Summary:
Shen Wei’s influencer Didi Yezun arrives in Tallahassee and Da Qing has to host him and it’s hard- well, it makes Da
Boya takes Qiming on a road trip back to New Orleans to meet his parents with the kids
There was a disturbance in the peaceful Shen-Zhao household, which was the only apartment with a settled enough pair of residents living there to be considered reputable, because Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan had been married for a whole month without having an audible argument or needing more groceries to feed Yunlan’s bottomless pit. It wasn’t down to either regular residents to be fair, but rather professor Shen’s Didi Shen Yezun.
Yezun was a top American influencer on Tik Tok and general internet celebrity on other websites people didn’t talk about in public, one of those people who had exactly the right face to make buckets of money by doing silly dances and showing off his tiny waist in crop tops, much unlike his serious Ge. He had run into some problems with being so famous though, and his landlord refused to let him stay in his current building in downtown Miami because a few fans had figured out where he lived and caused a ruckus for the other people living there, but Shen Ge had an apartment free where he rented. Miami was far busier than sleepy Tallahassee, which made the rent cheaper of course! The landlord was originally offering him the advertised apartment, yet when he asked how quiet and non confrontational the neighbors were if he made noise, he was suddenly advised to try sharing with the young man who had just moved into Zhao Yunlan’s old apartment or sleeping on professor Shen's sofa.
It was more out of fear for the new move that Bai Jintang strongly recommended staying with Shen Wei, because his brother Yutong and his esteemed fiance Dr Zhan were both generally disruptive when not at work and short tempered if anything threatened their peace that wasn't Gongsun putting his baiju bottles out for recycling. They did meet after trying to report each other to the police and planning systematic sleep torture after all, however good they were at being normal now. No man should have to put up with that every night and whenever work wasn't calling.
Shen Wei had just been doing dinner prep for that day's meal of orange duck, fried noodles and crab soup, when Yunlan went to answer the door. It could have been anyone at the door, considering how close they were to the shockingly friendly residents in the rest of the building, for example, Wen Kexing had pooed by with his fiance Zhou Zhishu once to borrow some rice wine and soy sauce because Walmart didn’t have any, and Lao Wen was entertaining his adoptive mother for the day. Bai Yutong and Zhan Yao also visited randomly, to talk about work at either the police station or university depending on the topic of the day, and to borrow cooking ingredients too because the residents in the crazy asian block couldn’t just need a cup of sugar to make tea.
However, the person at the door was not at all expected. With his dyed white hair in a shag cut, Gucci sunglasses and an all white super dry tracksuit, Yezun was there to stay until he found a place that suited his standards and the landlord would let him live there. “Wei Ge! I’m living in Tallahassee now, and my prospective landlord told me we could be neighbors again. Do you have a spare room I can pay you for, wait, who are you, ruffian?”, he asked accusingly, staring at Zhao Yunlan’s bird nest hair and unruly beard. In his defence, it had just been his week off and it wasn’t like Shen Wei was going to complain as long as he showered before bedtime sex and trimmed his beard so the hair didn’t go in food when he ate. Those were admittedly very low standards, but that was how they rolled in the Shen-Zhao household. Shen Wei came out, wondering who could possibly have turned up that didn’t know his husband, or knew he was a semi permanent slob, to find his Didi in the hall with two rolling suitcases.
He hadn’t seen Yezun for a decade, since young Shen Wei left for university in Massachusetts to pursue a scholarship in natural sciences and left his Didi in the care of their nice old neighbors in Seattle. Being a professor of biology that bathed in textbooks and research papers, he hadn’t exactly been keeping up with the latest trends in social media, yet his students had always talked about MianMian on something on Tik Tok like the influencer had a big stake in people’s lives. Zhan Yao helped him find a picture of the amazing MianMian, and Shen Wei was generally surprised to see his brother. “Come in Didi, we don’t have a spare room and you won't want to sleep on the couch since this lazy oaf I married hasn’t replaced it with a better one yet. Gege is cooking dinner soon, come eat with us.”, he replied invitingly.
Apart from several very obvious changes, Wei Ge had stayed the same, having clearly gained a scruffy caveman husband, his masters degree and a whole apartment to himself, which was unfortunately occupied. The apartment next door used to be rented by Zhao Yunlan, the scruffy caveman was apparently a community police officer when he didn’t need a shower and shave, but it had been passed on to his friend Da Qing, to live in until the lease was up and then lease it himself. If Yezun liked the crappy apartment, Da Qing was probably going to welcome somebody to share the rent, and Yunlan's mother hen husband would have someone else to bother that wasn't him.
Da Qing didn't think professor Shen had any family, nobody got invited to the wedding or spoken about to be fair, but the tiktok celebrity cretin he was supposed to room with showed no relation to his neighbor. Where his Gege was filled out with useful muscle, had the soul of a housewife and the patience of a saint, essentially all the ways he was able to deal with Zhao Yunlan, Shen Mianmian was snappy, diva like, flamboyant and his body clearly didn't know what muscle was because every time Da Qing brushed past him he felt bone. He was also terribly sexy, which caused different problems.
Ever since the barista accidentally spied his obligatory roommate going into the shower the day he technically moved in, Da Qing had been plagued by dreams. The kind of dreams that included him taking bratty Yezun out of his tantalisingly tight white boxers and into bed, where they did sexy things that felt so real, each morning the towel laid on top of the sheets to save the daily laundry needed changing. That Mianmian would either be the trigger of his bisexual awakening or the death of him, and Zhao Zhen would have to find another worker then.
Boya, Qiming, Fangyue, Honey Bug and Yum Yum were on a journey across America, well, not much of one really. A typical road trip was to have fun right, not see each other's dead parents gravestones because that was all they had for parental figures, but this isn't your typical American sitcom to begin with, so what did you expect?
Anyway, the first stop was in Louisiana, six and a half hours of driving away from good old Florida, to meet the Yuan family because it turned out that Qiming wanted to stop a little bit after Louisiana and it made more sense to go a round trip. In Boya's earliest memories, he and his parents lived in a homestead somewhere cool and crisp, a comfortable place to play and sit out on the porch reading about dragons and all the other exciting stories written for five to seven year olds with his Ma. The picture of the perfect family to most people, and he had to admit that it was pretty darn good growing up, his Ma was a working from home seamstress who made custom costumes for theatres and Ba made decent money in teaching history at a local high school, so there was always someone at home to get dinner ready or stay home when he was sick.
Until there was nobody to pick him up from kindergarten one rainy Thursday, and the kindergarten called his aunt. Aunt Jing was a crabby singleton who didn't like little Boya and he didn't like her, especially after she casually dropped the bombshell of his parents being dead in public. The teacher needed to close up, so she had to send him home come hell or high water.
A few weeks later, Yuan Boya entered the orphanage because he was labeled as a problem child. That was his life for eleven years, and at 18 he moved to Tallahassee. Qiming took over the managerial position at Walmart two years before the two met, so what had he been doing?
The Yuan parents shared the quiet corner of a well kept cemetery, surrounded by wild flowers and small animals, and enclosed by a sturdy gate, the thin black cat sleeping in the daisies. "This is a nice plot, can I let Fangyue and the cats out? We can have more time to clean the graves if they're busy sniffing around the non toxic flowers, and I'm sure you want to talk to your Ma and Ba.", Qiming asked shyly.
His shyness made his little boyfriend smile, "A-Ming, if I had bought a woman and our kids here, I wouldn't say that the kids can't roam, and Fangyue, Honey Bug and Yum Yum are the closest that Ma and Ba will get to grandkids. We had a cat at home back then, he was the same size as Lady Honey, but silvery coloured and I called him Long Long because I was convinced that my cat was a dragon. That would explain why your lady acts like a royal though, she must be a dragon Queen in cat form!”
As Boya swept dead flowers and old flowers off the graves, arranged new bundles of daisies plucked from the surrounding area, and burned incense, Qiming saw a different side of his boyfriend. Underneath the hard exterior he saw at first, Yuan Boya was a complete softie who just had a rotten life for a while and needed lots of love. When it was his turn to talk to Ma and Ba Yuan, Song Qiming knew exactly what he wanted to do and lovingly manhandled his sleepy lover into his arms. “Mr and Mrs Yuan, thank you for protecting my A-Ya and delivering him to Walmart. I love him so much, I’ll marry him one day when we’re ready, and these are our fur kids, Honey Bug Song the grey tabby, Fangyue Song the Samoyed, and Yum Yum Yuan-Song. Please keep watching over him as I ask him to move in. Boya, will you move into my apartment with me when we get back from this lovely road trip?”, he asked confidently.
If Boya was going to fall asleep, he wasn’t now! Qiming had straight up announced their relationship to his dead parents' gravestones like he was talking to living people, and popped a pretty hefty question. Of course he was willing to move in with Qiming, no one had ever managed to break through his defensive layer so easily or without getting some broken bones first. “Ma, I’m sorry, I love this idiot too much to say no when I really should be talking about something more constructive. Qiming-ah, why do you have to ruin any serious moment I try to have? I’ll definitely make you pay for the hotel tonight and you have to help me move, you’re the smart one apparently.”, he whined.
Ma Yuan watched fondly from above, her little Boya in the arms of a man who was more than loving enough for a boyfriend. The scamp called Qiming was playful, yet respectful of boundaries when he was playing around, and for the first time since they saw their son off at kindergarten, he was truly smiling.
Qiming and Boya left the private patch just as the sun was going down, after sharing a picnic of egg rolls, chicken skewers and smashed cucumber from the hamper they brought with them, to find a motel that took pets in rooms. Zhan Yao and Bai Yutong called near bedtime to check if their friends needed any assistance, not that the pair needed any help from the rich rabbity couple and their crazy Shiba when they already had two cats and a huge dog to pay for. It had been a long but important day for the slowest couple in the apartment building, and one day, Qiming felt comfortable to divulge his life story. Just not now, he was far too tired to do anything except shower and collapse into the double bed of the motel room. The sheets smelled like tide pods, and not the pleasant smelling lavender variety either, and the ploycotton scratched his skin, however, he had his boyfriend, fur babies. “A-Ya, did you lock the door when we came in with the kids?”, he called into the bathroom.
Boya honestly wanted to roll his eyes if he hadn't needed to keep them shut, “Yes silly Ming, of course I locked the door, I’ll be out in a minute and we should settle down for bed soon. You could start taking Fangyue’s harness and the cats’ collars off while I dry my hair, unless you want to do that while I uncollar the kids.”, he replied dryly. He decided that his useless boyfriend clearly needed help more than his needed drying, so he just put an oversized t-shirt over his boxers and left his hair as smoothing to fix in the morning. The gasp from Qiming was unnecessary, it wasn’t like the giant oaf had never seen legs before, in fact, the first time he was in bed with his boxes on the night of the 4th July party, Boya distinctly remembered wearing boxers and a long shirt when he woke up. Poor Qiming was going to keel over when it came to complete nakedness if a glimpse of leg made him into a statue, but fortunately, that was a bit further in the future.