A Lucky Snow First Falling

It’s never been like this before. Wei Ying has been… well, he’s been in relationships. He dated. There were girls in school, back in China, and parts of it were the same. The early giddiness, the warmth, the desire to be with them, all the time, as much as he could. He still keeps up with most of those girls, on Weibo, and considers them friends.

But this thing with Lan Zhan is different, too. There’s something about the lack of urgency. Something about the way they both know it’s going to happen, and there’s no rush.

It was rough being out here with Jiang Cheng, away from their sister for Mid-Autumn festival, although the Chinese Benevolent Association organised a festival downtown, and the Chinese Students’ Association had had a moon-cake making party, which was where he had met Lan Zhan.

But now Jiang Cheng is going home for winter break, and Wei Ying is not. He’s staying in the dorms. And so is Lan Zhan. They’ve got three whole weeks to themselves, and Wei Ying doesn’t have a roommate. (Lan Zhan’s roommate, Chris, lives in the city, and has a dorm room so that he can “integrate socially” but comes and goes according to a schedule he doesn’t keep them informed of.)

On the one hand, Wei Ying is burning to get his hands up Lan Zhan’s sweaters, down his pants, roll around with him on a bed, bite his collar-bones and discover more of the skin over his hips. He’s even looking forward to the excruciating fully-clothed make-outs. But there’s something so enjoyable about this slow process, too, the way he’s magnetized to Lan Zhan across the whole length of the fully packed Student Union building, the way when he meets Lan Zhan’s gaze in a lecture hall, Lan Zhan is already looking back at him.

So far, the physical progress of their relationship has been limited to an absolutely agonizing date where they watched a movie in Tamil with English subtitles, and probably it was a good movie, but Wei Ying’s brain had abruptly run out of patience with English at 6:30 that evening and the movie started at eight. On the other hand, Lan Zhan had held his hand throughout the movie, and ten minutes in had started to explore his hand with his fingers in a way that managed to hold Wei Ying’s attention to complete exclusion of the movie.

But the amazing thing was, in Wei Ying’s mind, that there was absolutely no doubt it was going to happen. Lan Zhan wanted him. He wanted Lan Zhan. They were circling each other like celestial bodies in orbit, and eventually their orbits would yield to each others’ pull in an annihilating (but glorious!) collision. But their orbit was good too. Beautiful, even, he thought a little dreamily, as he lay in the afterglow of the most self-indulgent masturbation session he’d been able to have since he left China. He missed Jiang Cheng, but it was nice to have a little more space.

Also, Jiang Cheng didn’t really get the whole orbit thing. “Just fuck, it’s agonizing watching you guys!” he’d said, as he jammed a seemingly random selection of his belongings into the one carry-on he was taking. “Please. Fuck like rabbits, and then air the room out before I get back.”

Which. Well. Wei Ying was enjoying the waiting, but he also really, really planned to have put some of the sites he had bookmarked on tips for first time anal to the test while he had the room to himself. Once Jiang Cheng came back they would be at the mercy of Chris’ peregrinations.

The first day after Jiang Cheng leaves, Wei Ying isn’t free yet, because he still has one more exam, but after that he goes directly to Lan Zhan’s dorm. Chris is there, but seemingly on his way out to hockey. “Hey, Ying,” he says, slinging the large bag of hockey equipment over his shoulder.

“Hey Chris,” says Wei Ying, in English. He kind of likes how large and Canadian Chris is. It’s like he’s dedicated to being a stereotype of Canadianness, and he does it very well. He’s growing a beard, and it’s coming in an appalling shade of orange that doesn’t match his hair. Wei Ying wants to pet it like a marmalade cat.

“You’re going to get to have a real winter,” says Chris, cheerfully. “Stay warm, eh?” and he’s out the door before Wei Ying can tell him about the average winter temperature in Changchun.

Lan Zhan, on the other hand, is a delicate flower from Shanghai, yet he wakes up every morning to go jogging around the campus in a tracksuit that Wei Ying is sure he would find sexy if he was ever awake to observe it. In contrast, while Wei Ying is technically the more winter-savvy, he beat Nie Huaisang at fourteen days without leaving the hodge-podge of tunnels and walkways connecting the university’s sprawl, even if it was only because Huaisang’s professor wouldn’t answer his email last week.

But all that is going to change. “Lan Zhan, come skating with me!”

Lan Zhan is copying out his notes, a thing he likes to do, in a system that involves six coloured pens and a selection of coloured sticky papers. Wei Ying smugly thinks there’s probably something wrong with him, with how sexy he finds it. “Now?” asks Lan Zhan, looking a bit torn.

Wei Ying thinks that Lan Zhan, the weird sexy nerd, would leave his note-copying to go skating with Wei Ying, but he would also be torn about it. Wei Ying takes that as a compliment to himself.

“No, uh, Friday? The Chinese Students’ Association has a thing, you have to put your name down. There’s a van?”

“I don’t have skates,” says Lan Zhan. Wei Ying can see his brain start churning away on the logistical issues. He loves Lan Zhan’s brain. He wants to rub his brain on Lan Zhan’s brain.

“No, it’s. I don’t either. Or, I do, but they’re in Changchun. It’s fine, you check a box and you pay two dollars and they’re going to rent them? It’s fine, it’s all taken care of.” Or, Wei Ying assumes it is. He had heard Wen Qing making the tail-end of the phone call about it, and she’s a very competent person and also the Student Association’s outgoing vice president. He’s going to miss her when she leaves for grad school.

Lan Zhan smiles at him. “Yes, I will go skating with Wei Ying.”

“And possibly twenty of our closest friends, but mostly me, right?” asks Wei Ying, so that Lan Zhan will smile at him.

—

There turns out to be a fly in the ointment, as Wei Ying probably could have predicted if he had thought about it: Wen Chao is driving the van. Wen Chao is the Student Association’s treasurer, and if it weren’t for the fact that Wen Qing would absolutely not permit it, Wei Ying would assume he was treasurer so that he could steal from the Association’s funds. He cannot really believe that Wen Chao is a good treasurer, although he hasn’t heard anything about financial mismanagement, so he guesses he’s managed to not fuck up too badly.

Wen Chao is in his fifth year of undergrad. Wen Chao is supposedly working toward an MBA. It’s pretty obvious to everyone that Wen Chao’s degree is being financed by his family as the simplest way to make Wen Chao the university’s problem.

Wen Chao’s terrible girlfriend, Jiaojiao, is coming, since of course she can’t be separated from Wen Chao. They’re being disgusting in the front seats. Wei Ying would sit as far from them as possible if he were alone, but Lan Zhan gets sick if he sits too far back, so he and Lan Zhan are sitting half-way down the van. Lan Zhan is wearing something incredible; he looks like one of the men who work in the freight-yards over the winter.

“Lan Zhan, what are you wearing?” Wei Ying hisses in delight as he squeezes in next to him. He doesn’t want to expose Lan Zhan to the hilarity of the large, serious looking senior who is sitting two seats back. Lan Zhan is his to make fun of, because he does it with affection.

“Chris was worried that I would be cold. He insisted I wear his… ‘skidoo suit’,” says Lan Zhan, a little stiffly. He is wearing some kind of black, quilted full body garment, but its true magnificence is in the large pink and blue stripes travelling diagonally across the torso. They can only be described as ‘fluorescent.’

“Chris is the best,” says Wei Ying. He himself is dressed as warmly as possible, since the weather is supposed to be pretty brutal, but he had been a little worried about Lan Zhan, who doesn’t really know how to live in winter. He seems to be wearing Chris’ mittens, too, since Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan only owns gloves.

Wen Ning is a couple seats back with Mo Xuanyu, which is nice because otherwise Wei Ying would feel responsible for him, but he’s pretty sure Wen Ning came along for exactly that reason. Wen Ning is local, and belongs to a hockey team, so he doesn’t have to climb into a van and drive outside the city if he wants to get some skate time.

They drive first across the city to a building where they all get out and try on skates, with the exception of Jiaojiao, who apparently brought her own. Wei Ying has to do a little bit of interfacing for Mo Xuanyu; he wants skates with a different kind of blade but isn’t confident enough in his English to be willing to bother the man behind the counter, and Wen Ning isn’t pushy enough to bring it up if Mo Xuanyu insists it’s not important.

Then they all get into the van and it heads out of the city. “We got a great place,” says Wen Chao, confidently. “Lots of places are too full, but we have this place all to ourselves.”

“Wen Qing arranged the rental,” Wei Ying tells Lan Zhan, sotto voce. “Wen Chao had nothing to do with it.” They’re pressed together in the seat, and it would probably be more intimate without a van full of people, and also if they weren’t separated by untold layers of batted fabric, but still, he thrills in the press of their shoulders, hips, thighs.

“Mmm,” says Lan Zhan, looking out the window. He probably hasn’t been out of the city at all, Wei Ying realises. “Is this what it looks like in Jilin?” he asks Wei Ying.

Wei Ying looks out the window. “I mean. A little?” he says, trying to catalogue the similarities and differences. “I mean. There’s not so much snow. And it’s so flat, here.” Actually, there are bits where he can almost pretend he’s at home, but then there are bits where the illusion is broken by stupidly mundane things; the way roads are built or fields are ploughed.

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. “Very flat.” But he keeps looking out the window as they travel, which Wei Ying hopes is not going to upset his stomach.

He likes that Lan Zhan is imagining Wei Ying’s home.

About twenty minutes out, they pull over, and Wen Chao pulls out his phone to consult a map. Then they backtrack a few minutes, and turn onto a narrow little road between fields, before stopping seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where a truck is waiting. A person gets out and makes some gestures that seem to indicate Wen Chao should roll down his window.

“What?” says Wen Chao, baffled at this person’s attempt to communicate.

Wei Ying sighs. “I’ll talk to them,” he says, and pulls on his mittens and hat. He doesn’t believe in letting Wen Chao talk to people who don’t deserve it. Wen Chao’s English is very idiomatic, which in his case means that he knows how to swear in English and will increase the density of profanity as a substitute for being understood.

The truck person turns out to be a woman named Jean.

“Just follow the tire tracks, it’s the only path cleared of snow. You’ll need this.” She hands him a plastic bag.

Inside the bag are three rolls of toilet paper, and a box of matches.

“There is an out-house. Please use the out-house.” The way she says it suggests she has had experiences where people have not. “Bring back whatever toilet paper you don’t use, otherwise the foxes will get into it. There’s firewood by the barrel.”

This all seems fairly self-explanatory. He nods. She points at the gate. “There’s a gate here, and at the other end. Close both the gates when you leave or I keep the deposit.”

Wei Ying looks at the gate to make sure it doesn’t have any kind of tricky latch, but it looks like it’s just a loop of chain, so he nods. “All right. Thanks for letting us use your… ice.”

She smiles, then, and suddenly looks friendly. “No problem. It’s nice for it to get used. You kids have fun!”

Wei Ying passes on the important parts of the message to the van’s passengers, and puts the matchbox inside his coat, because he doesn’t think he’s necessarily the best person in this van at getting a fire going, but he’s sure there’s someone in here who’s worse than him and he’s not taking that chance.

Wen Chao is not very good at driving the van off road, and they all get thrown against each other in a way that Wei Ying feels he could enjoy, except the lurching is a bit hard on even his hardened inner ear. Also, instead of getting thrown into Lan Zhan’s lap, he’s getting thrown out of his seat into the van’s narrow aisle half the time. Lan Zhan is starting to look a bit green.

The van makes one or two concerning noises, and Wei Ying is starting to think he should have asked himself before now exactly what qualifies Wen Chao to drive the van. He assumed Wen Chao has the relevant licences, but really, isn’t that a foolish assumption to make where Wen Chao is concerned? Wei Ying isn’t licensed, not even at home, but he has driven a motor vehicle before, if a motorcycle counts. Probably he can figure out a van.

But just as the van makes an alarming cough, they reach a second fence line. The track goes through a gate. Behind it, there is some sort of built structure, and a small stand of trees bare of leaves.

Wen Chao brings the van to a halt. “Someone has to open the gate!” he calls.

Jiaojiao does not look like she is about to leap out.

Wei Ying sighs. “Come on, Lan Zhan. You’ll feel better if you walk around for a bit.”

Lan Zhan follows him out of the van with an eagerness that betrays his efforts to not let on how bad he was feeling. The gate here is a different kind of hook, a loop of wire, but it is no more technologically advanced than the first and Wei Ying doesn’t even have to take off his mittens to open it. They let the van through and then Wen Chao drives around the stand of trees without waiting for them to get back in.

“Wen Chao,” says Lan Zhan, as if it’s a complete utterance. The way he says it, it is, and a devastating one.

“I know,” says Wei Ying. He had taken Lan Zhan’s hand to help him out of the van, and had not let it go, even when unhooking the gate. He does not let it go now, as they follow the tire tracks to see how far they have to walk to catch up.

It’s not very far. The tire tracks in the snow only go around to the front of the building, which Wei Ying would call a shack except that it’s missing one side. It’s more like a wall with a roof attached, and some wings on both ends to stop it from falling over. There are hay bales set against it and Mo Xuanyu and Jiaojiao are already sitting on them with their boots off, preparing to put on their skates. Once Lan Zhan and Wei Ying come around the corner of the structure, they find themselves abruptly out of the wind. Maybe that’s its purpose?

From here Wei Ying can see what he assumes is the outhouse, a tiny plywood cubicle with a quarter-moon shape cut into the door. He takes a moment to congratulate himself on having used the heated facilities at the dorm, and on having a sturdy bladder.

The ice is down a small slope, and has been cleared of snow by hand, if the shovel leaning against the snow bank is a clue. Wen Ning must have some kind of supernatural skate-lacing abilities because he’s already on the ice doing lazy loops.

They get their skates back out of the van, and luckily, they are marked in sizes so they can figure out which belong to who. “Mm,” says Wei Ying to Lan Zhan. “Big feet. Sexy.”

Lan Zhan affects not hear him. They sit on bales and start lacing their skates, which Wei Ying does relatively quickly and Lan Zhan does… slower. Wei Ying is already standing, bouncing slightly with eagerness to get moving after their ride when Lan Zhan, with the ridiculous dignity of a newborn calf, wobbles himself up to balance on the blades of skate.

Realisation blooms inside Wei Ying, and he doesn’t – he can’t –

“Lan Zhan!” he says, feeling a ridiculous tender dismay, delight. “You can’t skate!”

Lan Zhan looks at him, mutely stubborn.

Wei Ying covers his face with his mittened hands. “I can’t,” he says into his palms. It’s too much. Lan Zhan agreed to come skating with him, and he has clearly never been in a pair of skates before.

He peeks between his fingers. Lan Zhan’s ankles wobble. “Sit down and let me tighten your skates,” he says, trying not to let the giddiness inside him burst out into laughter. Lan Zhan wouldn’t mind being laughed at by him, but he doesn’t want to do it in front of everyone.

Kneeling in front of Lan Zhan in the straw, with his cheeks and hands cold, his knees getting colder, feels like the most intense thing he’s done since the first time he reached out and took Lan Zhan’s hand, in a lecture hall with the light turned out so that they could read the overhead powerpoint.

“My mom did this for me,” he tells Lan Zhan, not quite meeting his eyes. “My real mother, I mean, before. It’s one of my memories.” He gives the long laces a good yank, and then moves up a pair and does it again. He’s getting some wires crossed, here, because kneeling in front of Lan Zhan feels one way, and that memory feels another, and it’s far too cold, but also…

Lan Zhan’s cheeks are pink. Possibly also from the cold. Wei Ying ties a big bow at the top of the skate and starts on the next one. “It should feel too tight, and then it’ll loosen up a bit as you skate, and you might need to tighten it again.”

“Mn,” says Lan Zhan. “I will rely on Wei Ying to teach me.”

“Wow,” says Wei Ying. “You’re just saying things like that’s allowed.”

“Ugh,” says Mo Xuanyu next to them and pops up and trots down to the ice. He moves like some kind of antelope, now that he’s in skates.

Wei Ying ties off Lan Zhan’s second skate and then gets to his feet, and offers Lan Zhan his hands. “Let me help.”

Lan Zhan has just about figured out how to walk on his skates on the hardened snow path when they hit the ice and Wei Ying sees the panic in his eyes a moment before Lan Zhan starts to disappear downward.

“Whoop!” says Wei Ying, and grabs him around the middle before he can hit the ice. “Right.”

Wei Ying is merely a competent skater, not an accomplished one, but he remembers how to skate backward after a false start where he nearly does the splits, and then he makes himself figure out again the trick of skating slowly backward while checking over his shoulder, towing Lan Zhan with both hands. It’s glorious. It’s better than anything.

Lan Zhan is so bad at this, he thinks, and it makes his heart ache, how much he wants to protect Lan Zhan. He knows Lan Zhan will learn quickly, with a little work, but he feels so lucky that Lan Zhan is letting him be part of it, letting Wei Ying see his fumblings.

The sky is huge and blue and bright, even though it’s cold, and the little dip where the ice is seems to be protecting them from the wind. It feels thrilling, even though it’s a very small bit of ice and very slow-moving skating.

Mo Xuanyu, it turns out, is learning to figure skate, and can even do a little jump and hop which Wei Ying would not attempt because he would definitely fall on his face. He would be the best skater of their group, for technique, except that Jiaojiao apparently is a great figure skater. She is doing spins and twirls and jumps, and other things that honestly don’t look possible in the small space available. By rights she should be smashing into people, but somehow she flits lightly across the ice without even making anyone turn aside.

Wei Ying finds himself revising his opinion of her, a little, although of course her personality is still terrible.

Wen Chao is clomping around the ice in his boots, having declined to put his skates on. Wei Ying does not revise his opinion of him at all.

“Wei Ying need not remain with me,” says Lan Zhan. “If you wish to skate.”

Lan Zhan is slightly steadier on his feet, and has started to attempt to push off his blades a little, but he is still in a duck stance that Wei Ying mistrusts.

“I don’t mind, Lan Zhan. I’m happy with you.”

Mo Xuanyu loops around and encourages Lan Zhan, and even gives helpful advice, having had more recent experience at skating instruction. “I know it doesn’t feel like it,” he tells Lan Zhan, “but the more you can straighten up, the steadier you’ll be.”

Wen Ning and one of the large seniors he doesn’t know—Song Lan, he thinks— have brought out hockey sticks and a puck he didn’t notice when they were in the van, and are passing the puck back and forth in one of those activities that some people manage to find interesting but Wei Ying cannot. Honestly, he can’t imagine doing anything more interesting than skating backward, towing Lan Zhan around this patch of ice.

Eventually, they progress to one-handed towing, Lan Zhan having figured out his balance, and Wei Ying tries to explain how the strokes work, something he has never had to verbalise before.

Jiaojiao stops by.

“You’re using the edge to push,” she says, and demonstrates, gliding on one foot and then the other, exaggeratedly long, with the other leg picked up in a move that probably gets you points if you do it in front of judges. “It’s easy,” she says, eroding some of the good will points Wei Ying had just assigned her, and glides away to do loops around Wen Chao.

Wen Chao has gone back to put skates on, but is still stomping around with roughly the same technique, although he is, annoyingly, much steadier on his feet than Lan Zhan. He seems to be having a terrible time, which Wei Ying notices and then immediately dismisses from his awareness. Wen Chao is unspeakably boring, compared to Lan Zhan’s skid-scraping across the ice.

After another few loops, Wei Ying realises Lan Zhan is getting tired. “Come on, let’s see if we can find the firewood,” he tells him, pulling him back toward the shack. He’s a little tired too. Skating uses muscles he hasn’t used in years.

“If Wei Ying still wishes to skate,” says Lan Zhan, “I will sit and watch.”

“I’d rather be with you,” says Wei Ying, without even meaning to say it. Ugh.

The barrel is obvious once they approach the shed, a big, half rusted thing, and there’s firewood stacked a little distance away. Wei Ying uses three matches to get it started, which he hopes Lan Zhan doesn’t notice. It’s so excruciating to have these feelings, he wants Lan Zhan to notice everything about him, but also he wants to perform his best while Lan Zhan is watching, and he can’t be his best all the time. He laughs at himself.

“Are your toes cold? You can take off your boots and hold your feet up to the fire,” he tells Lan Zhan.

The hay-bale is not very wide, and they have to sit quite close so that neither of them is in danger of sliding off an edge. It’s not a hardship. Wen Chao comes back off the ice.

“I was going to start the fire,” he says, sounding aggrieved. Wei Ying congratulates himself on hiding the matches.

“Oh, sorry,” he says.

Shortly, Wen Ning joins them, and then another girl whose name he doesn’t know. Wen Chao occupies a whole hay bale by himself because the only person who really would want to share it is Jiaojiao, who is still enjoying herself on the ice. When Mo Xuanyu gets off the ice, all the bales are in use unless he wants to share with Wen Chao.

“You can share with us!” Wei Ying offers, “I’ll sit on Lan Zhan’s lap.”

Mo Xuanyu looks dubious, but after some hesitation decides they’re the better deal, compared with Wen Chao who is pretending he hasn’t noticed the shortage of seating.

It is not exactly what Wei Ying had imagined Lan Zhan’s lap would be like. For one thing, the skidoo suit is insanely slippery. He has to perch delicately, or else he will start sliding off in whichever direction he has accidentally leaned. Every time he starts to slip, the fabric of the skidoo suit makes an unnaturally loud “zzzzzzzzip!” noise as he slides across it.

Lan Zhan helps by clasping him tightly around the waist, but is still somewhat precarious.

The sky is starting to turn a bit colourless, even though it’s not really that late, and Wei Ying can tell he’s going to be hungry soon. They’re not going to leave until Wen Chao decides to go, though, and Jiaojiao seems content to work on her olympic routine, so maybe they’re stuck here until she lands her triple axel.

“Jiaojiao!” calls Wen Chao, “Are you still messing around? Come on! We’re leaving!”

Or maybe not.

Mo Xuanyu leans in. “She’s not so bad. She was showing me how to do a toe-loop.”

“Mmm,” says Wei Ying noncommittally at the exact same time as Lan Zhan says “Mn” and he huffs a laugh. He can feel Lan Zhan’s chest move with the same laugh, inaudibly.

Jiaojiao stomps off the ice, looking piqued, and everyone gathers their stuff. Wei Ying tries to decide if he ought to treat the fire in some special way, but it looks fairly contained in the barrel, so he just shovels some snow on top of it with the shovel that had been by the rink, and considers it good enough.

The van feels a lot colder now, since it has been cooling for an hour or more, and they just left the fire, and he presses himself closer to Lan Zhan.

Then Wen Chao tries to start the van and it makes an alarming noise, a cough, a wheeze, a death-rattle.

Wen Chao swears. No one else says anything. He tries again. And again. Then he pounds the dashboard with his fist. “Useless!” he swears. “Some idiot forgot to put in gas!”

Some idiot, indeed, thinks Wei Ying. Wen Chao describes the mother of this hypothetical idiot at length, in between trying the ignition again as if the engine might, despite not having gas, choose to start now that he has verbally abused it enough.

“But Chao’er,” says Jiaojiao, finally. “What are we going to do?”

Wen Chao stops. “I’m going to call a cab,” he says, decisively, pulling out his phone.

“What,” says Song Lan, from the back, echoing all of their incredulity.

“Lan Zhan,” says Wei Ying, “Do you have data?”

Lan Zhan wordlessly unlocks his phone and holds it out. Wei Ying starts searching for “ice skating rental.” The first ranked search response is helpfully “0 kilometres from your location.”

“Hi,” he says, dialling the contact. “I’m looking for Jean? I’m very sorry to bother you, but we’re renting your ice? We have a problem.”

Jean listens to his story. “I’ll come out with a jerry can after I’ve gotten this stew in the crock pot,” she says, “but I’m keeping the deposit.”

“Fair,” says Wei Ying, feeling a little giddy.

“It’ll be twenty, twenty-five minutes,” she says, and hangs up.

“Jean will be here in twenty-five minutes,” Wei Ying tells the van.

“My Uber will be here in twenty,” says Wen Chao, smugly.

Your Uber? Wei Ying thinks. Is Wen Chao planning to abandon the rest of them?

“Mo Xuanyu is cold,” says Wen Ning. Mo Xuanyu, Wei Ying realises, has been wearing a light, fashionable coat, which was probably only sufficient as long as he kept moving.

Everyone except Wen Chao and Jiaojiao decide, after a little discussion, to go back to the fire to stay warm.  Wei Ying pulls the damp wood out of the barrel and restarts the fire, and Wen Ning and Song Lan ransack the van and discover an emergency kit that has three granola bars in it.

“There are also some candles, and flares,” says Song Lan, “but I think we’ll be better off with just the fire.” 

There’s also a tin can in which they could melt snow to drink, if they could figure out how to suspend it over the fire.

“Hold on,” says Wen Ning, and disappears around the back. He comes back with a length of wire that looks like it might have been a clothes-hanger in an earlier life.  “It was holding up the fly-paper in the outhouse,” he says.

Wen Ning is a braver man than he is to chance the outhouse, but Wei Ying is glad.  Mo Xuanyu and the girl whose name he now feels too embarrassed to ask go find some particularly clean snow, and Wei Ying bends the wire into a hook that looks like it will do the job. 

It’s noticeably colder now than it was before they tried to leave, although maybe that’s just because they are now facing a wait of unknown duration. The fire is slower getting started this time, it feels like, and even Wei Ying is starting to shiver. 

“Come here,” says Lan Zhan, and unzips his enormous skidoo-suit, before sitting down and pulling Wei Ying into his lap.  Then he wraps Wei Ying in it, half-inside it with him, although it can’t close around them both.

“Lan Zhan!” says Wei Ying, delighted.  “This is so dirty!”  It’s also very warm.  He can feel the trapped warmth of Lan Zhan’s body all against his back and thighs.

Song Lan divides up the granola bar into even pieces, although it’s barely more than a fragment each, and the snow in the can melts into a bare inch of water.  Once it gets a little warm, Wei Ying gives it to Mo Xuanyu to drink, since his shivering looks almost violent.

“Oh!” says Mo Xuanyu.  “That’s nice.  Let’s do more.” They do.

The sky, so quickly it seems unnatural, turns bruise-coloured, and everything gets very grey, except the light of the fire which is now much oranger.  Wei Ying probably shouldn’t be thinking about Lan Zhan’s dick, but the way he’s half inside Lan Zhan’s clothing, seated directly on Lan Zhan’s lap, honestly feels like some kind of porn where someone has a hole in their pants and is being secretly molested in public.

Sadly, it is much too cold, and none of Wei Ying’s layers would accommodate that fantasy.

Also Mo Xuanyu is pressed between Lan Zhan and Wen Ning to keep warm.

Still, he leans back and turns his head to whisper in Lan Zhan’s ear, “This is kind of sexy, right?”

Lan Zhan growls and his grip around Wei Ying’s waist tightens.  So Wei Ying isn’t the only pervert on this hay bale.

Lights appear on the horizon, dipping and bobbing.  “Is that the lady?” asks Wen Ning, hopefully, but Wen Chao and Jiaojiao erupt from the van. “That’s our ride,” Wen Chao shouts, as if any of them is going to steal it.

Wei Ying is trying to decide if it’s worth insisting they take Mo Xuanyu with them. It will be a miserable ride for him, stuck in the back seat with the two of them, but he really does look like he might expire from the cold if they keep him out much longer.  But as the small car stops to navigate the gate, another light appears over the fields.  That has to be Jean.

The Uber pulls up first. 

“All right, so we’re clear, there will be a five star rating and a cash tip” says the driver, without getting out of the car.  Wen Chao, demonstrating the most sensitivity to mood Wei Ying has ever seen from him, has already pulled out his wallet.

With Jean coming up behind, Wei Ying isn’t sure if there’s any real point to Wen Chao taking the Uber, but they’ve already made him come all the way out.  And besides, despite his insistence that someone forgot to fill the gas, Wen Chao probably does not want to travel all the way back into the city with a van full of witnesses to his screw-up.

No one else seems inclined to argue that Wen Chao should travel back with them either, although Mo Xuanyu does say “Bye, Jiaojiao!” brightly, and she gives him a friendly little wave, so uh.  Whatever that is.

Jean waits until the Uber pulls out before pulling in, since they’ve really maxed out the available parking space already.

“He got a plane to catch?” she asks, hooking a thumb after the receding Uber. 

“Or something,” Wei Ying agrees, since Wen Chao’s… whole deal seems a lot to have to explain in English.

“Right,” says Jean.  “This is coloured gas, but you don’t tell the minister, neither will I.”

Wei Ying has no idea what that means and he doesn’t care.  “Who’s driving,” he asks their group.

“I uh, I have my licence, technically,” says Wen Ning.

“I have my licence actually,” says the girl whose name he doesn’t know.  “No offence.”

Wen Ning looks relieved.  “No, no, better you than me,” he says.

There’s extra room on the drive back, without Wen Chao and Jiaojiao, and the mood is a bit giddy.  Everyone is talking more, and he learns that the girl who’s driving is named Qingyang, but “I guess everyone in this van is allowed to call me Mianmian.”  She turns out to be hilarious, chatting with Mo Xuanyu, who has been put in the passenger seat so he can be blasted by the heater.

Jean follows them to close all the gates behind them, since apparently she’s decided they’re unreliable, which is not an unfair thing for her to have decided. Wei Ying is just glad not to have to get out of the van.

“So if I run for treasurer of the Chinese Students’ Association next year,” says Mianmian, “I have all your votes, right?”

Wei Ying and Lan Zhan are alone in the backseat, now that the horizon is dark enough that Lan Zhan’s eyes and stomach can’t make him queasy with their disagreements.  It feels intimate, alone back there.

“Lan Zhan,” whispers Wei Ying.  “We nearly died!  Alone!  In the Canadian wilderness!  What an adventure!”

“Not alone,” says Lan Zhan, which, fair point. “I was with Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying cuddles into the neck of Lan Zhan’s skidoo suit.  He zipped it up when Jean arrived, but it’s been unzipped again, now that the van has started to warm.  “Sexy Chris skidoo suit,” says Wei Ying, appreciatively.

“What,” says Lan Zhan.

“Stay in my dorm, tonight,” says Wei Ying.  It’s time.  The planets are aligned.  They’re locked into their final approach.  “Sleep in my bed.”

“I—”  says Lan Zhan.  “I would be honoured.”

“I can hear you,” Wen Ning says, very awkwardly, from the seat ahead.

“You have to be gentle with me, Lan Zhan,” he whispers, pushing himself as close into Lan Zhan’s lap as he can without taking off his seatbelt. “It’s my first time.”

Zzzzzzzzzzip! says Chris’ skidoo suit.

“Oh god,” says Wen Ning.