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Barb McNichols knew it was going to be a weird shift before she even made it into the hospital.
Not only were they short-staffed, but it was a full moon—and a blue moon, at that. Her wife could say what she liked about “superstitious nonsense” (and Cecilia certainly never held back in speaking her mind) but Barb knew better. She’d been a nurse for nearly thirty years, night shift the whole time. She knew what she was walking into.
But she still paused halfway across the parking lot at the sight of what appeared to be a luxury sports car parked along the lane that ran past the back of the hospital.
Barb frowned, pushing her glasses up her nose. She could just barely make out the license plate from here; out of state, from the look of it. She pulled out her cell phone and took a photo, then punched the license plate number into a Note to make sure she didn’t forget them. Then she headed inside to start her shift.
As it turned out, it was a good thing she took that Note. Between the stat help called halfway through report on her second patient and the little old lady with urosepsis who thought 2315 was a great time to rip her IV out, all thoughts of weird cars got kicked right out of Barb’s mind until much later in the shift.
“Ugh,” said Mel, dropping into the seat next to her with a groan for their third attempt at report. Mel was the PM RN who was handing off to her; Barb was getting all of Mel’s patients, plus the new admit they were being sent from the downtown ED. “Great start to your shift, Barb. What’d you do, kick a black cat on the way in?”
Barb chuckled. “Full moon,” she said. “Was the first half of your shift this crazy?”
Mel groaned. “You’re just lucky you’re working eleven to seven. 5335’s bad, but she’s a million years old and septic, at least she’s got an excuse. 5337’s husband is just a walking nightmare.” At Barb’s raised eyebrow, Mel flapped her hand. “We almost had to call security to make him leave the hospital.”
Barb smiled. Plenty of patient family members were frustrated with the ongoing “no visitors after 9 pm” hospital policy. Staff, on the other hand, was generally in favor. “That bad, huh.”
“You have no idea. He kept coming up to the nursing station every fifteen minutes, demanding to know why we were ‘letting his husband suffer.’ His husband is an angel, by the way. No idea why he decided to marry Captain Asshole over there. Real creepy guy, all covered in tattoos and with an honest-to-God eyepatch.”
“Was his husband suffering?” Barb listened with half an ear, scanning through the computer to look up the aforementioned patient. Huh—confidential lock on his chart; unusual, but not unheard of. Thirty-two, full code, Chinese heritage going by the name, admitted for an L4-5 fusion and L5-6 laminectomy.
Barb doubted very much that “Leon” was really how you said his name, but not as much as she doubted she’d be able to get a proper pronunciation out of anyone but the patient.
“No! Well—okay, honestly, he was pretty uncomfortable, especially considering how young he is and the surgery. He’s got a drain, too, and it’s putting out plenty. But he always says it’s fine whenever you ask him if he’s in pain. Real sweet boy.”
“Right,” said Barb, making a note. “What’s the husband’s name?”
“It’s… Hua? Hua something. Chang, maybe. But the patient kept calling him something else—sounded like ‘Sam Long.’”
They finished handoff, though not without a lengthy round of venting from Mel about her shitshow of a shift. In addition to her UTI with dementia, Barb also had a gentleman in ETOH withdrawal, a left total hip 8 hours out from surgery, one of their long-term boarders who was just here for IV antibiotics, and then the “angel” with a demon for a husband. Not bad, all things considered.
Turned out Mel was right: 5337 was an angel. He was about the nicest patient Barb had had in months, and definitely the nicest-looking: he had cheekbones supermodels would be jealous of and lovely golden-brown eyes. And his hair was long. Barb hadn’t seen hair that long on anyone since she was in primary school.
(Privately she wondered why on Earth a man seemingly as healthy and active as Lian was having such spine issues, but it wasn’t that rare, just… a little strange. Especially since he looked like he could be a professional athlete.)
“Your hair is so pretty,” she said, as she emptied Lian’s drain (sero-sanguinous, 40 ml, not terrible) and examined the foam tape dressing on his spine. She tapped his hip to let him know he could roll onto his back again. “Did your husband braid it for you?”
Lian rolled onto his back with a little grimace of pain, but his expression lightened immediately when Barb asked about his husband. “Ah, he did! He brushed it out for me after the surgery, too.”
“My wife used to have long hair, though not as long as yours,” Barb said. “But she cut it off when we had the kids. I miss it sometimes.” She noted the barely-there way Lian relaxed when she said my wife and nodded to herself, satisfied.
Barb asked a few more questions about Lian and his husband as she worked through her assessment, and discovered very quickly that although Lian was happy to talk about his ‘Sam Long’ given any opportunity, he didn’t seem to want to talk about himself very much. He made one off-hand comment about how the hospital bed was so much more comfortable than lots of other places he’d slept before, but clammed up immediately when Barb asked him what he meant by it.
It threw up a few red flags, honestly. Something wasn’t quite right here. But for all that Mel had thought the husband annoying as hell, she hadn’t made any comments about getting a sketchy vibe off him, and Barb hadn’t met the man, so she let it go, for now.
The pain control was another story. Lian swore up and down that his back was fine, that no he wasn’t in any pain, even when he leaned a little too heavily on Barb’s arm when she got him up to use the bathroom.
“Hmm,” said Barb. She eyed Lian over the tops of her glasses. He was trying to reposition himself in bed, but he was stiff, taking shallow little breaths like every movement pained him. “You know, it’s possible to put your recovery back if you’re in so much pain that you can’t sleep or move very well.”
Lian reddened a bit and laced his hands together in his lap. “It’s really fine,” he said, or started to, until Barb fixed him with a Look and he wilted against the pillow. “It’s—I don’t want to be a bother…”
“It’s not a bother,” said Barb firmly. “It’s my job, and there’s no point being miserable. Now why don’t you let me get you something?” Sheepishly, he agreed.
By the time Barb got done with her first round of assessments and meds, it was almost 0200. Which was why she was surprised to get back to her desk to find a post-it with a phone number and a note in the unit clerk’s hand that said Husband of 5337 has called 4 times, wants update - told him you were busy.
“Oh boy,” said Barb. Four calls in two and a half hours. She took a pull of coffee and then sat down to make a call.
She got an answer on the second ring. “This is Hua Cheng,” said the sharp voice on the other end.
“Hi, Mr. Cheng—”
“Hua.”
“Ah, my mistake—Mr. Hua. I’m Barb, your husband’s nurse, I’m just returning your call.” Calls.
“How is he? Why did you take so long to call me back?”
“He’s doing well,” Barb said in her best everything is fine, you have nothing to worry about nurse voice. “And I’m sorry for taking a little while, but I’m afraid it’s a busy shift, Mr. Hua.” She spent the next ten minutes patiently answering every single one of the husband’s questions, up to and including the most recent set of vital signs, what meds Lian had last, what meds were scheduled next, when the drain in his surgical site would likely be taken out, and when Lian might be discharged out of the hospital.
“Why haven’t you given him any more dilaudid?” Cheng demanded, when Barb was done going over the last round of meds.
Barb raised her eyebrows at the fact that this man even knew the name of that med, then said, voice even, “Because giving IV narcotics on top of oral narcotics can cause respiratory depression and sedation, and I don’t want your husband to stop breathing.”
There was an extremely annoyed pause at the other end of the phone. Into the moment of opportunity, Barb added, “But, I can tell that he seems the type to pretend he’s not in pain even when he’s miserable. When was the last time he slept a whole night through?”
There was another pause. Then, grudgingly, Cheng said, “Probably two years.”
Barb exhaled. “That sounds awful,” she said, softer. “You must have been pretty worried about him.”
Silence. Then, just when Barb was going to make some getting-off-the-phone excuse, Hua Cheng finally said, “I had to talk him into getting the surgery. He almost fell going down the stairs two months ago, his leg just gave out under him…”
Barb winced. It registered that as cranky as Cheng sounded, he also sounded exhausted, and Barb found herself wondering when the last time he slept was. “That must have been scary, to see the person you love suffering like that,” she said gently. “But you did the right thing. He’s gotten the surgery, and Dr. Jameson is one of our best spine surgeons. Now he just needs to take the time to recover.”
There was a shaky sigh from the other end of the phone. “Right,” said Cheng. “Okay.”
“Now, you need to get some sleep too,” Barb said. “You’re not going to do your husband any good if you run yourself into the ground.”
“I’m fine,” Cheng said irritably. He sounded like a cranky toddler, Barb thought, and she grinned.
“Bullshit,” she said. “If you slept a wink the night before surgery, I’ll eat dirt. Get your ass in bed.”
“You—”
“The doctor’s note says they’re planning to come take his drain out when Dr. Jameson is done with clinic, and that won’t be before 10 am,” said Barb, not unkindly. “He’ll have therapy after that. Get some sleep.”
Cheng grumbled something incoherent at the other end, then sighed. “Please call me if anything changes,” he said, and Barb thought he sounded maybe a little less irritable than before. Maybe.
“I promise,” she said, and got off the phone.
* * * * *
She didn’t get time to think about the whole situation again for another hour or two.
Her little old lady with urosepsis got worse instead of better, trying to get out of bed four times in forty minutes, until Barb finally coaxed her into taking the PRN trazadone she’d refused three times before. It took another thirty minutes beyond that for the meds to work, at which point her withdrawal patient’s CIWA shot right up to 19 after hours of not needing a drop of loraz.
It was bad. Barb spent about an hour wondering if she was going to need to page for a phenobarbital drip before she could get his hallucinations and vomiting under control, his heart clicking along in the 140s while he shook like a leaf in bed. At least he wasn’t having seizures, she thought.
(Yet.)
But when she went into 5337 to hang Lian’s 0400 cefepime, he reacted…strangely. She tried to be as quiet as she could—poor boy clearly needed his sleep—but she bumped his tray table with her hip as she edged around the side of the bed, and he came up off the mattress like he’d been shot.
“No!” he cried, and the way he twisted away from her was like a kick to the chest. “Please, I’m sorry, I’ll be good—”
Immediately, Barb flipped to mama bear. “Honey, it’s okay,” she soothed, pitching her voice low and gentle, “you’re okay. You’re in the hospital. You’re safe. It’s just Barb, that’s all. It’s your nurse.”
I’ll wring your husband’s miserable neck, she thought but did not say. Dammit, she’d liked Cheng by the time she got off the phone with him, porcupine that he was, but that didn’t matter. It never did.
Lian sucked a few shaky breaths, clutching the blankets to his chest as he reoriented. “Oh,” he said. His voice wobbled; he sounded about fifteen instead of over thirty. “I’m—I’m sorry, how silly of me…”
Barb reached over and flicked on one of the lights, the dimmest ones that just lit up over the sink and counter. It was enough for Lian to see her face, and for Barb to see his: splotchy cheeks and trembling lip, determinedly avoiding her gaze. “You don’t have to apologize,” she said very softly, and sat down on the edge of the bed. She took Lian’s hand and squeezed, and he burst into tears.
She let him cry it out for a few minutes, making soothing noises and pulling him into a gentle hug like he was one of her babies. Once he’d calmed down a bit, she settled back, wrapping both her hands around one of his and looking at him seriously.
“I can have security stop your husband at the door when he gets here in the morning,” she said. “We’ve got some folks we can call to help get you somewhere safe, once you’re okay to leave.”
Lian sat up very straight, eyes wide. “No!” he said, and he sounded appalled. “No, no, no, please, that’s not—San Lang would never, ever hurt me.”
“You were scared when I woke you up,” Barb said, very gently. “You thought someone was going to hurt you.”
Lian swallowed thickly. He studied Barb for a few moments, looking for all the world like he was trying to decide between poison or a gun. Then he sagged, wiping at his face with his free hand. The other hand was still wrapped tightly around Barb’s, holding on for dear life.
“It isn’t San Lang,” he said. “It was—someone else.”
Barb wasn’t convinced, but she’d see this through. “Whoever it was must have really treated you awful, for you to wake up so badly,” she said. “What happened?”
And to her surprise, Lian told her. Not everything, she thought, not by a long shot, but enough: how his parents had died, leaving him desperate and struggling; how the man he’d taken up with had seemed so wonderful at first, until he wasn’t; how he’d eventually fled and wound up living rough in city parks until he’d been able to find a job that would hire him without a permanent address.
He didn’t share a lot of details, but what he told her was plenty. He reminded her so much of her own Jackson, from when he’d come home from his first semester at school with his heart broken from being cheated on, that she almost couldn’t stand it. Even if he hadn’t, Barb was still pretty sure she’d be ready to flip a table.
By the time he and Hua Cheng had gotten together, he’d managed a few years on his own, at least. She was glad for that. The only thing worse than having to run from a bad relationship was jumping directly into a new one. And she was glad to hear that Cheng really was what she’d thought: an asshole who would move the sun and moon for his husband.
But she was unfortunately pretty certain she now knew where Lian’s back injury came from.
Eventually, he petered out and started yawning. He apologized so many times for being “dramatic” that Barb was having some suspiciously wet eyes herself. Finally—after emptying his drain, repositioning him in bed, tucking some pillows under his knees, wrapping him in a warm blanket, and reassuring him for the eighth time that he was not being a bother—Barb got him settled back down. When she poked her head in the room again forty-five minutes later, he was asleep.
On a hunch, Barb made a beeline for the charge nurse, Cassie. “You still need more people till 1500?” she asked.
Cassie stared at her. “Thought you didn’t do doubles anymore,” she said. “But yes, yes we do. You sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Barb, and went to text her wife.
* * * * *
Cassie was right. Barb didn’t like to do doubles anymore. Sixteen hours was a long shift, and she didn’t much care for the business of day shift, with its bossy attendings and its harried schedule. But that was why God made coffee.
It didn’t take long for her hunch to come to fruition.
At 0715, just when the day shift was getting report, Barb got paged to the front desk by the daytime unit clerk. “Family of 5337 is on the phone and wants an update,” said Abby, a freckled girl just out of undergrad who was waiting to hear if she’d been accepted to any of the eighteen medical schools she’d applied to. “He seems really nice.”
Barb frowned. “Is that so,” she said, and went to take the call.
“Good morning,” said a deep, melodious voice on the other end—a voice that was definitely not Cheng. “I’m so sorry to bother you at shift change, but I’m on my way to a meeting and just wanted to see if you could tell me what time my dear Lian will be discharging today.”
Barb sat up a little straighter at her desk. She found herself thinking of the luxury sports car she’d seen on the way into the hospital last night—the one she’d never gotten around to calling security about. On sudden instinct, she fixed a perky smile on her face and said in her daftest voice, “Oh, of course! And who am I speaking to?”
“Hua Cheng, his husband,” said the man. Whoever he was, he lied the way other people breathed.
“Okay, just checking,” said Barb. “Well, let’s see here. He’s doing well, but he probably won’t be ready for discharge till later in the day, I don’t think; the surgeon wants to come by and check on him before he goes. I know that’s not very helpful…”
“Not a problem at all,” said the man at the other end of the phone. “I’m glad to hear he’s doing well.”
Barb decided to gamble. “I can call you to update you when we know when he’ll be discharging?”
“That would be lovely,” said the other man. Barb dutifully wrote down the number and simpered on the phone for a few more moments, then made excuses about needing to finish getting report before hanging up.
“You son of a bitch,” she muttered.
He knew exactly what he was doing, when to call—knew that the chaos of shift change was the time when he’d be most likely to get the information he wanted. How he’d discovered Lian was currently admitted to this hospital was another question, but not one she was likely to be able to answer.
Before she could think about what to do next, her pager went off: 5337: MD at bedside, RN needed. Shit, were they here to take the drain out already? Barb raised her eyebrows and went to go have a look.
She heard raised voices from two doors down and straightened her shoulders, smoothing her face into a look of beneficence the Pope would be envious of. She walked in just in time to see a tall, tattooed man with sharp features and a furious expression getting right in the face of her least favorite ortho resident.
“You’re not touching him until you give him some pain medicine!” snarled Cheng—because honestly, who else could it possibly be? So much for getting some sleep, Barb thought with a twinge of either exasperation or relief.
“San Lang, please,” said Lian from the bed.
“They’re not even supposed to be here till later in the morning,” Cheng said accusingly. “Why are you bothering him so early? He needs sleep!”
“Sir, I need you to calm down,” said Royce, the resident. He sent Barb a wide-eyed look as she walked into the room. Sure, now you listen to me, she thought.
“Hi there, Mr. Hua,” said Barb. “We spoke on the phone.” All eyes turned towards her, and she smiled, as calm and unruffled as if a patient family member wasn’t looming over one of her residents like he was going to choke the life out of him. Barb couldn’t exactly blame Hua Cheng—she too thought Royce kind of deserved an asskicking on a regular basis—but sadly his ass would have to go unkicked for now.
“You’re still here,” Lian said. The relief in his voice was unmistakable.
Cheng glanced from his husband to Barb, and Barb slid smoothly into her opportunity. “Mr. Xie has had some pain issues overnight, so I think that drain is pretty sensitive,” she said. “I’ll just go grab some dilaudid and some foam tape for you. Anything else you need from CS?”
“You—” Royce’s lips pressed into a thin line, and then he shrugged. “No, I’ve got everything else.”
“Okie dokie,” said Barb. “Be right back.”
Fifteen minutes later, the drain was out. Royce exited the room almost before the procedure was over, leaving Barb to settle Lian back into the bed and soothe a still-agitated Cheng. But whatever Lian had told his husband about Barb before Royce had arrived, Cheng seemed at least willing to be soothed. As she finished getting them situated, he even managed a grudging “Thank you.”
Barb smiled at him. “It’s my pleasure,” she said, and meant it down to her toes. Then her smile faded. “But there’s something I need to tell you two.” Cheng’s face darkened, while Lian just looked a bit anxious.
By the time she was done, he looked downright ill. Cheng sat on the bed next to Lian and pulled him in close, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “How the hell did he find out Xie Lian was here?” he demanded. His voice was tight, harsh. “Isn’t that supposed to be protected information?”
Barb shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, “but—”
“He’s got connections everywhere,” Lian said. His voice was dull, almost flat. “I’m honestly surprised it took him this long to find me again.”
Barb knew all too well the kind of man they were dealing with. She still didn’t know his name, but she didn’t have to. “We can have you leave by a different exit instead of the main one,” said Barb. “Or arrange transport for you so he doesn’t know what car to look for.”
“We’ll move again if we have to,” said Cheng fiercely. “We’ll leave.”
Lian sighed. “We only just finished unpacking,” he said. The exhaustion in his voice sank into Barb like a nail in her foot, and she clenched her hands against the tops of her thighs.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Cheng. “I’ll pack it all, you can rest. I’ll take care of it, gege. I promise.” He picked up one of Lian’s hands and kissed his fingers. For just a moment Barb caught a glimpse of the kind of man he was for his husband, that Lian adored him as much as he clearly did.
As a healthcare provider, there were things she was and wasn’t supposed to do. As a person who needed to protect her sanity, she had to leave her responsibility for people’s lives and happiness outside of her shifts—she had to, or she’d have been chewed up and spat out long ago. The work would rip you open if you let it, if you took it home and let it dwell.
But there were also things she couldn’t do. She just hoped her wife would forgive her.
Barb cleared her throat and said, “Actually, I had a different idea.” When Lian and Cheng looked over at her, she gave them a lop-sided smile and said, “Attempted kidnapping is a felony. Crossing state lines to do it gets the FBI involved. And that’s before tampering with private health information.”
Cheng made a derisive noise. “It’ll never stick,” he said. “Jun Wu has too much influence.”
“Lucky for you, I know a great lawyer,” said Barb.
“And how exactly do you know her?” Cheng raised an eyebrow at her suspiciously, but Lian’s face lit up in sudden realization before Barb got the words out.
“Married her,” she said. “She’s a mean bitch and she’s very good at her job. I recommend her highly.”
Lian made a high-pitched noise that might have been a peal of laughter. Cheng stared at Barb for a few moments before his “angry cat” face relaxed ever so slightly. It was Lian who sat up and smiled at Barb, and the warmth and determination there told Barb she’d made the right choice.
“I want to hear your idea,” he said.
* * * * *
The rest of the morning was a shitshow. But that was par for the course; in Barb’s opinion, the only good thing you could say about a day shift was that it was always so busy that it went by fast. Today she was glad for it. It meant she had less time to get nervous.
She handed her pager over to another RN shortly before two pm, since she was wheeling Xie Lian downstairs to the main hospital entrance herself. She’d warned her charge nurse what they were doing, and looped Lian’s hospital social worker Mariah into the situation as well—though she hadn’t told them they were expecting Jun Wu at the entrance. Just that her patient was worried he might be there and they had some plainclothes officers sitting in an unmarked car nearby. For safety.
(Barb normally trusted police about as far as she could throw them—she’d seen what they did to her neighbors, to her mentally ill patients, to other queer folk like herself. But Cecilia knew a handful of trustworthy ones, and Barb figured that if she could use her position to actually get the system to work the way it was fucking supposed to, then she was damn well going to do it.)
This part had been Lian’s idea. Cheng had been all for sneaking Lian out the back and apprehending Jun Wu at the entrance when he turned up to try to snatch Lian, but Lian had been adamant that his ex was far too cunning to be fooled if Lian himself wasn’t there to be the bait. Cheng had finally agreed, but only after confirming the number of hospital security guards who would also “happen” to be nearby.
Barb leaned over once they were in the elevator. “You sure you still want to do this?” she asked in a low voice. “It’s not too late for me to take you around back and just sneak away. We’ve got other things we can use against him—I spoke to him on the phone and I saw his car here last night, I’m positive.”
“I want this over with,” Lian said. “It’ll be alright. I have you and San Lang to help me.” He smiled up at Barb over his shoulder, and it was like getting a face full of morning sunlight. Little wonder Hua Cheng was willing to move heaven and earth for this man.
There was a moment when the automatic doors folded open and they rolled outside that Barb genuinely thought this whole dog-and-pony show had been for nothing—that no one would be outside but the ordinary traffic of a busy hospital. Surely this man wouldn’t be so foolish as to think he could just …spirit Lian away? Right under his husband’s nose? Surely no one was that overconfident.
But then she saw that same fancy sports car pulling smoothly up to the curb that she’d seen the night before, and her heart leapt into her throat.
Lian’s shoulders went stiff as the driver side opened and a tall, handsome man in a tailor-made suit climbed out of the car. His black hair had a streak of silver, and he wore his confidence and charisma like an expensive cologne. “Lian, there you are,” he said, and he smiled. “Let’s get you home.”
The tight, shaky noise Lian let out brought Barb very close to slapping Jun Wu right across his handsome face. “You’re not Hua Cheng,” said Barb, affecting bemusement.
“Hua Cheng had to go into work, I’m afraid,” Jun Wu said smoothly. “I told him I’d just swing by and pick up Lian for him.”
He really was that fucking brazen. The sad thing was, he’d probably gotten away with it dozens—hundreds—of times.
Barb smiled right back at him. “Alrighty,” she chirped. “Here, hold this!” She shoved a belongings bag into Jun Wu’s hands and bent over to pretend to fuss with something on Lian’s wheelchair as another car—this one cherry red with black detailing—slid past Jun Wu’s, slowing to a halt in front of its left quarter panel and effectively blocking him in. As Barb straightened up again, she brought the whistle on a chain around her neck to her lips and blew three ear-splitting blasts.
Jun Wu was fast. But Lian was faster. Even as his would-be kidnapper turned and threw himself at his car, Lian shot his foot out and hooked Jun Wu’s ankle, sending him crashing face-first into the side of his own vehicle.
Everything happened very quickly after that.
* * * * *
“Are you sure you’re not going to get in trouble with your supervisors?” Lian asked, for probably the fifth time.
The three of them were sitting just inside the hospital doors in a private room off the security quarters, where they’d patiently given statements to the police about the events of the day. It was now well past three-thirty. Jun Wu had been led away in handcuffs over an hour ago, spitting accusations even as police crammed him into a car, and while that had been extremely satisfying, Barb was now well past “tired” and headed straight into “delirious.”
They were just waiting for one of the hospital representatives to come back with some paperwork for all three of them to sign—something about limiting liability, Barb was sure. “I might get a finger shaken at me, but that’ll be it,” she said. “Even if I do, it’ll be worth it.”
“I should have punched him,” said Cheng. “You should have let me punch him.”
(The fact that Barb had been able to boss him into giving up the punching part of their plan was a Christmas miracle. She’d gotten right in his face to do it, too—an impressive feat considering he had at least six inches on her—but eventually Cheng relented, though not without a round of sulking that would put a two-year-old to shame.)
“If there was ever a face that needed punching, it’s that man,” said Barb agreeably. “But you played your cards just right. If you’d slugged him in front of police, they would have hauled you off to jail too, and your case against that asshole would be muddied for it.”
“Ugh,” said Cheng, and he scowled. Lian laughed, scooting closer to press himself hip to hip with his husband. Barb watched the way Cheng immediately relaxed, rearranging himself to fit more neatly against Lian’s side.
Lian hadn’t been lying to her. The way he shut his eyes and leaned into Cheng’s touch as his husband tucked a strand of Lian’s hair behind his ear said everything.
“I hope you’re right about your wife’s abilities,” Cheng said. He laced his fingers together with Lian’s, rubbing his thumb along the back of his husband’s hand.
“Oh, I’m not wrong about her abilities,” said Barb. “But I don’t think you want to hear about that.” Cheng and Lian stared at her, and after a moment Barb clapped both her hands to her mouth. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, that was so inappropriate, that was—”
She was cut off by Cheng actually throwing his head back and cackling. Lian’s face split into a huge grin a moment later, his cheeks blooming red, and then he started laughing too. Barb groaned and rubbed her hand over her face, and that set them off laughing at her harder.
They laughed a good deal longer than was strictly called for, until both of them had tears starting in their eyes. Barb just sat there and took it. She watched Lian leaning into Cheng’s side as he tried to hold his giggles in, his husband’s arm around his shoulders as he snickered into Lian’s hair, and all she could think was what she had told Lian was true:
Worth it.