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‘Don’t do anything weird in front of her, okay?’
‘Weird?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Like… this?’
‘Fu—He Tian.’
He grins. Holds his hands up. I surrender. ‘Sorry,’ he says, with the kind of smile that makes Guan Shan realise just how the fuck he gets away with everything at school. In life. Why it is that Guan Shan has really forgiven him for most of the things he does. Why it is that he’s probably a little bit in love with him, like it’s a shard of glass that makes up the stained window.
‘Just… Behave,’ he says.
He unlocks the door, pushes inside. They toe their shoes off, and Guan Shan can feel He Tian at his back, almost against him. He knows he’s looking around. Taking everything in. The shoes on the rack, the books across the dinner table, the trinkets on top of the TV that his mum bought him when she went to Spain once. The basketball that’s nearly flat by the sofa, the cushions faded and stained with spilled coffee. The rug by the door, corners curled and upturned and such a hazard, Guan Shan, I know, I’ll fix it this weekend before I break my neck.
He can feel him leaning in, peering over his shoulder, taking in the smell of something spicy from the kitchen because his mum still clings to her Sichuanese roots. He hopes, suddenly, that He Tian likes spicy food because what if he has to drink water and eat yoghurt for the rest of the night and his eyes water all through the meal? Guan Shan supposes it won’t be that bad if it means he has to kiss his mouth to cool him.
‘Mum?’ he calls. ‘I’m home.’
Like she was waiting – and of course she was; she’s got that grin on her face – her head pops around the corner and she’s untying her apron, bundles it up and throws it onto the floor.
She’s smoothing her skirt down with one hand, touching her hair, and outstretching the other. Shaking He Tian’s hand before Guan Shan can get out of the way fast enough.
‘It is so good to finally meet you, He Tian,’ she’s saying, and He Tian is just smiling and his eyes are wide and he’s taking in the hair and the eyes and Guan Shan knows how much he looks like her. ‘So good. Guan Shan tells me so much about you.’
Guan Shan shifts. ‘Mum…’
‘He even got the looks down to a tee,’ she says, and then she winks, and Christ they’reseventeen. She looks at Guan Shan. ‘His eyes really are like the night sky in Déyáng Shì.’
‘Oh my god… I never—That wasn’t how I said it, Mum—’
‘You’re from Sichuan, Mrs Mo?’ He Tian says, clearing his throat, polite.
It’s not like Guan Shan hasn’t told him before. It’s not like he hasn’t told him, specifically, that his mother would spend the evening talking about Sichuan if she could, how she comes from a family of rice farmers, how she moved when she fell in love with Guan Shan’s father at seventeen – your age, really, He Tian – how she misses it and goes back when she can, because her sister still runs the farm, how she used to take Guan Shan every summer but he’s not that interested in rice fields and farmland anymore and it’s understandable, really, but still a shame.
‘I’ve never been,’ He Tian says. As if that wouldn’t immediately warrant his mother’s invitation. If, of course, he doesn’t have plans for the summer.
‘I’d love to,’ he says. ‘Granted, of course, that Guan Shan comes?’
And his mother blushes because for a second she realises it sounds like she was inviting himon his own, and Guan Shan’s blushing because of course he’ll go there with him if he wants, idiot.
And it’s about then that they realise they’re all still standing by the front door, and something smells like it’s burning in the kitchen, so his mum sprints back to the stove and He Tian takes a breath and Guan Shan wants to hide.
‘Sorry,’ he mutters.
‘She’s… not like you,’ He Tian says eventually, looking at him.
‘No,’ Guan Shan says. He shifts. ‘My dad was kind of the quiet one. Didn’t say much.’
‘Was?’
‘Is. I… don’t see him often. They transferred him to a place in Gansu and, um, visitor privileges aren’t great.’
He Tian doesn’t say anything to this, and they walk further into his home, put their bags on the floor. He Tian sits down next to him on the sofa, and Guan Shan laughs when he sees that he sinks so far down that his knees, before he moves, are higher than him.
‘No one sits in that spot,’ Guan Shan tells him, because the springs had broken a year ago and the padding flattened a while back too.
‘I wonder why,’ He Tian says dryly. He shifts to the left so that he’s sitting higher, thigh pressed flush against Guan Shan’s, and Guan Shan decides that this kind of touching is okay, because it’s necessary, isn’t it?
They put the TV on, and He Tian doesn’t say anything when the cooking channel is the first thing to come on – he presses a button and it flicks to some mundane show about nature and cruelty-free pig farming and high peanut crops that year – and his mum talks to them across the room.
Her back is to them, but she keeps throwing smiles and jokes over her shoulder. Sometimes it’s like she talking to herself, and Guan Shan is grateful and sort of touched that He Tian gives her better responses to her words than he ever does. At one point He Tian wanders over because she asks if he likes spicy food, if he’d like to try it.
He says yes to both, and it’s a funny sight. He Tian’s head almost disappears above the archway to the kitchen because he’s so damned tall, and his mother’s looking up at him and laughing with the ladle in her hand because he’s telling her about the time Guan Shan poured in a bottle of seasoned, spicy stock into the stew he made. He leaves out that Guan Shan hadn’t really been all that willing at the time, or that He Tian had paid him afterwards.
But he does tell her that it was actually the best thing he’d tasted in a while, and that he’s tried to make it on his own but it’s never very good – maybe it was the added stock. He’s saying this to her but he’s also saying this to him, even though he doesn’t look at Guan Shan once from where he’s sitting on the sofa, not really watching the TV.
Guan Shan wonders if his mother can tell, and what she’s thinking of him. Of He Tian. Of himself. Of them. Because she’s not really said anything. Only ever listened and given spirited answers that things always work themselves out and have you tried talking to him, Guan Shan? Never, really, asked about the mechanics of the relationship.
He’s not really sure what he’d say anyway.
His mum lays out the best china on the table, but even the best has chips in it and the paintwork has been scored by the scratch of spoons and metal chopsticks. The bowl she eats from is glued poorly together after Guan Shan broke it when he was eight. He’d hidden the pieces in his bedroom and glued them back together when she left for her night shift at the hospital. She’d told him, when she saw it drying on the table, that it looked better that way anyway.
‘This is delicious, Mrs Mo,’ He Tian says when they’re sitting at the table.
‘Not too spicy?’ she says.
‘I can handle it,’ he says. ‘Guan Shan’s cooking prepared me.’
‘That was an accident, you dick.’
‘What did I say about penis-related insults at the table?’
Guan Shan looks at his mum. ‘You didn’t?’
She opens her mouth. Pauses. ‘You might be right. But let’s not when we have guests over, all right?’
‘We never have guests over.’
‘Then that makes He Tian unique, doesn’t it?’
Guan Shan says nothing, swallows a mouthful of water and helps himself to more soup. He Tian’s eyes are shining when he glances at him. Unique, he mouths at Guan Shan.
The rest of the dinner is filled with He Tian pandering to his mother, as if it’s something he needs to do to her earn her trust. As if he hasn’t talked about He Tian an embarrassing amount already. As if his mother, when he got home from school, hadn’t started asking how He Tian was today before she asked him how his day was, and he was only ever half-sure if she was joking.
He Tian keeps looking at him like he’s got something to prove, like he’s making sure that Guan Shan sees how much he’s behaving. Some of the time he looks like he’s thinking. Trying to place Guan Shan in the context of this place – his home. Trying to imagine Guan Shan walking in the door when he gets home from school. Trying to imagine him stumbling out of his bedroom in the morning and how his hair might look and what he wears to bed and if he’ll stick his head in the fridge like something’s going to miraculously appear or if he’s the type to have made everything for breakfast the night before. Looks at him like he can figure something about him out. Like the apartment was going to reveal something about him that he’d missed.
Sometimes he looks at him in a different way. Like he’s looking at his hands, or his lips. And Guan Shan is only aware that his mum is sitting next to him and she probably knows everything and, despite that, he can’t stop looking at He Tian’s hands and his lips and his eyes and his throat and the lift of his collarbones beneath his school shirt.
‘There’s really no need,’ his mum says when they’re finished and He Tian offers to help with the dishes because they don’t have a fancy dishwasher like in He Tian’s fancy apartment that, now that he thinks about it, looks around his own home, is really fucking empty. Like he can stand and look out of the windows down onto the city and realise only how far away from everything he is. And the thought is… It’s just kind of sad.
‘I insist,’ He Tian says, and Guan Shan excuses himself when his mum tells him to go and blow up the air bed in his room because you’re staying, aren’t you, He Tian? And how can He Tian possibly say no?
He uses an old pump that sounds like it’s about to blow up when he first turns it on, full of dust because he doesn’t know when he used it last. Maybe when he and She Li were seven and doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago. He fits the spare sheets onto it and gives He Tian one of his pillows, knows that it smells of him and his mum’s lime and coconut scented washing detergent.
He doesn’t know why, but he stands in the hallway when he’s done, because he can hear his mum talking, and her voice is quiet, which is strange, and he can hear the sound of ceramic clicking and the swish of dishwater.
‘He found it hard,’ she’s saying. ‘What child wouldn’t? What boy wouldn’t?’
‘They were close?’ He Tian says.
‘They spent a lot of time together. I’ve always worked shifts, so that can make things… difficultsometimes. I felt… Like I wasn’t there when I always need to be. Afterwards.’
‘I don’t think he’s ever thought that.’
‘He’s said that?’
Guan Shan hasn’t. Has never, really, talked about his mum much around He Tian. And He Tian had never really talked about his own life much. It was like once they got to school anything outside of that just wasn’t really real. Like the personal wasn’t something that belonged in their conversation when they were in uniform and when He Tian was reaching for him and messing with him and making him nervous and making him something else, too.
But He Tian says, ‘He admires you so much,’ and Guan Shan has never said that. He wishes now that he has, because his mum deserved being talked about like that, and because it’s true.
She clears her throat. ‘Well,’ she says. And then: ‘You know he talks about you all the time too?’
He can hear the smile in his voice, the faint sound of delighted surprise. ‘Really?’ he says, and it’s so fucking self-indulgent.
‘Bed’s done,’ Guan Shan says, shutting the bedroom door again, louder, because he refuses to let his mum gush about everything he’s ever said about He Tian. Refuses.
‘I was just telling He Tian—’
‘About your job at the hospital?’ Guan Shan says, walking into the kitchen. ‘Because he’s really interested in that. Wants to be a doctor, don’t you, He Tian? Long white coat and a stethoscope?’
He Tian’s look is dry, but he’s smiling still – smiling more tonight, real smiling, than Guan Shan has ever seen him do before. And it’s so fucking sly. Because he knows that Guan Shan heard his mum’s words. Knows it was true.
‘So, what have you been saying about me to your mother?’
‘Shut up,’ Guan Shan sighs. He’s pulling his shirt over his head, knows that He Tian is sitting there. On his bed. And he’s watching. And Guan Shan could have gone into the bathroom but he doesn’t because he knows he can’t help himself around He Tian, and because the way he sits there and looks at him, eyes hooded, lips pressed, arms folded, makes him chew the inside of his mouth and gets something stuck in the inside of his throat.
‘I’m really interested.’
‘I bet you are,’ Guan Shan says. He Tian leans back until his shoulders are against the wall, and the hem of his t-shirt has ridden up to show the faint paleness of his stomach, the line of hair that dips beneath his waistband. He runs his hands across Guan Shan’s bed, slips one beneath his pillow. And then he stills.
‘What’s this?’ he says, and this time Guan Shan stills too.
Because he’s holding a piece of paper that he must have read a thousand times by now, creased and worn so the ink has faded and the paper is soft to the touch. It’s not difficult to tell what it is. They both recognise it.
‘You kept it?’ He Tian says. The words are quiet and he’s only looking at the note, not at him, and Guan Shan doesn’t know what to say.
He swallows, throat dry enough that it clicks. ‘It—I—Yeah,’ he says eventually. ‘It’s, uh, it’s fucking stupid I know but—’
‘It’s not stupid,’ He Tian says. ‘It’s not.’
Guan Shan’s biting his lip, and he feels awkward. Shouldn’t feel awkward in his room, but somehow He Tian seems to fill the space. Always makes him feel small anyway, but seeing him on his bed, feet hanging over the edge, is something else. And Guan Shan always has to crane his neck to look up at him, to kiss him, but now he thinks about climbing onto his bed because he’d be kneeling and looking down at him and because he can because they’re in his room because He Tian is sitting on his bed and looking at him like he’d let him.
‘We should go to sleep,’ Guan Shan says.
‘Really?’ He Tian says. ‘That’s what you want to do?’
‘I said that’s what we should do.’
He Tian sighs. ‘I can’t sleep on soft beds.’
‘Then sleep in mine.’
‘Okay,’ He Tian says. He’s beneath the duvet before Guan Shan can even say anything, head propped up with a hand.
‘You’re an idiot,’ Guan Shan says. He turns off the light. The air bed is already half-empty when he lies down, and it makes a low whistling sound as he shifts around. ‘That was the bed,’ he says.
He hears laughter, a kind of faint breathy sound. And for a while they do nothing. Just lie there, and it’s dark and Guan Shan would be lying if he said he wasn’t distinctly aware of the fact that he could hear He Tian breathing. That he couldn’t see the vague outline of him in the dark when he turned over. That he was looking at He Tian because he knew that He Tian was looking at him, and it was unnerving, and made him feel bare and open that he could see him through the dark and wasn’t saying anything. That neither of them were saying anything, and that if he reached out he could touch him and probably He Tian would let him.
‘You know,’ He Tian says quietly. ‘I didn’t say you had to sleep on the floor.’
By ten o’clock Mrs Mo has dried and put away the dishes. She’s put leftovers in two separate containers for He Tian and Guan Shan in the fridge for tomorrow. She’s turned the TV off at the plug and wiped her make-up off, cleaned the table down and rearranged the cushion sofas. The boys’ shoes are put away because leaving them at the door is not just away, and it’s only then that she thinks to check on them.
Maybe, she thinks, hand on the handle, she probably shouldn’t. Because they’re old enough. Because they don’t need checking on like they’re eight.
But she does, because he’s her son, and because He Tian clearly means just as much to him as he’s always said he did, except—
Except Guan Shan is in his bed, and He Tian is too, and Guan Shan’s head is on his chest and He Tian’s arms are around him like it’s natural. Like it’s how they’ve slept every time before. Like when they stay at He Tian’s, which Guan Shan has done a lot lately, this is how things work between them.
Like they understand how they work together.
And Mrs Mo blinks. Says, ‘Well,’ and shuts the door with a quiet click because she doesn’t want to wake them and because the hallway light might disturb them. She nods to herself. ‘Really should have seen that one coming.’