could go to town with those motherfuckers, but what about going together, so you see that I can behave?”

Xie Lian doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“You can behave however you want, San Lang.”

“I wouldn’t want gege to think less of me.”

“I think highly of you, and seeing you, ehm, ‘go to town’ with those, ah, individuals, wouldn’t change that.”

“Oh?” Hua Cheng sways their hands playfully. “Is permission what I’m hearing?”

“You don’t need my permission to do anything.”

“No, no, gege is enabling me,” Hua Cheng’s brags. His sharp edge is still there, but he looks more like a predator ready to hunt than one rampaging in fury, which is good—perhaps not for the people about to deal with him, but at least it is for Xie Lian. “Shall we go?”

Xie Lian allows Hua Cheng to pull him to his feet and guide him first to the lockers, where they retrieve the crimson trolley bag, then out of the lounge. All the way, he tries to berate himself for not being responsible and stop this madness before it escalates, but the whole journey has been complete insanity, anyway, and the heavy breakfast has increased his drowsiness, rendering him unable to put on a fight. Besides, he’s really quite weak to Hua Cheng’s aggressive confidence.

They start with an enquiry at the baggage service desk. Despite his eagerness to obliterate everyone in their path, Hua Cheng appears perfectly polite and agreeable with the people there. Xie Lian can see the utter insincerity of his smile and hear the sarcasm hidden in his words, but the bewitched employees take him at face value and go above and beyond for him. The lost backpack is located in Chicago in a matter of minutes.

“I unfortunately can’t arrange the delivery to your home right away because there’s a pending payment on the account,” one of them explains, his face a vivid picture of shame and remorse. “Take this to the airline’s desk, so they can sort that out as soon as the fees are cleared.”

Xie Lian stares at his service case number. Now that there’s a chance he’ll see his backpack again, he allows himself to think about the things that he had given up for lost. The outfit he wore for the wedding and other nice clothing he’s thrifted through the years. A couple of interesting books he got at a stall set up by students near the National University of Kaohsiung. The Moghania root balm against DOMS that Mu Qing swears by. The silliest rabbit figurine, with muscular humanoid arms raised in a weightlifting stance to hold pens and other office trinkets, that Lang Qianqiu bought for him in a souvenir shop because “just look at him, jiaolian, it’s literally you!”

He dares to rejoice and his quiet laugh gives way to a silent, jaw-cracking yawn, so massive that his eyes water a little and he has to shake his head to recentre. Next to him, Hua Cheng chuckles.

“Sorry,” Xie Lian says, rubbing the minuscule tears away with a hand that immediately has to go and cover his mouth to contain another yawn. “Sleepiness is catching up to me.”

“Let’s go, then, so gege can have his well deserved rest as soon as possible.” Hua Cheng nods towards their left, indicating the way. “At least, the next part should be fun.”

It’s a massacre. 

It starts civil enough, with fake pleasantries and loaded questions that slowly unravel the mess without crossing any line. However, when they summon the short flight attendant, who Xie Lian learns is called Xiao Ying, and unceremoniously dump the blame on her, Hua Cheng bares his teeth in his most hostile smile yet, and the carnage starts.

Sitting next to a trembling Xiao Ying and an elderly couple looking after a sleeping baby, Xie Lian is frequently so dazzled by Hua Cheng’s viciousness that he can barely keep his jaw from dropping in awe. They occasionally shoot questions his way, and the serene confidence with which he manages to answer is so far removed from his struggle at the other airports that he could weep. The support of a single person really makes a world of a difference.

Hua Cheng wasn’t joking when he said that dragging people into the mud brought him joy. He’s right in his element, burning through every link in the chain of command like a wildfire. He’s quick-witted and sly, sharp and merciless, even facetious at times. He also seems to know the ins and outs of international legislation involving terms of service and consumer rights. Perhaps he’s a lawyer.

Once again, Xie Lian is appalled to realise that he still doesn’t know anything about his new friend and impromptu saviour.

“I didn’t think he’d defend me,” Xiao Ying whispers at some point, speaking in Chinese. “Or you, for that matter. He was very angry in New York.”

“We were all put in very awkward situations, weren’t we?” Xie Lian replies, lighting a candle in his heart for the manager who’s tearing up in frustration at the other end of a video call.

Xiao Ying hums. The baby next to her moves in his sleep, distracting her. Despite Hua Cheng’s impressive display of murderous skill, Xie Lian is starting to doze off. More people have come into the office, and while there are clerks available for them (after Hua Cheng grew tired of toss them around and moved to bigger targets) no one’s business seem to be urgent enough to interrupt the show. A group of students sitting at the other end of the office get so invested that they hiss and whistle at the hardest burns.

“What’s this man to you?” questions the anguished voice of the manager on call.

“Maybe he’s my future husband, maybe I just felt like playing Robin Hood,” Hua Cheng replies scathingly, making Xie Lian’s eyes fly wide open. “Whatever the case, is irrelevant. But you know what is relevant? That my driver will arrive in less than ten minutes and I don’t see any of the documents in my inbox.”

“Wow, he really took a liking to you!” Xiao Ying remarks, unaware of the fact that she’s adding coal to the fire of Xie Lian’s agitation. “How fortunate. I don’t want to imagine how this would’ve gone if he didn’t.”

“I… don’t think it’d make that much of a difference…”

Xiao Ying glances at the state of her fellow airline employees, knits her brows and gives him a look. Xie Lian grimaces. It’s true that Hua Cheng’s affect—no, attract—no! Interest! His interest has benefited their case, but Xie Lian believes that he would’ve prevented the airline from throwing Xiao Ying under the bus even if he didn’t like his pod mate, just like he would’ve rejected any compensation that didn’t come from the airline’s pockets. Possible ulterior motives aside, he seems to be motivated by a strong sense of justice and an even stronger aversion to being taken for a fool. 

In any case, Hua Cheng mentioned that his driver will arrive soon, and Xie Lian is suddenly too restless to continue the slow process of fusing together with his chair.

“Could we exchange contact information?” he asks Xiao Ying, who has stood up after him. “It might come in handy if your bosses try to give you trouble once we’re gone.”

“Good idea, yes. Thank you, sir!”

Hearing her utter the word ‘sir’ makes him think of his dream in the plane again. He has to tell the boys about that, they’ll find it hilarious. They must be in Java already, after finishing the circuit they wanted to do in Taiwan. Mu Qing and Feng Xin are in Indonesia as well. If Xie Lian had known that he’d spend a week trying to get back home, he would’ve heeded his students’ pleas and looked for a way to finance his stay.

If he had done that, though, he wouldn’t have crossed paths with Hua Cheng.

“Saved,” he tells Xiao Ying once he adds her to his contacts. A few notifications from the video app where he posts his mudlarking adventures pop at the top of the screen. He’ll check them later. “Are you flying today again?”

“Yes, to Istanbul.”

“Then you should go get some rest while you still can.” He glances at the defeated staff littered around the office. “I don’t think they’ll need you here any longer.”

“They won’t,” Hua Cheng announces, arriving next to Xie Lian with a look of endless satisfaction, and gives a handful of documents in a plastic cover to Xiao Ying. “These should be loaded to your employee’s profile, but keep them like this, just in case.”

“What is that?” Xie Lian asks while Xiao Ying reads the only visible page.

“Documents issued by management declaring that she had no monkeys in this circus and that she’ll be compensated for the distress caused by it.” Hua Cheng explains and then waves another similar stack, if only a bit thicker. “This is yours, gege.”

Xiao Ying thanks Hua Cheng profusely, bowing deeply to him again and again, despite the fact that he obviously doesn’t like it. Xie Lian skims the top page of his bundle. It’s the delivery information of his backpack, which is already on the way and will be taken to his home tomorrow before midday. This means that he doesn’t have a standing debt with the airline any more.

“Thank you, San Lang!”

“My pleasure,” Hua Cheng says and casually squeezes Xie Lian’s waist, which makes him jump a little, although he’s not exactly opposed to it, but then a male voice says ‘ho, ho’ somewhere behind them and he feels like his ears start blowing steam. Hua Cheng, on the other hand, remains completely unconcerned. “Alright, you can stop that,” he chides Xiao Ying.

The flight attendant straightens like the released arm of a catapult. “Yes, sir! I’m very sorry!”

“If they don’t pay you or try to give you trouble, let me know.” Hua Cheng takes a business card out of his wallet. “Don’t contact me for anything else.”

“Of course!” Xiao Ying receives the card with both hands, and after a couple more high-pitched thank yous and goodbyes, she’s gone… not like Hua Cheng’s arm, which still holds Xie Lian by the waist.

It’s nice. Great, even, but also nerve-wracking. The speed at which things are progressing gives Xie Lian vertigo. He doesn’t have many points of reference, being both dating and hook-up culture completely alien to him, so he doesn’t know what to think. All he knows is that he’s not scared of what’s happening, but rather of the possibility of it ending abruptly and/or for reasons he doesn’t understand. Looking through his lashes at how Hua Cheng types something on his phone, he wonders if he should return the gesture and hold him too.

“My driver is here,” Hua Cheng says, taking him out of his musings, and then he hides a discreet yawn with the back of his hand. The gesture is reminiscent of a tiger licking his lips after a sating meal, which for some reason strikes Xie Lian as adorable. “Shall we go?”

Of course, being yawns contagious, Xie Lian has to do it as well. 

“Yes, let’s go,” he agrees while Hua Cheng chuckles. “I’ll take your trolley.”

The car waiting for them is a sleek, dark crimson Bentley, and the driver is the most nondescript man Xie Lian has ever met. He’s the quiet type, too, only talking to greet him and to confirm his home address.

“Feel free to have a nap, if you want to,” Hua Cheng offers once the car gets in motion.

“Will you sleep too?” Xie Lian asks, praying for a positive answer, because his manners demand that he stays awake if Hua Cheng will, but there’s no way he can win the battle against his impossibly comfy seat. They haven’t even left the car park and he’s already fighting for his life to keep his eyes open.

“I think I’ll use the time to draft the claims to the other airlines, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.”

“But gege, I’m on a roll. I have so many ideas!”

With no energy left to engage in a courtesy battle, Xie Lian gives him carte blanche to write whatever he wants and falls asleep like a log.

To his utter horror and mortification, by the time they arrive to the residential complex where he lives, he has awkwardly contorted himself to fit in the back seat while lying on his back. His legs are folded so his feet press against the car’s door, leaving shameful dirt prints on the luxurious material, and he’s using Hua Cheng’s thigh as a pillow. The man in question looks nothing but pleased by this development, and he has a hearty laugh at how Xie Lian launches himself out of the car in a vain attempt to put an end to his misery.

Xie Lian drools in his sleep! He knows he does!! How will he ever recover from this?! He’ll have to wash Hua Cheng’s trousers along with the j—

NO. He just did not think of asking Hua Cheng to take his trousers off. HE DID NOT.

“I didn’t think gege would still be so shy,” Hua Cheng says smugly, corralling Xie Lian against the wall next to the gate. “To think that he was happy to sleep on top of me just a few hours ago.”

It was just a leg, and Xie Lian didn’t do it on purpose! And—wait, how does Hua Cheng know about the leg? He was asleep when Xie Lian took it off him. Does this mean that…?

Unable to withstand the pressure of reality, Xie Lian’s knees cave in. He tries to crouch and curl into a ball like a pangolin, never to unfold again, but Hua Cheng catches him before he gets too far, and rocks his world with a tight, wonderful hug. Crushed against the chest he hasn’t stopped gawking at since he woke up, with his arms pressed against his body and his hands covering his face, Xie Lian surrenders and joins the laughter that’s shaking them both.

“Forgive me,” Hua Cheng asks quietly once they calm down, prompting Xie Lian to look up in confusion, just to be instantly fulminated by the contained euphoria glinting in that bottomless eye. “This is inconsiderate and selfish for me to say, but whilst I despise every single asshole who had a hand in the hell you had to go through, I’m also thankful because they led you to me.”

Xie Lian is rendered speechless, to the point the silence seemingly starts making Hua Cheng nervous. That cannot be. Moving slowly, so his actions aren’t interpreted as rejection, he presses his hands against Hua Cheng’s chest and slides his arms up until he can wrap them around his neck. He has to get on the tip of his toes to be able to hug him fully, which has no business being as thrilling as it is.

“I’m happy as well,” he confesses next to Hua Cheng’s ear. “Happy and thankful, San Lang.”

Hua Cheng adjusts his hold to support him by the waist and squeezes, setting Xie Lian’s body alight. It feels like a dream, one he never wants to wake from. This whole ordeal has probably made him delusional, and he’s definitely getting way ahead of himself, but the shouts of “you’re next, Xie Lian!” and “it’s your turn!” by the oneiric versions of his newly-wed friends feel now like premonitions.  

“I’ll let you get your rest, but if you’re up to it, can we meet again on Sunday?” Hua Cheng asks when they finally let go.

“I’d love to, although I’ll probably need a little more time to have your jumper ready.”

“Never mind that, gege, you can take all the time in the world.” 

Xie Lian’s smile is so wide that his cheeks are starting to hurt. Before he can doubt himself, he asks a question that would inevitably burst the bubble if directed at anyone else:

“Then, do you want to go mudlarking?”

Hua Cheng lights up in a way that threatens to make Xie Lian’s heart burst. He’s not just anyone, after all.

@immortalscraps:

[Xie Lian sits on a concrete bench next to a small lighthouse, with the expanse of the River Thames behind him. His hair flutters in the relentless breeze, but he seems undisturbed. In fact, he’s beatifically serene, with the soft smile of total contentment that one would expect to find in the face of Buddha.]

“Hello, everybody. As you can see, I’m back in London, safe and sound. The return journey from Taiwan was quite strenuous. Nevertheless, I’m glad I had the opportunity of travelling there and celebrating my friends’ love. I apologise for the sudden restrictions imposed on my account the past few days. Fortunately, the misunderstandings that led to them have been cleared up, and we can resume our regular schedule.”

“Also, for a change, I’ll have company today. This person doesn’t have a foreshore permit, which means that while he can visit the foreshore, he cannot help me search it in any way. The size of the waiting list for regular permits is exorbitant, so I’m afraid this condition won’t disappear any time soon. I hope he won’t get too bored.”

“Of course, I’m taking responsibility for his safety and well-being while he’s with me, but in a way, he’s also safeguarding mine. As you know, I’ve always done this on my own, but actually, the Port of London Authority strongly advices to go mudlarking in groups, because it makes it easier to deal with emergencies and accidents. Talking from experience, I can assure you this recommendation is entirely reasonable and correct. I’m very relieved to finally be able to follow it!”

“I don’t know if my new companion will eventually appear in a video, but I thought it’d be nice to let you know that he’s going to be here. Thank you for following my journey, and I hope I can show you something beautiful soon.” 

Caption: Thousands of times I’ve searched over the crowd, and all of a sudden, when I turned my head around, he was right there, where the lights are few and dim || I’m back in London, and this time, I’m not alone~

Chapter Text

“Feng Xin, we have to talk.”

Mu Qing is curled in the obnoxiously expensive knitted hammock seat that they brought back from their honeymoon. If a year hadn’t passed since their wedding, and their relationship wasn't a decade old by now, his use of the full name, tone, words, and the way he's sneering at his phone would send Feng Xin on a panicked rampage. Well acquainted with his husband’s quirks and mood by now, though, he just imitates one of the man’s trademark eye-rolls.

“Hello, Qing’er,” he says, kicking his shoes off without dropping the grocery bags he's carrying. “I missed you too. How was your day?”

“Leave that, quick.” Mu Qing gestures at the grocery bags. “And you better sit down.”

“Alright, alright.”

Feng Xin intends to empty the bags to put everything orderly away, but Mu Qing is burning holes in his back with a glare of legends. He can't begin to imagine what got him in this state. Deciding that only taking care of the stuff that goes into the freezer is a good compromise, he does so, grabs a beer on the way and goes to sit in front of his bristled husband.

“Okay,” he says and opens the beer can. “I'm listening.”

Mu Qing looks down at the can, then at him. “Cheers,” he says, in a tone that means ‘you should've brought me one’, with a side of ‘hope you choke and die’ that he doesn't really mean.

Feng Xin can't help a smirk. Holding his husband's gaze, he takes a long sip. Mu Qing waits patiently, and as soon as he notices his Adam's apple moving to swallow, he drops the bomb:

“Xie Lian is getting married.”

Maybe he actually did wish for Feng Xin to choke and die, because WHAT THE FUCK? Coughing and sputtering in a desperate attempt to clear his windpipe, he sees his life flash before his eyes, tinted in red out of pure rage, which only aggravates him more. He didn't really think too deeply about colours before, but he's developed a level of contempt for red because it seems to be Hua Cheng's entire personality. Red and ‘gege this, gege that, gege, gege, gege.’

That guy has given them the creeps ever since they first learned about him. Coming back from their honeymoon to the story of how Xie Lian spent a week in airport hell without saying a single word was already a lot to process, but if Feng Xin must be honest, it wasn’t a surprise. After all, Xie Lian is the kind of person who would rather cut his leg off than ‘be an inconvenience’. However, that the sketchy millionaire he met on the last flight wrapped him in a relationship not two days later was both unbelievable and unacceptable.

Was he tricked? Coerced? Drugged? Bewitched? How was that how Xie Lian got the first kiss of his life, as he told them, all starry-eyed and blushing? They were determined to interrogating him until they got to the bottom of it, but before they could get too far, Hua Cheng’s ugly mug appeared on the screen. Ever since, it has been virtually impossible to talk to Xie Lian without his fucking boyfriend —fucking fiancé ?!— making a nuisance of himself. He holds a massive grudge against both Feng Xin and Mu Qing for literally no reason, and while it can't be said that he actively prevents Xie Lian from speaking with them, he always makes sure of appearing at some point to mark territory by means of pissing them off.

It's really fucking unlucky that he’s from mainland China, and not from a place that at least allowed them to keep him behind the language barrier.

“Why?!” he manages to croak at some point.

“Beats me,” Mu Qing replies, gripping his phone with such force that it’s a miracle it doesn’t crack. “And that’s not the worst part.”

Feng Xin leaves his can of beer aside to brace himself. What can possibly be worse?

“Xie Lian, fucking…” Mu Qing gesticulates wildly in an attempt to convey his multiple negative emotions. There’s contempt, there’s frustration, there’s disbelief and some other things that, were they in  any other situation, would have Feng Xin snapping at him for being disrespectful. “He was the one who proposed.”

“No!”

“Look!”

Feng Xin blinks stupidly when Mu Qing shows him his screen, which displays his private conversation with Xie Lian.

“Read out loud, or I won’t know what you’re reacting to,” Mu Qing instructs with a tilt of his perfectly groomed eyebrows that makes Feng Xin squint.

“Do you want to torture me?”

“In the face of catastrophe, a man needs comic relief.”

Brat! Whenever he gets like this, Feng Xin gets the urge to bite him. He’d happily indulge instead of reading whatever train wreck is waiting for him in that inbox, but he needs to know. Resigned, he takes the phone from his husband.

Xie Lian
I started planning it a while ago
Perhaps too long ago, ah
Do you want the whole story? I don’t want to bore you

Me
…

Xie Lian
…

Me
¬_¬

Xie Lian
Hahaha
Ok, ok
It started during our two months anniversary celebration

Me
TWO MONTHS?

“Two months?!” Feng Xin repeats, barely stopping himself from throwing the phone out the window. “Who starts considering marriage at the two months mark?!”

“That’s Xie Lian for you,” Mu Qing sighs.

Xie Lian
I know, I was very embarrassed, ah

Me
How do you manage to feel embarrassed and being so shameless at the same time?

Xie Lian
??

Feng Xin doesn’t want to laugh, but he can't contain a snort, much to Mu Qing’s delight.

Me
Nevermind
What happened during your two months anniversary?

Xie Lian
Right, so:
Do you remember that San Lang recognised me in the plane for the videos I make about mudlarking?
He confessed that day that the first video he watched from my channel was actually the one I made in the Love River about gay marriage in Taiwan
Which I had posted just the week before
Up to that point, I thought he’d followed me for years, but no, he binged my entire channel in the flight, while I slept next to him!
Hahaha

“What the fuck does he mean with ‘hahaha’?!” Feng Xin explodes after barely managing to read the section without having a stroke. “That snake, that… predator! It was bad enough when we thought Hua Cheng was a years-long stalker, but this?! This is insane!”

“They’re both insane,” Mu Qing laments and hooks one foot on Feng Xin’s leg to pull and make his hammock seat sway.

Feng Xin takes the chance to lightly tickle Mu Qing’s knee, which earns him the swat of a hand, but also a furtive smile.

Xie Lian
No wonder he looked so tired when we landed
I didn’t think much about it at the time because I was dead, but later on, I did wonder…
Anyway

“Anyway,” Mu Qing repeats in a mocking tone, eyes rolling.

“I discovered 33 corpses buried in the garden, but anyway.” Feng Xin joins.

“He set fire to a thousand buildings, but anyway.”

They would laugh, but all they manage is a weak snicker that devolves into a joined sigh, heavy like the entire world. 

Xie Lian
He told me he thought I was the one getting married because of a story I posted with my outfit for your wedding
Someone screen-recorded and reposted it as a video in an account called pretty jades or something, ah
One of those content scrappers, you know

“He’s always been so nonchalant about people ogling him,” Mu Qing says. “It gets on my nerves.”

“It drove his parents crazy with worry, too.”

“And yet…”

That’s an ugly story. Rolling his shoulders to release some tension, Feng Xin goes back to the texts.

Xie Lian
While talking about it, the idea of dressing up to marry him just came to my mind
As I told you, I was so embarrassed! It had only been two months!!
But it felt so natural that I just knew it would eventually happen
He was the one who asked me to be in a relationship with him, so I decided to be the one who took the next step when the time was right
I decided to leave it for after my thesis defence, but started thinking about what to do because I wanted it to be really special, and that’s hard when your boyfriend’s profession is to make things special

Feng Xin groans. No matter how many times Xie Lian enumerates the giant institutions and corporations his beloved ‘San Lang’ designs experiences for, he just cannot believe the guy’s obscene wealth comes from being a glorified party planner. If at least he had something to do with technology, as Feng Xin first thought because he mistook ‘experience designer’ for ‘UX designer’, then his mountains of money would be slightly more believable. After all, an UX designer is a sort of techbro, and techbros always have a lot of money. An experience designer, on the other hand? That’s a fake ass job. Hua Cheng has to be gambling or trading crypto or doing who knows what shady shit behind Xie Lian’s back. It’s the only reasonable explanation.

Me
What did you end up doing?
Don’t tell me you proposed with a ring you found in the mud

Xie Lian
I would’ve loved to, but the foreshore is private property, and we aren’t entitled to what we find in it

Me
Ah, ok

Xie Lian
Any object of historical or monetary value that you find while mudlarking must be surrendered to the Port of London Authority
And you need a creative permit in order to make art with materials that you find at the foreshore, too

Me
Right

Xie Lian
It’s strict, but it’s the only way to protect the foreshore from plundering

Me
I see

Xie Lian
Besides, San Lang just got his permit
I wouldn’t want to jeopardise it
Or lose mine, it would be a real bummer

Me
Xie Lian

Xie Lian
... Sorry

“You should let him ramble a little more,” Feng Xin admonishes. Mu Qing scoffs. “I know he is a motormouth, but he cares a lot about everything he talks about. Besides, you were the one who brought the mud-searching thing up.”

“I know, I know, and I paid the price,” Mu Qing grumbles. Feng Xin arches a brow in question. “Keep reading and you’ll see.”

Xie Lian
I invited San Lang to a city by the sea called Bristol. I have a friend there whose family owns a big shipping company, influential in the harbour. They helped me with permits to organise a treasure hunt. The pieces were both a physical puzzle that spelled ‘double happiness’ and a riddle that had a proposal as solution. I used a red thread and my red coral pearl earrings to propose. San Lang liked everything and he said yes

Feng Xin grimaces. What a way to turn what would've probably been a novel’s worth of heartfelt descriptions into a war telegram. Too bad they didn't get a glimpse of Hua Cheng being pathetic (he must have been A MESS!). Oh, well. He can always ask Xie Lian on his own later.

“To think that one of those earrings would end up in Hua Cheng’s hands,” he says, defeated, giving the phone back to Mu Qing.

Those earrings are the reason why Mu Qing starting talking to Xie Lian, and by extension, to Feng Xin. It was a really rough start for their relationship, back in their training days under Jun Wu’s tutelage. The drama was huge, involving accusations of robbery, threats of expulsion and hours crawling under trampolines and lockers until the stupid earring that got lost appeared inside one of Mu Qing’s shoes. If anyone had asked Feng Xin that day whether he’d become friends with the guy who almost gouged his eyes out after he made one snark comment about pickpockets, never mind marrying him, he would’ve laughed his ass off and then punched them in the face.

He punched someone in the face that day, in fact, once Xie Lian identified the fuckers who set Mu Qing up.

“So, when and where is the wedding?” he asks before he can get too far down memory lane. “And why did he tell you and not me?”

“He sent a physical letter, actually,” Mu Qing nods towards a table nearby, where Feng Xin can see an envelope. A red envelope. Red is the colour of weddings, but for fuck’s sake. “I just had to text him as soon as I opened it.”

“Instead of texting me?”

“Obviously?”

“Asshole.”

“Idiot.”

Feng Xin takes his can of beer to chug the rest of its content, pulls Mu Qing to give him a brusque, quick kiss, and stands up to reach for the letter. It’s beautifully made by hand, featuring Xie Lian’s old-fashioned calligraphy. The edges are decorated with painted crystal butterflies and white flowers that must be Hua Cheng’s doing, if what Xie Lian says about his artistry is true.

Dear Mu Qing and Feng Xin.

It is our greatest joy to announce that we are going to get married. The ceremony will take place on the day of the mid-autumn festival next year (06.10.2025) in London, aboard the yacht Thousand Lights on the River Thames. 

We extend our invitation for you to join us as Xie Lian’s groomsmen. It would be an honour should you accept, and we will spare no expense facilitating your travelling and accommodation in order to make your attendance possible.

Please get in touch to arrange the details.

Looking forward to celebrating with you,

Xie Lian and Hua Cheng

A motherfucking yacht? Hua Cheng really loves to flaunt his damn money. Feng Xin can’t really be mad at him for it, though, the same way he can’t be mad at the photos of Xie Lian and Hua Cheng kissing that the latter likes to send him before replying to any of his texts, or sometimes out of the blue, just to annoy him. Xie Lian looks happy in those photos. He lights up like the sun whenever they’re on a video call and Hua Cheng approaches. One year ago, in Taiwan, he was a shell of what he used to be, skittish and quiet, with dark circles under haunted eyes. Now, he’s glowing. He’s healthy, thriving in a new flat where there’s no black mould and the heating works (for starters, Xie Lian told Feng Xin that he used to live with black mould and shitty heating. He would’ve never admitted to such a thing before!) Additionally, he could complete his PhD with honours and then landed his dream job with the Crown State, which led to Lang Qianqiu and the other climbers at the gym calling him Dianxia, an epithet Xie Lian finds mortifying and that Hua Cheng loves.

Feng Xin sighs. Hua Cheng might be insufferable, creepy and evil, but he lives for Xie Lian and would die for him, and it shows. Thanks to him, their old friend has never been better. How could Feng Xin truly be mad? 

That said, he’ll take every chance he gets to annoy the shit out of the man. It’s only fair.

“Spare no expense, huh?” he reads out loud in a conspirational tone, turning towards Mu Qing and finding that he’s mirroring his grin. “Guess it’s our turn to try that famous first class couple pod, then.”