Chapter Text
Jonathan Meng had never been a particularly spiritual person. However, in the time-honored tradition of precocious preteens that struggled to connect to their roots or put them down, he had an intense mythology phase that powered him through quiet recesses on the bench and long after-school programs in the cafeteria. He ate up everything the school librarians would give him, Greek and Egyptian and Mayan and Norse, and at one short-lived junior high, Chinese. His mother laughed until she cried when she finally noticed the imperfections in the calligraphy on the cover, then found him something secondhand but better.
When the books started to repeat themselves, he stole half hours in the computer labs, sad-eyed teaching aides guiding him through Internet safety and trusted sources. He didn’t need to take notes, but a teacher two schools ago said it was good practice. He filed the facts and fiction away in meticulous composition notebooks he bought in packs, analyzing the traditions and superstitions of the world through the lens of a lonely twelve year old with too much free time.
Some of them were bogus, but a lot were pretty credible, or at least pretty. He liked how the holly and ivy he picked from the neighbourhood shrubbery looked over the windows in the winter, no matter what the windows themselves framed. There was a cathedral on the walk between one of his schools and one of his apartments that had a stained glass front that caught the sunset light just right. It was nice, until the sun started going down too early, and then they moved again before it could circle back. He collected plastic Buddhas and waving cats from the cramped Asian markets his mom managed to find in each new neighbourhood, lining them up on windowsills since they never had a place with a mantel. He gave the men who dropped in and out of his mother’s life four of anything he had to give them and let them think he was being a generous kid.
He even tried some of the habits on for size, avoiding sweeping over his feet and stepping on cracks and walking under ladders. Some of them were easier than others, some just made him look silly, some he made up on his own, and some got lodged into him hard enough that he lost sight of which culture they came from. He never told anyone about them, so no one ever knew.
The phase passed. He turned sixteen. His mom died. Other people reminded him they existed, and they weren’t always pleasant about it. His childish free time wisped away. Urban legends and the supernatural didn’t really matter when flesh and blood people were fascinating and awful enough on their own. His stack of composition notebooks disappeared in the foster care shuffle, and he didn’t miss them. He didn’t have the time.
Old habits die hard, though. He still knocked on wood, he still never sat in the cross-breeze between a door and an open window, even as he stopped paying attention to sidewalk cracks and let his thumbs do whatever they wanted when he passed a graveyard. He upgraded his taste in stationery. He hung an evil eye ward at his door and an ethically-sourced dreamcatcher in his bedroom – not that anyone ever saw it to ask what artisan he had bought it from.
A therapist (if he had kept one after the mandatory social worker sessions) would have had a lot to say about how he kept everyone at a stiff-arm distance. He didn’t go to therapy, though, so he just argued with the shadow of the last one he had seen at seventeen years and eleven months old, when it was still early enough in January that his office’s Christmas decorations were still up.
Life hasn’t been kind to you, Jonathan, a Santa cutout said from the wall. But at some point, you should think about trying to pay it forward a little.
That movie was stupid, though, and Jonathan’s life was fine. He didn’t need people anymore. He studied them instead, like fire ants on the abandoned edge of the playground; carefully, with a stick and good shoes, watching their patterns and keeping his observations to himself, figuring out which ones to leave alone and which ones would make good surprises in bullies’ backpacks. Other people were tools, in the multiple definitions of the word. He used them. He didn’t like them. He didn’t need them. He was fine.
All in all, it wasn’t difficult to stay a virgin until he turned thirty.
February was cold in Ottawa. It was cold across the country, of course, but it always felt especially brutal on Jonathan’s birthday. He hopped on his toes as the last bus of his commute finally pulled up to the stop. Crossing the river added an extra hour to his morning, which was annoying, but not annoying enough to buy a car he would have to park. He would just have to make sure his next contract was on the Ontario side of the river.
He waved the woman who had been waiting with him onto the bus first. She flashed a blank, familiar smile at him behind her scarf as she crunched through the slush to the open door. He nodded back, stripping off his gloves as he stepped in after her, glancing around for the hope of an empty seat – it wasn’t fun to stand for the entire half-hour trip across the bridge. Ah, his bus stop friend had claimed an empty bench, perfect. He dropped down next to her, wedging his messenger bag between his knees, their winter coats bumping-
“If David hasn’t turned on the fucking coffee when I get there, I’m gonna kick his ass,” someone who wasn’t him said in his head.
Jonathan froze, blinking at his surroundings as images of a man he had never met experiencing everyday inconveniences tripped over themselves in his head. What?
He glanced at his seat companion, taking an earbud out as he asked her, “Did you say something?”
She blinked at him. “Excuse me?” she mumbled in the same voice as the one screeching in his head in a shapeless blind panic tinged with disgust. “Um, I mean. I’m sorry, no?” “Please don’t say this is one of those motherfuckers who’s going to try and talk to me on the fucking bus, I thought he was safe, he has airpods in, he was perfectly fine at the bus stop, I hate men so much-”
Jonathan cleared his throat, struggling to keep his face together through the force of the misandric wave flowing through him from some mysterious source – her? It had to be her, it was definitely her voice. But someone who knew they were broadcasting their thoughts wouldn’t be swearing up a fit at him in the third person with a shaky customer service smile. He tried one in return and knew his was better. “I thought I heard something,” he said. “My mistake.”
She shrugged, her neutral presentation at odds with the riot he was listening to against his will. The bus set off from its stop at a red light, and the sway allowed her to shift away without looking suspicious. The foreign voice in his head cut off like a disconnected cable.
Huh.
He scooted to the very edge of the bench and kept a careful distance for the entire river crossing. Well, that was weird.
Things didn’t stop being weird.
He conducted experiments on the walk from the bus stop to his current office building, brushing against other pedestrians on the sidewalk, in the lobby, and in the elevator. By the time he got to his desk, he had figured out that whatever was going on wasn’t isolated to just the girl on the bus, but anyone he touched, and that people thought in so many different ways. His head rang with the echoes of strangers and the too-vivid snapshots of their inner lives piling up on each other in his head. It was dizzying. Was he nauseous? He felt a little sick.
He stared blankly at his email, then at his surroundings, the Parks Canada worker bees droning around him as the office woke up. Would any of them want to talk to him? Want to touch him? He put two fingers over his mouth against the bile surging at the thought. He couldn’t deal with – any more of that.
Screw it. It wouldn’t be the first time he booked a breakout room for the whole day.
He spent his thirtieth birthday hiding from society in a glass-walled box, alternating between Excel on his work laptop, trying to focus on balancing his project budget against the actual invoices like he was supposed to do, and an incognito browser on his WiFi-disabled phone, frantically researching hallucinations. It was a mixed blessing that he couldn’t find any evidence for what he was experiencing on WebMD. On one hand, it meant he wasn’t going crazy out of nowhere in a quantifiable way. On the other, he still had no idea what was going on, and that was going to drive him there if he wasn’t already.
Ugh. He shoved his phone deep into his bag and threw himself into his numbers. At least finances always did what they were supposed to.
It was late when he worked up the will to pack up his temporary fishbowl shop and brave the real world once more. When he had woken that morning, he had thought he would treat himself to an easy day and an early departure, maybe do some idle solo touristing he saved for these special occasions, but he didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. Now, he just wanted to run straight home, avoiding any physical contact on the bus… oh, fuck it, it was his birthday, he could spring for a taxi. He shrugged his coat and bag on and headed out—
The door opened for him. He jumped, winced at himself for jumping, and smiled at his new companion. Dr. Lan’s eyes crinkled back at him. “Long day?” he asked in his infuriatingly silky voice. He held the door for Jonathan to pass through to the hall. “You’ve been trapped in there for hours, I was worried about you,” he said, like the concept of someone worrying about Jonathan wasn’t the most mystifying part of his whole existence. “Mingjue’s not working you too hard, is he?”
Jonathan’s next smile came easier. “No, not at all. I just needed some quiet today.” Dr. Lan hummed as he fell into step with Jonathan to the elevator bank. He had his own bag hanging from one shoulder, his coat and scarf open at the front. Jonathan tilted his head, a bubble of something,don’tthinkaboutittoohardJonathan swelling in his belly despite himself. “Were you waiting for me?” he asked, teasing just a little. He didn’t know much about Dr. Lan, not really, but the last few weeks of sharing a floor and two informational interviews had taught Jonathan that he was fun to tease. “You didn’t need to do that, you know.”
Dr. Lan smiled. “If I didn’t, when else would I get to talk to you? Our paths so rarely cross.”
Jonathan bit his cheek. “Ah yes, how surprising, that the contract project manager and the behavioral psychologist don’t have much in common at work.” Dr. Lan chuckled. “How was your day, then?” Jonathan asked, feeling a normal kind of hot-person dizzy instead of the sideways tilt of the morning. Jonathan was good at small talk. He could do this, even if his conversation partner was, as the office administrators called Dr. Lan behind his back, ‘a tall drink of mineral water’. He didn’t even need his new weird mindreading powers to know that one, just some Outlook shortcut tips and a few loonies dropped in the candy fund.
Dr. Lan sighed, his elegant version of a grumble drawing Jonathan away from his plans to woo old ladies. “Oh, they always keep me bouncing between meetings on my days in the office,” he said, long fingers twisting before them as they rounded a corner. “I never understand how some of these people can talk so much and get so little done.”
Jonathan laughed. “That’s government work for you.”
“Yes, yes, it comes with the territory, unfortunately.” He sighed again. “Still, it is rather exhausting. At least I have dinner with Mingjue to look forward to now.”
Jonathan bit his tongue. “I didn’t know you two were that close,” he commented.
“Ah – yes, we’ve been friends for years, since long before we lived in the same city.” His eyes crinkled. “I’d say it was serendipity that we get to work so closely now, but we did try to make this happen, so it was a little more than that.” They reached the elevators. Dr. Lan pushed the down button, then stepped back to face Jonathan head-on. “What are your plans for the evening?” Dr. Lan asked.
Jonathan shrugged. “Well, I had thought to stop in the nature museum on my way home since it’s my birthday, but it’s a little too late now, so-”
Dr. Lan gasped. Jonathan shoved his fists into his coat pockets. “It’s your birthday? You didn’t mention that!” His brow furrowed. “Are you just going home, then? After spending all day alone?”
“Ah…” The elevator dinged and opened. Jonathan hurried in, then cursed internally as Dr. Lan followed – now he was shut in a metal box with this conversation. Great. “Yes, well, it is a work day, so…” He shrugged. “I’ve never made a big deal about my birthday, honestly. It’s fine.”
“That’s so sad!” Oh God, Dr. Lan was pitying him, this could stop at any time. Jonathan smiled through it as Dr. Lan’s brow furrowed deeper, then lifted. “I know! Come out with Mingjue and I!” He smiled like the idea was the sunrise. “We can treat you like you deserve, it’ll be fun!”
Jonathan bit his cheek, smile sticking. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Dr. Lan shook his head, still beaming as he whipped out his phone. “Oh, not at all, we’d love to have you join us. Mingjue and I have wanted to get to know you better, anyway, this will be wonderful!” He dialed a number and held it to his ear as the elevator opened, touching Jonathan’s elbow as they exited.
“Yesyesyesyesyesyes oh God finally is my hair okay so excited can’t wait—” Jonathan stumbled on the lip of the elevator, and the hand tightened. “Oh no, oh no, he’s so light, I could pick him up, I want to pick him up, would he let me pick him up if I asked?”
Jonathan tugged his arm out of reach and straightened his coat, face hot. “I would not,” he mumbled.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Dr. Lan asked. Jonathan opened his mouth, but the low grumble through the phone pulled Dr. Lan’s attention away. “Mingjue! Hi!” His face eased in the way it only seemed to when talking to Jonathan’s current contract lead. “Would you be open to adding another person to our plans? I just found out it’s Jonathan’s birthday!” The voice rumbled just beyond Jonathan’s hearing. Dr. Lan laughed. “Yes, today! He’s with me now, we’re just leaving the office.” He tilted his head at the answering rumble, then turned to Jonathan. “How old are you turning, Jonathan?” he asked.
Jonathan’s smile tightened. “Thirty…” Wait. Wait. Fuck. Was that what this is?
Dr. Lan chuckled. “A milestone! We have to take you out, then.” He listened to the phone for a minute as they hovered just to the side of the door, cold gusts from others leaving for the day billowing over them every few moments. “That sounds lovely, da-ge,” he said after a long moment. Da-ge? “We’ll meet you there in half an hour, then?” A pause. “Okay, see you there. Bye!” He hung up and traded his phone for his hat, buttoning up his coat. “Mingjue’s going to see if his brother is free to make it a party,” he explained, eyes on his buttons. “Is that okay?”
Jonathan stared through him, lost in his recollections of some of the raunchier Internet urban legends he had spent a confused early puberty combing through. It’s because he turned thirty today. That’s what caused his weird day, isn’t it? Oh, hell. He wanted to go curl in a ball in his bed and never see another human ever again, actually, not go out to dinner with his supervisor and his doctor best friend and unknown quantity brother and try to pretend like he wasn’t freaking out about something more than just not being in his twenties anymore. Dr. Lan’s eyes were so hopeful, though, and the fifteen seconds of his thoughts so far had been so bright and big and…
Dr. Lan looked at his distress and chuckled. “Is it really so odd, for your coworkers to want to spend time with you outside of the office?”
“Yes.” Dr. Lan laughed. “Dr. Lan, I-”
“Huan.” He stepped closer to do up the clasps on Jonathan’s coat, which should have been such a breach of conduct, but… “Please call me Huan,” Dr. Lan said out loud, even as his thoughts waterfalled in a riot of colorful, not-very-appropriate thoughts about Jonathan calling him Dr. Lan. Oh dear.
“Sometimes, you have to make the good you want to see in the world,” Dr. Lan said, deep and low, discordant with his academically horny internal dialogue. “It’s not too much, to want to take a friend out for his birthday, is it?”
Jonathan stared at the big hands on his coat, trying desperately to sort through the influx of information flooding through him from too many fronts. “Friends?” He cleared the cracks from his throat. “I didn’t know we were friends.”
“Ah – that is. I would like to be.” Dr. Lan patted his shoulders and smiled. “Please, please, at least let us be friends, I can make do with anything he wants to give, but this is more than enough.”
Jonathan tried to breathe without showing it, the depths of Dr. Lan’s want carving him open. He was going to have to figure out how to deal with this, soon, but…
He smiled up the head of height difference between them. “Okay. I’d like that.”
Dr. Lan lit up, inside and out. Oh, fuck.
The world had changed a lot since Jonathan had made PowerPoints on Hera and Zeus in Windows 95. Back then, he could only cite sources from an .edu, .org, or .ca domain or he would lose his extra credit. Now, the most useful source on the very real phenomenon he was experiencing was Know Your Meme.
At least scrolling the Google results for ‘japanese urban legend 30 year old virgin’ was a distraction from analyzing every square centimeter of Dr. Lan’s passenger seat. Dr. Lan had insisted on driving them to the restaurant where Mingjue was meeting them, so here Jonathan was on this weird, weird day, folded into Dr. Lan’s ridiculous car with seat warmers and an expensive sound system, which was currently turned down low enough to hear Dr. Lan humming along with the radio. It only took about thirty-five seconds to learn the entire timeline of the urban legend – when it first showed up, where at, how it evolved over time. There wasn’t much to it, just Japanese forum gremlins passing around old wives’ tales about how guys who turn thirty when they’re still a virgin will get magic powers. They were frustratingly vague on what kind of magic powers, though. Did he have more than touch telepathy? Could he fly? Would his fish have something to tell him when he finally got home? Could he control traffic patterns, or throw fire?
He glared at the stoplight they were sitting at the moment. It didn’t turn green. Oh, well. Maybe it only worked if he touched it. Well, he wasn’t about to climb up a lightpost to test that theory.
“You know, you don’t have to join us if you don’t want to,” Dr. Lan said, shattering the quiet of the car and Jonathan’s red light reverie. Jonathan looked at his profile to catch Dr. Lan’s smile. “I realize that I sort of dragged you with me without really checking if you wanted to come. I apologize if you truly wanted to spend the evening alone – I know people who prefer that.” His teeth flashed in the streetlights. “If you wish, I can take you home instead and make your excuses to Mingjue.”
Jonathan tucked his phone away and shook his head. “No, no, this is fine. It’s nice to try something new sometimes.” He folded his hands on the center console, twisting to face Dr. Lan. “If anything, I’m the one imposing my birthday on your previous plans.”
“Oh, not at all!” Dr. Lan rushed to reply, touching Jonathan’s wrist on the center console. “It’s our pleasure, really!” “He’s so cute to be worried, he thinks you’re a creep, oh he’s so cute and tiny, oh no, his hand is so-”
The light turned, and Dr. Lan moved his hand to the gearshift before Jonathan learned what his own were ‘so’ of. Jonathan tucked his hands under his legs and frowned at his knees, heart still thrumming in his ears. What had he ever done to Dr. Lan to incite this level of… preoccupation? Should he be flattered? Terrified? Reciprocating? But Dr. Lan hadn’t actually done anything to indicate any kind of pursuit… maybe he wasn’t sure if Jonathan was into men, or he had workplace relationship standards, or…
Jonathan shook it off. It didn’t matter, anyway. There had been plenty of people who had thrown themselves into superficial, one-sided affairs with him through the years. None of them had ever stuck around after they learned anything about him deeper than a dimple. As soft as Dr. Lan was, he was sure to be the same. No reason to get his hopes up.
“Well, I appreciate the invitation,” he said with a smile. “Can you tell me about this brother of Mingjue’s? I wasn’t even aware he had one. Are they alike?”
Dr. Lan snorted, the uncharacteristic indignity making Jonathan’s nose wrinkle. “Oh, you’ll be hard-pressed to find two people less alike! Huaisang is younger – younger than you, even – and refuses to touch government work with a ten-foot pole!” He grinned, sharper than any expression he had shown Jonathan before. “I think he’ll like you.”
Jonathan grinned back at his profile. “I notice that you don’t say anything about me liking him.”
Dr. Lan laughed again. “Oh, Huaisang can be something of an acquired taste,” he admitted, “but he does grow on you. Ah, we’re here.” He parallel parked like a professional, then materialized at Jonathan’s door before he could figure out if he should take his bag inside with him (safer) or not (rude).
Safe won, as usual, so Dr. Lan held the door as Jonathan climbed out of the way-too-nice-for-government-work car and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Where to, sir?” he asked. It was almost lost in the glare from the streetlights, but Jonathan would have sworn that he saw Dr. Lan’s pupils dilate at the customer service slip. Hmm.
Neither of them acknowledged it, though. Dr. Lan just closed the door and locked the car behind Jonathan. “It’s just at the end of the block,” he said, directing Jonathan down the sidewalk with a hovering hand at his waist. Wow, absolutely not. Jonathan hitched his coat up and stepped out of reach with the motion, stretching his legs to keep up with Dr. Lan’s long strides. Dr. Lan’s hand dropped to tuck in his coat pocket, but his smile stayed put.
They walked the half a block in companionable silence, the kind that Jonathan had only ever had with his mother. Dr. Lan got the door again; Jonathan shot him a look as he stepped inside. “You do know that I can open doors on my own,” he teased.
Dr. Lan’s eyes crinkled under his hat-flattened bangs. “Indulge me, please.” Jonathan looked away instead of rolling his eyes, glancing through the half-full café for a familiar face. Despite the early conclusions Jonathan had drawn from his first impression of rough, informal Mingjue, his current boss had yet to be anything but distressingly punctual. The odds of them beating him here were extremely long.
“Ah, I believe my party is – oh, there he is!” Dr. Lan waved at Mingjue, who was sitting in a high-backed booth across the dining room, then smiled and nodded at the hostess as he passed. She and Jonathan made the meaningful eye contact of anyone who has ever worked in hospitality as he hurried to follow. If nothing else, he would get a chance to learn their tipping habits and judge accordingly.
Mingjue nodded at Dr. Lan as he slid onto the bench across from him, then quirked an impressive eyebrow at Jonathan. “Happy birthday,” he said, a laugh bubbling under the words. “You know, if you had told me before six in the evening, I would have let you take the day off.”
Jonathan flashed him a rueful smile as he unbuttoned his coat to cover his dithering about which side of the booth to sit. Dr. Lan was a known, if very attracted to him, quantity for the inevitable moment they touched during dinner, but Mingjue… maybe it was just the Quebecois in Mingjue, but it had been seven weeks now, and Jonathan still didn’t know if Mingjue liked him. But then, again again, this would be a perfect time to figure that out.
Dr. Lan smiled at him, tucking his coat between his side and the window to clear a spot for Jonathan. Mm. He could puzzle out Mingjue later.
“As I told Dr. Lan, I don’t make a big deal about my birthday,” he said as he sat down, biting his tongue at every gold sweep of pure pleasure Dr. Lan brushed over him as they settled in. “It’s so often during Chinese New Year, anyway, and since you gave your team the day off for that, it felt silly to ask for another day a week later.”
Mingjue huffed. “I’d’ve given it to you, you know. You work too much.” Jonathan’s smile tightened around a retort about how Mingjue was the one who set Jonathan’s strict deadlines. Mingjue didn’t notice, but reached for his water and asked Dr. Lan, “And what were you doing still in the building after five? Jonathan is a well-established workaholic, but you usually clear out by now.”
Dr. Lan sighed. “Rachelle wanted to discuss her master’s thesis again, and it ran long.”
Mingjue grinned, long dimples Jonathan had never noticed before showing, dark eyes sparkling. “Oh, her master’s thesis, huh?” He sipped his water as Dr. Lan groaned. “She ask you out yet?” Mingjue asked. Dr. Lan groaned louder. Mingjue chortled.
“I wish she would just make her move so I can turn it down and actually advise on her thesis,” Dr. Lan grumbled. “It’s at least somewhat interesting.”
“Just somewhat?” Dr. Lan stuck his tongue out at Mingjue like a kid. Mingjue laughed. “Okay, okay, do it your way.” He sprawled across the bench, attention swinging back to Jonathan. “Anyone targeted you yet?” he asked. “You’re fresh meat and a pretty face, I bet it must have happened by now.”
Jonathan put his own coat between him and Dr. Lan to block whatever thoughts he would have over the evening. “Ah – well, I’m used to being the fresh meat, as you say,” he replied. “I have a system.”
Mingjue grinned. He had smiled more in the last two minutes than he had in the last two months of coworking. “A system, huh? Well, it must be pretty decent, to hold the dogs off that well. Some of the women in my office can be… aggressive.” He ran a hand through his slicked-back hair. “Last contractor I hired didn’t fare near so well as you, poor man.”
“Oh!” Dr. Lan exclaimed. “Alix, right? He was sweet.”
“A pushover,” Mingjue snorted. “Lillie and Jennifer walked right over him. Glad our next one has a bit more backbone,” he said, winking at Jonathan. Jonathan hid a smile behind his water glass. “A-Huan, do you remember…”
They traded workplace anecdotes through ordering and appetizers. It was strange. Jonathan had only passing familiarity with Dr. Lan, just a couple of stakeholder interviews a month ago and sporadic break room interactions since then, and Mingjue was nothing but brutally professional whenever they talked shop in the office. Now, however, just an hour and a few miles away from their building, not only were they both old friends who enjoyed each other’s company, but they folded Jonathan into their conversation without pandering. After some of the other after-work happy hours Jonathan had been dragged to through the years, this was almost refreshing. Too bad it was just a birthday present.
The restaurant was busy for a Wednesday, other patrons coming and going enough that movement beyond their table didn’t draw Jonathan’s attention. Therefore, their fourth companion dropped in out of nowhere, collapsing on the bench next to Mingjue with a dramatic sigh, a shocking neon green coat with a dark fur collar billowing around him, long hair slapping Mingjue in the face. “Da-ge,” they whined, slumping into a resigned Mingjue’s side, “Il fait frette!”
“C'est Février,” Mingjue snapped back, spitting hair out of his mouth. “Arrête de chiâler, assis-toi comme du monde!”
Dr. Lan chuckled as the new person just slumped harder. “Hello, Huaisang,” he said, sliding the appetizer plates out of the line of flailing fire. “It’s good to see you.”
Huaisang blew a kiss at Dr. Lan, then finally sat up like Mingjue directed just to fold a leg under him and kiss his brother’s cheeks, nuzzling hard with a long hum. “Bonsoir, bonsoir,” he chirped. He plopped down on his folded leg and reached for the last piece of garlic bread. “So!” He smiled at Jonathan across the table, hair falling artfully over his eyes. “You must be the birthday boy.”
Jonathan bared his teeth. “So it seems.”
Huaisang shook his head and shoved bread in his mouth. “I don’ u’ers’and people ‘ike you,” he grumbled, hand held in front of his mouth to catch the crumbs. He swallowed. “It’s your birthday! The whole month should be about you!”
Mingjue yanked Huaisang’s coat out from under him. Huaisang wobbled and cursed, turning on his brother to snap in a mix of French and Mandarin that even Jonathan was hard-pressed to follow. Mingjue growled back in kind, wresting the Scooby-Doo villain of a coat over to join the pile of his own outerwear on his other side. Jonathan watched, eyebrows raised.
“Oh, I’m so glad we got him to join us, this is delightful.” Jonathan glanced over to find Dr. Lan leaning in to his space, smiling out of the corner of his eye. “An acquired taste,” Dr. Lan mumbled, waiting on Jonathan’s subdued response laughter before sitting back and sucking his thoughts about where else he wanted to take Jonathan away. A shame. Some of those were interesting ideas.
Jonathan hid his smile behind his hand. “I admit, I don’t really get it,” he mumbled, leaning sideways enough to feel Dr. Lan’s delight at the motion. “But I guess it’s from growing up as an only child.”
Dr. Lan chuckled. “I have a younger brother as well, and Zhan-er and I are nothing like this.”
“Hey!” Huaisang wriggled to kick Dr. Lan under the table. “Don’t compare me to a-Zhan, he’s so weird!” The entire table laughed. Huaisang crossed his arms and play-glared at Dr. Lan.
“Y’est cute,” Huaisang’s voice said in Jonathan’s head, half an octave lower than his whine and deadly serious. “Au moins Huan-ge a bon goût, mais on va voir s’il passe le test.”[1]
Jonathan’s eyebrows shot up. Huaisang pouted at Jonathan. “You back me, right?” he asked, bottom lip jutting out as he tapped his boot to Jonathan’s again.
Jonathan pulled his foot back. “Since I’ve never met Dr. Lan’s brother, I can’t judge.” He smiled. “Mingjue said you had a client that ran late?”
Huaisang moaned as he latched onto the obvious conversation shift and bolted, laying out the latest injustice one of his customers had served him while in his chair. Jonathan locked his ankles together tight, kept his hands and elbows inside the vehicle at all times, and nodded along.
It was a nice dinner. Jonathan’s companions had an easy rapport with each other, born of years of familiarity, and bounced off him as the new element with gusto. The buffer of discarded coats and the wide booth seats kept them from touching him, other than the unfocused brush when Dr. Lan went to the bathroom halfway through the evening. He coupled that trip with a note to the waitstaff that it was Jonathan’s birthday, of course, but at least no one sang over his complimentary cheesecake.
A quick check of his phone when they were bundling up to leave confirmed Jonathan’s fears about his bus ride home. He frowned at the options Maps was giving him, following the Nie brothers through the restaurant’s airlock as they bickered in their family language. He shivered in the winter night onslaught as they stepped outside. He really should start bringing his skates to work. Even after dark, it was a more reliable way to cross the river than public transit.
“Jonathan? Are you coming?” Jonathan looked up from the Lyft app at Dr. Lan, who stopped a few metres down the sidewalk, headed to his parked car.
Jonathan smiled reflexively. “Oh, I don’t want to be a bother,” he deferred, even as the little cars on the Lyft map were in absolutely awful locations for his needs. “I’m over the bridge, I’d be out of your way-”
“Oh, not at all!” Dr. Lan beamed. “I live there as well, it would hardly be an issue.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, besides, I’m just barely over the bridge, the Lyft won’t be that expensive-”
“Nonsense!” Dr. Lan stepped closer as the Nie arguing picked up volume. “You think I’d pay for your dinner, then leave you to Uber home? What kind of date do you think I am?” He winked, big and hammy. Jonathan tried to laugh. “At least tell me what ‘just over the river’ means so I can figure out how out of the way it really is.”
Jonathan tilted his head to ponder Dr. Lan, in his tailored leather overcoat and handknitted hat. “You’re not used to losing, are you.”
Dr. Lan’s eyes crinkled. “Not in this. Where do you live?”
It was too cold to argue about this, so Jonathan gave up the fight. “Between ByWard and Lower Town,” he sighed, pocketing his phone. “Really, though, you don’t-”
“You live in ByWard?” Jonathan and Dr. Lan both turned at Huaisang’s interjection, his dark eyes sharp over his fuzzy highlighter coat. Jonathan raised his eyebrows and nodded. Huaisang groaned with his whole body and escaped his brother’s meaty clutches to flop on an unbraced Jonathan, who stumbled backwards until his heel clipped the curb. “Dieu merci!” he cried. “Oh, you have to give me your number! It’s so annoying having to come all the way back here every time I want to go out, and ByWard is so much more interesting than anything in Gatineau! Please, please, we have to go out together, gege!”
Jonathan blinked under the dead weight of Huaisang’s rambling external English and stone-cold internal French. “You can’t move in with me,” he managed to answer both dialogues. “I don’t have the space.”
Mingjue and Dr. Lan laughed. Huaisang pulled back from his one-sided embrace to pout in his face. “I thought you were fun,” he whined over the unintelligible tide of brotherly defense in his head. Where did that come from? “You’ll have to make it up to me,” Huaisang sniffed, then started pawing through Jonathan’s coat pockets for his phone. Jonathan shot his biggest eyes at the older brothers over Huaisang’s shoulder, but neither of them moved to save him. Bastards.
Huaisang found his phone and stepped back, still in Jonathan’s bubble but not touching him anymore, thank God. Jonathan still felt a bit unstable from all the French thinking about all of the possible ways Jonathan could be a tool in Huaisang’s remarkably low-stakes schemes.
Huaisang held up the phone to Jonathan’s face to unlock it. Mingjue finally broke down into undignified chortling, clutching his belly tight, breath clouding around his head. Jonathan glared at him. “This is workplace harassment,” he snapped. Dr. Lan barked a laugh before slapping a hand over his mouth. Jonathan pointed at him with two gloved fingers. “And don’t get me started on you!” Dr. Lan grinned at him, cheeks pink. Mingjue’s eyebrows twitched. Jonathan bit his lip and shoved his fists into his empty pockets. Shit, it must have been a long day if he was talking like this to his boss.
He huffed and composed himself, holding out his hand for his phone with a smile. Huaisang rolled his eyes and slapped it on his palm. “Whatever, I don’t work with you, bitch. Good luck suing me.” “Victorie.” Huaisang spun on his heel to latch around one of Mingjue’s arms. “Da-ge, let’s go home,” he crooned, nuzzling into his brother’s shoulder.
Mingjue smiled at the top of his head, amused and indulgent. “Sure, Sang-er.” He winked at Jonathan. “Thanks for coming, we should do this again sometime.” Jonathan bit his cheek. No one ever really meant that, did they? “Do me a favor, please?” Mingjue asked. Jonathan hummed. Mingjue nodded at a bemused Dr. Lan. “Let a-Huan take you home. It’ll make him happy, and I won’t get midnight double texts wondering if you made it back safe.”
Dr. Lan gasped. “Mingjue!” Mingjue just raised his eyebrows at him. A stiff breeze blew down the sidewalk. Ugh, it was too damn cold to be arguing like this.
Jonathan shrugged his bag higher on his shoulder and smiled at Dr. Lan. “Seems I’m being overruled.”
“You’re being big-brothered,” Huaisang corrected. He wrinkled his nose. “You get used to it.”
That night, skincared and wrapped in his bed, Jonathan laid on his side and thought. Today had been – unexpected. Was it bad? He still couldn’t tell. He didn’t like how he didn’t have a choice in the new mind-reading powers, and that no amount of gloves or bundling-up would silence it. He would have gladly become that weird coworker who always wore gloves if it would have helped, but, well. Maybe it would come with practice.
But… maybe he could use this. He had never been bad at reading people, but now he could be perfect. It would take time to figure out how to implement it fully, but there had to be ways to use his new… powers? Abilities? Magic hands? Gross, not that. Just his magic, then. He was smart, he could figure out what it was good for beyond snooping on strangers on the subway. Things like finally figuring out what made Mingjue tick, giving him what he wanted to get a glowing closeout review, maybe getting a contract that lasted longer than six months next time. He could build up the clout to suggest changes to the firm that only existed in a tab on his personal OneNote right now. And Dr. Lan…
Jonathan rolled away from his fish tank, clenching his eyes against the glow from the street that filtered through his curtains. Dr. Lan’s superficial crush would fade away, like they always did. Someone like that had no business sticking around someone like Jonathan, ant-bitten and poisonous. Tonight was a one-time thing. A birthday present.
Jonathan clutched his hands to his chest, brushing a thumb over the back of his palm. Dr. Lan had touched him there when he dropped Jonathan off at his building, smiling like a streetlight and thinking about kissing Jonathan good night. He bit his tongue and tried to sleep.