My Straight Best Friend Thinks It's Bro Stuff novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bro Rules

Tang dictates seven rules for two straight men sharing a bed and Fu writes every one down; at seven the gossip account accuses Fu of treating the team without a licence.

The flat on Phoenix Lane had a working heater, a window over a hot pot restaurant's red neon sign, and exactly one bed.

It was a good bed.

It was wide enough for two grown swimmers, if neither of them had opinions.

Luo Bin and the other roommate carried in the last box, filmed the bed for a long, silent moment, and went away down the stairs howling.

Tang shut the door on the noise.

He dropped onto the sofa with his duvet in his arms and looked at his best friend of sixteen years.

Fu was setting out two bowls of rice and a takeaway box of mapo tofu on the little table.

He moved around the kitchen easily, and Tang suspected he had been in it for a month.

"Okay," said Tang, and clapped once. "Before we start. House rules."

"You want rules," said Fu.

"I want rules. We're two straight guys sharing a bed. Rules keep it clean. Bro rules."

Fu pulled out his green notebook and turned to a fresh page.

"Go ahead," he said.

He said it gravely, with his pen ready.

Tang had a speech prepared on the way over.

He had practised it in the mirror, he was a little embarrassed to admit, and he delivered it now with one hand raised.

"Rule one. In bed we sleep back to back. Never facing."

Fu wrote it down.

"Rule two. Every hug gets a back-slap. A good hard one. It keeps it manly."

"How hard?" asked Fu.

"Audible."

Fu wrote that down too.

"Rule three. No hand-holding, except when you're crossing a road."

"Define road," said Fu.

"A road. With cars."

"A pedestrian bridge?" asked Fu.

"Is there a car under it?" said Tang.

"Usually," said Fu.

"Then the bridge counts," said Tang, with dignity. "Rule four. Feeding each other is only allowed when one person is sick."

"I've been feeding you since Monday."

"Because I was sick. That's the exact rule. Rule five."

He paused here, because the next ones were harder.

"A massage has to include swearing," he said. "Proper swearing. If you're not swearing, it's not bro-ing, it's something else."

"Something else," Fu repeated. His pen did not move for a moment.

"Rule six. Nobody says 'I miss you.' We say 'where are you.' It's got the same information."

"It doesn't," said Fu.

"It's got the same information and none of the problems," said Tang. "Rule seven."

Tang scratched the back of his neck.

This one was the oldest, and he had never explained it to anyone.

"Nothing counts after midnight," he said. "Whatever happens after midnight, it didn't happen. We're tired, we're stupid, it's a bro blackout. Agreed?"

Fu put down the pen and looked at the page.

Seven numbered lines in his small, square writing.

Tang had come up with the first six that night three years ago, on the roof of Building 9, drunk on one beer.

He had said them out loud to Fu as a joke, and Fu had listened to every one and said okay.

He had never said anything else.

The memory sat at the back of Tang's head, uncomfortable, and he waited for Fu to argue.

"Agreed," said Fu. "I'll keep them in here."

"You're really writing them down?" asked Tang.

"You told me to."

"I thought you'd laugh," said Tang.

"I never laugh at your rules," said Fu. "Eat before it gets cold."

They ate, and the tofu was perfect, and it burned Tang's mouth.

Fu pushed a glass of cold soy milk toward him without a word.

Before the lights went out Fu changed for bed with his back politely turned.

He pulled the grey sweater over his head, and under it he was lean and long-backed, with the muscle of a man who hauled swimmers around for a living.

Tang looked at the ceiling very hard.

He told himself it was because he had never noticed how broad Fu's shoulders were.

He told himself a good many things before the light clicked off.

By eleven the lights were out.

The bed was wide, and the sheets were new and smelled of the sun.

Tang lay on his right side facing the window, the red neon sign pulsing through the curtain.

Behind him, Fu lay on his left side with his back against Tang's.

A hand's width of cool air stood between them, and Tang kept it there.

Rule one, he thought. We're fine.

He could feel Fu's breathing through the back of his own ribs.

It was slow, and even, and a little too even for a man who was asleep.

At some point Tang drifted off.

The next thing he knew, there was a grey light in the curtains and his phone was buzzing on the floor.

Fu was already up.

He was standing at the window in his sweater, with his own phone in his hand, very still.

"Lingchen?" said Tang, with a thick tongue. "What time is it?"

"Seven."

"Who died?"

"Nobody." Fu held out the phone.

On the screen was the Rongda Treehole, posted at 6:58.

Under the headline "THE QUIET LITTLE LICENCE" was a photo from the Old Natatorium's taping room.

It showed Fu with Tang's bare shoulder under his hands and a roll of white tape between his teeth.

Below it, in black letters, the post read:

"Fu Lingchen has no medical licence. He has been treating the national-roster swimmers for free, unsupervised, for two years."

"Isn't the department asleep? Isn't the coach? Someone should ask what's in that notebook."

Tang read it twice.

"I'm going to kill whoever wrote this."

"You're going to put your shoes on," said Fu, quite gently. "I'm due at the professor's at ten."

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