Chapter 73: N. Tender Comfort

Su Hui hadn’t anticipated things becoming this awkward so suddenly.

He knew Carl was Ning Yixiao’s personal assistant, but he was startled all the same, and immediately patted Ning Yixiao’s arm and used the chaos to extract himself.

Ning Yixiao straightened Su Hui’s clothes for him, entirely unbothered himself, then turned to glance at Carl with a perfectly calm expression. “You’re still here?”

Carl had clearly not yet recovered from the shock of what he had just witnessed. He didn’t respond. His mind appeared to be running approximately ten thousand simultaneous subtitles.

What is happening.

Weren’t you two just friends?

Did I misunderstand something, or did you?

In the excruciating seconds that followed, Carl had already mentally drafted a strategy for contacting the best PR team in the country to contain his employer’s extraordinary personal news.

“Aren’t you a little slow?” Ning Yixiao turned, positioning himself casually in front of Su Hui.

Carl’s internal state was indescribable.

Is it possible that you were the fast one?

But he had been professionally trained, so none of this internal turbulence reached the surface.

“I’m sorry, Shaw. I didn’t mean to intrude.” Carl retrieved the scented candle from the floor and worked hard to restore his composure. “I just came to find the incense for the cleaners. I’m leaving now.”

He hadn’t gotten to light anything. He set the candle down on the entryway cabinet and made a brisk exit, but Su Hui noticed his briefcase still sitting on the sofa and was about to mention it when Carl came shooting back in, made a beeline for the small sofa, grabbed the bag, and fled the scene.

Su Hui couldn’t help laughing.

Ning Yixiao turned to look at him.

“Your assistant is adorable.” Su Hui picked up his hat from the floor and set it on the shelf. He heard Ning Yixiao make a flat sound and turned back.

“Adorable? I don’t see it.”

Su Hui realized he was jealous and walked over to take his hand. “What’s wrong? I said one thing. You’re being very stingy for someone in a management position.”

“I offer excellent benefits,” Ning Yixiao said. “Ask him yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Su Hui laughed again. “Ning Yixiao, you are so serious.”

“I’ll accept that characterization.” Perfectly deadpan.

Su Hui gave up arguing and linked their fingers, wandering through the ground floor of the house. It was even more beautiful than he had imagined, open and filled with light, the sea visible from almost every angle.

He had spent years sinking in a swamp of self-doubt born of misunderstanding and distance. He had convinced himself Ning Yixiao no longer liked him, that perhaps Ning Yixiao even resented him. The fog of uncertainty had been so thick he couldn’t see anything clearly.

It turned out none of that was true.

Even through the years apart, Ning Yixiao had quietly kept every promise he had ever made, and had even done things Su Hui had once written on a wishlist for himself, like going to Africa to visit the little elephants he had helped rescue, and playing a harmonica for them.

What Ning Yixiao showed of his love had always been only the surface.

“What is it?” Ning Yixiao looked down, sensing the shift in Su Hui’s emotions, and tapped the tip of his nose with one finger.

Su Hui’s lips curved into a smile. He shook his head and wrapped his arms around him.

“Ning Yixiao. I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too.” Ning Yixiao kissed the top of his head. “Work has been relentless lately. I’ll make more time for you after this.”

Su Hui shook his head. “Not just lately.”

He pressed his face into Ning Yixiao’s chest. “I missed you the whole time. Every single day we were apart.”

The sudden candor of it made Ning Yixiao go still for a moment.

The Su Hui he had known would do this often: say things directly, boldly, without reserve, like a plant growing toward the light, showing everything it had without apology. But when they met again after six years, Ning Yixiao had found that this plant he had kept in his heart had withered almost beyond recognition.

He no longer laughed freely or reached forward with that old fearlessness. Everything he did was careful. He watched the people around him, pulled his own emotions back, kept expression to a minimum. Only when he was drunk did he allow some of that inner softness to show through.

There wasn’t much Ning Yixiao could do except water him, a little at a time, and hope the small plant might find its way back to life.

It seemed to be working, slowly. A new shoot had appeared.

“I missed you too.” Ning Yixiao held him, voice gentle.

He walked Su Hui through the rest of the house, pointing things out in passing. When he mentioned the name of the architect, Su Hui’s eyes lit up entirely.

“I love his work. Everything he makes is a work of art. No wonder this place is so beautiful.”

Ning Yixiao had the distinct impression of watching a visible affection meter above Su Hui’s head jump upward by a hundred points.

They stepped outside onto the large second-floor terrace, where an infinity pool stretched to the edge of the view.

“I still can’t swim,” Su Hui said, with a small sigh.

“I can teach you.”

“You said that before, and the moment I said I didn’t want to learn anymore, you just agreed. How is anyone supposed to learn anything like that?” Su Hui tucked both hands in his pockets and turned the complaint on Ning Yixiao. “You should be stricter.”

Ning Yixiao raised his eyebrows, perfectly accommodating. “Fine. Next time you don’t learn, I’ll lock you out of the bedroom and you can sleep on your own.”

“That’s an extremely harsh punishment.” Su Hui shot him a look, then suddenly ran inside.

“What are you doing?” Ning Yixiao was left standing outside.

“Going to the bedroom first,” Su Hui called back, hair flying, “so I can lock you out.”

Ning Yixiao smiled at the absurdity and followed at an unhurried pace, reminding him: “Third floor.”

When he got there, Su Hui hadn’t locked the door at all. He was standing quietly in the doorway, looking out.

The panoramic glass curved around the room, holding the whole blue expanse of the sea. Ning Yixiao had looked at this view many times and stopped really seeing it long ago. Even when he first came here and decided to buy the place, he hadn’t felt settled or satisfied. The restlessness and emptiness had stayed with him.

Su Hui’s still silhouette now, lush as a green island, filled six years of hollow dreams. Ning Yixiao felt his heart quietly come to rest.

“Don’t you think I’m kind of shallow?” Su Hui said suddenly.

Ning Yixiao didn’t quite follow, but the word felt entirely wrong for Su Hui.

“Not at all.”

Su Hui smiled, glanced back at Ning Yixiao, then turned to the window again. His silver-white hair went translucent where the light passed through it.

“I used to think I didn’t care about money or status. I almost disliked those things, actually. Not because I was born with them, but because they were always used to correct me, to shape me into something, and I resented it. Back then I thought almost every day about running away. Going somewhere no one could find me. Even if the life was hard, it would be fine.”

He smiled faintly. “But after I met you, I realized life isn’t as simple as I’d imagined. The hardship I’d romanticized didn’t come close to one ten-thousandth of what it actually is.”

Su Hui hadn’t finished, but Ning Yixiao already understood.

What he called shallow wasn’t for his own sake at all.

“That’s when I understood I wasn’t someone without desires. I wanted so much for you to succeed. To build something remarkable. To have the very best life.”

To not have to worry about running into debt collectors on the street. To not have to hide. To not have to save up coin by coin just to buy a gift. To not have to work multiple jobs with barely any time left to sleep.

Su Hui’s nose stung, but he kept his voice light. “So when I saw you again in Seattle, my very first thought was: you seem like you’re doing better than before. And I thought… maybe what I did wasn’t the wrong choice.”

Ning Yixiao walked over and held him from behind, lowering his head to rest against Su Hui’s shoulder and neck. The scent of his skin, something like tobacco and fresh flowers, was soft and warm.

“But I wanted you more.”

Su Hui smiled and turned to face him. “That’s why I said the shallow one is me.” He leaned against the glass, his gaze tender.

They seemed, in some ways, to have traded places.

Ning Yixiao lived practically and purposefully, yet somewhere inside him was a fantasy of giving everything up and disappearing with Su Hui to some quiet island.

Su Hui had grown up in daydreams and illusions, yet he had wanted nothing more fiercely than to see the person he loved escape poverty and build a life beyond it.

Ning Yixiao smiled and leaned in. “You just love me too much.”

Su Hui didn’t deny it. He looked steadily at Ning Yixiao.

The hallucination that had kept him company through all those years had finally become real.

“Yes. I really do love you.”

Ning Yixiao thought he could listen to Su Hui say that for the rest of his life.

He took Su Hui’s hand without a glove between them, without saying anything, and traced his thumb across it with something that was entirely love.

“My hands aren’t as nice as they used to be.” Su Hui turned them over, showing both palms. “Lots of small scars.”

Ning Yixiao took them and looked closely. “Where?”

“They’re there, stop pretending you don’t see them.” The smile left Su Hui’s face, replaced by something quietly proud as he lifted his chin. “They’re proof that I worked hard.”

Ning Yixiao drew his hands up and kissed his fingers carefully. For reasons Su Hui couldn’t entirely explain, just that touch, just those quiet kisses, made his heart race.

The weather turned without warning. One moment the sky was wide and clear, and then rain came, sudden and soft, pressing the waves down before they rose again, scattering into a thousand small points of light.

Ning Yixiao dropped his head and let his nose graze Su Hui’s ear. “No swimming today.”

Su Hui flinched from the ticklish sensation, but his hands found their way up, and he stood on his toes, looking at Ning Yixiao with eyes that had gone a little bright.

“It wasn’t going to be today anyway…”

He still wasn’t entirely used to being the one to initiate when he was fully sober. Six years had worn him down in ways that made him hesitate, made him question things he had once taken for granted.

But the next moment Ning Yixiao pulled him close by the waist and kissed him.

The rain grew heavier. The room grew warmer. The temperature climbed slowly, and the air filled with the faint scent of white musk, undercut by something like bitter almond, there and then gone.

The rain covered everything. Ning Yixiao’s fingertips moved across Su Hui’s cheek, then worked slowly at his earlobe, trailing down, his hand curving around the soft line of his waist and holding tight.

In the long kiss, Ning Yixiao’s fingers pressed hard enough to leave marks. When he let go, the warmth and closeness between them only deepened.

Between one breath and the next, Su Hui kept saying Ning Yixiao’s name, broken and repeated, and Ning Yixiao gave it his full and undivided attention.

The rain clouds moved across the sky and settled over them. Su Hui, too, found himself pressed into the softness of the bed.

Ning Yixiao thought of Su Hui’s difficulty with beds and said, almost to himself, “Didn’t get a chance to have them move it yet.”

Su Hui shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said, and his neck tilted back to receive the kiss that moved lower.

“You said you didn’t like it.”

“A little…”

Ning Yixiao pressed his forehead to Su Hui’s and said quietly, “We can stand.”

Su Hui was against the window then, breath fogging the glass, the night outside going soft and indistinct. The bridge lights glimmered and shifted on the dark surface of the sea below, golden and wavering. Su Hui caught his own reflection in the glass. He heard Ning Yixiao say things he would never say at any other time, and it undid something in him completely, his heart stuttering in ways that felt almost wrong.

Ning Yixiao knew that at a certain edge of unraveling, if he held steady, Su Hui would answer him honestly.

“Say it with me. Whatever happens.”

Su Hui’s voice came out as barely a thread of air. “Whatever happens…”

“I won’t leave Ning Yixiao.”

“I won’t… leave Ning Yixiao.”

Ning Yixiao lowered his head and kissed his earlobe. “Never.”

“Never…”

Ning Yixiao was satisfied with the oath. The corner of his mouth curved. His voice was low and absolute, like lifting a spell, and his hold loosened.

“Good. Cum now.”

---

Su Hui woke briefly around ten in the evening, but only for under a minute, just long enough to register Ning Yixiao holding him from behind. He had no strength left at all and sank back under immediately. When he woke again it was one in the morning.

He opened his eyes to find Ning Yixiao across the room in black pajamas, working at the small round table by the window.

It took Su Hui a long moment to remember where he was. Every muscle in his body felt wrong, and when he tried to speak, his voice had gone alarmingly rough.

He cleared his throat, reached an arm out from under the covers, and waved.

Ning Yixiao came over immediately and crouched down, taking his hand. “Awake?”

“Water…” That was all Su Hui could manage.

Ning Yixiao poured him a cup of warm water and sat on the edge of the bed, half-cradling him so he could hold the cup steadily.

It was a little hot. Su Hui drank in small sips until his throat felt human again, then handed the cup back and murmured a thank-you.

“You’re welcome.” Ning Yixiao kissed the top of his head, set the cup on the bedside table, and moved to get up, but Su Hui’s hand caught his hem.

The faint red marks of Ning Yixiao’s grip were still visible on Su Hui’s pale wrist.

“What is it?” Ning Yixiao looked back.

Su Hui opened both arms from under the covers. The meaning was obvious: he wanted to be held.

Ning Yixiao smiled slightly and lay back down, pulling Su Hui against him.

Su Hui coughed softly and asked: “Are you still working this late?”

“Just a small thing.”

Su Hui nodded. After a short silence he said, “I want to sleep with you.”

Ning Yixiao paused, understanding the fuller meaning. “Sleeping together helps with the bed?”

“Yes.” Su Hui admitted it.

This had always been something Ning Yixiao paid attention to. He hadn’t asked before, partly because it hadn’t felt like the right time, and partly because he hadn’t felt he had the right. But none of that applied anymore.

“Why is it difficult? The bed?” He kept his voice very soft, not wanting to press.

Su Hui was quiet for a few seconds, as though deciding how to answer.

He hadn’t always been someone who needed a long runway to open up about things.

“It’s… complicated, I suppose.” He gave a rueful smile before he started, then let Ning Yixiao’s arms around him lend him some courage. “That hospital had a room specifically for the electric shock treatment. It was very dark. Just a bed inside. Lying down there meant the treatment was starting. I was terrified of that room.”

His breathing trembled slightly. He kept to the parts that were easier to say. “When they let me out, they gave everyone a packed bag of whatever they had brought with them when they were admitted, the same as walking out of a prison. But I had nothing. Just the clothes I had arrived in. No money. When you have no money, you can’t do anything. So I found work.”

“I was what you might call undocumented labor, since I didn’t have any identification.” Su Hui’s eyes dropped. “Someone like me could only wash dishes or wait tables. Earn a little cash. But being Asian, I got much less in tips than everyone else.”

Ning Yixiao felt a deep ache. He couldn’t imagine how Su Hui had survived it. He had never done physical work in his life, had once failed even to learn how to fry an egg, yet he had managed to hold down restaurant work just to get by.

“Later I switched to a Chinese restaurant. The owner seemed to take pity on me at first and was good to me. My hourly pay there was higher than any of the other places. When I burned my hand, he bought me medicine.”

Su Hui spoke a few sentences and then stopped, as though he needed to process things quietly between them.

Ning Yixiao held his hand.

Su Hui knew what that meant and smiled slightly. “It wasn’t so bad.” He kept going. “He could see I had nowhere to go, and that the hostels were costing more than I was earning, so he offered to rent me the attic above the restaurant at a very low rate. I was genuinely grateful at the time. I worked as hard as I could and washed a great many plates. He would give me leftover ingredients to cook for myself. He said he had a son about my age studying somewhere far from home, and that seeing me made him think of him.”

“I really thought I had found a place to land. Every day was exhausting, but it was better than being locked in that hospital.”

Su Hui had genuinely believed it. He had trusted that kind-faced restaurant owner, and when the man mentioned he was driving up to Vancouver the following month, Su Hui had asked to come along so he could go to the embassy and seek help.

“I had barely been there two days when the manic episode came. No medication. I couldn’t sleep. I was lying in the dark, and then I heard a sound. It came from under the bed.”

“The floorboards beneath the bed could be pushed open from below. He had climbed up from the restaurant directly, through the floor beneath me. He was under my bed. He touched my ankle.”

Su Hui had no way to describe how terrified he had been in that moment. Even now, remembering it, he broke into a cold sweat.

Ning Yixiao felt a quiet anger rising as he listened to the bare account of it, but pressed it down, pulling Su Hui closer and patting his back gently.

He wished more than anything that he had been there. That Su Hui hadn’t had to face that alone.

Su Hui seemed to drift back to that night.

He had moved his foot. The restaurant owner, thinking he was awake, retreated. Su Hui waited until he was sure the man had gone, then fled.

He walked the empty streets with his arms wrapped around himself, calling Ning Yixiao’s name in a small voice, knowing the person wouldn’t appear.

“I went to the police the next morning. They didn’t do anything.”

“Why not?”

“They all knew each other. And I wasn’t the first. Plus I was a foreigner, so they cared even less. Not even a detention. I couldn’t stay there anymore. I used the little I had saved to leave and went to a new city. It was difficult. I ran into walls. But I also met people who were genuinely kind.”

Su Hui didn’t want to keep going. He smiled, leaned up, and kissed Ning Yixiao’s lips lightly. “I’m foolish, aren’t I? Always getting taken in.”

Ning Yixiao felt a pain that had no easy name, moving slowly, as though being absorbed into him a little at a time.

Su Hui should never have had to go through any of this.

“Do you remember the name of the restaurant?”

Su Hui thought about it and told him, then looked up. “What for? Are you going to avenge me?” He laughed a little.

Ning Yixiao didn’t laugh. “Just curious.”

He lowered his head and tried to cover Su Hui’s pain with a long, unhurried kiss.

“Su Hui.”

Su Hui surfaced from the kiss, voice faint. “Mm?”

“You’re not foolish. You’re not shallow. You are the smartest, strongest little cat.”

Ning Yixiao pressed his lips carefully to Su Hui’s forehead.

“I’m here with you. I won’t leave you on your own again.”