Page 53 of From Beijing, With Love

“Do you wanna come up?” Daniel asked with feigned casualness when they were once again in front of Hotel Alium.

“We’ve been together for”—Yang checked his phone—“almost thirty-six hours. I really should go back and sleep in my own bed.”

Daniel wanted to protest, but he thought better of it. It was better to be grateful for what he got instead of asking for more. He put on his best smile. “Has it been that long? I haven’t noticed.”

“Shagua.” A corner of Yang’s lip tilted up as he stepped closer. “I’ll come by tomorrow with breakfast. Is that okay?”

Daniel let out a breath and nodded, feeling like a cliché—the lovestruck idiot—but he didn’t care. He was going to have another day with Yang.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWOYang

After thinking long and hard about what to bring Daniel for breakfast, Yang settled on the quintessential Chinese breakfast: youtiao and zhou. Iconic, delicious, yet not too exotic.

If Yang was going to soon be relegated to a distant memory—an anecdote—he wanted to show Daniel amazing eats, like the jianbing guozi from yesterday. He imagined that one day Daniel would have it again somewhere else in the world and he’d tell whoever he was with that it was nothing compared to when he first had it in Beijing.

As Yang waited for his order at the small restaurant nestled in a maze of hutongs, his phone vibrated with an incoming email. Even after getting Dr. Sun’s sign-off on the paper yesterday, accompanied by tepid praises, seeing his name on the email still made Yang’s chest tighten. Then he saw the subject line: “Postdoctoral Fellowship Proposal.”

All,

Can you each draft a high-level research proposal for the postdoctoral fellowship? Include your research ideas, general timeline, and all reference studies. I’m out of office next week. Take that time to get it done. Chat when I return.

With his hand clenched around the phone, Yang stared at the text, unblinking. The email was as utilitarian as it could be and it was addressed to a blind recipient list, so it shouldn’t feel like Yang had just won the lottery.

But it did.

Yang tore his eyes away from the screen and focused on the terra-cotta brick walls of the hutong just to regain his breath. When his eyes returned to the phone a minute later and the texts were still there in black and white, he let himself smile.

This was a confirmation—the first and only—that he had made it onto the short list for the fellowship. After four years of following the rules and doing what he was told, he was being asked for his ideas. This was a glimpse of what the next phase of his career would look like—the freedom to explore, the autonomy to go in the direction he had always wanted to go.

When Yang knocked on Daniel’s door with breakfast in tow, he was breathless.

“Is that my food delivery?” Daniel answered the door in his bathrobe, which was open just enough to show off the contours of his defined chest.

“What?” Yang asked dumbly. All the thoughts in his head evaporated at the sight of Daniel with his wet hair and goofy smile, backlit by the late-morning sun. Was this really the same man who was so uncertain of his own worth that he genuinely believed his ex had traded up?

“I was doing a whole bit, pretending you’re a deliveryman … not in a porny way.” By the time Daniel stumbled to the end of his sentence, he was adorably pink. He took the takeout bag from Yang. “Sorry, it was funnier in my head.”

Yang wanted to pull Daniel close and kiss the uncertainty out of him. Then he stepped over the threshold of the hotel room and did just that.

Daniel smiled into the kiss. “Someone’s in a good mood.”

“I …” Yang pulled away. When the email finally sank in, Daniel was the first person he’d thought about telling, but he wasn’t good at sharing good news. It felt like boasting.

“It’s nothing. My adviser asked me to write a proposal for the postdoctoral fellowship.” He watched Daniel’s face light up and hurried to add, “Amongst others on the list. It doesn’t mean that I have the fellowship, just that I’m being considered. Short-listed, maybe.”

Before Yang fully registered what was happening, Daniel buried him in a bone-crushing hug.

When Daniel held on after a full second, Yang allowed himself to melt into the embrace and revel in the good news. Having someone else show this much excitement for his achievements felt so foreign. Growing up, nothing he did had earned him more than a nod and a smile from his dad. Every finish line was just the starting point of the next race.

Daniel’s robe was soft against Yang’s cheek, and his skin carried its usual scent—floral, bitter, citrusy and crisp. Then, with their bodies pressed together, Daniel’s stomach let out a loud rumble.

Yang tried but failed at holding back a laugh. “Are you hungry?”

Daniel buried his face in Yang’s shoulder. “Just kill me now.”

“Or I can feed you instead.”

Yang unpacked their breakfast: two plastic containers of zhou, still hot to the touch, and the brown paper bag stained translucent from the fried youtiao. They made a makeshift dining table out of the hotel desk so as to not make a mess on the bed, which Yang was hoping they’d make a mess on later in a different way.