March, 2020

Michael breathed in, enjoying the peacefulness and quiet that enveloped Chen Song and the carriage house. The older man's movements as he danced with his swords were masterful, simple, complex, smooth. It was beauty and poetry and, more importantly, soothing.

Unlike the world outside the carriage house where the parents sent him to get shrinked apparently because he wasn't, and had never been, besties with his former roommate. Where professors got all snooty and upset because the nineteen year old genius was stuck and his research hadn't progressed since December. 'The important part of this sentence is the word nineteen, not genius, he wanted to scream at them. Is it so bad that I just want to be a nineteen year old kid for a while?

His sister was the worst, though. She stalked him in person, via text, via social media trying to prove that he'd been in any kind of relationship with Lim. All she ended up doing was making a fool of herself with those obviously faked ticket stubs and texts or the photoshopped pictures of him and Lim hanging out. She had caused more headaches and bloody noses in the last few months than he had had in the first eighteen years of his life.

And on top of all that crap was this fucking covid. Not only was it fucking sneaky with the way it could transmit without the carrier showing symptoms, but it also attacked everyone in different ways. And there were the half-assed government officials with their conflicting advice: wear a mask, don't wear a mask, the only mask that will protect you is the N95, the N95 mask does nothing to protect you, it's a flu, it's not a flu. Fucking idiots. All of them.

Seriously. How hard would it be to get some covid positive patients into a clean room with different mask types and test the efficacy? Efficiency? Whatever the fuck the correct word was. You're supposed to be scientists; go do some experiments and tell us the results.

The one thing he was sure about was that this was not like a traditional flu which flourished during the colder months of the year. Rumor had it this thing started in August, or maybe even earlier. And China in August was not exactly a cold environment. Add in the way it was spreading down in Australia and India and other countries close to the equator? A warm or hot climate was not deterring this thing at all. Sunlight and heat may make great disinfectants, but they were losing out to this virus.

And now the schools were all talking about shutting down for a few weeks or a month. Maybe even the rest of the semester. Go to remote learning or something. Fuck. Like that was going to help him get his groove back in his PhD research. 'Yeah, we're taking away your lab and equipment and the high-powered computers you need. But you still need to present your research findings by the end of the semester.'

A loud clap distracted him from his thoughts. Concentrate, Chen Song ordered. Michael nodded his head, mentally thanking the man for reminding him what he was supposed to be doing. Chen Song's expectations were reasonable and attainable. He had to run the course just a bit faster than last week, or be less winded at the end. Increase his cultivation ability from week to week. Increase his martial arts ability from week to week. No major breakthroughs were expected or even desired. Just be at least marginally better than before.

Even the two people he'd dated had expected more than that. He'd met Tiffany in a bookshop right as the semester began. She was cute, funny, and a sophomore over at Simmons. She was studying Japanese as a minor and was reading Manga in the original language as well as English as practice. They'd gone out to dinner a few times, seen a couple movies, gone to her dorm a few times to 'watch' anime (aka make-out sessions), and then he'd asked her if she wanted to see a hockey game with him. She'd flipped out about how sports were too violent and how concussions were destroying the lives of college kids and did he ever think to look at the brain scans of those football players who went on rampages after sustaining multiple concussions? So that was that, and he'd deleted Tiffany's contact information from his phone.

Zachary, a BU senior, who he'd met at the hockey game Tiffany refused to go to, was much more laid back. They'd dated for a few weeks before he invited Michael back to his apartment for some pot and an overnight stay. Michael was a firm 'no' to the pot; he'd absorbed the 'say no to drugs' campaign his parents waged. So while weed was legal now, he had no desire to partake of it. And he really wasn't sure that he wanted to have sex with Zach. First of all, he'd thought that it would be better to lose his virginity to a woman, get used to the process of sex, before he offered up his ass to a man; Zach had been very firm indicating that he was always a top. And second, he wanted to be at least infatuated with his partner before having sex with them. While Zach was incredibly handsome, and fun to hang out with, there was something missing…. Really missing. As in the last time they made out, Michael set up and solved a triple integral in his head while they kissed. Apparently, his refusal to stay overnight was the end of their relationship, since the following weekend, Michael saw Zach with another man on his arm.

Another loud clap echoed through the carriage house. "Sorry," Michael muttered. "My head's somewhere else today."

It's fine. Actually, I wanted to talk to you. If your school closes for covid, what are your plans?

"Well…. My mom has been making noises that I need to go back to Concord. She says it will be safer there since it's not as crowded. But I really don't want to spend the next few months at home." He fiddled with the bag in his lap. He was supposed to be learning how to turn it into a qiunkun pouch. "And it's really hard to practice cultivation with them in my face all the time."

I have a possible solution. I had the Medical Group buy a house in the suburbs. It only has three bedrooms, but I'm not planning on taking any of the other students with me. Instead, I'm going to advise them to spread out and take one bedroom for each of them until this pandemic is over and we can return to normal. There's a finished basement which you can turn into your study area if you want. And it has a two car detached garage; we're converting its second story into a practice studio. You'll have plenty of space for your research and studies of all kinds.

"And you wouldn't mind me intruding?"

You're my disciple. There is nothing to intrude on.

April, 2020

Mary had won the argument over who would live where: all five of them were home. And since (mostly) everyone was social distancing, that meant all five were at home practically every minute of every day. Michael hated it. Even having his own room was no guarantee of privacy. If it wasn't Matthew barging in to see if he wanted to play video games in between online classes, it was Eleanor trying to shrink him or his mother asking him to go to the store or grab something from the top shelves or something.

So staying home was horrible. Going out was worse. New Hampshire was not known for being a hotbed of liberalism, but usually people just went about their business and left everyone they disagreed with alone. Growing up, he'd been subjected to many kids pulling their eyes into a slant and asking how he could possibly see properly with his vision so severely limited. Or they'd done the 'my mother is Chinese, my father is Japanese and I'm a mixed up kid' slant-eyed routine. A few adults had patted him on the head and said he was so smart simply because the Chinese bred them like that. Those people weren't overtly trying to be bigoted or hateful. However, over the last month or so, he'd been called more Chinese and Asian slurs and told to go back to where he came from than he ever remembered hearing before. He'd even had the cops called on him for violence after one idiot decided to use force in addition to the insults. Michael's martial arts training had automatically kicked in, and he'd had the asshole flipped and restrained in what felt like two seconds. Luckily, this was all caught on a surveillance tape, so he was let go and the bigot was charged with assault. But it had been a harrowing few hours before the cops released him.

With Chen Song hours away, Michael's cultivation progress ground to a halt. They had tried using video chatting a few times without success. And Michael hadn't learned enough to continue to learn on his own.

In desperation for peace and quiet and solitude, Michael turned to exercise. No one bothered him while he ran. So run he did, rain or shine, hot or cold. He pushed himself until he really couldn't run anymore. And when running couldn't calm his mind, he picked up his bamboo sword and ran through every exercise he'd been taught, over and over.

Mary suggested that he play his violin or piano to help quiet his mind. After all, they had always worked before. Michael looked at the violin case growing dusty under his bed and started dry heaving at the thought of picking it up, even just to move it or dust it. At least since February, it physically hurt to look at it, made him nauseated to even just think of playing it. Even the mere mention of a violin could make his head pound; listening to classical music inevitably led to a nose bleed and an offering to the toilet god.

June, 2020

The spring semester was over, covid was going strong, and his professors were ticked that he was taking the summer off. Michael smiled politely, but firmly, at his advisor and clicked out of the video meeting. What do they honestly expect me to do? I can't be the only researcher who was unable to make any progress this spring. The labs were closed and would mostly likely remain so until the following spring semester. Maybe even longer.

A typical vaccine took almost a decade to develop. Even with all the money thrown at these biomedical firms, the likelihood that they'd develop a vaccine, test it properly, and bring it to market before 2021 was infinitesimal. And even then, the virus was already mutating. Would the vaccine they were scrambling to make now also work for the mutations?

Wang Lina might know. Wasn't she studying to be a doctor? All of a sudden, his head started pounding. Oh, fuck. Not again. These headaches came on suddenly, worse than migraines, and took ages to go away. He'd tried every over-the-counter painkiller and nothing worked on these bad boys. Sleep helped. It didn't take away the pain entirely, but it helped.

Except that he'd taken so many naps for the headaches that his mom had taken him to the doctor swearing he had mono or something. Multiple blood tests, an x-ray, and a CT scan later, he was diagnosed with: headaches. De-stress, the doctors had advised.

How the fuck is a PhD student who is getting spoken sternly to by his advisors multiple times a week for failure to progress going to de-stress? Especially when that PhD student is living at home with a family that doesn't respect personal boundaries?

For fuck's sake, he hadn't even had an enjoyable orgasm since coming home! It was like every single freaking time he got all nice and cozy and had a porno all set to go on his phone, someone wanted him to do something. He'd even waited until past midnight to wack off a few weeks before, thinking with everyone asleep, I can finally get off! Nope! Just as he'd lubed up, Matthew had knocked on his door talking about some midnight release of a video game he'd been dying to play.

So the few times he'd managed to cum in peace, they had been rushed and more of a physical release rather than a pleasurable one.

Not that he didn't orgasm multiple times a week. It was hugely embarrassing that wet dreams seemed to be the go-to method for his horny body. It was horrid waking up to the cold, sticky, wet aftermath without experiencing any of the joys. And he barely remembered the dreams. Sometimes there was a dark haired person blowing him. And sometimes he was being fucked up the ass. It was strange how his mind was able to turn porn videos into really vivid dreams. Especially after the latter dreams, his ass would still be faux aching from being imaginarily stretched when he woke up. It was almost like his body was desperate for that thing to be shoved up there again. Again? It's not like anything has ever been shoved up there in the first place!

He wasn't even sure if he wanted to be a bottom…. It looked like it hurt. The research he'd done while dating Zach made him feel even more unsure about the whole thing…. Enemas and condoms and dietary restrictions… ugh. Sometimes he wondered if he should maybe finger himself while jacking off…. Just to see how it felt in a safe environment. Given his luck, though, it would be like 3AM, he'd have two fingers shoved up high enough he'd be seeing stars and one of the parents would stroll in asking him if he wanted ice cream or pie as a midnight snack.

Squeezing his head in a vain attempt to reduce the pain, he wondered what exactly it would take for the parents to let him move back to Cambridge. Or to move in with Chen Song. No one in either location would bother his 'me' time...

Passing through the living room, he saw his sister watching two guys struggling to kill a freaking huge water snake. "That's either a horrible puppet or horrible CGI," he snorted.

Eleanor nodded and paused the TV. "I think the budget for special effects was about a thousand dollars. And nine hundred of that was spent deleting the pulley wires and making the runes glow. You should have seen the wolf-dog creature a few episodes back. It was supposed to be scary, but I laughed through the whole scene!" Eleanor unpaused the show, and giggled a bit at the antics on the screen. "This is supposed to be a thousand year old man-eating turtle named Xuanwu. It looks like something a kindergartner would draw."

Michael felt slightly dizzy all of a sudden as his headache increased a notch or two. "Xuanwu? The Tortoise of Slaughter? What show is this? Maybe I'll watch it later." He grabbed the back of the couch to steady himself.

Eleanor smiled over her shoulder quickly. "The English title is The Untamed. Chén Qíng Lìng in Chinese. I don't know if you'd like it. It's the highly edited and almost completely censored version of a BL novel, Mó Dào Zǔ Shī."

"What's a BL novel?"

"Boy's Love. Danmei? Yaoi? Heard of those? Gay drama basically, but for some reason it's marketed towards women. Like the eighteen to twenty-five year olds. The first few novels that were released in China were definitely NSFW, but censorship seems to have removed a lot of the porn-y parts of the later novels. They guys still have sex at the end, but it's more like, they kiss all gooey-romantic like and then the bottom wakes up in the morning with a sore butt and all the in between parts are for your imagination to fill in. Or fanfics. And, of course, the TV shows are censored to remove as much of the gayness as possible. They're 'just friends' who happen to be 'soulmates' instead of lovers who fuck each other's brains out in the extra chapters." Eleanor used air quotes to highlight her statement. "Thai dramas are full of this stuff and they don't always hold back on the NSFW elements even in the TV shows. I've seen soft porn that's less hardcore than some of what they show... But I gotta say, Thai dramas are the worst at showing the reality of LGBT. In a lot of them, and I do mean a lot, one of the leads gets raped either as his first time with an ex-lover or by his current lover. I'm sure there are far too many rapes in the gay community that are never reported, but do the writers have to romanticize it? 'You raped me and now I'm in love with you'? Not a healthy relationship... The non-rape stories are cute, but too many of them start out with like six or eight boys in various friend groups. And they're either all straight or there's one gay guy who's not quite out of the closet. By the end of the show or book, every single freaking one of them is in a homosexual relationship. And worse? All it takes is one heartfelt 'but I love him' speech to convert a homophobic parent into a rainbow flag waving ally.

"Nǐ gàosù wǒ. Did all of your college friends turn out to be gay?"

Michael snorted. "Méiyǒu. Not a one." At Eleanor's disbelieving look, he repeated himself. "Not. A. One." Stop trying to insist I was dating my former roommate.

"See? Unrealistic. This story gets it right. There's two guys who think they're straight, but fall in love with each other when they're teenagers. Just one is a dumbass and doesn't realize what he's feeling until the very end. Which is like twenty years after they first meet. The other one realizes it early on, but convinces himself that the guy he's in love with would never love him back. Everyone else is completely straight. Of course, the fans are all goo-goo and gah-gah and insist that Lan XiChen and Jiang Cheng fall in love."

Michael's dizziness and headache increased fourfold. "Who?" he questioned faintly.

Eleanor either ignored him or didn't hear. "And then there are those who insist that Lan SiZhen and Jin Ling will fall in love. Personally, I don't ship either of these pairs. Michael!" she screamed hearing him fall to the floor.

Michael lay still, head pounding so hard that he barely felt it anymore. It felt like there was something wet running down his neck. It made a weird sound when it hit the floor. "Lan SiZhen didn't fall in love with Jin Ling," he heard himself say calmly. Almost too calmly. "A'Yuan fell in love with OuYang XiaoDan, ZiZhen de mèimei. Tāmen yǒu sān gè háizi. Two boys and then a girl." Memories burst into his skull: Ming Lim! No longer simply a former roommate mostly forgotten and ignored. His lover and soulmate. The man he adored. That last text: 'I love you Michael. Forever.' I love you, LimGe! My fucking brain! How could I forget you?! He wanted to cry at what he had done. It sort of felt like he was crying…. The fluid was the wrong viscosity. And smell.

"Mom!" Eleanor screamed. "Dad! Matthew! Help! Michael! What the Hell is happening to you?" Michael raised one shaking hand to wipe away the wetness from his eyes; it came away stained with blood. "Mom!" Eleanor screamed louder. "Call 9-1-1! He's bleeding! Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Bleeding from the eyes and ears…. That's… ummm… concussion? No."

Michael pulled his phone from his pocket. "Video call or text Chen Song," he ordered as his eyes fluttered shut and the darkness crept up his body. "9-1-1 can't help me. Tell him… qi deviation. And tell… Ming Lim…. Tell him… a thousand lifetimes… Gàosù tā... Wǒ ài nǐ."

I will love you forever, Ming Lim.