Matt, a young, Chinese-American man, is a biotech engineer who is dating Gus, his boyfriend of some years and a personal trainer by profession. They talk about their feelings for each other while testing the supernatural elements which have come to govern their reality. Saying a lie causes one to be drenched in a sudden, chilling downpour; a half-truth brings about humidity; uttering a paradox results in an overpowering sense of dread, which relents only when one says an unequivocal truth. Gus says he loves Matt, and both feel themselves suffused with warmth; Matt says he doesn't love him back and is instantly drenched in water.

When Gus casually brings up marriage later that night, Matt reveals that he has not yet come out to his parents. Up to now, he has talked to his parents about Gus while using gender neutral pronouns in Mandarin. Matt proposes that the both of them attend a family Christmas celebration at his sister’s house, to which Gus enthusiastically agrees. 

His sister, some years older than him and already married with children, is enraged at Matt for bringing his boyfriend to the gathering. She tells him the shock of coming out could kill his parents, not to mention embarrass them in front of her husband’s parents. She urges him to marry a Chinese woman instead. To prevent him from talking to their parents, she stays with him throughout Christmas Day, which increasingly gets on his nerves. When she tells him that Gus will probably cheat on him, she is drenched with water.

Over dinner, the rest of the family warms up to Gus, who has been acting as a friend of Matt’s without a place to go for the holidays. Before the meal ends, Matt’s sister’s boyfriend’s father asks him when he will have a son. Matt takes this opportunity to reveal Gus’s marriage proposal to him, which causes his sister to explode in fury. She tells him to leave, and he goes to his room to pack up.  As he packs, Gus comes up to the room and tells him that his parents are taking the news quite well. Gus calls them by terms in Chinese which one uses for a husband’s father and mother, which were taught to him by Matt’s parents. Matt realizes that his parents knew, even without him saying anything. As he is a biotech engineer, his parents joke about him fusing his and Gus’s DNA to have a child. 

After leaving the party, Matt and Gus check into a motel. Gus suggests that even though he may not want to stay in contact with his sister, he could still have a relationship with his parents, for the sake of their possible children. They agree to try and go back to the celebration tomorrow. Sensing Matt’s unhappiness and unwillingness to talk, Gus leaves for a few hours. In the silence after he goes, Matt says out loud that he loves him.