Shen Yuan shakes his head, but it's not about the dreamlessness—that would be good—or about sleeping more. His limbs are heavy, and he'd really rather die than do anything that means getting out of bed and thus out of Binghe's embrace. But—he can't introduce Binghe, even another time; because the people he would be introducing him to aren't here, and neither his brain nor Binghe's brain can conjure them up properly. Any kind of introduction he could make would also be a coming out, and he'd never know what they really would have said to that. He'll never find out. He'll always have this thing, this big, important thing about himself, that they'll never know.

He thinks of Magnus' Queer After Death t-shirt idea, and wants to laugh, but it comes out a choked little sigh. It doesn't seem fair, all of sudden, that he went through so much self-discovery after death; his self-knowledge should have stopped when everyone's knowledge of him stopped. How could there possibly be something so important to him that his mother won't know? What kind of fucked up injustice, that she'll visit his grave and mourn him wrong—mourn the life he could have had, the wife and children, not even knowing the things that really would—really do bring him joy, and fulfillment, and love?

Binghe's shirt is soft against his face. He tries to subtly wipe his eyes on it.