Chapter 6: No More Waiting
The green door closed, and for thirteen days, the world outside ceased its constant, gnawing demand. The apartment became our universe, its boundaries defined by the scent of longjing tea and the texture of well-worn sheets. Time didn’t flow in here; it pooled, deep and still.
We slept tangled, woke lazy, and made love with a shocking, quiet regularity that felt less like passion and more like a vital, shared physiology. A necessary function. We didn’t talk about the twentieth. We didn’t talk about Boston. We talked about the steam curling from the teacup, the pattern of shadows the bamboo screen cast on the floor in the afternoon, the specific, briny taste of the xiaolongbao we ordered in late at night.
But the silence about the end was a living thing in the room with us. It fed on every glance, every touch. It made the sex fierce.
It happened on the seventh day. A thunderstorm rolled in, muffling the city in a thick, grey wool of rain and low cloud. The room was dark as twilight. She was reading a dense academic text on the futon, her brow furrowed, a pencil behind her ear. I was supposedly writing in the ginkgo-leaf notebook, but I was just watching the raindrops chase each other down the glass.
The silence between us wasn’t peaceful. It was taut, a wire vibrating with a frequency only we could hear.
I got up, walked to the futon, and took the book from her hands. I closed it with a soft thump and set it aside. She looked up at me, her expression unreadable in the gloom.
“Vy.”
That was all. Just my name. A question, a warning, a plea.
I didn’t answer with words. I knelt over her, straddling her thighs, and kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a claiming. A negation of the academic future in that book, of the distance encoded in its pages. She yielded for a second, her lips soft under mine, then she met me with equal force. Her hands came up to grip my hips, her fingers pressing into the bone.
We didn’t undress each other with our usual distracted slowness. We pulled and tore. My t-shirt was over my head and discarded. She wrestled with the button of my jeans, her breath hot and frantic against my neck. “Off,” she growled, her voice thick. “Get these the fuck off.”
I shimmied out of them, kicking them to the floor. Her own shorts and underwear were a single, swift movement. In the grey light, her skin was like polished marble, a stark landscape I knew better than my own. The frantic energy between us snapped into a hard, focused hunger.
She flipped me onto my back with a strength that stole my breath. Her knees pressed mine apart, and she looked down at me, her hair a dark curtain framing her face. Her eyes were black, consuming.
“No more gentle,” she said, and it wasn’t a request. It was a decree. “No more pretending this is just something we’re doing. You feel this. You feel me.”
“I feel you,” I gasped.
“Then show me.” She lowered her mouth to my breast, not to kiss, but to suck hard, her teeth grazing the peak until I arched off the mattress with a sharp cry. Her hand slid down my stomach, through the wetness already gathered between my legs, and pressed two fingers inside me without preamble. The sudden, deep stretch made me gasp. She was relentless, curling her fingers, her palm grinding against me with each thrust. “This is what you are,” she breathed against my skin, her own breath coming in ragged pulls. “Wet and open for me. This is all you are right now. Say it.”
“It’s all I am,” I choked out, the words fracturing as she found a rhythm that erased thought. My hips rose to meet her, driving her fingers deeper. The room was filled with the raw, obscene sound of her fucking me, the slick slap of skin, my own broken moans.
She withdrew her hand, bringing her glistening fingers to my lips. I took them into my mouth, tasting us, salt and musk, my tongue cleaning each one. She watched, her eyes burning with a possessive fire.
“My turn,” I managed to say, pushing at her shoulder. She resisted for a heartbeat, then allowed me to roll her over. Now I was above her, pinning her wrists to the futon. I kissed her, deep and filthy, sharing our own taste. I moved down her body, my mouth leaving a heated trail. When I reached the apex of her thighs, I didn’t tease. I parted her with my thumbs and licked a hard, flat stripe through her folds.
She cried out, a raw, unfiltered sound. Her hips bucked off the mattress. I held her down, my arms across her stomach, and devoured her. I used my tongue, my lips, the edge of my teeth—every weapon I had—to map her, to memorize the way she clenched and trembled. I fucked her with my tongue, deep, then focused on the hard, swollen knot of her clit, sucking it relentlessly until her thighs began to shake around my head and her curses became a broken, chanting sob.
“Vy… fuck… right there, don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop…”
I didn’t. I felt the precise moment her control shattered. Her body bowed, a tight, taut arc, and then convulsed, wave after wave of brutal pleasure wracking through her. I stayed with her, drinking her in, until her hand pushed weakly at my head and she collapsed back, boneless and gasping.
Before she could recover, I was moving up her body, aligning myself. Our eyes locked. Rain streaked the window behind her head like tears.
“I need you inside me,” I said, the words gritty and true. “Now.”
She understood. She reached for the small bottle on the floor, slicked her fingers, and then her. She guided herself to me, the blunt, hot pressure an answer to a ache I couldn’t name. She pushed up, and I sank down, taking her in one slow, excruciating, perfect slide.
We both froze, a joint intake of breath. The feeling of being filled by her, so completely, was almost too much. It was closeness and possession and a heartbreaking imitation of unity.
Then I began to move. I rode her with a desperate, driving rhythm, my hands braced on her chest. She gripped my hips, her fingers digging in, meeting each downward thrust with an upward surge of her own. The sound was animalistic, our skin slapping together in a frantic, wet cadence that drowned out the storm.
“Is this what you want?” she gritted out, her face a mask of strained ecstasy. “This? Knowing I’m in Beijing in two weeks? Knowing you’re on a plane?”
Each word was a thrust, a brutal punctuation. I couldn’t answer. I could only fuck her harder, using her body, letting her use mine, as if we could purge the future through sheer, physical effort. The pleasure built, a terrifying crescendo that felt inseparable from the pain. It coiled at the base of my spine, tight and hot.
“Look at me,” she demanded, her voice cracking. “Look at me when you come.”
My eyes, which had been squeezed shut, flew open. I looked down at her—at the sweat dampening her hairline, at the fierce, agonized love in her gaze—and I fell apart. The orgasm ripped through me, violent and obliterating. I cried out, a sound ripped from somewhere primal, my inner muscles clamping around her in rhythmic, milking pulses.
The sensation tipped her over the edge. With a choked shout, she thrust up into me one last, deep time, and I felt her own release, the hot, urgent pulsing inside me. She held me there, impaled, until the last tremor subsided.
We collapsed into a heap of spent, sweating limbs. The storm raged. Our breaths slowly evened out. The room smelled of sex and rain and despair.
A long time later, she spoke into the hollow of my shoulder. “My mother called today. While you were in the shower.”
The words were ice water on my heated skin. I didn’t move. “What did she say?”
“She’s proud. She’s booked a train ticket to Beijing for the twenty-second to help me settle in.” Shuting’s voice was monotone. “She asked about my research preparation. She asked if I was excited.”
I felt the weight of it all—the mother, the pride, the train ticket, the correct, magnificent future—pressing down on us, on this fragile sanctuary. Our frantic, beautiful fucking suddenly seemed like the twitching of a severed limb.
“What did you tell her?” I whispered.
She turned her face into my skin. “I told her yes.”
That single, simple confirmation was the most devastating thing she had ever said. It was the real world, knocking with a polite, unstoppable force. We had thirteen days. Then she would get on a train to meet her proud mother, and I would get on a plane to a life that didn’t include her. Our green door universe had a hard, immutable expiration date.
We lay there, listening to the rain diminish to a drizzle. The silence returned, but it was different now. It wasn’t the silence of a world kept at bay. It was the silence of that world patiently waiting, certain of its victory.
The silence of that world patiently waiting, certain of its victory, lasted until dawn. We didn’t sleep. We just lay there in the wreckage of each other, listening to the city’s night sounds resume. The drip of the eaves. A distant siren.
On the twelfth day, she brought a small paper bag back from a trip to the pharmacy. She placed it on the low table with a deliberate, soft click. I looked from the bag to her face. Her expression was unreadable, a calm surface over deep, churning water.
“What is that?”
“A contingency,” she said, and poured the tea.
We drank our longjing without touching the bag. It sat there like a third presence. Later, when she was in the shower, I looked inside. Clear plastic, purple silicone. A double-headed form. I closed the bag, my face hot, my chest tight. It was a promise of a specific, shared future that wouldn’t exist.
The final forty-eight hours began with a stark, sunny morning. The light in the apartment felt accusing, too clear. It showed every dust mote, every flaw in the plaster, every neatly packed item in my open suitcase by the door. My flight was tomorrow at noon. Her train to Beijing was the day after.
She saw me looking at the suitcase. She crossed the room, opened the paper bag, and pulled the toy out. The silicone gleamed in the harsh light. She held it, weighing it in her hand, then looked at me.
Her voice was flat, devoid of its usual careful control. “What would you do with this when I’m gone, huh?”
The question hung, vulgar and heartbreaking. I couldn’t speak.
She took a step closer. “You know you’re my first kiss. And my v-card, too. Everything about me is belong to you.” The grammatical slip, the childlike phrasing from her precise mouth, undid me more than any polished declaration. It was her core, raw and untranslated. “I’m leaving in less than two days. Please. I want you to break me apart.”
I took it from her hand. It was cool, pliant. “Lie down.”
She obeyed, stretching out on the futon, her eyes never leaving mine. I found the bottle of slick, my hands trembling. I poured a generous amount, coating both ends, watching the liquid catch the light. The air smelled of synthetic cherries and our own lingering scent.
I knelt between her legs, pushing her thighs wide. I positioned one end against her, applying pressure until the tip breached her, then pushed slowly, watching her face. Her lips parted on a silent gasp, her eyes fluttering shut as the thick, invasive length filled her. “Look at me,” I demanded, and her eyes snapped open, wide and dark. “You feel that? That’s me. That’s what I’m leaving inside you.”
I didn’t wait for her to adjust. I began to fuck her with it, a steady, deep piston motion. Her hips rose to meet each thrust, a low moan tearing from her throat. “Fuck, Vy… yes…”
When she was slick and open and whimpering, I positioned the other end against myself. I lowered my body onto it, a sharp, burning stretch that made me cry out. The connection was immediate, violent, a feedback loop of sensation. We were linked by this absurd, purple bridge. Every movement I made rocked into her, and every clench of her muscles traveled up the silicone into my own core.
I found a rhythm, rolling my hips, fucking us both. The slap of skin, the wet, squelching sounds of the toy moving in our shared space, her choked curses—it was a symphony of ruin. I leaned forward, bracing my hands on either side of her head. Our faces were inches apart. I could see the tears welling in her eyes, not from pain, but from a devastating, unbearable fullness.
“You’re mine,” I grunted, driving down harder. “Say it.”
“I’m yours,” she sobbed, her body arching. “Everything. It’s all yours.”
“And this is me,” I said, my voice breaking as the friction built to a blinding peak. “This is me breaking you. This is all I can leave you.”
The orgasm hit us not as a wave, but as a simultaneous detonation. It ripped through the tether of silicone, a convulsive, shared shock. She screamed, a raw, ragged sound that was my name and a curse. I saw her vision whites out as my own world dissolved into pure, shuddering sensation, my inner muscles clutching desperately at the fake, surrogate connection.
We collapsed sideways, still joined, a tangled, sweating mess of limbs and silicone. It was a grotesque parody of intimacy, the very tool meant to link us underscoring the brutal fact of our separation. We lay there, breathing in ragged, synced gulps. Slowly, carefully, I pulled away, the slide out of us both a final, wet sigh.
She turned onto her side, facing the wall. Her shoulders shook silently. I curled behind her, fitting my body against the curve of hers, my front to her back. I wrapped my arm around her waist, my hand splayed over her stomach. I could still feel the faint, internal tremors within her.
“I bought it,” she whispered into the wall, her voice thick and shattered, “so you could take half of it with you. So we’d both have a piece. It was a stupid idea.”
I pressed my forehead between her shoulder blades. I didn’t tell her it wasn’t stupid. I just held her as the victory of the waiting world outside seeped in through the cracks around the green door, absolute and cold.
I just held her as the victory of the waiting world outside seeped in through the cracks around the green door, absolute and cold. Her shaking subsided into minute tremors, then a terrible stillness. The purple silicone lay between us on the rumpled sheet, a garish, spent thing.
We didn’t move for a long time. The light shifted. Outside, a scooter backfired, and she flinched against me. It was the first acknowledgement of the external world in hours. Her voice, when it came, was scraped raw from crying and screaming. “We should eat something.”
“Okay.”
We moved around the small space like ghosts haunting the same corridor, careful not to touch. She heated leftover congee. I wiped the toy clean with a detached clinicality, my fingers tracing its absurd shape before burying it back in the paper bag. We ate at the low table, the silence punctuated by the click of ceramic spoons. Every taste of ginger and rice was a memory already being catalogued for the future.
I looked at her—really looked—across the steam. Her eyes were hollowed, her beauty sharpened by exhaustion into something brittle. This was the cost of our container. The coming out. I understood her desperate simulation that first morning perfectly now. My chest ached.
“Hmm,” I said, the sound cutting the quiet. She glanced up. I pushed my bowl aside. “What could I do with that Li Shuting.”
A faint, wary curiosity flickered in her gaze. “What do you mean?”
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. “You know I’m so happy that you’re my first. That I’m experiencing everything with you.” The words were simple, stark. They felt more revealing than any filthy thing we’d done. Her spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. “So tonight,” I continued, my voice dropping, low and clear. “I want you to make me feel that I can’t walk tomorrow anymore.”
She put the spoon down. A slow, deep flush traveled up her neck. The hollows in her face seemed to fill with a new, focused intensity. The resignation burned away, replaced by a spark of pure, defiant challenge. “Is that a request or a demand?”
“It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask you for in this room.”
She stood up. She came around the table, took my hand, and pulled me to my feet. There was no frenetic energy now. Her movements were deliberate, solemn. She led me to the center of the room, away from the futon, onto the cool wooden floor. “Then get on your knees.”
I knelt. The grain of the wood pressed into my skin. She stood before me, looking down, her hand coming to cradle the back of my head. Her touch was possessive, almost reverent. “You are my first kiss,” she said quietly, her thumb stroking my hairline. “My first everything. So this last time… it belongs to me. I decide how it ends.”
I nodded, my throat tight.
She stepped out of her shorts, kicked them aside. “Taste me.” The command was soft. “Clean me up. Get every last part of you out of me.”
I obeyed, leaning forward, pressing my face into her. I licked through her folds, tasting the lingering slickness, the faint, metallic hint of us from earlier. I lapped at her, thorough and slow, my tongue seeking every hidden place. She twitched, a sigh escaping her. Her fingers tightened in my hair, not guiding, just holding. I sucked gently at her clit, feeling it harden against my tongue, and she let out a soft, broken sound. “Enough.”
She pulled me up, her kiss brutal and deep, a reclaiming of her own taste from my mouth. She walked me backwards until my shoulders hit the wall. The impact was solid, final. “Hands here,” she murmured, placing my palms flat against the plaster above my head. “Don’t move them.”
She sank to her own knees then. Her breath was hot on my inner thigh. She didn’t use her hands. She used her mouth, her teeth, nipping a path up my leg that made me jump. Then her tongue was on me, a broad, flat stroke that had my head thudding back against the wall. She ate me with a meticulous, starving dedication. She licked into me, deep, her nose buried against me. She fucked me with her tongue, a relentless rhythm that built a punishing pressure in my core.
“Shuting… god…”
She ignored me, a woman on a mission. She focused on my clit, sucking the sensitive bundle of nerves between her lips, applying a rhythmic pressure with her tongue that made my knees buckle. Only the wall and her grip on my hips kept me upright. The pleasure was excruciating, too sharp, too much. I cried out, a stream of incoherent pleas and curses. She didn’t let up. She drove me over the edge with a ruthless precision, and I came against her mouth, shuddering, my cries echoing in the small room.
Before the last tremor faded, she was rising. She turned me around to face the wall, my cheek pressed to the cool plaster. “Stay.” Her voice was guttural. I heard the tear of foil. The sound of her rolling the condom onto the toy. Then the cold, slippery press of the silicone, not at my entrance, but lower, at the tight, forbidden pucker of my ass.
I went utterly still. We had never. It was a line.
“This,” she whispered, her lips against my ear, one hand splayed on my stomach, holding me in place. “This is the part of you no one else gets. This is mine. I’m taking it with me.” She pressed, just the tip, and the burn was immediate, intense. “Breathe out.”
I exhaled, a shuddering release, and she pushed in, a slow, inexorable invasion. The stretch was breathtaking, a feeling of being split open and remade. I whimpered, my fingers scraping against the wall. She buried the entire length inside me, then stopped, her body flush against my back, both of us panting. The fullness was unbelievable, a deep, aching possession.
“Now,” she said, and began to move.
She fucked my ass with a steady, grinding pace, her pelvis slamming against me. Each thrust sent a jolt of sharp, bright sensation through my entire body. It hurt. It felt incredible. It felt like punishment and worship. The filthy, squelching sound of the silicone, the slap of her skin on mine, filled my head. “You feel this,” she grunted, her breath hot on my neck. “You feel me in your guts, Vy. You’ll feel this on that plane. You’ll feel it in your fucking dorm room.”
“Yes,” I sobbed. “Fuck, yes.”
She reached around, her fingers finding my clit, swollen and oversensitive. She rubbed hard, quick circles, the dual assault ripping another orgasm from me, a shocking, convulsive wave that made my internal muscles clamp around the intrusion. She fucked me through it, her rhythm faltering as her own climax took her. She bit down on the meat of my shoulder to muffle her roar, her body rigid and shaking against my back.
We slid down the wall together, a heap of sweat-slicked limbs. She pulled out gently, and I winced at the sudden, empty ache. We didn’t speak. We just breathed in the dark. The deep, throbbing soreness was already settling into my muscles, a promise of the immobility I’d asked for.
When dawn came, grey and inevitable, I couldn’t stand without her help. My legs trembled, useless. She half-carried me to the futon, her own movements stiff. She made tea, brought it to me, and watched me drink. Her expression was calm, emptied.
She packed my suitcase with a terrifying efficiency, folding my clothes, placing the ginkgo-leaf notebook on top. She zipped it closed. The sound was the loudest thing in the world.
Then she went to the paper bag. She took out the toy, now clean and dry. Without a word, she walked to my suitcase, unzipped it, and nestled the purple silicone deep inside a roll of my socks. She met my eyes. A faint, ghost of a smile touched her lips. “A piece of me. For you to take.”
My taxi arrived. She helped me carry my bag downstairs, her arm strong around my waist. At the green door, she pulled me into a final, crushing kiss. It tasted of salt and tea and endless goodbye.
“Walk,” she whispered against my mouth, a command and a plea.
I took a step, then another. The ache was profound, a radiating reminder with every movement. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. I got into the taxi, each motion sending a fresh pulse of that deep, claiming soreness through me. As the car pulled away from the curb, I finally glanced at the retreating green door.
She was gone. Already inside. The container was closed.
I leaned my head against the window, my body humming with the echo of her, and knew she had kept her promise. I could barely walk.