Duan's mother stood at the door and held Jun's face in both hands and looked at him for a moment.
"Come back," she said. Not an invitation. A statement.
Jun nodded.
She let go and turned to Duan and grabbed his face the same way and shook it once lightly. "Call me."
"I always call—"
"You never call."
"I call every—"
"Kamin calls. You send voice messages at midnight."
Duan opened his mouth and closed it. She kissed his forehead and went back inside and the door closed and he stood there on the step for a second.
Jun was already at the car.
---
The drive back was easy. Two hours, the city coming up slow through the windshield, radio on low. Duan drove with one hand and didn't try to fill the silence.
At a long red light he reached over and picked up Jun's hand from his knee and held it on the gearshift.
Jun looked at their hands.
Left them there.
The light changed.
---
Back at school it took approximately one afternoon for Duan to combust.
Dom and Fah were minding their business after class — Dom working on something, Fah reading — when Duan sat down between them and started talking.
He talked about the drive. He talked about his mother pulling Jun into the kitchen. He talked about how his father had shaken Jun's hand at the door. He talked about dinner and how Jun had laughed at something his mother said — the real one, the quiet one — and how his mother had looked so pleased with herself afterward.
He talked.
Dom turned a page.
Fah did not look up from his book.
Duan kept talking.
Dom turned another page.
"Are you even listening to me," Duan said.
Nothing.
"Fah."
Fah turned a page.
Duan looked between them. Then he reached out and grabbed both of them by the shoulders.
They looked up with the identical expression of people who had been somewhere peaceful and had been removed from it.
"We slept in the same bed," Duan said.
Dom blinked. Fah blinked.
"Jun and I," Duan said. "Same bed. All night."
Silence.
Then Dom, in a completely detached tone: "Did you have sex."
Duan's eyes went very wide.
Fah made a sound and pressed his fist to his mouth.
"No—" Duan pulled his hands back. "Nothing happened. We just — it was just sleeping. We just slept. Nothing—" He was going red from the collar up. "Why would you even — nothing happened."
Dom looked at him. Looked at Fah. Looked back at Duan.
"Top or bottom," he said.
"I—" Duan pointed at him. "There's nothing to be top or bottom of because nothing happened—"
"Asking for the group."
"There is no group—"
"There is absolutely a group."
Fah smacked the back of Dom's head without looking up. Dom absorbed it without moving and kept looking at Duan expectantly.
Duan grabbed his chopsticks and turned back to his food. "None of your business," he said pleasantly.
Dom turned to Fah. "He's the bottom."
"Probably," Fah said.
"I can hear you both," Duan said.
---
Three days later they went grocery shopping.
Jun moved through the store the way he did everything — with a clear internal sense of what he was doing and no interest in deviation. He picked things up, inspected them, put back the ones that didn't meet whatever standard existed in his head. Duan pushed the cart behind him and handed things over when Jun held them out and found he didn't mind this arrangement at all.
He watched Jun hold a packet up to the light and turn it over and felt something warm move through his chest. Jun's brow was slightly furrowed. His lips pressed together the way they did when he was deciding something.
Duan thought: one day.
His ears went a little warm and he looked at the cart.
---
They came around to a small accessories display at the end of one of the aisles. Jun stopped. Turned the keyring rack once and picked one out, looked at it, put it in the basket and kept walking.
"What's that for?" Duan asked.
"You," Jun said without turning around.
"Me? Why?"
"Because you lose your keys every other day." Jun turned the corner. "At least this way they'll be easier to find."
Duan stood there for a second.
It was an insult. A very practical Jun-shaped insult with no ceremony to it whatsoever.
He'd been on Jun's mind. Jun had thought about Duan losing his keys, had filed it away, and was now doing something about it. Jun didn't do anything that wasn't deliberate.
Duan pushed the cart after him with his ears pink and said nothing.
---
He didn't notice where they were until the cart stopped.
He looked up.
Jun was standing in the aisle already reading the back of a condom box with the same expression he used to inspect vegetable freshness. He put it in the basket and picked up a bottle of lube beside it and turned it over and read that too.
"Jun—" Duan stepped up beside him. "Are we — are we doing this?"
Jun didn't look at him. He read the label.
"Do you not want to," he said.
"I—" It came out faster than he had any control over. "Yes."
Jun looked at him.
"Pervert," he said, and put both in the basket and kept moving.
Duan stood in the middle of the aisle with both hands on the cart and his face completely beyond his control and watched Jun round the corner with the same calm energy he'd brought to every other part of this trip.
He pushed the cart.
He didn't say another word all the way to the checkout.
---
They got home and Jun put the groceries away and Duan stood in the kitchen being absolutely no help to anyone.
Jun finished and turned around and held out the keyring.
Duan looked at it. Small and simple. Exactly what Jun would pick.
He took it.
"Thank you," he said.
Jun had already moved past him.
Duan stood there and clipped it onto his keys and held them for a moment and felt something settle into his chest that had no intention of leaving.