My Online Lover Is the Rival I Fired novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Clean Room
Locked into a windowless audit lab with the man he fired, Yu watches Mo smile at a message from Whale and loses the argument with his own hands in the cold aisle between the servers.
Lu Tianci, Greywater's head of production, caught him in the Greywater lobby at six that evening with a blue folder in both hands.
"Mr. Yu. Mr. Cen asked me to prepare you."
"Prepare me for what?"
"For the audit," said Lu.
He pushed the folder at Yu.
He was a tidy man of thirty-six with a damp upper lip, and he had run Yu's production floor for three years.
"I started a summary. Overlap between Saltmarsh and Undertow, seventy percent in the core systems."
"It saves you the first night."
Yu weighed the folder.
"I haven't seen his build yet."
"Cen thought you'd want a head start."
Yu took the folder because Cen's name was on it, and went to the forty-seventh floor.
The audit lab had no windows.
Two desks faced each other across a gap of white tile.
A wall of server racks ran along the back, and a leather sofa stood under a dead plant.
A door at the far end opened onto the cold aisle.
Jiang Ke, Mo's co-founder, had walked his partner to the lab door and stood there, large and worried, with a thermos in one hand.
"Founders only," said the security guard.
"I know." Jiang held the thermos out to Mo. "It's the ginger one. Drink it. Don't fight with the tall one."
"I'm not going to fight him," said Mo.
"Your face says you are."
"My face is tired."
Jiang looked at Yu and Yu looked back, and the large man shook his head and left.
The door shut with a heavy click.
Mo set the thermos on his desk, sat down, and pushed his glasses up with a knuckle.
"Rules," he said. "You read my code, I read yours. No copying, no screenshots, no talking."
"Agreed."
"You can start with the tide system," said Mo. "It's the only part you're pretending to care about."
"It's the only part that's mine."
"It was never yours," said Mo, and plugged in his laptop.
They worked in silence for six hours.
It was longer than Yu had managed in a room with another human being since the spring.
Mo typed fast, with his shoulders hunched, and every few minutes he muttered at the screen in Shanghainese.
He smelled of tea and cold air and some cheap soap, and he kept stretching one arm over the back of his chair.
Yu read the Saltmarsh tide code.
It was clean.
It was cleaner than Undertow had ever been, and different at the root.
A hundred small choices in it had Mo's name written all through them.
Yu knew those choices.
He had read them for four years.
He turned the page and pretended it said nothing.
At ten to two, Mo's phone lit up face down on the desk.
Yu felt it in his own jacket, the black one, a small answering heat against his ribs.
He had written to Moon Cat at half past one, from the cold aisle, with the door pulled to.
"tell me what he did."
Now Mo turned his phone over.
Two low notes sounded in the empty room.
Yu kept his eyes on the screen and did not move.
Mo read.
He read it slowly, with his glasses down his nose.
His mouth did something Yu had never seen it do in three years of rooms.
It curved.
It was a small, helpless, private smile, and it was for him.
It was for a man in a cardigan who didn't exist, and it was for Yu, and it was aimed straight past him.
Mo typed a few lines, with his thumb moving fast.
Something clenched hard in Yu's chest and then, rudely, lower.
"Something funny?" said Mo, without looking up.
"No."
"You've been staring at my phone for a minute," said Mo.
"I've been reading your tide code."
"My tide code is on the other screen."
"Who's the man?" said Yu, before he could stop it.
Mo's eyes came up.
"Excuse me?"
"Someone's writing to you at two a.m. in a lab I've been locked in. I'm entitled to a name."
"You're entitled to a report on my code," said Mo. "Nothing else."
He shoved his phone into his pocket and stood.
"I'm going to check the racks. Try not to read my mail."
He walked through the door at the back into the cold aisle.
Yu counted to ten and went after him.
The cold aisle was a narrow steel corridor between two walls of server racks, lit blue and loud with fans.
Mo had his back to him, reading a temperature gauge.
He turned as soon as Yu's shoes hit the floor.
"I said I was checking the racks."
"I heard," said Yu.
"Then what are you doing here, Mr. Yu?"
"Watching you read the gauge."
Mo's mouth moved.
He crossed the corridor in two steps, took Yu's right wrist, and slammed it flat against the rack beside his head.
The metal was cold through his shirt.
The fans roared.
"Say it again," said Mo, close and quiet. "Say what you said upstairs. Every layer. Spread open."
"You heard me."
"I want it again."
"I'll have your files open on my desk by midnight," said Yu, "and I'll go through every one while you watch."
"Those are files," said Mo.
"Those are files."
"You didn't say it like files."
His other hand rested on Yu's belt buckle, light on the buckle.
Yu's breath went out hard through his nose.
"Let go of my wrist."
"Make me."
He did not make him.
Mo undid the belt, then the button, then the zip, and took him out in a hand that was hot after the aisle's cold.
Yu was already hard.
He had been hard since the smile.
"Look at that," said Mo, low and pleased. "The famous Mr. Yu. Cold. Exact. Hard over a man he fired."
"Shut up."
"No."
Yu freed his wrist and shoved a hand down the front of Mo's trousers.
Mo's cock was thick and wet at the tip and it jumped in his palm.
Mo made a sound that was nearly a laugh and nearly a curse.
"So we're doing this."
"You started it," said Yu.
"I started it in the stairwell."
They stood chest to chest in the blue noise with their foreheads almost touching, jerking each other slowly and then not slowly.
Mo's hand was relentless.
He twisted over the head with his thumb and spread the wet.
He dragged down hard to the root and back up, and Yu's hips drove into the grip with no say from him.
"Fuck," Yu said.
"There he is."
Yu's fingers closed round Mo's cock and pulled.
Mo bit his own lip, and the mole at the corner of his mouth went dark red.
His glasses had slid sideways.
Yu pushed them straight with his thumb, and his thumb stayed on the cheek.
"Don't be nice to me," Mo said, hoarse.
"I'm not."
"You are," said Mo. "Stop."
"Then stop pulling like that."
"I'll pull how I like."
He did.
He did it until Yu's thighs shook and every muscle in his back went tight.
Yu shut his eyes and gave a rough choked breath against Mo's temple.
He came over his fist in three long, hot spurts.
Mo followed a moment later, with his forehead dropped against Yu's collarbone and his cock jerking in Yu's palm.
The fans went on roaring.
Then Mo stepped back, wiped his hand slowly down Yu's shirtfront, and straightened his glasses.
"Eyes open, Mr. Yu," he said. "You didn't look once. You never do."
He put himself away and walked out.
Yu leaned his head on the cold steel with his trousers undone.
His left pocket buzzed against his hip.
The lighthouse chime sounded, two low notes, muffled in the cloth.
He did not have to read it to know it came from the man in the next room.
When he came back to the lab, Mo was sitting at his desk with the lights turned low, scrolling.
He did not look up.
"Tomorrow I bring a lock for that door," Mo said. "Tonight you don't leave first."
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