October 2018, continued
Michael's legs gave out from exhaustion and he slid down the door frame to the floor. "Do you know what my first thought this morning was?" Without waiting for an answer, he laughed tonelessly at his own idiocy. "First thing I thought of was that I'm finally eighteen and I can finally do adult stuff." He looked blankly at his lover. "Like get married. And sponsor my husband for a green card. And rent an apartment for us to live in instead of a bedroom in someone else's house."
"You want us to get married?"
"It doesn't matter what I want!" Michael shouted. "I can't do it, can I? I don't have the money for the green card fees. And, yeah, I start my Master's research project next semester and I get a stipend, but it's not enough to support two people. If we got married, your dad would not pay your spring tuition and then what happens. You're here on a student visa, so…. So we wait until January or February when the check clears? And what happens next fall? Do they deport you because your visa isn't valid anymore or do you get to stay on a spousal visa while we wait for the green card or what? I don't know jack shit about immigration shit! My stipend would barely pay for half of a crappy apartment and the train fare I'd need because there's no way in Hell I can afford anything in Cambridge. It certainly won't pay for Harvard. My parents would probably want to help out, but Matthew's going to college next fall. After I turned four, they never planned on paying for three kids in college at once."
Ming Lim placed his hand over Michael's mouth, stopping the stream of consciousness. "So since you cannot have everything you might want, you think me not saying I love you changes things? You don't need to say you love me; I already know you do. I love you, Michael. " His hand moved to wipe up a tear wending its way down Michael's cheek. "In some form or another, I will love you until the day I die. If I say it or don't say it, nothing changes. Knowing I had your love for a while will give me strength when I have to return to China and do my father's bidding.
"Hopefully we have… six more years together? Three at least for my BA and MBA and then two or three for my violin. I'm sure I can persuade my father to allow me to finish my degree at the Conservatory instead of at Julliard. You should be finishing up with your PhD around the same time. Who knows if we'll even still want to be with each other in six years?" He replaced his hand with his mouth, coaxing out Michael's whimpers and needy sighs with his lips and tongue.
The two men had 'had sex' when they first got together; they were still learning the other's body and were too involved in not hurting Michael more than necessary to concentrate only on giving and receiving pleasure. As their familiarity increased, they moved from 'having sex' to 'fucking': engrossed solely in the pursuit of mutual, fast, and quiet orgasms so as to not alert their housemates. 'Making love' had been reserved for their one vacation the spring before where they had hours to devote to the other: to linger over each kiss and caress, to make noises of appreciation and encouragement. To unreservedly show their love to their partner.
This night they were able to make love once again. Ming Lim kissed and caressed every external inch of Michael's body, teasing his lover to the edge of release over and over for hours before finally joining their bodies. And even then, their movements were unhurried and gentle, almost a co-mingling of their souls, while they luxuriated in the feeling of being one being.
Michael stretched his legs, sore from being held wide open for so long and groaned happily. And then abruptly grimaced as the movement allowed more cum to slide out and down onto the towel under his bum. "LimGe… you cumming inside me was not bad…. Felt quite nice actually. But this after stuff?" He shuddered as another glob slipped out. "This is nasty, honestly."
"I guess it was a good thing you insisted on having a towel under us…. Are we back to condoms then?"
Michael got up and duck-walked to the bathroom, the towel sliding between his legs to catch the drips. "Let's give it a few more times. The same thing has to happen to women, right? So it must be something you can get used to?" Ming Lim offered up a 'how would I know' look, but the younger man wasn't paying attention. Instead he was looking at the translucent white, wet stains on the towel.
"Impressed with how much we came?" Ming Lim grinned, leaning on the doorway.
"No…. I just thought there'd be other… stuff… on here."
Ming Lim shook his head. "I have no idea how you do it. But you clean yourself out somehow. You really don't use enemas?"
"No."
"Michael… We've been doing this for over a year and you're just now realizing there's no shit on the sheets when we're done?"
"It's not like I look!" Michael protested. "I just ball the sheet up and throw it in the laundry basket."
"My theory is it's that pattern you draw on yourself before we have sex. There's only one time you didn't draw it, and that's the only time the condom was covered in... extra stuff."
Michael looked up from his position on the toilet and threw the dirtied towel at his lover who ducked out of the way. "I don't draw on myself. And even if I did, how does that clean out my… bum. Speaking of…. Get out and shut the door so I can clean up in peace!"
Ming Lim shut the door behind him, and still completely naked and getting itchy with dried sweat and cum, picked up the hotel notepad and pen and started drawing. By the time Michael was finished with the bathroom, choosing to clean his body inside and out, Ming Lim had drawn five versions of what he remembered seeing Michael draw on his belly. "It's not this exactly, but it's something like this," he stated as he went off to have his own shower.
Michael looked at the pictures and shook his head. Scribbling pictures on your body doesn't clean out your ass.
February, 1982
Lan Qinyang giggled as yet another bunny hopped onto Wen Ning and laid down. "Uncle, you're funny!" They had returned to her ancestral home for the Lunar New Year, far from the city and its smog. It was a great place for bunnies to roam freely. "Why aren't they afraid of you?" The bunnies were wary of the child, but had no issues with the man.
"For some reason, none of Lan WangJI's rabbits were ever scared of me…. Perhaps because I'm not really alive. Just stay still and let them come to you."
"Uncle…. Do you think I'll meet the reincarnated Yiling Patriarch and HanGuang-Jun?"
"It's possible, XiaoYang. Their previous incarnations died in 1895."
"Uncle… two men in love with each other is called 'gay' right? I heard in school that being gay is wrong and immoral and disgusting. But you talk about Grandfather Wei and Grandfather Lan like them being in love is a good thing…."
"How can it be wrong to love? Just because you love differently than another? I remember that before I died that there were girls I thought were very cute. And I had a few male friends who thought they weren't. Conversely, there were girls my friends thought were cute that I didn't. Does that mean one of us was wrong? No. It only means we liked differently. It's like your mother loving eggs with runny yolks and your father can't eat them unless the yolks are completely hard. Loving someone is never wrong. Even if they don't love you back, it's not wrong. Loving only becomes wrong when you act inappropriately if they don't love you back."
Lan Qinyang sat very still as a rabbit cautiously approached her. "Uncle? How come no one else can cultivate anymore?"
Wen Ning turned his head to look at the child. It must be difficult to be almost twelve and not be able to tell her friends that she can cultivate. She can't even talk about it to her parents. "Using the Western calendar, cultivation peaked around year 300. After that, the ability to form a core became more and more rare until about the year 500 when there were only a few dozen cultivators left in the entire world. I've looked for explanations and have yet to find one. The fae disappeared almost overnight. No more walking corpses. No more resentful energy infused creatures anywhere. No more brownies and sprites in Europe. Shamans in the Americas and Africa went from practicing magic to pretending. And the beliefs in magic, in cultivation, changed almost overnight as well. Your ancestors saw the decline and did everything they could to preserve our heritage. They copied or bought out the Sect libraries. And bought as many spiritual items as they could under Song XiChen's and my guidance. Even if the items were not Chinese or even Asian."
"Even though no one can use those spiritual items or learn from the books?"
"Of course. We hoped that someday the ability to form a golden core would come back and we wanted to ensure that the books and devices would be preserved for that time. And in the meantime, Song ZiChen and I would be around to take care of them and make sure they didn't harm people. And now we have you: the first disciple in over a millennia."
November 2018
Scribbling pictures on your body doesn't clean out your ass. He'd repeated this thought to himself over and over during the last few weeks. Even as he started to notice his fingers autonomously drawing this pattern on his belly before they had sex. And even as he noticed that sometimes he drew another pattern, in the air this time, and afterwards there was no cum on his belly or in his butt. How the Hell that happened, he had no idea!
This was the perfect time to prove that his butt was just naturally clean! His parents had 'kidnapped' Ming Lim and taken him to a tree farm for his very first time to cut down a Christmas tree. Matthew was out working, Eleanor was at a friend's house, and he had a slight cold, so his parents had forbidden him from going with them. It was just a minor cough, but parents will be parents.
He stood, naked from his waist to his socks, in his bathroom with a bunch of sandwich baggies and a tube of lube. He carefully wrapped his index finger with a baggie, lubed it up, and inserted it just past his fingernail into his ass. What he saw when he pulled his finger out made him want to gag, so he quickly tore the baggie off and threw the disgusting thing into a grocery bag. Okay…. So it's not clean! He coughed, drew the pattern and repeated sticking the baggied-up finger into his butt. Still not clean. So why is it when I'm with LimGe? But then again, it felt different when he drew the pattern while he was with his lover…. Concentrating on replicating how it felt, he drew the symbol again, wrapped and lubed his finger again, and inserted it into his butt again. And drew out that finger completely clean of crap.
What.
The.
Actual.
Fuck.
He stuck his finger further in, all the way up to his knuckles and wiggled it around. And was very grateful that no one was around to see him in this undignified position. Still clean. He sank down to sit on the edge of the tub and yelped/coughed at the cold porcelain on his warm skin.
So the symbol… by itself does nothing? How do I get it to work? Can anybody do this? He shook his head. No… or it would be all over the news…. Maybe I should test out the other pattern? He started picturing his boyfriend in various stages of undress, imagined touching, being touched, and a few minutes later, he gasped out his orgasm. All over the floor. He concentrated on that feeling and drew it out, only to see a translucent blue copy of the symbol hovering above his knees. This startled him enough that he tipped over backwards into the tub. "Shit! That hurt!" he yelled out rubbing the back of his head.
"Nǐ hái hǎo ma?" he heard his mother call out. "I heard a noise up there."
"I'm fine, Mom! I just tripped and stubbed my toe," he lied. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. The parents came home too quickly! The puddles of spunk were still on the floor next to his jeans and underwear. There was still the glowing rune thingy hanging in the air. And there was no way in Hell his mother wasn't coming upstairs to check on him. He had maybe two minutes. Maybe.
If he was lucky.
He hauled himself out of the tub and quickly pulled on his clothes. How the Hell do I make this thing go away? In desperation, he shoved at it as if to wipe it away; the glowing symbol sank to the floor and disappeared. Along with his cum.
Holy. Shit.
December 2018
"So do you want to tell me what's going on or are you just going to keep pretending." Michael sighed and rested his bow on his lap. "You've been playing your violin until your fingers bleed daily since we got back from Thanksgiving break. Talk," Ming Lim ordered.
Michael pulled his ear buds down, but kept the eye mask firmly in place. "You know there's no such thing as magic, right?"
"Of course. Magic doesn't exist."
"Of course. So that means this isn't magic, right?" Upon saying 'this', Michael twisted his hand and the lights in the room turned off.
"That's useful," Ming Lim deadpanned. "No more stubbing your toes at night. How'd you do it?"
"I don't know. I just… do it…. There's something wrong with me, isn't there."
"No… I mean… really… how did you do that? Wires? Remote? How? Cool party trick."
"It's not a fucking party trick!" The lights clicked back on. "I can turn your phone on, too." Ming Lim looked down at his phone as the screen lit up. "I just sort of think about what I want to do, and… it happens." Michael sounded more than a little scared. "The power surge the other day? Where the lights all flickered?"
"Yeah?"
"That was me." He shivered. "I stood on the stairs and…. The range seems to be about thirty feet or so. I can't reach the carriage house from here. LimGe…. I'm scared."
The older boy crossed the room and placed the violin and bow on the desk. Holding his lover tightly, he whispered, "You don't have to be afraid…. I'm here. I'll protect you."
"I think the more I do, the more I can do," Michael whispered back. "I know where everyone in the house is. I can feel where they are in relation to me. I couldn't do that this morning." He pulled his mask off to look into his lover's eyes. "Right now, there are four people walking in front of our house. Half an hour ago, I was in the living room, watching people on the sidewalk; I couldn't feel that far. Hàipà, Gege."
Ming Lim tried to hold back a shudder. "It's going to be all right. Bùyào hàipà." Don't be scared.
This thing he could do (he refused to call it magic) seemed to stabilize a bit over the next week. Which he was extremely grateful for. It was a nightmare knowing where everyone was, first only in his and surrounding classrooms, then in the classrooms and floors surrounding those, too. His range petered out somewhere between 250 and 300 feet. It was like an itch inside his head that wouldn't go away. He once tried to treat it like the Jedis did in the movies, and tried to see if he could make his friends do anything. His attempts at imitating 'these are not the droids you're looking for' did not work. So either his 'magic' did not permit Jedi mind tricks or his friends were too mentally strong and resisted him. "'May the Force be with you' is a bunch of crap," he muttered, as he started peeling an orange over the island sink.
"Oh! Did you watch Star Wars, too!" Sheng Lin shuffled into the kitchen. Oddly enough, he could only 'feel' this man's presence at about ten to twenty feet…. "I saw the first one last weekend. Wait, it wasn't the first one; it was the fourth one."
"A New Hope or The Phantom Menace?"
"Pardon?"
"Did you see A New Hope or The Phantom Menace? A New Hope was the first Star Wars movie released, in 1977, but it was Episode Four. The Phantom Menace was the fourth movie released, in 1999, but it was Episode One."
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I saw Star Wars. There's a young blond kid on a desert planet and a Jedi takes him away to be trained and lots of ships get blown up. Which one was that?" Sheng Lin sounded quite confused.
You just described both movies. "Anakin or Luke?"
"Oh! Luke."
"A New Hope, then."
"Suíbiàn. Oops. English. Sorry. Whatever. The point is," Sheng Lin was back to looking earnest, "the movie got the Force all wrong. Well…" he hedged. "Not all wrong, just the mind control stuff. And the name. Calling it the dark and light sides of the Force is gibberish; it's called yin and yang. Yin is the female, dark, resentful energy. Don't use it. In all of the history of the world, there is exactly one person who was able to use it and not go insane. And he took the secret of how he managed to do that to his grave. Yang is the male, light, spiritual energy. That Ben character at least had the definition almost right. 'It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.'"
Michael stared at his housemate. Sheng Lin, are you insane or are you for real? Yin, yang: it's all nonsense. There's no such thing as spiritual energy. Except there must be something like that or he wouldn't be able to do what he did…. "'Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.'" Michael inwardly groaned at his horrible impression of a Han Solo voice.
Now Sheng Lin looked really confused. "When did you fly around the galaxy?"
"Nevermind. It's just another quote from the movie. Orange?" He held up a segment, knowing full well what the answer would be.
"No, thank you."