“You used to cook a lot,” Lu Han said, watching Yixing cut the red and green bell peppers into julienne.

                They had napped for an hour after making love, the first time in days he’d felt truly relaxed. Both awoke hungry and wanting to move out of the bedroom. He had offered to make an evening breakfast- eggs and bacon- but Yixing had declined.

                “I’m going to treat you to an old specialty of the Zhang household,” he had said. “Chángshā mǐfěn (Changsha-style Rice Vermicelli).”

                His stomach had trolled at first, but now as he smelled the scents blending, he grew surprisingly hungry. Yixing had drained the rice noodles under cold water after boiling and let them air-dry and firmed up in a colander. Then he was whisking the eggs together with the curry powder and the sesame oil until they blended. Now he was putting vegetable oil into the skillet, pouring in the egg mixture and immediately reducing the heat to low. Scrambling the eggs until just set; turn out on a plate and reserved.

                “I cooked some. Baekhyun did most of it. For me it was only a hobby.” He stir fried the shrimp, pork and chicken until just cooked and removed and reserved them in a small bowl. “Something to do when I couldn’t think anymore. Just trust my hands and eyes and nose. A way to turn off the hamster wheel.”

                “As if,” Lu Han said, watching him with admiration approaching envy. It did not escape him that he had just spoken comfortably of his husband for the first time. “I’m betting your brain never turns off, period.”

                Yixing shrugged and smiled. “Let me have some modesty, okay?”

                “I love Cordon bleu. You know how to cook it?” he asked, playfully rubbing his shoulder against Yixing’s arm.

                “Yeah. Pretty easy.”

                “Paris?”

                He shook his head. “Not quite. But my boss had.”

                “Your boss?”

               “Stanford’s an expensive school,” he said. “Even if you’re on scholarship. And Palo Alto is an expensive place to live. So I thought - I have to eat, why not get a job where that’s included?”

                “You worked at a restaurant?”

                He nodded. “Started as a dish boy and the head chef noticed I really cared about the food. He made me a sous chef and there you go. I didn’t make a lot of money, but at least I didn’t have to buy dinners.”

                Lu Han smiled. “That’s. . .charming. I mean, it’s one of those ‘who’ da thunk it’ things.”

                “Few people’s lives are straight lines,” he said.

                “That’s true.” Lu Han laughed, remembering his own early life. “I was going to do weather. Meteorology.”

                “Really?”

                He smiled. “Yup. I had it all figured out. I was going to get a PhD and be on TV for a few years and then do research on typhoons, when I could squeeze it in around being insanely rich and happily married.”

                Yixing laughed, a huge belly laugh like he’d never heard from him before. It was, Lu Han realised, a laugh he’d like to hear a lot more often.

                “Okay,” he said, finally taking a breath. “So when did that train derail?”

                “Probably right about where you would have gotten interested,” he said. “Quantum physics. Turns out that meteorologists have to know that stuff. And I couldn’t get it. Period.”

                “It’s not intuitive,” he conceded, adding the scallions, bean sprouts and noodles to the wok and then pouring in the chicken broth.

                “Not intuitive? He asked. “Try incomprehensible for ordinary human beings!”

                “There’s a saying among physicists,” he said, “Anyone who claims to understand quantum theory. . .hasn’t studied it enough.”

                “Now you tell me!” Lu Han said.”If my professor had just said that, I might’ve stuck around. Instead, because I was good at math, I went into accounting. Of course, it’s not as interesting as being on TV, researching typhoons and being insanely rich and happily married.”

                “Been interesting enough lately, though, hasn’t it?”

                And there it was. Lu Han remembered the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

                “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it has. Speaking of, I need to print out my files. If Suho is involved, he may decide to scrub the server. I want hard copies, just in case.”

                “Good idea,” he said, “I’ll be a few more minutes here. You have time before dinner. And print two copies, okay? I’ll take one with me when I leave.”

                “Leave?” Lu Han. “Can’t you. . .?”

                Yixing shook his head. “No, I can’t. I’ve never seen it from here. I wouldn’t know what to look for. I have to follow the vision, and that starts at Momo’s,” he paused and looked at him. “You were the one who said we can’t change anything that might affect what I’ve seen.”

                He remembered only too well. The thing was, he didn’t want to let Yixing go. Not even for a few hours. But fear was riding his shoulder again. “Yeah. Okay. Two copies.”

                He could have brought his laptop into the kitchen, but he decided to stay in his little office. Better that Yixing not see the look on his face right now. He didn’t need to see him being silly, and that was exactly what he was being. Of course he had to leave. Tonight, and once this was over. He’d go back to California and his friends. That was that, and he just had to deal with it.

But he didn’t want to. Right alongside fear, another ache was growing, adding to the butterflies and sense of impending doom. He didn’t want him to leave. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. Maybe.

                As he booted up his laptop and logged onto the server, he thought about the boy who’d wanted to do weather on TV and study typhhons. The boy who’d wanted to be insanely rich and happily married. That boy had been a fool on every count. And apparently still was.

                If parents were fair, Lu Han thought, they’d teach their kids to hope for being ordinary. Survive adolescence and get educated enough to get a decent enough job to make ends meet if you were careful. Maybe you’d meet someone special, and maybe you wouldn’t. Either way, remember that most people’s lives were. . .ordinary. The universe reached down to touch you with extraordinary gifts, or it didn’t. And for Lu Han, it hadn’t. Now, if he was going to be on TV, it was likely to be as a murder victim, a breathlessly told tale of corporate intrigue in which his was merely a stock role: dead body on floor.

                No fan mail. No high-level research. No wealth.

                And no Ms. or Mr. Perfect.

                Except that Mr. Perfect was in his kitchen right now, he thought as he scrolled through his files and started the print job. He was in there making magic with food, just as he had made magic with his body before. He had played his most exquisite nerve endings as skillfully as he handed a chef’s knife, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. On the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, Yixing was a Category Five: breaks down even the sturdiest walls.

                And like a Category Five hurricane, he was going to leave wreckage in his wake. Dreams and hopes long buried, picked up and life breathed into them, passions driven like flotsam on a storm surge, needs he had spent years denying not just watered but flooded. All that was missing was some reporter from the Weather Channel on his front porch, leaning into the wind-driven rain to report: You can see the storm is really picking up. And as I stand here with power lines falling and tree limbs flying past my head, I should once again warn ever