Archive of Our Own

“Soooo,” said Wei Xuzhou, taking a long sip of his ungodly 8pm instant coffee, “what’s up between you and our esteemed chef Fu Shen?”

As always, Xuzhou’s capacity for sticking his unnecessarily long nose into things that were not his business fascinated Yan Xiaohan, the exact way one could be fascinated by a blowfly’s unerring capacity to fly repeatedly into one’s face regardless of how many times it had been swatted away.

The two of them were loitering out the back, next to the bins, catching a quick break to stretch (and drink ungodly 8pm instant coffee) before diving back in to dole out a fresh round of sliced meat-slash-fish balls-slash-tofu puffs. At this time, especially on a weekday, the shops in their area were pretty quiet; most of the other restaurants would be cleaning up the kitchens by now. But hotpot did invite a bit more revelry, and Golden Stage would push on until 10. Was Xuzhou’s nosiness the kind of situation Xiaohan wanted to be stuck in during his precious break? Not really, but he supposed he had it coming after he and Fu Shen bumped into each other in the freezer earlier in the night and there was a bit of snapping, as usual, and then there was that… thing… and when Xiaohan looked up, Xuzhou’s nose was poked right into the doorframe. Bitch.

“If you put even half of your nosy energy into your actual work,” said Xiaohan, leaning on a creaky rail with what he hoped was nonchalance, “the restaurant could’ve hired their operations manager internally.” As it stood, Golden Stage had put out ads, Xiaohan had applied, and as of two months ago he had been made the operations manager of this suburban hotpot joint.

Xuzhou, shameless with what must be years of gossipmongering, was undeterred. “That’s not a denial of something between you guys. Actually, I’m even gonna say I totally detected a vibe on your first day. Now the vibe has been validated.”

Xiaohan threw him a look that could kill weeds.

“You can’t hide from me,” Xuzhou trilled around his coffee. “I mean, there was you guys getting snippy with each other suspiciously soon after you first started here. Always thought that was weird. But then—this hair touching?” He made a cheesy slobbering sound and chortled into his mug.

Xiaohan was going to fucking perish. He was going to throw Xuzhou into the freezer, and close the door.

OK. OK so maybe, Fu Shen had really nice hair. Xiaohan was not going to deny that the guy was kind of maybe very attractive. He had eyes and he was also gay, so you’d best believe they were some well-trained eyes, capable of objectively discerning which men were attractive. Maybe—maybe!—including such candidates as Fu Shen.

In spite of himself, he found his mouth moving. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said to Xuzhou, “or I will piss in your instant coffee powder. Every jar you get. Fu Shen and I met once before.”

Xuzhou’s eyes, already buzzing with caffeine, lit up in the gloom. “I told you. I told you.”

Xiaohan leaned back against the thin rail, blowing a strand of hair out of his face and crossing his arms.

“Aren’t you gonna say more?” pressed Xuzhou.

“No,” said Xiaohan. Then, “It was seven years ago, we were on a Duke of Ed camping trip. Different school groups. We got lost together. Got out. Got into a disagreement and parted on bad terms. Now piss off.”

“What was the disagreement ab— Fark!” The final sip of coffee sailed in an arc out of the mug and landed with a sad splat on the pavement. Xuzhou crouched mournfully beside it. “Yan Xiaohan, you are a heartless man.”

“You had to finish that shit anyway, we’re going back in.” Xiaohan marched over to the door, wrenched it open, and let it shut before Xuzhou could follow. Then he reopened it.

“Not a word to anyone else,” said Xiaohan.

OK, so maybe Xiaohan had a crush on Fu Shen.

All in all, it was pretty annoying because the crush had started some seven years ago, when he’d gotten lost in the bush with an innocent little baby-faced Fu Shen, when he’d looked into Xiaohan’s eyes and called him “gege”—like, literally, in Putonghua. Gege? he’d said, wide eyed and guileless and Xiaohan could feel the ba-dump, ba-dump of his heart in his fingertips. After they had emerged from the scrub and parted sourly, Xiaohan spent a couple of weeks mooching in his blankets while his dad tried to coax him out with Malaysian takeaway. He also failed an exam—OK, not failed, Asian failed, he got a B—but still. Young heartbreak.

Not that Xiaohan had been hung up for seven years on this one kid he knew for two days. He’d had two (2) boyfriends in the intervening years, thank you very much. But he could remember the shock that went through him, the same feeling of his heartbeat in his fingertips, when their boss Yuantai had introduced them on his first day at Golden Stage Hotpot and he could see in the same moment that Fu Shen recognised him too.

Didn’t help either that he’d grown into adulthood so nicely. Out of the corner of his eye, Xiaohan watched as Fu Shen’s arm muscles flexed with the weight of the cleaver he was wielding. His face had lost some of its teenage chub, starting to trace the planes of his cheekbones. His hair was tucked under a cap but Xiaohan had seen it out during the Freezer Incident™, in a shaggy cut that made him look like 1990s Takeshi Kaneshiro. The brash kiddishness that eighteen-year-old Xiaohan had been so taken with had refined into a burnished irony. The biggest change, of course, was that Fu Shen used a wheelchair now. In a thoughtful touch, the Golden Stage kitchen was modelled to accommodate him, with wide passageways and a set of low benchtops. No doubt he was skilled, though it helped that he was the franchisor's nephew.

“Are you looking at Chef Fu?” said a voice out of nowhere. Xiaohan froze, then turned around to find the curious eyes of Shen Yi’ce peering along the same line of vision he had been glancing down. When Xiaohan raised his eyebrows, she shrugged. “I heard you guys used to know each other.”

“Wei Xuzhou,” growled Xiaohan. “That man’s days are numbered.”

Xiaohan’s 8pm break this evening was blissfully unmarred by a certain loose-tongued tattler. It was a brisk autumn night, the kind of weather that let Xiaohan wear his favourite jackets. He was leaning against the wall, crunching at a muesli bar he’d stashed in his pocket, when the door opened and Fu Shen came rolling out.

Only a streetlight, some ten metres away, illuminated their spot. Fu Shen’s features were blurred by the dark, but his smirk was sharp as ever. “So Xuzhou is running around the pantry screaming, because apparently someone’s pissed in his Moccona.”

“How unhygienic,” said Xiaohan.

“Yes,” said Fu Shen. “Could get into some deep Food Safety shit with that.”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb”—Xiaohan punctuated the air with a wave of his muesli bar—“and say that if he didn’t want the coffee to be pissed in, he should’ve kept a lid on it.”

Fu Shen gave a huff of amusement, reclining in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. “You’re so against people knowing we knew each other already? My, with that attitude, they might think I was the one who had done something to offend you.”

There it was again, the sharp little dig at what had happened between them all those years ago. It was like Fu Shen would never let it go. “Just accommodating whatever your own desires might be, chef," said Xiaohan, with teeth.

“Well, aren’t you such a thoughtful little dog.”

It went this way with most of their verbal spars; they would trade barbs, then there would be this weird pause where everything felt like it was suddenly up in limbo, where they could do anything without thinking, like Xiaohan reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. This time, Xiaohan was gazing into his eyes while he thought about slamming the smug bastard back in his chair and kissing him back into the innocent little thing that had called him gege.

The door opened again.

Fu Shen manoeuvred out of the way as Yuantai's portly form bustled through. "Ah, you're here," said their boss, barely apologising for catching the door on Fu Shen's wheel.

"Headed home, boss?" said Xiaohan. Yuantai nodded absently, fishing around in his briefcase for his car keys. "Nice seeing you today."

"I was looking for you two, actually. I told a couple of the guys inside to pass it on, but may as well say now you're here! Anyway." With a jingle, the keys appeared in his hand, and Yuantai ambled down the stairs towards his car, which blinked as it unlocked. "There's a competitor opening around the block. Your uncle"—he meant Fu Shen's—"booked a table for you two to scope it out on Monday night. All on company dime! And you'll be paid for your research time, heh heh."

Making Fu Shen spend a night with him? The guy was gonna hate it. "Uh, boss…"

"Isn't it great? Free food and you guys can get to bond a bit, as colleagues." Xiaohan knew for a fact Yuantai had walked in on one of their spats just last week. "Alright, gotta go. Bye!" The door slammed, the car started up, and Yuantai went vrooming off onto the street.

"You're always such an asskisser to him, it's kinda funny," Fu Shen commented mildly. He unstuck the door from his wheel and went back inside.

Xiaohan's brain was completely blank.

The rest of the week was hell. Xiaohan made a point of hovering near Yuantai when he wasn’t bossing around the staff or serving customers, looking for a good moment to tell the boss that maybe, just maybe, someone else should go have a nice hotpot meal with Chef Fu, but Yuantai was having none of it. At one point, Yuantai started to get mad, and Xiaohan knew he had reached a dead end here.

The other staff, insubordinates that they were, had obviously heard about the whole affair and were all finding it incredibly amusing. At a retributive Wei Xuzhou’s instigation, they had taken to calling the highly professional and serious scouting mission a “date”. Then some clown had started calling it the “Yan-Fu Date”. In any case, Xiaohan had taken to drinking large mouthfuls of water whenever Xuzhou was around, just to remind him that his bladder was full and at the ready.

For all his historical resentment of Xiaohan, Fu Shen himself had borne all this with surprising neutrality. He hadn’t interacted with Xiaohan after Yuantai had dropped the bomb, and remained pokerfaced when prodded at by the staff. Xiaohan made a point of cornering him in the pantry as they closed up shop on Friday night, three days out from the Apocalypse.

“Don’t you hate me?” hissed Xiaohan. The pantry was dark, and the only thing he could see of Fu Shen was the gleam of the whites of his eyes and the chrome of his wheelchair. “Don’t you want to get out of being stuck with me for dinner for two hours? You’re the franchisor’s nephew, you could just choose anyone else to go with you.”

Fu Shen was tapping the arm of his chair, idly avoiding his gaze. “Can’t even handle a nice dinner with me?”

“It has nothing to do with my feelings. The other staff are being absolute bitches about it.”

A snort. “The ‘Yan-Fu Date’?” Fu Shen quoted. He gave a snort. “I don’t care, actually. Boss has decided, I’m not gonna fight him for no reason.”

Xiaohan paused. “OK,” he said. “OK.”

“You done bitching?”

Xiaohan hummed, stepping aside for Fu Shen to collect his jacket and head home.

“Wait a sec.” Fu Shen turned around, hands stilling on the wheels. Xiaohan picked up pace. “I’ll walk you out.”

Over the next two days, the Golden Stage staff witnessed an incredible new phase in the dynamic between the operations manager and the head chef. Yu Qiaoting, one of the chefs, was the unfortunate witness to most of these happenings and was soon enough appointed by Xuzhou as chief gossip-bearer. On Sunday evening, the evening before the Yan-Fu Date, the staff loitered until the head chef and the manager had left, then clustered among the empty tables beneath the swooping, gold-leafed ceiling of the restaurant.

“Give us the deets,” Xuzhou ordered with a clap of his hands, switched on in a way that he seldom was during work hours. The others were leaning eagerly in. After a couple of months of Xuzhou’s relentless gossipmongering, it was hard not to feel invested in the unfolding drama.

Qiaoting sighed. “You know how my workstation is right next to Chef Fu’s?” Her audience nodded. “In the past two days I have seen the manager pop up there no less than twenty times.”

Yi’ce gasped, propping her glasses up her nose. “You counted?”

“Um, no,” Qiaoting demurred. “But it was probably about that much.”

“He was there so much, is the point, Yi’ce, keep up,” Xuzhou said, flapping his hand. “Come on, get to the juicy bits.”

Qiaoting shifted in her seat, clearing her throat. “So, first of all, they were way less snappy. Xiaohan definitely smiled, which isn’t something I’ve ever seen. At the chef.”

“Never seen that myself either,” Xuzhou interjected wistfully, propping his cheek on a hand.

“You probably deserve it though,” said Yi’ce.

“The weirdest thing was,” Qiaoting said, getting into the stride of the recount and barrelling over the interruption, “I think they were doing some sort of one-upping gift exchange business.”

Everyone was completely befuddled by what this might mean.

“I think Chef Fu started it,” said Qiaoting. “I saw him with a little bag from the pastry shop down the road in the afternoon—never saw him eat it. He must’ve given it to the manager. Cos, an hour later, Xiaohan left a plate of cut-up orange segments on his workstation.”

“Flirting,” someone breathed. The group was leaning in across the circular table, rapturous faces fixed on Qiaoting.

“The little presents got bigger and bigger. A bowl of fish balls. XO sauce. A potted succulent. Half a roast goose from the BBQ shop.”

Xuzhou was the first to break the ensuing silence, giving a low whistle. “Sheesh. All this in two days? They’re down bad.”

Qiaoting nodded. “Chef Fu actually made me go get the goose with him, right before we opened for dinner. It was a lot. Then he swung it around in the bag using centrifugal force and launched it at Xiaohan.”

She could see everyone trying to conjure the image in their minds. It was, everyone agreed, a kind of idiotic but ultimately deeply romantic gesture.

Golden Stage was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. On Monday afternoon, Xiaohan found himself despairing as he scoured his latest attempt at hair gel into the sink. Behind him, the dog was whining an echo of his distress. His dad, coming home early from work, did a double take as he walked past the bathroom.

“Since when did you use hair gel? You seeing someone tonight?”

“Yes. No! No, I am. Just not like that. You don’t need to make me dinner.”

His dad was right, since when did he wear hair gel? This shit was probably from ten years ago; he’d fished it out of the bowels of their medicine cabinet. He scrubbed a towel through his hair and hoped it would dry by the time he arrived at the restaurant.

The outfit was much harder to wrangle. He settled on something artfully ordinary, pieced together to look like it hadn’t been pieced together; this? Oh yeah, I just threw on whatever was in the laundry basket, oh you think it looks good? Well, thanks, I guess.

Xiaohan slapped himself. He was not going to devolve into imaginary conversations with Fu Shen.

A final spritz of agarwood cologne to his wrists.

He ended up having to pelt for his train, leaping through the doors as they were closing.

Fu Shen arrived later than him at the competitor’s restaurant, pushing himself up the slope where Xiaohan was waiting. The sun was setting earlier and earlier now, and a chill breeze was nipping at Xiaohan’s scalp where his hair hadn’t fully dried yet. He put his hands in his jacket pockets, trying and failing to not think of the words “Yan-Fu Date”. Outside his work uniform, Fu Shen looked pretty good, jacket shed from the exertion of transporting himself and laid across his knees, showing off the flex of his arms. His hair was idly secured in a half-up style, a couple of wisps brushing his cheeks. A circular jade pendant bounced on a string against his collarbones.

“You’re early.”

“Caught the earlier train,” said Xiaohan. He came behind Fu Shen and pushed him inside.

Wheelchair-bound, Fu Shen drew attention at once. They watched as staff scrambled; one server came up, gabbling nonsense to detain them, signalling nonsense behind his back at the others. Behind him, two others were talking furiously, pointing and frowning at various tables. No doubt there was some consternation about where to put them, because the aisles didn't look wide enough for a wheelchair and the tables at the front were already occupied.

"Table under Yan for 6:30," said Fu Shen boredly. He tilted his head towards Xiaohan. "Minus points for accessibility."

The table the restaurant had prepared for them was somewhere in the middle. There were partition walls that made the path narrower, and Fu Shen couldn't get through without mowing the other patrons down. The waiters looked horrified. A couple of patrons, already seated, started to rise from their seats.

"Don't bother," said Fu Shen. He twisted around to look at Xiaohan and raised his arms.

Which was how Xiaohan ended up carrying Fu Shen, bridal style, into his seat.

"Put my wheelchair somewhere safe," said Fu Shen as Xiaohan settled him into his chair. "If you damage any part of it I'm suing. That thing cost two and a half K."

"You good?" asked Xiaohan in a low voice. He draped the jacket back over Fu Shen's knees.

"And you were so insistent I get someone else to come. Is Yi'ce going to carry me to my seat? Xuzhou?"

Xiaohan narrowed his eyes, feeling a sourness rise in his throat for reasons entirely unrelated to the logistics of tiny Yi'ce or weedy Xuzhou carrying Fu Shen. Fu Shen smirked at him as he took his own seat. Cramped conditions aside, the place was pretty nice. Golden Stage’s interior design was on the more ostentatious and traditional side, which was part of the appeal for most of their patrons. This place looked more modern: bright walls, white tables, and a gold-rimmed well in the centre of their table waiting for a pot.

“Sorry about that.” One of the waiters bustled up, setting down menus, pencils, and water, fitting their pot into the well. “It’s our first week opening, I’ll see if I can bring it up to a manager.”

“Happens a lot,” said Fu Shen in his ambiguous way. He was looking at Xiaohan.

“Um,” said the waiter. She pointed quickly at the menus. “You can tick off the items you want and press the buzzer for me to order.”

This hotpot place specialised in seafood, apparently. There was even a fishtank on the wall opposite Xiaohan, where bream and lobster were wandering morosely before their inevitable slaughter. The menu itself was chock full of fish, shellfish, and fishballs.

“Second uncle’s paying, you want lobster?” said Fu Shen. In times like this, it was hard to tell whether he was joking.

“I don’t imagine it’d be much good boiled, chef. But I defer to your expertise.”

Fu Shen raised an eyebrow, tapping the end of his pencil on the menu. “Probably shouldn’t call me chef while we’re undercover.”

“A-Shen.”

“A-Han.”

A frisson sliced through Xiaohan. Fu Shen was making fun of him, but the familiarity of the address made his heart thump. He plucked the pencil out of Fu Shen’s hand and started ticking off menu items at random.

“So,” said Fu Shen when their dishes shored up at their table, “how did you end up working at Golden Stage?” He tossed a couple of scallops into the awaiting soups: one mala spice, one ox bone broth. “Were you stalking me?”

Xiaohan shot him a look, sliding his own share of bean curd in. “I’m taking a career break.”

“You mean you never planned on becoming a hotpot restaurant manager?”

“I finished my Master’s earlier this year, was looking into PhDs but decided to take a break for a couple of years.”

“Didn’t enjoy it?” Fu Shen put his elbows on the table, swirling a fishball around in the soup with his chopsticks.

“Yeah nah, I just couldn’t handle being swamped with job offers for an ancient Chinese history major specialising in the imperial bureaucracy of the Tang dynasty. I think these are done.” He scooped up the scallops, depositing them in their bowls. “Anyway, I may as well make some money before I think about going back in.”

Fu Shen had concocted a profane soup of sauces and toppings in his bowl, and was making sure to coat his entire scallop in it. “Fair enough,” he said. “This is… fine.”

“Of course it’s fine, A-Shen, how much can you fuck up a scallop that you make the patron cook themselves?” said Xiaohan.

Fu Shen snorted at that. “You into KBBQ?”

“It’s fine.”

“You cook it yourself as well.” Fu Shen ate his second scallop, which had been in the mala soup, and winced. “But I think hotpot’s better. I’ve never been to a properly-ventilated KBBQ place; always come out smelling like meat. Easy enough to wash off myself, but then it gets into the cushions of my chair and that’s a bitch to clean.”

Xiaohan distributed the cooked bean curd and another dish landed: mussels. “Shit, I hate these.”

“You’re the one who ordered everything,” said Fu Shen.

Well, he couldn’t say that he’d ordered while flustered because Fu Shen called him “A-Han”, and had temporarily lost the ability to read. Xiaohan pursed his lips while Fu Shen snorted.

"What about you?" he countered. "How did you get where you are now?"

"If you wanted to know why I had to start using a wheelchair, you could just ask," said Fu Shen lightly.

"Very funny, chef."

Fu Shen pretended to sniffle. "It's very tragic, actually."

"The last time I saw you," said Xiaohan, "you were a very proper little private school boy. They don't really become cooks."

Fu Shen shrugged. "I was on a half scholarship, not like we were loaded like the other kids. Then I moved out, money was tight, didn't really like uni, so I got a diploma at culinary school."

It was a version of events more abbreviated than Xiaohan had expected, but he didn't push.

"As for the legs, some cunt in a quad bike ran over them," added Fu Shen, when the silence had gone a bit too long.

"Shit," said Xiaohan.

"You'd have found out sooner or later. Want a beer?"

Tsingtaos in hand, the rest of the evening passed quite enjoyably. While Xiaohan’s renewed crush had been largely forged in hostility, eating with Fu Shen reminded him of back when they had been lost in the bush together. They’d gotten along and it had been mostly pleasant, getting lost aside. The more recent spate of competitive-slash-flirtatious gift-giving had thrown his stomach into a wobble too. Fu Shen and his refined chef’s palate kept up a running commentary on the food, and it was nice to listen to someone who knew his shit. Xiaohan was not going to validate the insufferable nosiness of Wei Xuzhou and his staff but maybe, just maybe, it was starting to feel a bit like a date. And maybe, he wouldn’t mind if it were.

Fu Shen slung an idle arm around his shoulders as Xiaohan hoisted him back up and settled him in his wheelchair. The staff were too obviously enthusiastic to see them out.

The sky was completely dark now. Xiaohan shrugged back into his jacket and draped Fu Shen’s over his shoulders. He barely noticed, tapping out a report to his uncle and muttering under his breath. “...seafood fresh, except the mussels. Prawns cheap, could be fresher. Fishballs fine but probably bought mass produced ones. Standard toppings. Inaccessible seating. You got anything to add, A-Han?”

Xiaohan started. “Me?”

“Any other A-Hans around?”

“If there are then I’d hope you weren’t talking to them.” He put a hand on the back of the wheelchair and peered at the text message. “I think their tick-off menu and buzzer was a good system. Although our own system works well for us as is. People coming here would expect something fairly different from Golden Stage.”

Fu Shen added this to the end of his message and sent it off. It was just past 8, and Xiaohan didn’t want to go home.

“Are you full?” he asked.

“Stuffed.”

Xiaohan sighed. “And here I was, about to invite you to dessert.”

Fu Shen tilted his head, elbow coming to perch on his armrest. “I’m listening.”

Ugh, he was wonderful like this. Xiaohan pushed him down the street as stragglers parted before the wheelchair. In the distance, they spotted Golden Stage, closed for the evening. The neighbourhood was dominated by Chinese shops, pretty much, built by Cantonese immigrants and later joined by proximate cultures. It was close to where Xiaohan lived, and he had always come here with his dad for groceries. Working here full time was a very familiar feeling. Now, he and Fu Shen were entering one of the Chinese groceries still open at this time of night, and Fu Shen gleefully pointed out his favourite products.

"Those noodles have shrimp roe in them, fucking delicious. Grab a pack for me."

Xiaohan fetched it for him, indulgent like an old dog having its ears tugged at by a toddler. "So bossy. How do you even shop by yourself?"

"I make other shoppers grab stuff for me," Fu Shen replied instantly, snapping up the noodles from Xiaohan’s hands. "People feel awkward the second they see the wheelchair. Easy prey. Have you had that apricot drink before? So good."

Dutifully, Xiaohan fetched him one from the fridge. “We were looking for dessert, and I’m helping you do your groceries now.”

“Well, it’s hard doing them when your arms can only reach the third shelf.” Without a hint of contrition, Fu Shen rummaged in a pocket and flourished a reusable bag, into which he put his goods. “I have a grabby stick too. I’ll let you in on a secret though. I can kinda walk.”

“Hm?”

Fu Shen twisted around in his seat, deviousness glittering in his eyes. “Only with leg braces on, though, and not for long. But sometimes I’ll just get up and grab something off the shelf, and you can see people try not to freak out. It’s so fucking funny. To be fair, they also freak out if I cross my legs. People have some weird ideas about your level of mobility when you use a wheelchair.”

Xiaohan didn’t quite know what to say. He moved a box on the ground out of the way of Fu Shen’s chair. “Would you rather be able to walk?”

Fu Shen shrugged. “I was pretty adventurous before, so I guess yeah. But the chair is what it is. Rather chair than no chair.”

They had come up to the dessert fridge, which they subjected to a thorough analysis. “This is a bit dismal,” said Xiaohan. Sure enough, it was stocked with litre tubs of ice cream and ten-packs of ice cream sticks, hardly appropriate for a two-person dessert.

“Tell you what,” said Fu Shen. “I’ll take you to a place.”

They paid for the groceries. The place Fu Shen had in mind was a quiet few minutes’ walk away, in a part of the neighbourhood Xiaohan did not frequent: a late night Taiwanese dessert shop, windows adorned with pictures of colourful tapioca mounds. Fu Shen found a table out the front while Xiaohan ducked inside to order—mango sago for himself, grass jelly and taro balls for Fu Shen—and picked his way back out juggling their laden bowls.

It was hard to ignore the way that Fu Shen had fully unwound tonight. In the cool evening, his jacket was shrugged back on, which unfortunately hid his arms from view, but his hair had been tousled by the breeze and the bracing air had left colour on his cheeks. The tension between them was palpably uncurling and Xiaohan’s crush was beating a tattoo on the walls of his chest. Fu Shen lit up when he saw his dessert coming.

“I’ve never been around here before,” said Xiaohan, trying for casual. “Good selection.”

“Isn’t it?” Fu Shen tucked happily into his food, as though he had not been complaining about being stuffed mere minutes ago. “I live around here actually. So I’ve really been around the”—he affected an ironic tone—“food scene here.”

“You do? Live around here?” Xiaohan took a slurp of his mango sago, which was good in the way mango sago could be relied on to be.

Fu Shen gestured with his spoon. “Just a couple of streets back there, renting a flat.” A sharp smile flashed across his features. “No flatmates.”

Xiaohan felt the back of his neck grow warm. He took a quick slurp of his dessert. On his second dip, Fu Shen detained him with a touch to the wrist.

“I haven’t tried this flavour before,” he said. “Let me have some.”

Xiaohan seriously doubted that Fu Shen had never had mango sago before. He held his breath as Fu Shen moved the wrist up to his mouth, and took a slurp from Xiaohan’s own spoon.

“Love mango,” he said, licking his lips and looking directly into Xiaohan’s eyes.

Pushing down the fluttering feeling in his stomach, Xiaohan held his gaze and took another spoonful of his dessert. “You’ve been flirting with me, chef.”

Fu Shen quirked an eyebrow. “Why not?” He twirled the spoon in his own bowl.

“I thought you’d always hold it against me.”

Fu Shen hummed. “I thought so too.” Xiaohan knew he was thinking about it: the sunlight winking through the eucalypts, the orange flash of the rescue team’s uniform, the stretcher and foil thermal blanket, the concerned face of Fu Shen’s teacher turning into a scowl as Xiaohan murmured into her ear. “Certainly when I was like, age sixteen. But to be honest it’s hard to hold onto something like that for so long. Teenagers are dumb. Plus you’re kinda cute now, and it’s hot when you get snippy.”

It was a lot to process. Xiaohan settled on, “I’m not cute.”

“Are too,” Fu Shen singsonged. “So, is it working? Are you seduced?”

“Maybe,” said Xiaohan, shooting a coy glance over his spoon that he knew Fu Shen would interpret. It felt perhaps too early to confess that he had always carried a little torch for Fu Shen, and that the embers had roared back to life when they met again. “I had your XO sauce with the goose on rice for lunch today. It was pretty good.”

Fu Shen laughed, for once without the armour of his irony. Xiaohan was a little enraptured. In the artificial light filtering outside through the shop window, he was almost glowing. At this hour, the street was growing quieter and it felt like the neighbourhood was theirs. “Finish your food, A-Han,” he said. “I’ll walk you back to the station.”

It was a short, companionable walk. When they arrived, Xiaohan caught Fu Shen’s hand, reluctant to let go. The electronic timetable ticked down the minutes until his train would arrive.

“I should head,” he said, and Fu Shen tugged him down by the sleeve for a hug. Caught by surprise, his lips brushed the side of Fu Shen’s cheek on the way down and both of them started. A smirk crept across Fu Shen’s features.

“That was nice,” he said. “Let’s go for another one.”

He aimed for Xiaohan’s lips this time.

Xiaohan missed his train.

“Oh my God,” said Yu Qiaoting on Wednesday at 8pm, making a quick dash back inside from the back door. Her hands were over her eyes. “Don’t go out there. Oh my God. I need to bleach my brain.”

That, of course, only made everyone want to go out all the more. Qiaoting made an attempt to block the way, but it was five nosy cooks and waiters against one. With her discarded, Wei Xuzhou did the honours of flinging the door open. “Aha!” he roared.

The dim yellow street lamp illuminated the outline of the head chef and operations manager curled together in an exceedingly intimate position. The onlookers’ eyes widened as they took in the scene: Chef Fu eating a dried jujube date—fed to him by Yan Xiaohan!

“What is it?” said Xiaohan coldly.

“We knew it,” crowed Xuzhou, pointing. “It was a date. You guys are canoodling!”

Xiaohan narrowed his eyes, hand curling tighter around a cluster of dates. Fu Shen chewed up the rest of his date bite by bite, and his lips brushed against Xiaohan’s fingers. He seemed to pay it no mind.

“You will find,” Xiaohan said, enunciating each syllable, “that Golden Stage is near a moment of crisis. A competitor has opened nearby. The chef and I are working hard on experimenting with our ingredients.”

Everyone’s jaw dropped. Such blatant lies, told with such a straight face.

“Y-you were feeding him!” cried Qiaoting, who had returned to the doorway after curiosity won out over shock. “I saw you! We all saw!”

“Yes, Chef Fu has touched raw meat. It would not be hygienic for him to use his own hands.” Xiaohan unfurled from his crouch and swept towards the gathered crowd, ice in his eyes. Behind him, Fu Shen’s smirk was widening all the more. “The chef and I are on our break. Do any of you have a good reason to be disturbing us right now?”

The staff gibbered and shuffled out, shamed. But Xuzhou’s spirits refused to be dampened. “The Yan-Fu Date totally worked,” he spent the rest of the night telling anyone who would listen, which included bewildered patrons at their establishment. “The thing is totally real and also a thing.”

Xiaohan, observing from behind an extremely (extremely!) discreet dividing screen, made to enact another act of petty revenge when a hand on his wrist detained him. He turned. Fu Shen’s eyes were sparkling.

“Let him be, Han-ge,” he said. “Let him have his moment.”

And when he tugged Xiaohan down for a quick peck, well. How could he refuse? Xuzhou could have his moment. Let him have as many moments as he wanted. Xiaohan had everything he wanted right here.