Of all the things that Líanlí had planned to do today, “running into Lian Ming and taking him home” had fallen exactly nowhere on the list. And yet, like a freak bolt of lightning out of nowhere, Ming-er had dropped into his lap and gotten one over on him. Out of respect for the idea that maybe, they should wait for privacy before talking about everything that had led Líanlí (and perhaps also Qiye?) to sever ties with the family, Líanlí had planned to say nothing for the entire walk……which, like his other plans for today, had not lasted.
He’d spent the few blocks from the library to his apartment telling Ming-er about how he’d found Táotáo at the shelter and immediately fallen in love. Then, Líanlí had shown off the photos of her little red dress and bunny ears outfit from Lunar New Year. (“I’m already working on the dragon outfit for next year,” Líanlí had explained, while waiting at a crosswalk. “Much more complicated than a rabbit, so……”)
He’d successfully resisted the impulse to apply pressure to his wound, or to scratch at the stitches. Last thing Líanlí needed to add to this lunacy was for Ming-er to get nosy and somehow figure out that Líanlí had gotten stabbed.
How would he even explain that to his cousin-in-law in the first place?
Unencumbered by any costumes at the moment, Táotáo roused from her favorite sleeping spot on the sofa and darted over as soon as she heard the apartment door open.
“There’s my sweet baby,” Líanlí cooed, locking the door and fastening the security chain as she danced around Ming-er’s legs, a little whirlwind of black sniffing at the New Person. “She might be a little fidgety for a few minutes? But she’s getting a lot better with new people. And if you want to incentivize her to trust you?” Líanlí gestured at a plastic ziploc container of treats shaped like bones, sitting over on the table in his kitchenette, beside a small plastic basket with his Adderall, some vitamin supplements (many of which were in gummy form, thanks to a Youtube sponsorship deal), and the pain meds that the trauma center doctor had given him (heavy duty tylenol). “She hasn’t had any treats yet today, so if she sits for you like a good girl? Give her one.”
Without it even needing to be a direct command, Táotáo did sit down, hearing Líanlí say the word. It didn’t earn her a treat, but Líanlí did crouch down to ruffle his hands up and down her sides while telling her she was the best girl.
“Any special requests on the tea, Ming-er? Want to browse my selection of leaves before letting me make it or anything?”
Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 5:36 pm
Lian Ming had cooed appropriately at the pictures of Táotáo in her cute little outfits. She looked adorable, and Líanlí had done an excellent job making them. Meeting the little tornado who was even more adorable in real life had him cooing all over again, petting her gently after she sniffed him and going for the bag of treats.
"Ah, if you have chamomile or licorice root?" he asked, distracted by getting a treat from the bag and getting Táotáo to sit like the goodest girl she was. He would have looked for himself, but… Well, cute dog!! Forgive him!!!
Once he'd fed Táotáo her treat and given her a little more attention, he sat at the table, pondering how to broach the subject. Probably best to just start with the truth.
"Qiye came out as genderfluid to me, before we married," he said. "He, she, hir, wife, husband, spouse. Sometimes wifesband, if I'm feeling silly."
He paused to chuckle, resting his chin in his hand. "I'm a very lucky man. Anyway, he came out to the rest of the family once we were married, because then nobody could stop us from getting married, and…"
He shook his head, sighing. "It's been difficult. My mother had to convince my father not to make me lose my job for supporting Qiye. And… We've been looking for you. Queer cousins must stick together, after all."
Please do not ask me to explain how I recognized you. I can't lie worth a s**t.
Although Líanlí busied himself around the kitchen—tea did not brew itself, after all—he did pay attention to what Ming-er had to say about everything. “Difficult,” he felt pretty sure, was the politest of all possible understatements that Ming-er could’ve come up with. True, Qiye was a cousin on Xiǎo Yùlán’s side of the family—the maternal side, for Líanlí—but that still left Qiye with an aunt who’d once looked her son in the eye, agreed that forcing an allegedly gay son to go on dates with girls wouldn’t make him any less gay, and then told Zhìháo that he had deserved this punishment regardless because he’d lied to his parents and grandparents by not telling them that he’d Felt Things about other boys.
If only any of the girls they set Zhìháo up with had been remotely his type, Líanlí mused silently, setting up the kettle on the stove. Maybe would’ve answered a lot of questions a lot sooner.
But, oh well. No use wasting tears on things that hadn’t happened.
“‘Wifesband’ is a cute term for hir,” Líanlí said, joining Ming-er at the table now that they had water ready. Needed time to boil, but that was alright. They……probably had a lot to talk about. “And good thing you’re sitting down. Much less anxiety about telling you: I’m glad that Qi-jie’s had you in hir life.… Glad she married someone who understands and supports her as herself, no matter what.”
Something in his chest twisted, thinking about that, but……it was fine. Líanlí didn’t need to be anybody’s wifesband in order to have a good life or be happy. No sense trying to make someone else into his home when building that feeling for himself would likely yield better fruits in the end.
The image of that pastel alien still haunted him, but it wasn’t like that was going to go anywhere. Líanlí didn’t even know where to start with it.
“I told my jiejie in the letter I sent her after I left,” he said, ruffling a hand through his bangs. “About being genderfluid, I mean. And about how the whole ‘gay’ thing that the family latched onto after the twins made it everybody’s business……wasn’t entirely accurate?” Wasn’t not accurate either, exactly? But it frustrated Líanlí to no end how many words that felt like they could be Right for him tended to carry some assumption of single-gender attraction that Líanlí couldn’t claim for himself. “Told da-jie plenty of other things, too. Apologies, assurances that it wasn’t her fault I needed to leave and I knew she always did her best for me, told her I loved her.…”
Xiùyīng had deserved better than that from her er-di, but……unideal circumstances all around.
With a soft huff, Líanlí slouched forward onto his elbows. “How did you recognize me, by the way? Tiktok’s taken to reminding me lately: I look pretty different now from how I did back then.”
He’d let his hair grow out. He wore the clothes that he wanted, now. He’d lost weight. Líanlí had done a great deal to stop looking like Zhìháo, and for most of the world, it generally seemed to have worked.
Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 5:43 pm
Ming-er wanted to be dramatic and pretend to have a heart attack because Líanlí said something positive about him, but now really was not the time. Even if it would be kind of funny. He also wanted to reach out and grasp Líanlí's hand in solidarity, but he didn't know how familiar he was allowed to be with Líanlí. So in the end, he settled for a blush, awkward smile, and nod.
Fabulous social skills.
And, of course, the very question he didn't want to be asked. ********.
"Well…" He winced. "If I knew a few years ago what would happen with AI, I would have never done it, but at the time, I figured, well, the police use this as a tool to age up children that have been missing for a few years, what if I do something similar? And I saved the results from various trials so I could… keep them around. Hope to find you. It sounds horrifically creepy now, but… Qiye wanted a family member to talk to, you know? And maybe your parents never cared, but we did. Do."
He sighed, running his fingers through his bangs. "We hoped to find you and make sure you found something good for yourself, even if you didn't want to talk to us. Because you were—are—still important to us."
Líanlí supposed that he owed it to Ming-er to, like, actually listen to him, rather than nod along while loosely hearing him but mostly waiting for the opportune moment to interrupt him. That sort of behavior had defined most of their interactions before Líanlí had left the family for Destiny City. Most people wouldn’t have considered it a point of pride that they’d been………arguably kind of a jerk to their cousin’s significant other, Líanlí felt pretty sure.
“For what it’s worth?” He rubbed at one eye and explained, “The sort of AI that they use in those programs isn’t really the same thing as the sort of AI that’s ******** things up for artists and writers, right now. The facial modification AIs use algorithms to judge photos that already exist and adjust the pixels based on someone or other’s ideas about how aging affects the face. Or losing weight, plastic surgery—not that I’ve had any, but like, doctors use that with patients and stuff? To help them pick out the nose jobs they want?
“s**t like ChatGPT, though? That stuff is outright stealing people’s work to create these databases that it assigns labels to. Like, it might throw the entire text of Twilight into its database for ‘young adult vampire romance,’ even though Twilight……eh?” Líanlí lifted a hand and tilted it up and down to indicate general noncommital-ness. “It does have a lot of hallmarks of the young adult vampire romance genre? But it’s also not as horny as most of the other options, because blah blah, Stephenie Meyer is Mormon and as far as I’ve learned from Hayden? Catholicism is the horny Christianity.”
Which was beside the point, so Líanlí dismissively waved at nothing in particular to move himself along. “So, once ChatGPT or whatever other example fills up those databases, it has references on-hand. Somebody gives it a prompt, and it recombines all these references that it stole from people into a hot mess that’s usually not even good. And that’s assuming you can even get it to work at all. I, uh.”
Líanlí pursed his lips. “So, some danmei fans have been all up on my channel and my Patreon recently, right? Somebody linked me to one of the songs from some live-action version—some ******** thing about Sexy Boy One used to be an assassin and Sexy Boy Two wants revenge, but oh, they fall in love or something? I haven’t watched it or read the novel; I don’t ******** know. All I know is that I covered that song and I’ve gotten a bunch of danmei fans throwing me money to do more covers of their favorite songs from their favorite dramas. And sometimes, I hear about other stuff that happens in their fandoms.
“Which goes back to AI because some fan of a totally different novel apparently tried to get ChatGPT to write a fanfic, and the stupid program wouldn’t do it. Because I guess the main lovebirds in that novel are like, shizun and disciple or something? Which is apparently really morally offensive when it’s two guys, as if there aren’t, like, hundreds of xianxia stories where the disciple is a girl and the shizun is a man, like……eugh??”
Trailing off into that disgusted noise turned out to be well-timed: the kettle whistled. “My point is,” Líanlí went on, getting out two mugs (Ming-er could have the pretty one with the design of roses along the rim), plus his little boxes full of dried and prepped chamomile flowers for Ming-er and green tea leaves for himself, “don’t worry about single-handedly causing the downfall of entire artistic careers or whatever you might beat yourself up about, okay? Because you’re not. This guy I composed some channel music for? He has a PhD in some kind of computer programmer something? He did a whole video on why the two kinds of AI are different.”
For all Líanlí thought it might be nice if Ming-er had gotten better in the anxiety department since they’d seen each other last, the fidgeting and surrender-hands didn’t give him much hope for that. Nor did Ming-er beating himself up about trying to do something nice for his wifesband. Sliding Ming-er his cup, his infuser-ball, and the box of tea leaves, Líanlí stood beside him, ready to pour the hot water as soon as Ming-er decided how much he wanted to fill the infuser ball.…… He probably deserved an answer to the, like, actually significant questions too, didn’t he? Instead of just an impromptu lesson in “some things I learned from a video by this guy I composed some stuff for once and the danmei fans who sometimes give me money for my music.”
Líanlí huffed softly. “……Also, I do have something good for myself. And, uh…….” A deep breath, and then a sigh. “I don’t.……? I don’t think I want to, just? Not talk to you. Definitely don’t want to cut off Qi-jie, either.”
Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 5:48 pm
Ming mostly just nodded as Líanlí talked through the implications of AI, humming at the right intervals. The whole thing was fascinating, and he hated how such a tool for good was being used so horrifically. He supposed, though, that was just capitalism at work. Aiyah. At least his tea was ready to start steeping, he thought, filling the infuser ball and dropping it into his pretty, rose deco cup. It smelled nice already…
He smiled warmly at the affirmation that Líanlí didn't want to cut them off, the desire to hug Líanlí growing, but he held back.
"I'm glad. A-Ye would be happy to hear that," he said softly. "She would—it's not like there's not the community center? But you obviously know more of the specifics of hir situation, being part of the family. Having that conflict of culture."
He sighed, rubbing his temples. "I've done my best, but I'm afraid I'm not good enough," he admitted. "He needs someone like you."
Líanlí frowned, listening to Ming-er express what were inherently valid concerns because they involved Qiye and making Qiye happy was Important. As one of the only other queer cousins, she’d always been one of Líanlí’s favorite people, and needing to leave her behind hadn’t been easy, the same way that leaving Xiuying behind hadn’t been easy. But……if Líanlí could have all of the cake and also eat it? Get to have a relationship with his cousin and keep doing what he loved instead of being dragged, kicking and screaming, to medical school and make sure his parents and paternal grandparents never found him? Then……that sounded like a win all around.
He didn’t really know what to say about most of what Ming-er had to say, though.… Bobbing his own infuser of green tea up and down in the “Gender Fluid” mug that Hayden had found for him at Target, Líanlí hummed. “Even if he needs more than you can give,” he supposed, because it sounded like the sort of thing that Ming-er needed to hear, “he’s probably still appreciated having you there. And given the family, it’s……it’s important to have somebody who won’t judge him for anything.”
Because truly, their family did nothing if not judge each other.
Líanlí meant to try and find something else to say, but before he could, an alarm went off on his phone. It crashed headlong into his thoughts with the sound of a jaunty fiddle really feeling itself over top of a solid beat, and then, to the tune of “Drunken Sailor (Up She Rises),” the vocals cut in like, “Gonna sing those songs that offend the censors! Singin’ those songs that offend the censors! Poppin’ my pills from a PEZ dispenser, rock stars don’t do mornings! Get washed up sailors writin’ all our songs!……”
With a sigh, Líanlí fumbled his phone and turned off the alarm, trying to pretend—even simply in his own mind—that he did not understand what the words CLEAN THE STAB WOUND meant. “Hey, would it be okay, uh……” He vaguely gestured down the hall, toward his bathroom. Really, Líanlí’s instincts here were to ask that Ming-er close his eyes and not open them again until Líanlí said ‘when.’ But……Hayden would probably mild-to-moderately kill him when he inevitably found out about that. “I, uh. Might……need some help with something, it—? It’s not very pretty and I’m sorry for that in advance, but……all Ming-er needs to do is help reapply a bandage.…… If Ming-er doesn’t mind giving me an assist?”
genovianprince
Posted: Sun May 28, 2023 10:22 pm
Lian Ming smiled softly, swirling his infuser for a moment, before deciding it was steeped enough and taking a sip—nearly immediately deciding it was not, in fact, steeped enough, and setting his mug back down.
"Yes, you're right. Thank you."
The alarm, followed by the question, caught him off guard, and he stood up, feeling—well, alarmed!
“I lost a fight with a gardening implement last week,” Líanlí ‘‘explained,’’ both allegedly saying something that was kinda sorta lie-adjacent, allegedly, and not actually explaining anything (or at least, not directly answering Ming-er’s question). Getting to his feet with a sigh—and absentmindedly stretching, only to wince in pain and regret for that idea once he’d done the thing—Líanlí wished that he were, like……better. At talking. Not about random topics of personal interest, which he could gab about endlessly as easy as blinking, but about, like……his own s**t.
Not because he felt bad or guilty or anything like that about misdirecting Ming-er or about yanking his chain or anything of the sort, of course not. What reason would Líanlí have to regret that? It simply inconvenienced Líanlí a great deal to wonder if Ming-er would tattle on him to Qi-jie, and in what ways Ming-er might tattle on him to Qi-jie, and what consequences might get involved if Ming-er decided to tattle about him.
Well, it inconvenienced him in a way that prohibited him exactly not at all from heading for the bathroom, motioning for Ming-er to follow him. Along the way, Líanlí only paused for long enough to get a pair of fresh washcloths out of the basket of laundry he’d sort of meant to put away, but then he’d gone out on patrol, and then he’d been drawn towards the chaos, and then he’d gotten more than slightly stabbed. Whoopsie daisies.
“Anyway, it turns out that, when one loses a fight with a gardening implement, there’s a lot of tedious upkeep to do. Regular cleaning to keep it from getting infected. Not supposed to use any sorts of cream-type disinfectants or anti-itch stuff—which is the worst; it’s all to prevent anything getting where it shouldn’t, so fair, but, like……itchy? Then, the skin needs to stay properly moisturized or else the itching gets worse, so like, eugh? Rude, much? And of course, the wound is in a spot that’s not the easiest for me to reach on my own……”
With a shake of the head, Líanlí said again, “I’m really sorry that it’s gonna be so unpleasant to look at and everything. But it looks worse than it really is, okay?”
Líanlí sighed, flicking on the bathroom lights and opening the medicine cabinet over his sink. The bandages (the big-ish sterile pad-type ones) sat there, same as the bottle of gentle, moisturizing soap sat on the edge of the sink, waiting ever so patiently for Líanlí to wash his hands (warm water, soap, timing today measured in units of “Old Town Road,” from “Got no stress, I been through all that” through the second repetition of “Gonna take my horse to the old town road, I’m gonna ride ‘til I can’t no more”).… The ER staff had been very clear about the need to make sure his hands were as sanitized as possible before handling the stab wound, and time Made Sense to Líanlí when measured in units of music, in ways that it simply did not Make Sense when counted off all boringly and eeeeugh, it was so easy to lose track of numbers like that, why didn’t more people appreciate the simple genius of keeping track of time in measurements of song.
Hands properly clean, Líanlí could go to work.…… Unfortunately, doing this meant that he rather needed to shuck off his multiple layers of shirt, and remove the old bandage. Which, in turn, meant letting Ming-er see, A., Líanlí’s torso, and B., the wound, with the stitches. They’d taken good care of Líanlí at the ER, but even after a week, even with the itch that meant his skin was trying to heal, the stitches were still doing most of the work to keep the wound all sutured up. Sure, there hadn’t been any blood leakage for five days, but that didn’t mean the wound looked any nicer. Líanlí took a deep breath.
“I really want you to remember, okay,” he said as he began wiggling out of his shirts, “that it looks significantly worse than it really, actually is.” Dropping the shirts to the floor and his hands to the old bandage, he added, “If not for the risk of infection, it’d honestly be more annoying than anything.”
Ming squinted at Lianli. "You saying that over and over doesn't make me feel better," he said, washing his own hands thoroughly as well. He tried to remember not to start touching his face, because he immediately wanted to pinch his nose in exasperation, but he didn't want to wash his hands all over again.
"...Li-ge, what the ******** really did look bad—he turned away for a moment, taking a few deep breaths, pushing down his queasiness. After the feeling vanished, he turned back around and took the bandages, fixing up Lianli's wound and breathing carefully.
"Be more careful, idiot. I'm not losing you when we just got you back," he scolded irritably, frowning severely at Lianli as he stood back up and washed his hands once more.
Honestly, Líanlí had sort of expected to get called out on the sheer implausibility and inherently ludicrous sound of an explanation like “I lost a fight with a gardening implement”—but ahahaha, it seemed that fortune would favor the cheeky today.
Because apparently, Ming-er didn’t want to look too hard at Líanlí’s stab wound or think logically about what Líanlí had said about where it had come from.
Not that Líanlí entirely blamed Ming-er for feeling queasy. If he hadn’t seen stitches in the vicinity of someone’s stomach before, then yes, it was a shock, and—“Y’know, after they got put in, Hayden had some pretty cool thoughts about how stitches are sort of a physical manifestation of the abject, in a real Julia Kristeva kind of sense?”
That had been what Hayden had said, anyway. Líanlí, personally, took Hayden’s word for it because he hadn’t read Julia Kristeva since the feminist film criticism course that he’d taken back in Massachusetts because it fulfilled one of his many assorted degree requirements and it had sounded fun.
Shaking his head as he finagled some extra tape on top of Ming-er’s perfectly placed bandage—maybe an unnecessary precaution, but Líanlí appreciated the extra layer of protection from germs and assorted things that he didn’t want getting inside his stab wound—Líanlí clarified, “Basically, he meant that, speaking psychoanalytically, stitches are in this weird place for people where we can recognize them as part of the body—giving it help while it heals itself and all that?—but on some really deep, ‘mind-games we play with ourselves’ kind of level? We also feel like it’s not part of the body. So, it’s in this wonky liminal state thing and it inspires all kinds of revulsion and discomfort because our feelings and our heads are fighting about it like ‘Oh no, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter’ except……with wounds and stuff.”
He huffed, trying to be careful as he stretched out his shoulders. “Anyway, I’m taking care of it and not looking to repeat the experience any time soon.” He left out the part about how the Negaverse may not have made that entirely a choice for him, but……well, he couldn’t very well tell Ming-er that he was a magical knight with an awesome, creepy evil wizard tower up in space. Not yet. What if the Negaverse tried to get at him and Qi-jie? Reaching for his t-shirt, Líanlí added, “Plus, at least a scar looks cooler than my stretch-marks, right.”
He said this simply and easily, because for him, it was. Even if he preferred to think of the period of time that had caused said stretch-marks as belonging entirely to Zhìháo, who didn’t exist anymore and everyone was better off for that, this didn’t change the fact that they were on Líanlí’s body and thanks, he hated it. Scars looked much cooler.
genovianprince_
Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2023 12:05 am
Ming-er sighed in relief when Lianli finally finished tending to the wound. Good. He didn't have to pay attention to that anymore and pretend he didn't feel faintly nauseous (as though he didn't feel that most of the time anyway). He took a more steadying breath and braced himself on the counter to stand back up, wondering if the shaking in his body was as visible as he felt it was.
He flinched a bit at the comment, swallowing back his initial reaction. "Yeah. Uh-huh, sure," he agreed quickly, trying to move past that comment as fast as he could. He, too, would rather have scars than stretch marks. And he really wouldn't want scars, either. But stretch marks... Would be worse.
Not that he wanted to talk about it. "A-Anyway, I should head back home. I have a beautiful wifesband to kiss and tell all about who I met today," he said cheerfully, trying to end the visit on a cheerful mood. He needed to get out of there before he threw up from thinking too much about this comment. He couldn't do that in front of Lianli. It would get him questioned.
