August 1986

Lan Qinyang at sixteen wanted to concentrate on three things: her friends, her studies and attracting the attention of the right sort of boy. Reality was not participating in this. Why she had her mother's surname instead of her father's was apparently a topic worthy of discussion among her classmates; one that frequently implied that she wasn't her father's daughter. She tried to tell them that this was a centuries old tradition in her mother's family: the first born of the first born would always be surnamed Lan, and this first-born child would grow up to become the next Secretary of the QishanWen Medical Group. She had a few "friends" who told her that they weren't ashamed to be friends with someone who might be a bastard…. And a few close friends who accepted the family tradition since Qinyang was the third generation female Lan in a family full of other surnames, and none of the men in the family seemed to be upset that these three women were Lans. Uncle Ning told her to ignore anyone who deliberately misunderstood her and to stand tall and strong. The people who mattered knew the truth; those who doubted were obviously not important.

If sharing her mother's surname wasn't embarrassing enough, she was also one of the only girls in her Tai Kwon Do school. Uncle Ning insisted that she learn martial arts since that was one of the ways to increase cultivation ability. Not that she was allowed to tell anyone about her golden core or the fact that she could do magic. Uncle Lan had started her in sword training when she was twelve and had given her a real sword to practice with, instead of the bamboo ones, for her last birthday. Lan Qinyang did not understand why she needed to practice using a sword since the only spiritual swords around were sealed. Uncle Lan simply shrugged off her concerns signing, Should there come a day when you need a spiritual sword, we will find one for you. You are learning the sword path for cultivation; you need to learn how to use a sword. And that was the end of that argument.

Admittedly, the cultivation part was fun when she was away from being instructed. It was still exciting to make a paper doll dance using only her mind. And flip light switches on and off without touching them. The practical applications of the magic she didn't really understand yet: Uncle Ning was teaching her healing.

He would take her on 'rounds' at her family's local hospital and make her take patients' pulses. Then they'd compare what she 'saw' in their bodies with what the medical charts said. She had been quite skeptical at first that anyone would allow a young teenager claiming she was learning ancient Chinese medicine to take their pulse since Western medicine was the primary focus within the hospital. She vastly underestimated the number of people who had more faith in the ancient methods of diagnosing and treating illnesses than they did in x-rays and blood tests. Those same people were happier taking a recipe to an herbalist than a prescription to a pharmacist.

On this particular day, Lan Qinyang was asked to go to the headmaster's office at her high school as there was a visitor from her family's company. Uncle Lan, who was currently calling himself Liang BaiLuo, was sitting relaxed in a chair while the headmaster sweated profusely and nervously bobbed his head. The QishanWen Medical Group held quite a bit of clout in the city; failure to keep Liang BaiLuo, as a representative of the Secretary and the Chairman, happy might cost him his job.

Song Lan signed and Lan Qinyang translated: the QishanWen Medical Group was going to donate fifty computers to the school along with a teacher. They would arrive within the month. Would the headmaster please find a way to include instruction time for all students to learn typing? And for the year one students, a class on programming? The headmaster hemmed and hawed and tried to avoid having to make a commitment; students' schedules were already heavily packed. Song Lan was relentless and determined to get his way. After traveling to hospitals across the United States, western Europe and Japan, he was convinced that computers and technology were going to overrun the medical world. In order to become competitive with those hospitals and within those countries, QishanWen (and China) was going to need employees proficient in using computers, from the basic entering of information into databases to designing medical technology. And that meant starting computer education as early as possible. Every school in the district was receiving computers and the order to start training their students. New teachers would be hired by QishanWen as needed to teach more advanced classes and the computers would be upgraded as new software was developed. The headmaster could only nod and accept and pray.

When Lan Qinyang was older, she watched an American sci-fi television show where one group of bad guys had a saying: Resistance is futile.

After years of watching her mother and Uncle Song steamroll over their adversaries, she decided to adopt that saying as her own motto. Smile, nod, be feminine and graceful with a steel rod for a backbone. The Secretary of the QishanWen Medical Group would get what she wanted. Resistance is futile.

October 2018

Ming Lim was frustrated as Hell. His clean bill of health was in his backpack, but Michael's birthday was still a few days away. And between today, Sunday, and the condomless-sex day, Wednesday, were three exams. He lay in bed, head propped up on one arm, trying (and failing) to read and retain information for his Monday exam. The cause of both his frustration and failure was snuggled up against him with his ear buds in. The younger boy also had exams this week, but he insisted that he was done studying for them. Ming Lim gave up studying for a while and pulled one of Michael's ear buds out. "Who are you listening to?"

"Not a who, a what," Michael responded. "Yo voy a España en Marzo para. No. Por? No. Por means for as in through or by. I was right the first time. Para una conferencia. Except I'm pretty sure conferencia is not a real word. Para ir a una conferencia?"

"English, Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Pick one."

"Xībānyá yǔ. I've been invited to a conference in Spain in March, and while the speakers will all be speaking in English, I want to be able to navigate the city and eat at restaurants without sounding like a complete doofus." Since Ming Lim was no longer looking at his book, Michael felt justified in stretching up a bit to suck on his lover's bottom lip. "God, you look so sexy when you study." He nibbled for a bit, switching between the top and bottom lips. "I love kissing you. Why don't you see if you can come with me? It's during our spring break, so you won't miss school."

"I'll look into it." Ming Lim slid down a bit in his bed to make it easier to kiss. They kept their actions unhurried, relaxed. Even when they opened their mouths wider and sent out their tongues to tangle with the other, it was more an expression of love than lust. "What do you want for your birthday?" he asked once they finally stopped kissing.

"You're already taking me to Florida. I don't need anything else."

"That's my birthday present. Do you want a new phone?"

"LimGe… I don't need anything. You're already going to give me what I want."

"I feel awful that you won't have anything to open on your birthday."

"You're giving yourself to me on my birthday. The completely naked you, no barriers between us, you. Maybe I'll unwrap you and maybe I'll have you unwrap yourself." He smirked, evilly. "Er'gege can give Sandi his ass as a present if he wants…. Sandi would like to try topping Gege someday."

"Zhēn de ma?" Really? "You've never said anything."

"The one time I tried to finger you, you yelped really loud and jerked away like you didn't want it. So I just guessed that you weren't into being a bottom. But since you want to know what I want…. Someday I would like to make love to you. It doesn't have to be on my birthday. Or any special occasion. I'd just like you to think about it."

"I'll think about it." Ming Lim sounded unsure and unwilling.

"A duì. My mother emailed earlier. She wanted me to remind you that you're invited for Thanksgiving. And she asked if you were coming as my roommate or my boyfriend."

"You told her!"

"No! She guessed. She's been thinking that I wasn't a hundred percent straight for a while now, like since before I met you, and I guess we made too many inside jokes or something last Easter. She hasn't told Dad. About you, that is. They've discussed my gayness. They're redoing the guest room and arguing about which size bed to get. She wants a king bed… so if we're going home as boyfriends, she'll have a bit more weight to her argument. After all, sticking two six foot tall boys in a room with a double bed is a bit cramped."

"What did you tell her? Wait… you told her we're sleeping together?"

Michael snuggled into his lover's body, resting his head against the other's heart, trying to give comfort and calm down his panic. "I didn't say anything yet. I am going to come out as bi to my parents. If you don't want to, then I'll say something sarcastic like, 'I wish you were my boyfriend' or something like that, and she'll drop it."

"Do you have to come out as bi just yet?"

Michael scooted up so they were face to face. "My parents are just as Chinese as yours. Which means accepting that they have a gay son was never going to be easy. I'll forward you her email: it's a freaking five page essay! She's seen a therapist, and talked to the gay-straight alliance coordinator at her school, and even went onto online forums about how to accept LGBT as normal and healthy and how to keep a healthy relationship with your loved ones while she's trying to undo her conditioning. She's done all this work just to support me, and you think I should lie and go 'nah, not gay, Mom'? I can be a shit-head, but I'm not that shitty. I hope."

"So it's not okay for you to lie to your parents, but it is okay for me to lie to mine?"

"LimGe…we're not starting from the same place. My parents won't disown me. They probably don't understand how I can be attracted to both men and women, but they won't yank me out of school and lock me in my room or send me to one of those reprogramming camps or anything. Plus New England's pretty accepting of the LGBT community, so it's not like me being out of the closet is automatically a death sentence. MIT certainly doesn't care who I date as long as we're both consenting and of legal age and it's not one of my professors. Once I graduate, I should have enough job offers that I won't have to worry about working for a homophobe.

"While if you come out to your dad… what would he do? Best case scenario? You get dragged back and forced to marry Wang Lina. Worst case, he hauls you back to China and disowns you. What would you do? An outed gay man with no money, no home, no job and no friends? I honestly don't see a future where you say, 'hey Dad, I'm dating Michael' and he's goes, "cool, so did you want chicken or beef in your dumplings?'"

Ming Lim rolled onto his back and pulled Michael over with him. "I can't come out to your family. Does that bother you?"

Michael leaned down and placed a tender kiss on each of Ming Lim's cheeks and then a firmer one on his mouth. "You get to decide how you come out. If you ever come out. I will support your decision no matter what." He then wiggled into a sitting position. "Now study or your dad will kill you long before you can think of coming out of the closet."

The highly anticipated birthday night came quickly. Eleanor and Becky took both boys out to eat at a Mexican restaurant as a present. Ming Lim's present was a bit more extravagant; he rented a suite in a hotel. Their balcony overlooked the Charles River sparkling with reflected lights of the cities.

Both boys cuddled up on a lounge chair drinking Sheng Lin's present: a bottle of rice wine. Apparently he didn't understand that the drinking age was twenty-one…. The wind coming off the river was quite chilly so not only were both boys in jeans and hoodies, they had dragged a blanket out to wrap around them as well. With half the bottle gone, Ming Lim was feeling quite pleasant and warm and more than slightly spaced out. "Michael… are we still going to do it?"

Michael, also feeling more than a little buzzed, curved his spine, pressing his shoulders and hips back into his lover's body. "Just you and me? No condom? Yeah. Not just yet, though. I'm enjoying just laying here. Thank you, Gege. This is a great present."

"Méiguānxì." No problem. He slid a hand under Michael's shirt to play with bare skin. "We do need to have a conversation before we do that…."

Michael snorted. "What kind of conversation? We go in, start fooling around, and instead of you rolling on a condom, we just do it."

"Haven't you done any research on anal sex without condoms? There are things we need to clear up in advance."

"Like?"

"Like whether or not you want me to cum inside you. Some guys like it and others hate it."

"How will I know if I like it until I've tried it?"

Ming Lim gently knocked his forehead against the back of Michael's head. "And then there's the after stuff. Some sites say you need to clean all the cum out right away or you'll get sick and some say it's okay to just leave it and let it come out as it will."

Michael sighed. "If you get sick because of anal sex, it's not because of cum sitting in there. It's because your partner was a bit too rough or something and you got a cut and shit got into your bloodstream. How about you cum inside me and we go from there? I'll let you know if I like it or if you need to keep wearing condoms." He rolled over, so they were face to face and started inching his way down the lounge, pulling up Ming Lim's shirts as he went. The air under the blanket was hot and a bit damp, making it hard to breathe. He ignored that, peppering kisses and love bites over the bare skin. One hand slid down to cup Ming Lim's growing erection through his pants.

"Suck me. Please," Ming Lim begged. It took a bit of skillful maneuvering to get the older one laying on his back with his pants off without overly disturbing the blanket keeping the chill away. Michael licked lightly, loving the way Ming Lim moaned and begged for more. Until the elder said, "I love y," and Michael squeezed the cock in his hand in warning.

"Do not finish that sentence, unless you're going to say 'this' or you sucking me."

"I love you."

Michael ripped the blankets off his head and yelled, "I told you not to say it!" He fought his way off the chair and stomped into the bathroom. Behind him, Ming Lim cursed and stumbled trying to pull his pants up and follow his boyfriend at the same time.

Inside the bathroom, Michael locked the door behind him and sank to the floor, silently sobbing. This hurts! Hurts so much. He hugged himself into a ball trying to alleviate the pain. Why did you have to say it? He ignored the knocks on the door and the repeated calls for him to open it.

Most eighteen year olds after being told 'I love you' would be giddy with happiness. Most eighteen year olds didn't live down the hall from their boyfriend's future wife. The pounding on the door and yelling was getting louder and fiercer, so Michael turned on the shower to make noise to drown it out. Then he stripped off his clothes and sat on the floor of the shower letting the water wash away his tears.

It hurt. His heart, his stomach, his head. It all hurt. A physical manifestation of the internal pain. He heard a strange noise over the water and realized after a few moments, it was him. Keening. I want it. I want you. I want all of you. Forever. I want it as reality and not as a fantasy. Reality slapped him in the face. I can't have you forever. Why did you have to tell me you loved me? He dry heaved over and over. Why didn't you leave me with the ability to pretend that it was just a fling on your part? He shut the water off without washing. His mom would yell at him for wasting water if she knew about this…. He mostly dried off, wrapped the towel around his waist, and unlocked the bathroom door. "Don't ever say that again. Please."

Ming Lim's hand was bright red from hitting the door. "Talk to me, Michael. What's wrong? You know how I feel! The same way I know how you feel! We love each other; why won't you let me say it?"

A/N Liang: two/pair, BaiLuo: white radish