The Intern Memorized the Surgeon's Schedule novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: Cufflinks
The afternoon of the Society dinner came into Han's flat as low gold light through the one window, and nobody had drawn the curtain.
Tong Yu lay on his back in the narrow bed, looking at the ceiling.
The committee's finding was folded in his head, and there was nothing to do until six.
Han came in from the kitchen with two cups of tea and stopped in the doorway.
"You are awake," he said.
"I've been awake for an hour. I was admiring the light."
"There is a clause in my schedule," said Han, "that says I must not look at you in daylight before an event."
"There isn't," said Tong Yu.
"There is now." Han set the cups on the table without looking at them.
He had taken the pill at six that morning, and it was thinning.
The right hand hung at his side with a faint, constant tremor in it.
"By the time I stand up tonight it will be shaking in front of three hundred people," he said.
"I would like to know, first, what it is like to be touched in the light, by you, while it does."
Tong Yu sat up. "That's not a request I get every day."
"I am asking you to do it slowly."
"I can do slowly," said Tong Yu.
"I know," said Han. "I have a notebook of evidence."
He crossed the floor, and Tong Yu pulled him down by the open collar, and the narrow bed made its familiar complaint.
In the sun, everything was plain.
The grey at Han's temples, the small scar by his eyebrow.
The lines at his eyes that came when he did not know he was smiling.
Tong Yu had memorized them all from a gallery seat.
He had never been this close to a single one.
He undid the shirt himself, a button at a time, and put his mouth where each one had been.
Han lay back against the pillow and watched him do it with an expression of dazed attention.
"You are very thorough," he said.
"I learned it from a surgeon."
The right hand rose from the sheet and found his hair, and shook there, and Tong Yu leaned into the shaking on purpose.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Intern Memorized the Surgeon's Schedule are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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