Our Last Chance
By Nasu Hasami
"I would not wish any companion in the world but you."
~William Shakespeare~
When it arrived, shiny and new and wrapped in plastic, it didn't make a lot of sense.
Li Shang had been at work, returning to his office from a lunch meeting, and there it was, waiting for him on his desk, a whisper of nostalgia and a ghost of the past.
Sure, Li remembered ordering it online, but he'd forgotten why. Peer pressure. Guilt. Alcohol poisoning. Not owning a cell phone hadn't hindered his life in any way in the last few years. His secretaries answered his work calls and his executive assistant handled his personal life, or managed what little was left of Li's personal life. Either Ms Lu or Ms Guo were always with Li, so security wasn't an issue. There was always a way to make or take a call without owning a cell. But lately, things had changed.
Before Li's father had passed away, it made sense to own a cell phone. Li Shang might have been the CEO's eldest son, but his position was never an absolute guarantee because of biology. Li Shang was a just a salaryman with a corner office and a handful of underlings. It was a challenging time, but back then, Li Shang had had time for a personal life. Then his father didn't return home from a business trip, and three days' later the body of a Cantonese businessman was found in a London hotel. The body was identified as Li Guangling.
The board of directors were unanimous in their decision and made Li Shang the acting CEO the day the body was found. There was a media frenzy and the entire Li Enterprises went into crisis management. It was a simple decision made by the media team: if your life didn't fit into the crisis management plan, your life didn't exist. Thus, Li Shang became the poster-child of filial piety.
Things were only made worse when Li Shang's little brother, Li Yiji, suddenly eloped with his idol girlfriend, and drew in more cameras to the situation. They were trapped at home, at the Li estate, and stalked by paparazzi everywhere they went. In an instant, Li Shang's life was over.
Fa Mulan messaged Li Shang after he'd called her to talk about what happened. It was a simple text, but their relationship hadn't ever been complicated. Not really. There was a one-night stand and a handful of romantic years together. I wish you all the best was the most Fa could say. Li Shang had never proposed, not even after all the plans he'd made. And with Fa's precarious fugitive status, they couldn't continue their relationship while the media made a circus of Li Shang's life. He'd once told her he'd keep her safe, and he intended to even in those changed circumstances. A promise was a promise. All the same, it was heartbreaking when that very promise broke the future it was made to keep.
When the board of directors proposed moving the headquarters to the Shanghai office, Li Shang agreed. By then, there was nothing holding him to Hong Kong anyway.
Li Shang's mother was another reason for the move. After the death of her husband, Li ma couldn't cope, and, in the end, Li Shang moved in with his mother, moving them both to Shanghai to be closer to their extended family.
A month after Li had settled into Shanghai living, Li and Fa's relationship officially ended with a second text.
Fa Mulan was in America at the time, and Li Shang knew she wouldn't respond when he sent her the text with his new address.
What could Fa say or do? It was still unknown if she could enter the PRC without being arrested. If she risked visiting him, and was discovered, there was a chance she could face the death penalty.
The thing that they were, that they had been, it had to end. There was nothing that could render the pain and deliver it from its exquisite agony. Their five year relationship was over. There wouldn't be any more international rendezvouses with a beautiful fugitive. There wouldn't be a strange woman trying to run away from Li at sunrise. There were no more incidental thrashings. No. With Fa Mulan, and with what they had been, it was all over.
A week passed. Then a month. Then a year. Then another.
There were no messages, and when Li Shang was finally sick of waiting, he gave his cell phone to his PA to deal with. (Ms Wen saved all the work-related numbers into her Samsung and disposed of the CEO's cell.)
Morning came. Then evening. Then another morning. Days passed. Then weeks. Months. Years. Li Shang was twenty-eight-years-old when he met a girl at a bar in Hong Kong. A girl that talked about the cultural revolution with unabashed passion, and a girl with a near lethal right hook; a girl he took home, and spent three years romancing before he decided he wanted to marry her.
When they met, Fa Mulan was only twenty-five-years-old.
The shiny, plastic wrapped box sitting on his desk made Li Shang think about another box: a smaller box. A box he'd carried on a spontaneous flight to Minsk years and years ago. A box that had disappeared from the hotel room before Li Shang had the chance to ask a certain someone a certain question on bended knee.
Li had thought Fa hadn't noticed he was on the cusp of proposing. A few months later, he'd learn otherwise.
There'd been the present of a small diamond band Fa thought of as an expensive gift. She wore it on the index finger of her right hand. Fa had made a point of saying she was glad Li Shang wasn't rushing things.
It had been a month since she'd moved to Hong Kong, with an idea, at least to Li Shang, of the move being permanent. They shared a wardrobe and a bed and a life. The proposal seemed superfluous because they were living together, and the decision for Fa to be based in Hong Kong was because of Li Shang. Surely, Li had thought, if they were settling in together, keeping a home together, then marriage was an eventuation, not an option. They had just never discussed marriage because it was a certainty.
But it was all a fantasy. Fa lasted three months in Hong Kong before she disappeared, and Li Shang came home to find a half empty closet and a post-it note stuck to his fridge. His father died suddenly three weeks' later, and Fa didn't return to Hong Kong for the funeral. It was the beginning of a rift that grew over months and months until it slowly dissolved completely.
Li Shang understood why Fa couldn't attend the funeral, but he'd wanted nothing more than to have her with him during that period of mourning. Perhaps, he'd though, the media and the world would see her differently as she held her lover's hand and supported him through the loss of a parent.
Almost a year later, the antique diamond solitaire that had gone missing in Minsk appeared on his desk at work, in a postage parcel, with a return address for an apartment complex in California, USA.
Li's grandmother's ring, it seemed, hadn't gone missing at all. Fa had found it and stolen it. She didn't want to get married. She didn't want to tarnish Li Shang's career. She didn't want to be the reason for his failure or remembered as the reason the Li family had fallen into disgrace.
The note left with the ring was sadder than a real break up. It wasn't dramatic or longwinded. It was just two honest sentences.
I know it was wrong to take this, but, back then, I would have said no for the wrong reasons. Now, I'm saying no for the right reasons.
At business school, Li Shang had learned that it was difficult to be angry with the right person at the right time for the right reason. Even so, there was something in him that knew he would have been making a mistake if he'd married Fa at thirty-three-years-old. Their lives were just so different. It would have been a struggle to juggle and balance things. The more Fa made headlines, the more obvious the differences seemed. Li wanted a calm life, and he couldn't have that with such a wild woman, no matter what his private affections for that woman may have been.
Settled in Shanghai, Li Shang moved on with his life at his mother's insistence, and married a girl of her choosing.
The marriage lasted three miserable years before it ended in divorce. Alimony was extravagant even with Li Shang being granted full custody of his son and the family's pet cats.
Then, after Li Hualing began school, Li Shang realised he needed a cell phone.
On his fortieth birthday, Li Shang saw the night in with a beer and some online shopping after putting his son to bed. A few days later, the shiny blue box appeared on his desk at work. Inside the box was a shiny blue Samsung.
The first thing Li did after turning the device on and setting it up wasn't to google Fa Mulan, but it was in his top ten things.
There wasn't a lot of information about her anymore.
Fa had lived in the States for a few years to teach Chinese History and Literature at Berkley in California. She'd been in between Hong Kong and Taipei since, for academic purposes. Then she had faded into obscurity. There was nothing about her personal life online anymore. No photos or pictures, not even her date of birth (8 August 1988), or her place of birth (Kaohsiung City, Taiwan). It didn't seem odd. People in the limelight often had a moment of fashionable popularity before disappearing. It seemed to be what had happened to Fa Mulan. After being absolved of her petty crimes in the PRC, and acknowledged for her work as a government official, there had never been another public mention of her name. And it seemed that with her freedom, Fa Mulan had vanished forever.
Failing to find closure with internet stalking, Li Shang pocketed his phone and drove to the pick-up zone of his son's school. He was leaning against his Audi when a small boy and his mother walked by him. He was skimming over headlines, catching up on the happenings of Hong Kong and Seoul.
Since the divorce, Li Shang hadn't bothered with women. It would have been difficult enough to date being a divorcee, but Li Shang was a divorcee with one child, two cats, and a life sentence of child support even though he had full custody. Women just weren't worth the time or the effort, and Li tried to ensure he never gave the impression he was interested. He hadn't even looked up at the mother until she spoke.
The little boy was slightly older than Li's son, and the mother still looked like she could throw a pretty mean right hook.
'Pork for dinner?' The mother asked her son. She brushed the hair away from the boy's eyes as she knelt to his height. He shook his head.
'Yeye wants to take us out for barbecue,' said the woman said, tapping her son on the nose.
The numbers percolated in Li's mind.
Fa would be in her mid-thirties, and the boy looked about nine-years-old, maybe ten. It wasn't an impossible judgement to make, but it was unlikely that the child was his. Surely, if Li had fathered a child, Fa would have wanted compensation of some kind.
Li Hualing interrupted Li's thoughts a moment later, running at his father, screaming and squealing at the top of his lungs. The boy had been born screaming and had screamed ever since. The mother turned to look at the loud little boy with a smile on her face. The smile only grew the moment her eyes met Li Shang's.
As Fa stepped towards Li, more than ten years disappeared in six small steps.
'CEO Li,' said Fa Mulan. She bowed to him as though to acknowledge his station—something she had never done when they were dating.
Li Shang nodded his head as he swung his son up into his arms. Li Hualing fell against his father's shoulder and wrapped his arms around him.
'Fa Mulan,' said Li Shang. Her son was swinging on her arms. He looked eager to be anywhere but the school yard.
'This is Fa Xiong,' said Fa. 'My nephew.'
'Li Hualing,' said Li, bouncing his five-year-old. 'My son.'
Li Shang doubted the boy was Fa's nephew. As far as he could recall, Fa was an only child. Everything was steeped in an awkward silence. Even so, Li Shang couldn't call her out on an indiscretion at the entrance of his son's school, no matter how much he might have wanted to.
'Sorry, I should be more direct; it just isn't something I talk about casually,' said Fa. 'If you give me your cell phone, I can add my number and we can talk later. Xiong's got piano and then soccer practice. I need to get going.'
Later that night, after his son was tucked into bed, and Li Shang had grown bored of TV, he texted Fa Mulan.
Hello was all the message said. Blunt, and to the point. Li Shang didn't expect a response.
It was nearly two hours before his phone pinged to life. Then it rang.
'Good evening,' said Fa. 'Sorry, I didn't get your message earlier. I'm still settling into this bath and bed routine thing. Xiong hates homework and showering and anything that isn't his Nintendo at the moment. There are small battles from pick-up until bedtime. It's exhausting!'
Li Shang sipped his beer in silence. Yes, he was judging her. If Fa Mulan had been a mother for the better part of ten years, surely she didn't wake up surprised by it every day.
'Does it get easier?' she asked. 'You know, as they get older?'
More silence. Fa seemed to understand and sighed.
'Fine, I suppose I deserve that. Xiong was my older sister's son,' she explained. 'Four years ago, my jeje and her husband passed away, and my parents became Xiong's guardians. Ma passed away not long afterwards. I moved in last year, to help ba out, and became Xiong's legal guardian. It's just the three of us now: Ba, Xiong and me. I don't like talking about it in front of Xiong. He's started to call me ma, and I've been his ma for nearly a year now, but I know he remembers his parents. I know it's hard on him. He was only six when they passed. He was old enough to remember.'
There was a slice of guilt in Li Shang's chest. He swigged his beer and switched his TV off.
'I'm sorry, Mulan. For a brief and obtuse moment, I thought he was mine. Possibly.'
The confession at least drew a strained laugh from Fa.
'We were always careful. And I don't know what that says about me if you didn't think I'd tell you we had a child.'
'I don't know you would have,' said Li. 'In the end, we both thought very differently: of each other and of ourselves.'
The thing about being divorced was that it meant you'd seen an ugly, immature side of yourself in arguments and in adulthood. It changed your thinking about how to handle situations. And it changed the way you monitored your behaviour. Li Shang had once told his ex-wife she'd never been that great in bed during a business dinner. The moment had struck him for two reasons. The first reason being that he realised he'd never seen sleeping with his wife as anything other than a marital chore, and the second being that he didn't care who knew that he had a shit love life.
The second realisation had made Li Shang conscious that he didn't care what people thought of him. It wasn't necessarily a nice trait, but it had stayed with him post-divorce.
Fa sighed and Li heard what he thought was a cat purring from her side of the line.
'One of my biggest regrets was that I didn't treat you better,' said Fa. 'I led you on for years knowing we couldn't be anything and couldn't go anywhere. I wanted you so badly it just didn't seem to matter. I thought there'd be some loophole we could find and work around, but the loop never happened and we just became a hole instead.'
'It wasn't meant to be,' said Li.
The assumed stolen ring and family heirloom was still in the study in his house. All the photos and mementos were packed into a banker's box. He had wanted so badly to believe everything would work out with Fa, but he knew it was over the moment he moved from Hong Kong. Fa Mulan would never give up anything for a man. And in all honesty, Li Shang would think less of her if she did.
'I was the girlfriend from hell,' sighed Fa. 'I don't know how you just accepted the situation as it was.'
'I had to,' said Li. 'I had no choice, not if I wanted you.'
'You didn't ever want me that badly,' said Fa. 'I was just your first serious relationship, and, coincidentally, probably your least serious.'
'Shut up,' said Li, laughing despite his best efforts not to. 'At least the sex was never a problem. The sex was probably the serious part of our relationship. It's a pity our relationship got in the way of the great sex.'
Fa groaned. 'God, I miss sex. I think I miss it more than I miss my old life. And I'd only ever been with one man, so it isn't like I have anything to compare it to. But, well, you were always pretty great, even if you were jet-lagged or overtired or not particularly interested.'
'Thanks,' said Li. 'I'll be sure to use you as a reference if I ever decide to date again.'
'No problems,' said Fa. 'I might do the same…but it'll never happen. I'm scarier than a single mother because Xiong isn't mine. I adopted him. It's a real turn-off to most eligible bachelors. I mean, it labels me with the potential to adopt strangers. I'm tarnished. No one wants me.'
'You should try being divorced,' said Li. 'I swear, there are times I feel as though I have Cuckhold tattooed on my forehead.'
'Really?' said Fa, sounding distant. 'I thought the baba thing was working pretty well for you this afternoon. It was definitely working for me. Besides, your son is very handsome. He'd be an attractive lure for a lot of women.'
'He gets it from his father,' said Li Shang, completely serious. 'I was a handsome boy. Hualing looks just like me at that age.'
'So modest,' said Fa, laughing now.
'It's my greatest flaw,' added Li. 'I'm modest, understatedly handsome, precociously wealthy, and I have an IQ of 157. I'm a great catch.'
'You were,' said Fa. 'And the sex, god, I'm sure we made stars explode.'
Li Shang smiled at the memories.
The intimacies he'd shared with Fa Mulan had been experimental and fun. They were in their prime, in their youth, and their juvenile adoration had carried them a great distance. It was a pity it had ended with a text. Li Shang was still ruminating on his lost romance when Fa interrupted him.
'I'm free next Thursday, if you want to get dinner,' she said. 'I could do lunch on Tuesday, if that works, if you want to catch up in person, not just snark at each other over the phone. It might be nice to have an adult conversation with an adult during an adult meal. I mean, this is great, but I feel like I'm being cheated out of experiencing this understated handsomeness of yours.'
Li Shang thought about it as he patted his cat. He made a mental note to check his schedule, or add Fa to his calendar if she gave him her email.
'Lunch would be easier with the boys,' said Li. 'I know I've got nothing tomorrow at two.'
'Two,' said Fa. 'I'll see if I can get an RDO.'
'Where are you working?' asked Li, genuinely curious.
'Ba's atelier,' said Fa. 'Did I ever tell you my father was a carpenter? Well, anyway, at the moment I'm his terribly inept assistant.'
'You say that with so much pride,' said Li. 'Most people aren't that proud of their failings.'
'Well,' explained Fa, 'I believe in being incredible at everything I do. So, if I'm terrible at something, I must strive to be outstandingly terrible at it. It's an art.'
'You know,' said Li, 'that explains the way you made tea.'
'It's an art,' repeated Fa.
Li Shang wasn't expecting his heart to skip a beat when he saw Fa on Friday afternoon, but when she walked through the restaurant doors, his chest tightened.
Fa was in skinny jeans and a loose-fitting sweater, her long hair up in a loose and somewhat messy chignon. She looked more like a mother than anything else. The outfit was incredibly flattering on her mature figure. Fa had softer curves than Li Shang remembered, and there was something graceful about the way she carried herself. He'd once believed age made women cynical, but Fa looked settled and confident. Age had somehow made her stylish and dignified.
When they finished their meal, Fa asked Li for his cell phone. She booked her name into two more available lunch meetings.
After three months of lunch dates, they had lunch at Li's house.
The afternoon was nothing like their relationship from the past. It wasn't mad or rushed. They made lunch and ate together. They talked, and Li asked if they should pick their boys up together and go to a movie or an arcade. They didn't even kiss goodnight after Li and Fa parted ways for the evening.
In their past romance, Li Shang would have seduced Fa into his bed before she could think about leaving or formulate some plan of escape. And while there was a part of Li that wanted to bed Fa, he was forty years old, and a father. His son had a say in whoever it was that he dated. For Li, there was also a part of him that realised that if he screwed this second chance up with Fa, he'd lose his best friend.
It had been six months since Fa Mulan had started having lunch dates with Li Shang. It had been three months since they'd begun spending time together as a family. Li Shang and Li Hualing attended Fa Xiong's soccer games and Fa Mulan and Fa Xiong went to Li Hualing's violin recitals.
It was at one of Li Hualing's violin recitals that Fa Mulan met Li Shang's ex-wife.
Fa had gone to the powder room and returned angry with a wet blouse and damp face. Li Shang noticed his ex-wife a few moments later, looking smug. His ex-wife was at the recital with her new husband, a man in his sixties with a much greater market value than Li. Fa had made a comment about the plastic bitch as she returned to her seat, and Li Shang knew who she was talking about. When they were mingling after the recital had finished, and Li Shang was done with networking, he'd pulled Fa Mulan into his arms and kissed her hard. He didn't know how much of a point he was trying to make. It didn't seem to matter. Li Shang hadn't kissed Fa since they'd been a couple, and he'd forgotten how good it felt to be affectionate when you genuinely cared about the person. If there had been a point, or a brazen display of masculinity, it was swiftly forgotten by the delicate press and feel of the woman in his arms.
Later that night, Li Shang's son told him that he really liked Fa, and Li Hualing was okay with his ba dating Fa Xiong's mama. Fa Xiong was going to be a cool older brother.
After eight months of steady dating, Fa Mulan and Fa Xiong finally accepted the invitation to stay the night with the Li's. Li Shang made up the spare room for Fa Xiong, and Fa Mulan was asleep in Li's bed by the time he came home from work. It delighted Li to find a bowl of winter melon soup in the fridge and a glass of wine waiting for him on the kitchen counter. The cats were fed, and asleep on the master suite bed with Fa. She stirred the moment Li dropped onto the bed beside her.
Li Shang hadn't known if Fa would sleep in the guest room with her son or in the master suite with him. He hadn't asked her directly because he didn't want to appear too eager if Fa wasn't ready. With their boys, there was more going on than falling into each other's arms, or each other's beds, and pretending the rest of the world didn't exist.
'Hello,' mumbled Fa, rolling towards Li. 'How was your day? Did the tournament go okay?'
Li nodded. 'Achieved my first ever condor, but I still hate golf. How were our boys this evening?'
It all felt so domestic. Supper left for Li on the counter and a midnight conversation about children and work.
'They slaughtered me at Monopoly,' said Fa. 'Xiong and Hualing formed a corporation: the Fa-Li Brothers. Then they pooled their resources, and I couldn't get out of jail. It was brutal.'
Li Shang laughed as he slid across the bed, curling up next to Fa. 'I'm not entirely sure how the boys pooling their resources and you being stuck in jail are intangibly linked to each other.'
'Luck of the die,' sighed Fa. 'I only made it around the board once. It was Xiong's idea to humiliate his ma. His little brother seemed pretty happy to humiliate me, too.' Fa was yawning as she spoke, curling closer to Li.
Nowadays, with Fa, it was only rare moments when Li Shang thought their kids each belonged to someone else. It didn't feel like it. It felt like they were theirs. Li Shang felt very paternal towards Fa Xiong. They had even started attending father-son Wushu together.
'They're good boys,' said Li Shang as he kissed Fa.
'Hm,' hummed Fa, lazily returning the kiss. 'Are they asleep?'
'Hm,' nodded Li. 'I checked on them when I got in.'
'So, we can have some quality grown-up adult time?' asked Fa, slipping out from under the covers.
'Yes,' said Li. 'I'll just shower first.'
Fa grabbed his wrist. 'You don't have to,' she whispered. 'I don't mind.'
'I do,' said Li. Then he kissed her, to reassure her. 'I won't be long. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.'
Fa was sitting on the bed nursing a glass of wine when Li returned to the room.
'I almost forget how to do this,' said Fa, blushing slightly.
Li Shang stepped over to her, taking a seat beside her on the bed. 'It's pretty straight forward,' he joked. 'This part,' he pointed to the towel covering his body, 'it goes there,' he pointed to Fa's lap.
It brought a smile to her face.
'Well, I understand that part,' said Fa. 'I just can't really remember how we'd get to that part.'
'With us, it was always pretty natural,' said Li.
'It wasn't natural with your ex?' asked Fa.
'No.' Li shook his head. 'It was an arranged marriage. There was no love lost. It never worked. So much for centuries of custom. It didn't work for me. There was never any passion there.'
'I'm very passionate about you,' said Fa, and then there was something in her hands. A very simple pair of couples rings. 'Do you want a cheap, silver ring from a woman who's very passionate about you?' she asked.
Li Shang nodded, amused at the rings perfect fit. It felt so much nicer than his diamond wedding band ever had, even if it was just cheap silver. The sentiment attached to the gift was deeper, more affectionate, and there was strength behind their bond.
'You're very important to me too,' said Li. 'I hope you can accept that.'
Fa nodded. 'I do.'
'So,' smirked Li, pulling the towel away. 'How about we start working on that quality grown-up adult time?'
There was grumbling coming from under the bed, and Li Shang was too amused to be an adult. Not on that morning.
'What did you do to my bra?' asked Fa, crawling out from under the bed. 'If Hualing finds it, it'll upset him. If your maids find it, it'll upset me. What did you do with it?'
'You don't need it,' said Li as he cupped Fa's breasts. 'I'll support you, no matter what.'
'Get off!' Fa swatted him away, but there was no conviction in her voice. 'Shang, what did you do with it? Seriously? It's one of my expensive bras too.'
'This is just like that first morning,' he mused. 'Watching you crawl around my bedroom floor, madly searching for your intimates.'
'You're not helping,' huffed Fa. 'I'm serious. Where's my bra? Have you stuffed it into one of your pillows or something?'
'Perhaps,' said Li. 'Don't worry about it. The boys will be asleep for another two hours at least. Hualing never gets up before eight on a Sunday. We have plenty of time to locate that lacy thing that prevents me from being the man in our relationship.'
Fa eyed her lover critically. 'What on earth is that supposed to mean?'
'Dominating you,' said Li, with conviction.
Fa grimaced. 'You're a terrible man. What on earth do I see in you? Why do I want to be with you?'
'Because the sex is amazing,' said Li. It had been, the night before. It was even more so when they'd both woken at 3 a.m., and made lazy love until tiredness overwhelmed them.
Fa was glaring at Li again. 'It wasn't that amazing.'
But the smirk broke across her lips, and Li Shang knew he was being baited.
'Right,' said Li, pulling Fa back to the bed and sliding over her body. 'I'll show you how amazing we can be.'
After one year of dating, weekends had become precious family time to Li Shang. Fa Mulan and Li Xiong would stay from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening, and that meant two mornings, side-by-side, Li Shang woke with Fa Mulan in his arms.
Still, it never changed Li Shang's morning routine of reading newspapers in bed. Li was forty, and his habits were fixed. There was no changing him now. Fa Mulan could try all she wanted. She would not succeed in this war.
'My daidai's a moron,' sighed Li Shang.
Although, admittedly, the stress Li was suffering regarding the latest public family drama would have been much worse if there wasn't a woman in his bed next to him, naked, half covering him like a blanket.
'I told you to stop reading the news first thing in the morning,' said Fa. She pulled the iPad away, dropping the device onto her bedside table. 'You get so stressed out by it. Do you enjoy torturing yourself?'
'Perhaps,' said Li. It was habit to check the market, it had just also become habit to keep an eye on his philandering younger brother.
Fa was closing apps and checking his calendar. She was cross-checking something on her phone.
'What is it?' asked Li.
'There's an auspicious date in February,' said Fa.
'Auspicious date for what exactly?' asked Li, a curious brow raised to his lover.
'A wedding,' said Fa, then she set the devices aside.
'Hm,' nodded Li. 'I knew I was just your piece on the side.'
'But the sex is amazing,' said Fa, curling into her lover. 'And I really don't want our relationship to get in the way of the amazing sex this time. It'd be a pity to ruin this you and me thing we've got going.'
'Is that why you're trying to find an auspicious date for us?' asked Li as he wrapped his arms around Fa. 'You're trying to trap me into a loveless marriage? One that's full of meaningless yet amazing sex?'
Fa winked. 'You know I've always wanted you for your body. You're just so understatedly handsome.'
'Hm,' hummed Li. 'I guess there's also that problem I pointed out with your womb. I should take responsibility for that, I suppose.'
'You should,' said Fa. 'I mean, I'm thirty-seven-years-old. If we both want what we discussed last night, I'm on a timer.'
'Something half Li and half Fa?' Li Shang sounded wistful. 'You know, the boys are still asleep. I could slip you one right now.'
'So romantic,' said Fa. 'You can slip me one right now?'
'Yes,' said Li. 'I can slip you one right now. It's basic biology, Mulan. We can make something if I'm inside you.'
'So, in a few years, when I'm explaining how our beloved child came to be, I get to tell people I let my husband slip me one on a lazy morning in bed?' asked Fa.
Li Shang nodded, grinning. 'Sounds fine by me.'
'You're not even going to propose to me? We're just going to have this conversation about how two is fun, but three would be nice, and make us a real family, and that way, we'd have this wonderful thing that's half me and half you and all ours, and I'm just supposed to let you slip me one?'
Fa was smirking though, despite her complaints.
'Do you want to be my ball and chain?' asked Li, winking.
'Oh, when you put it like that,' Fa rolled her eyes. 'No.'
'I'll let you wear the pants,' offered Li. 'So long as you stay home with the kids.'
'And this hole you're digging is getting surprisingly deeper,' groaned Fa.
Li Shang smiled at the woman next to him as he reached over her for his iPad. Fa was still pouting at him and looking annoyed when he kissed her.
'We can go to the family registration office anytime you like, you just let me know.' Li teased his lover. 'I should be able to fit that into my schedule. Besides, if you want my baby, you're going to have to make a decision sooner rather than later.'
'You're really not going to get down on one knee and ask me?' asked Fa, slightly affronted. 'You're not going to take me out for dinner or anything? You're just going to ask me if I want to be your ball and chain!'
'Hm,' nodded Li. 'I've never been romantic. There was this woman I dated, about twelve years ago, I was going to propose to her very romantically, but she stole the ring and I've never bothered with romance since.'
'How were you going to propose?' asked Fa, snuggling against her man. 'I guess you weren't going to ask her to be your ball and chain?'
'No,' said Li, kissing Mulan again. 'No. I'd booked a swanky hotel in Macau, and I'd begged my father for my grandmother's ring. I'd bought a bottle of champagne worth more than my car. I was going to ask my girlfriend to be my wife after dinner at a Michelin restaurant, proposing on bended knee on the rooftop of the hotel under the stars. I had it all planned out.'
'So, what happened?' asked Fa, smiling gently.
'I couldn't wait the three months for the booking and tried to propose early,' said Li. 'It backfired.'
'This woman sounds like a piece of work,' said Fa. 'I'd never get back together with her, if I was you.'
'I have no plans for it,' said Li, laughing. 'Still…that woman had a lot going on in her life back then, and I was just a boring salaryman. I think, if I met her again, she'd probably think I was a bit of a punk when we dated.'
'Just back then?' teased Fa. 'You don't think she'd think you're a punk now?'
'No,' snorted Li Shang. 'I don't think so seeing as I'm about to tell her I want her to have all my babies, then put my grandmother's ring on her finger.'
'Oh, I think she still would,' said Fa Mulan. 'You're a punk!'
'Not exactly what you said to me last night while you were—'
'If you finish that sentence,' said Fa, 'the thing I did you to you with my tongue and with my mouth is never happening again.'
'Not even on my birthday?' asked Li Shang. 'Or on our anniversary?'
'Not if you're a punk about it,' said Fa.
Li Shang's second wedding was nothing like his first. His first wedding had been western style whereas his second was traditional. For his second wedding, his bride wore a red gown with long sleeves, and he wore a traditional mandarin suit. They had a banquet instead of a reception, and, at Fa's insistence, they even allowed some of their friends and family to offer jokes and poke fun at them after they'd entered the honeymoon suite of the hotel they were staying at for the night.
There was also the addition to Fa Mulan's womb that hadn't been present at Li Shang's first wedding, and the reason the couple were slightly lax about what people thought of them. After all, Fa was four months pregnant when they were finally married. What did it matter if their friends teased them about their love life?
While it hadn't been planned, Fa had fallen pregnant a few weeks after their engagement, which had explained her goal in finding an auspicious date as close as possible to the date of their engagement. As it turned out, from the moment they had discussed a halfling (half Li and half Fa), Fa had decided she was ready to grow one inside of her.
Still, Li Shang had been expecting his second wife's pregnancy to be a similar experience to the first, not an inverted experience. But with Fa, everything had always been upside down, and really, Li Shang should have expected no less with her first pregnancy.
'My breasts are huge,' said Fa. She was analysing her body on the lounge after their boys had gone to bed. 'Look at them,' she said. 'They're massive. Did you know I'm wearing D cups! Seriously, D cups! They're the size of watermelons!'
'Hm.' Li Shang nodded. He'd learned there was no correct response to these statements. Pregnancy hormones were dangerous. Plus, he kind of liked how big his wife's chest had become.
'Don't they look like watermelons?' asked Fa. She'd pulled her camisole away and unclasped her bra, releasing said watermelons. Then she gave her husband a pointed look. 'You gave me watermelons!'
'They're very nice watermelons,' offered Li Shang. 'I'm still very fond of your watermelons.'
Fa huffed and folded her arms over her naked body. 'Well, I bet you won't be once this is all over.'
'Not true,' said Li Shang. 'You're eight months along and I still want to slip you one whenever I get the chance. And I find I'm particularly fascinated with your new watermelons. The mesmerise me. They now fit perfectly in my hands.'
Fa groaned. 'Seriously? You know what saying that does to me!'
'I want you,' said Li, winking at his wife over his beer.
'Go away,' huffed Fa.
'All right,' said Li, shrugging. 'I'll be in the study if you decide to change your mind.'
'You're an awful husband,' grimaced Fa.
Li Shang kissed her on the head as he walked around her. 'You keep telling yourself that,' he said, walking away. 'It won't change how I feel about you, your belly, or your watermelons.'
Fa Mulan was sulking, alone in her bed until nearly four in the morning. In the end, she'd accepted she couldn't win this battle and crept into her husband's office.
Li Shang glanced up at Fa, his focus still primarily on his work until he realised his wife was naked. Fa was only by Li's desk a moment before he stood, wrapped her in a loose hug and kissed her. He may have been extremely dedicated to his work, but to Li Shang, his family would always come first.
'You okay?' he asked.
'Not really,' said Fa, although no further explanation was given.
'You know it was only a joke,' Li explained as he kissed his wife again. 'You're my everything,' he promised. 'But I am fond of the watermelons. And I do still want you, belly and everything. You're only this way because our baby has usurped the use of your body. The doctor said it was normal, what you're going through. It's just uncommon.'
'Hm,' nodded Fa. She was using the gentle moment to pull herself against her husband. 'I just can't see how anyone would want me like this. I don't want me right now. If there was a way to use astral projection to escape my body, I'd do it. Are you sure you want me?'
'Do you want me to?' asked Li.
'Yes,' said Fa, blushing. 'And I understand it's normal, but I hate it. I hate needing you inside me all the time. I don't want it to feel like a chore.'
'It never will,' said Li.
Fa's train of thought was derailed with a heated kiss. Then there was paperwork being pushed aside and Li was unbuttoning his shirt.
'Here okay?' he asked Fa, sitting her on the desk. 'You do understand my body is responding to your hormones, don't you? Because you want me, I want you.'
Fa flushed as she was pushed back on the desk. She flushed a deeper shade as her husband pressed against her, kissing her hard.
'Mm,' sighed Fa. 'This is nice.'
'Yes,' said Li, his hand slipping between them. 'Lean back, sweetheart. I got this.'
Fa rolled her eyes. 'You got this? What am I? An inflatable doll?'
'Hm,' grunted Li. 'Your punk husband's trying to please you so you can just be quiet.'
'Please me?' asked Fa, laughing now. 'You're not trying to please yourself?'
'My happiness is guaranteed,' said Li. 'Yours is not so certain. With that in mind, I will do my utmost to impress you.'
Fa snorted. 'You're ridiculous.' Then she was still, and the merriment in her eyes was replaced with a dull, awed look.
'See, I know everything about you,' said Li. 'That's why you love me. That's why you married me. That's why you want me. I can get you there in seconds.'
Fa nodded, her cheeks darkening. 'I do,' she mumbled, attempting to purchase more contact. 'God, Shang, please!'
'Please what?' asked Li.
'I want…I need…' Fa stuttered.
'You want me to touch the watermelons?' asked Li.
'Yes, dammit!' snapped Fa. 'And kiss me. And…and…and take me to bed.'
She was in her husband's arms in an instant.
'I think I'm going to keep you pregnant,' said Li Shang. 'It's been brilliant for our supposedly loveless marriage.'
~Fin~