Tan Xiao decided to apply for a postdoctoral position at the neighboring university. Its application system wouldn’t open until September, but he needed to begin preparing now, contacting prospective supervisors and drafting a research proposal. There were also several remaining matters related to completing his doctorate.
He hadn’t enjoyed much of a break after his defense before another round of busy days began.
Zhou Ruofei stayed in Beijing for more than a week and handled a little work for the family’s China division while he was there. Knowing Tan Xiao was busy, he left without any great fuss and returned quietly to New York.
Time flew. In the blink of an eye, summer arrived and Tan Xiao formally graduated, transforming from a PhD candidate into the real Dr. Tan.
Commencement was held on the last day of June. At the reception afterward, the adviser came to congratulate and bless his freshly graduated doctoral students.
Tan Xiao was the only one in his research group graduating that year who intended to continue in academia. His adviser had even personally put him in touch with a new supervisor at the neighboring university. It wasn’t much of an exaggeration to say he’d been like a second parent to him, especially since Tan Xiao’s biological parents had largely been absent.
“I really don’t want to graduate! I want to keep learning from you my whole life!” Tan Xiao was overcome with sadness. He embraced the adviser, who stood about half a head shorter, and began to sob.
The adviser looked ready to cry too. He called to the people nearby, “Quick, quick! Pull him off me! He’s going to pull my wig off!”
Zhang Xingchuan had attended the morning commencement. He witnessed his beloved receive his degree with his own eyes and proudly recorded the occasion.
He wasn’t part of the department and didn’t feel it appropriate to join the afternoon reception, so he left first, arranging to see Tan Xiao that evening.
The reception ran from one until five. A little after five, Zhang received a call from Tan Xiao’s phone.
But it was a classmate speaking, asking very politely, “President Zhang? Would it be convenient for you to come collect your Tan Xiao?”
Although the happy puppy Tan Xiao had shed tears at the reception, he’d conducted himself with perfect dignity throughout the rest of the event. He only fell apart once it ended. He’d started with champagne, then absentmindedly picked up a glass of red wine. He loved everyone there and had to greet every single person, clink glasses, and exchange a few words. Between the tannins in the wine, the bubbles in the champagne, and the release of tension after the university leaders and professors departed, the alcohol suddenly caught up with him. He was completely drunk.
His dormitory had already been emptied, and his classmates didn’t know whether he rented somewhere in Beijing or owned a place.
They did, however, share an unspoken understanding about one thing. Tan Xiao and President Zhang of WenCheng seemed to be each other’s family now.
So Zhang returned to campus and collected the utterly intoxicated Tan Xiao from his classmates.
Tan Xiao had also become friends with the housekeeper at Zhang’s home. Figuring he wouldn’t want her to see him in this condition, Zhang took him to Tan Xiao’s own apartment instead.
He’d visited several times already. Tan Xiao had given him an access card, and he knew the code to the front door.
Half carrying, half supporting him, Zhang got Tan Xiao inside and settled him on the sofa. As he tried to turn back and close the door and change his shoes, Tan Xiao clung to his neck and wouldn’t let go.
“Be good. Let go for a moment,” Zhang coaxed him. “I haven’t closed the door yet.”
Tan Xiao clung tighter, made a couple of miserable little sounds, and suddenly began to cry.
“Fine, fine. We’ll leave the door open.”
It was a large apartment occupying an entire floor, with three elevators serving a single residence. Leaving the front door open wasn’t a major concern.
And before long, the air moving through the corridor blew it shut anyway.
Zhang sat down on the sofa with Tan Xiao sideways in his lap and comforted him. “Graduation’s like this. Parting is the hardest thing to accept. Go ahead and cry if you need to.”
Tan Xiao buried his face in Zhang’s shoulder, crying silently without a word.
Zhang thought he might have fallen asleep again and tried to lay him down on the sofa, but Tan Xiao said, “Don’t move. My head’s spinning.”
“Would you like to sleep in your bed for a while? It’s easy to get drunk mixing drinks. You know how to make cocktails. How could you forget that?”
“I wanted to get a little drunk.”
Zhang thought he sounded marginally better and began teasing him. “Which classmate are you saddest to leave? The one who called me? He’s quite handsome.”
“Who called you?” Tan Xiao had already lost that part of his memory. “Everyone in our finance department is gorgeous, boys and girls. I’ll miss every one of them. Why do people have to part? Why can’t we always stay together?”
Zhang didn’t have an answer. The question was so innocent that he couldn’t bear to offer some sensible explanation about how all gatherings must eventually end.
“Will we separate one day too?” Tan Xiao asked.
Zhang hadn’t expected that. “What’s gotten into you? Even if you’re feeling sentimental, don’t say something so cruel. You’re going to have me crying with you.”
Tan Xiao fell quiet again.
Zhang wasn’t entirely certain whether this was simply drunken talk.
“Tan Xiao? Have you fallen asleep?”
“My head’s spinning. I feel sick.”
“Lying down might help.”
“No. Right now I really need you to hold me.”
So Zhang could only stay exactly as he was.
“Brother,” Tan Xiao said.
“Hmm?” Zhang answered.
The old, familiar form of address sent ripples through his heart. It had been a while since Tan Xiao had called him that.
Then Tan Xiao asked a rather explosive question. “Do you not like me anymore?”
Zhang was completely baffled. “What? Did I do something wrong?”
“I have a very good classmate from your hometown.”
Zhang remembered the slightly accented Mandarin of the student who’d called him and guessed it was the same person.
“He told me people where you’re from say zai-zai in everyday conversation,” Tan Xiao said. “Parents don’t only call their children that. Couples who’ve fallen deeply in love call each other that too.”
“That’s right.”
Now Zhang understood what Tan Xiao was getting at.
“Ever since Julian’s secret came out, Sam hasn’t called him kiddo anymore,” Tan Xiao said. “Do you think Sam doesn’t love Julian as much now?”
Of course not. Zhang felt rather aggrieved.
Sam Zhang said, “Julian used to call Sam brother. Since his secret came out, he hardly ever says that either. Do you think…”
Tan Xiao was dizzy, but some part of him thought, No, Julian still loves Sam.
But Zhang’s question wasn’t the one he expected. “Do you think Julian wants to become Sam’s older brother?”
Tan Xiao chuckled, the laughter vibrating against Zhang’s shoulder. “No. No, I don’t. Don’t make things up.”
Zhang kissed his cheek and felt how hot his face was. He’d certainly drunk a great deal.
“Sam loves Julian,” Zhang said, “even more than he used to.”
“Really?”
“But you have a point,” Zhang continued. It didn’t seem wrong to be honest at a time like this. “Sometimes I still call you kiddo in my head, but it doesn’t feel quite right anymore. Then I find I can’t say it out loud.”
“Why?”
“It’s just…”
Money did have a silent kind of power. It had changed the way Tan Xiao appeared in his mind. Tan Xiao was still Tan Xiao, still that fresh-faced, adorable university boy, but the very image of his soul now seemed vast as heaven and earth, glittering with gold, reaching into the clouds.
“Maybe I’m a little dazzled by wealth,” Zhang said ruefully. “The balance in your accounts is so huge that I hardly dare act familiar.”
A moment later Tan Xiao said, “I noticed. The last two times you [bleeped] me, you became completely service-oriented. It didn’t feel like dating my boyfriend. It felt like I’d hired a male escort.”
What a nasty thing to say while drunk.
Zhang didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It wasn’t a compliment. I don’t like it.” Tan Xiao started crying again. “I don’t like you being like that. Do you understand? I don’t like it.”
Zhang had to comfort him once more. “I understand. I’m sorry. Next time I’ll be fierce and stop trying so hard to look after you.”
Tan Xiao turned his face toward him. Their eyes met, and Zhang kissed his lips. There was only a faint trace of alcohol. The drinks at the reception must have been good quality.
“Today I said goodbye to my teachers and classmates,” Tan Xiao said. “We’ll all take different paths from here. It feels like there are fewer and fewer people around me. And then I thought about how you’ve started treating me differently too, and I felt awful… I wish there were a button that could send everything back a few months, to when my dissertation hadn’t been approved. During that month I was taking a break, I was full of hope, waiting for an unknown result. It could’ve stayed unknown forever. And you still didn’t know I was a young master. You loved me the most. Every time we slept together, you’d wake up wanting to send me money… Wait. Doesn’t that make me sound like the male escort you hired?”
His words came haltingly, sometimes broken by sobs. He was neither entirely drunk nor properly sober.
“So you admit I used to send you money,” Zhang said. “If you thought of me as a male escort, why didn’t you send me any?”
“Do you want it? If you want it, I’ll give you all my money, and you can pay me a monthly allowance.”
“Your esteemed young mastership,” Zhang said politely, “you think far too highly of me. I have absolutely no experience managing a fund of that size.”
Tan Xiao looked at him earnestly. “You really are poor.”
“…”
“Say,” Zhang said, “do you remember President Fu?”
“Of course. Is he secretly gay and in love with you? He was incredibly unfriendly to me.”
That was the alcohol talking. Ordinarily Tan Xiao would never have said something like that.
Even if he genuinely suspected it, he wouldn’t gossip so cruelly about Zhang’s business partner.
Just as he wouldn’t normally tell Zhang that he was “really poor.”
“He couldn’t believe a boy as perfect as you would fall for me,” Zhang explained. “He thought it had to be an elaborate romance scam custom-built for me.”
“Really? Hahaha! Is he… is he always that touchy?”
“Once you’ve given me all your money,” Zhang said, “I’ll show him that the most sophisticated predator arrives disguised as its prey.”
“Good. Let’s broaden his horizons.”
“Lie down in bed for a while. Your heart’s beating very fast.”
Tan Xiao was sitting sideways on his lap but hugging him face-to-face, their chests pressed together. His heart was pounding. The alcohol was stimulating his sympathetic nervous system.
“Sam, do you want my money?” Tan Xiao asked. His eyes were half closed and his tone alluring. “The young master is hiring you now.”
He wasn’t merely talking. He genuinely wanted him, though he was too dizzy and lazy to move. Otherwise he’d already be trying to undo Sam Zhang’s shirt.
Zhang had been holding him for some time. Between the tears, the clinging, and the adorable nonsense, he’d begun to feel moved in another direction himself.
He wanted to take Tan Xiao to the bedroom. Tan Xiao’s bed was comfortable too. And the things they would need were in the bedside drawer.
Feeling Zhang prepare to get up, Tan Xiao clung fiercely to him. “Don’t go. Brother, I want to do it here.”
“Then let me go get what we need from the bedroom.”
“Don’t need anything,” Tan Xiao said. “I want to try it. You’re not really a male escort. Stop thinking you have to serve me all the time.”
But that had nothing to do with providing a service. It was about taking care of him.
“Do you know what you’re saying?” Zhang asked.
“Are you the one with a doctorate? I’m the doctor here. Which of us knows better?”
He was getting impatient, badly carried away. If they didn’t start soon, he might have to take care of himself.
All right, Zhang thought. As long as I’m careful.
Being careful was difficult. Tan Xiao was too good at drawing him in, and with the alcohol making him so warm, he seemed to envelop Zhang like fire.
Zhang had been holding himself back during their last couple of encounters. This felt like abandoning a strict diet for a feast with no limits.
Tan Xiao kept calling him. “Brother. Brother.”
Zhang kissed Tan Xiao deeply, stealing and swallowing the next cries of “Brother” before Tan Xiao could even voice them.
“Brother,” Tan Xiao said, leaning back against the sofa, a fine sheen of sweat on his pale skin. He smiled. “You’re taking such good care of me again.”
Zhang took care not to make a mess of him at the end, though the moment was a little awkward. “And whose fault is that? I don’t want you ending up with a stomachache.”
Tan Xiao felt wonderful, body and heart alike. Looking at Zhang, he thought his husband was perfect.
Zhang was watching him too, still reluctant for the moment to end.
“You haven’t said you love me today,” Tan Xiao said.
“I’ve said it plenty of times.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“You did.” Zhang leaned over him. “Kiddo, listen again.”