CH 86

Chapter 86 – Ordinary Love

Warm dependence

When Pei Tingsong woke up and unexpectedly found that he had shed some tears, he felt very disgraced. They had changed their sleeping posture when asleep, and had gone from embracing each other face to face, to him embracing Fang Juexia from behind, with one of his arms stretched under his neck.

They were like two inseparable petals in a bud, stuck tightly close together. 

Fang Juexia was still sleeping heavily, so Pei Tingsong gently pulled out his embrace, making sure not to wake him up. After getting out of bed, Pei Tingsong wiped at the little damp spot on his pillow. After a while, he just turned the pillow over and hid it, pretending that nothing happened.

He was hungry, for he couldn’t eat anything on the plane while returning, but the apartment was as empty of food as his stomach, so he changed his clothes, put on his hat and mask, and went downstairs by himself. After sleeping for two or three hours, as the evening dusk transitioned into night, he realized that all the supermarkets were closed now, so he had to go to the convenience store to buy something.

Pei Tingsong had grown up with almost no idea of how to take care of others; it had always been other people who took care of him. Some people took care of him because they loved him, such as his grandfather, while others took care of him because it was their job.

But as soon as he stepped into the convenience store, his head was filled with thoughts of Fang Juexia. When he went to the snack area, he thought— what does Fang Juexia like to eat? He seems to like candy. So he picked out many kinds of candy, especially the fast-selling candy with a ‘Hot’ note stuck on it, and tossed them all into his basket.

And there was also Wangzai Milk, which he used to feel was cloying as soon as it was mentioned, and which he now basically picked as soon as he saw it. 

There were no fresh fruits and vegetables in the convenience store, so Pei Tingsong could only buy some salad and oden. When checking out, the cashier said, “You can take a look at our summer limited edition oh, it’s a coffee smoothie, very delicious.”

“If I drink coffee at night, I can’t sleep ba,” Pei Tingsong replied casually.

“Ah…that’s true.” The cashier laughed awkwardly and continued billing the items. However, Pei Tingsong suddenly spoke up, “I want two cups, please help me fill them.”

He didn’t even know what the time was when he had woken up, and he definitely wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore.

He came out from the convenience store carrying a big bag of snacks, and noticed that the store next door was a florist. He had never realized that there was a florist here even though clearly, he had lived here for so long.

The proprietress was arranging flowers inside the store. Her careful and serious appearance reminded him of Fang Juexia; he would squat on his small balcony every day, and sometimes stayed there all afternoon. He obviously loved to be clean, but for the sake of his little flowers, he would tolerate getting his hands often covered in dirt, and he would then often wash them for more than ten minutes.

After seeing the tall boy stand at the door for a long time, the proprietress couldn’t help asking, “Do you want to buy flowers?”

Pei Tingsong didn’t have this idea at first, but he nodded once he saw that there seemed to be a eustoma in the middle of the bouquet that the proprietress was holding.

“What do you want to buy? Do you need a recommendation?” The proprietress was a middle-aged woman who spoke quietly. She asked him questions while tidying up the arrangement in her hands. “Is it a gift?”

She didn’t look like someone who would recognize him, or maybe Pei Tingsong was really wrapped up too well.

“En.” Pei Tingsong came in and stared at that arrangement.

“One look, and I can tell it’s for your girlfriend. How about roses? This season’s roses and pink dahlias are very beautiful, oh, and jasmine.”

Pei Tingsong shook his head and pointed. “I want this one, the white eustoma, a big bunch of them.”

“You like this one ah.” The proprietress gladly took out some fresh eustoma. Only when it got to the point that she almost couldn’t hold onto them anymore did Pei Tingsong say it was enough.

“This flower is very good, beautiful, and has a strong vitality. It can continue blooming for more than ten days when it is put into the water. It’s not delicate at all.”

It really was beautiful and not delicate; it was Fang Juexia.

“I’ll tie a bow around it for you, your girlfriend will love it.”

Pei Tingsong, who had already paid, stopped the proprietress’ actions mid-way. “No need, just like this ba. My boyfriend can do it when I get back.”

With that, he walked away carrying a big bunch of eustoma that could bury him, leaving behind a confused proprietress who still hadn’t processed everything, wondering whether it was a boyfriend or a girlfriend.

There was also an old woman selling vegetables on the street, and she was sitting on the ground. There weren’t many vegetables left, with only a few tomatoes, sponge gourds, and some leftover vegetables now available. Pei Tingsong originally walked past her, but then he turned around and bought all the old woman’s vegetables while also urging her to go home quickly.

By the time he got in the elevator, Pei Tingsong was exhausted. He put everything on the floor of the elevator except the bunch of flowers, which he continued to hold onto seriously. 

Once back home, he put everything down, then changed into his slippers before heading straight to the bedroom. Sure enough, Fang Juexia was still sleeping, but when he heard the sound of movement, he seemed to wake up. He raised his head with his eyes half-open, looking like a baby chick falling in the clouds, indistinct.

In a trance, Pei Tingsong forgot that he and Fang Juexia were bandmates in a boyband, and forgot the dazzling stage and spotlight that their lives circled around. Right now, they were just like the most ordinary couple in the city, living and falling in love in an ordinary way, and their daily life was filled with fireworks.

“Woke up?” Pei Tingsong went over and lay down in front of him. He gave him a kiss on his left cheek and then another kiss on his right cheek. Fang Juexia snorted, stretched out his arms lazily, made a small circle in the air, and lastly put his hands on Pei Tingsong’s shoulders. Pei Tingsong had brought back a slight smell of rain mixed with the smell of sage on his clothes, very summer-like.

“You went out.” He rubbed his eyes. “Where did you go?”

“Just went downstairs and bought some stuff.” Pei Tingsong liked seeing this appearance of his, when he had just woken up. After he covered himself in the quilt for a while, he became especially soft, and his face turned a bit pink.

Fang Juexia wasn’t used to staying in bed, so after talking a bit, he got up. As soon as he came out of the bedroom, he saw the flowers on the table and the big heap of things Pei Tingsong had bought. He knew that Pei Tingsong was a young master, but he still couldn’t help laughing at him. “Why buy so many flowers? There aren’t even enough vases for you to put them in.”

“How is there no place to put them?” Pei Tingsong opened a wine cabinet in the kitchen, and it was filled with clean and beautiful glasses. He took them out one by one huffily. “They can be put in all of these, I have plenty of glasses to put flowers in.”

Fang Juexia laughed at his childishness. Pei Tingsong still wasn’t done. “And if that’s not enough, there’s a pond.”

“There’s also a swimming pool, right?” Fang Juexia thought of Pei Tingsong’s story before they had slept, the one about killing the fish in the swimming pool.

“Anyway, I can afford these flowers, and they’re all my flowers.”

“Okay.” Fang Juexia lengthened out the last syllable of this word, making it especially gentle. He saw the vegetables that Pei Tingsong had bought, and none of them were very pretty. Some of them had already withered and he didn’t know why he had bought them. But he didn’t rebuke him, instead started washing them all while saying, “I’ll make a vegetable soup ba.”

“Okay.” Pei Tingsong began to fiddle with his flowers. He separated them one by one and shook them a few times. All the buds on the branch were quivering, dripping with water and releasing no aroma, looking very beautiful and pure.

Fang Juexia already knew how to cook, and his actions were quick and efficient. He sliced the tomatoes and sponge gourds, put them in a pot, added a spoonful of salt, and finally put the washed leftover vegetables in. Unfortunately, there were no eggs, otherwise the soup would become more fragrant.

Hot soup, smoothies, oden, and salad. They were eating strangely and casually, but both people actually found the things they were eating delicious. Fang Juexia left the smoothie for last, and when he took a sip of the half melted smoothie, his teeth chattered from the cold.

“It’s a very good drink.” He smiled, and his lips, that had turned red from the cold, were more beautiful than the roses at the florist.

After dinner, Pei Tingsong took the initiative to wash the dishes. In a hurry, he almost broke one, but he managed to save it. Fang Juexia was sitting at the big dining table pruning the eustoma, and almost used up all the glasses he could use.

He put the flowers in all the places he could put them, such as the dining table, under the corner of the sofa, on the porch cabinet, in the study, the bedside table in the bedroom, and even in the bathroom. The house was full of eustoma, and the empty house looked like it had come somewhat alive.

Pei Tingsong told him that he had lied to Cheng Qiang by telling him that he was sick and wanted him to stay with him to rest for two days. Fang Juexia agreed, and thought it was very interesting. “Then we also can’t go anywhere. There are too many eyes outside, and staying inside the apartment is the safest. It’s like we’re a little couple hiding after eloping.”

Pei Tingsong liked this description.

They wanted to watch Lu Yuan’s variety show for a bit after eating, but there wasn’t a TV in the apartment. Pei Tingsong found a projector in his study. “How about watching a movie?”

Fang Juexia said yes, but he doubted whether he would be able to see it clearly. He stretched out his waist and looked through the bag to find a raspberry flavored lollipop, tore off the wrapping paper, and stuffed it into his mouth. He sat cross-legged on the sofa as he watched Pei Tingsong fiddle with the projector that he obviously didn’t use very often.

Pei Tingsong finally got it right, and an image was projected onto the empty white wall. “Can you see?”

The projection effect was very good and very bright, so Fang Juexia nodded with the candy in his mouth. “It’s good. What movie is this?”

“Kill Your Darlings.” Every time Pei Tingsong spoke in English, his ending notes always sounded especially good. That kind of chest resonance, it always made Fang Juexia feel limp and numb whenever he heard it. 

The title made the movie sound like an art film, or a murder themed suspense film. Fang Juexia beckoned to Pei Tingsong and patted the sofa twice, indicating that he should come over quickly.

“Right away, I’ll get us something to drink first.”

He pulled out the last two glasses in his apartment, took out a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream from the wine cabinet, and mixed it with half a glass of Wangzai Milk before sipping it. The sweetness doubled like this, and Fang Juexia would like it.

For himself, he poured half a glass of rum with half a glass of coke. Pei Tingsong didn’t have a large alcohol tolerance, but he still drank a little occasionally. When he was half-drunk and wrote, his mind would be filled with even more fantastical imagination.

After he got back to the sofa, they sat shoulder to shoulder. As they watched the movie, Fang Juexia ended up being not so quiet. This was a movie about literature, poetry and the “Beat Generation”, so there were many things Fang Juexia didn’t understand. Whenever the hero with a beautiful face read a poem, he would look sideways at Pei Tingsong.

“This is Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer,” Pei Tingsong would kiss him every time he finished saying something, “He is also one of the Beat Generation, the prophet of sexual liberation. In my study, I still have his Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, and they’re all erotic novels.”

“Sexual liberation…” Fang Juexia repeated these words in a low voice, and because he still had some candy in his mouth, the words had a slightly cloying feel to it. 

He and Pei Tingsong had received completely different educations and had been raised in completely different environments, so he could never be like him, he could never utter words about sex and eroticism casually like him. His tone was weak and contained no confidence. “No wonder there was the word ‘cock’ in his poems…”

Hearing this, Pei Tingsong laughed and teased him with the line he had spoken in the hotel last time. “Gege, how do you say ‘cock’ in Chinese?”

Fang Juexia’s face suddenly turned red. Originally, he was half lying on him, but now he turned to sit upright.

“I don’t know,” he lied.

Pei Tingsong started laughing, but didn’t continue to tease him, and they immersed themselves in the plot again. Fang Juexia watched it silently, occasionally sighing tonelessly, and then spoke in the manner of stating the truth, “Alan really likes Lucian.”

“Why do you say that?” Pei Tingsong took a sip of his coke and rum, and handed Fang Juexia the mixture he had made for him.

Fang Juexia took a big gulp. At first, he didn’t even taste the alcohol in it, and he just thought it was chocolate milk which tasted very sweet. He said to Pei Tingsong, “Look at his eyes when he looks at him. No matter what Lucian says or does, he looks at him like that.”

Saying it like that, it was an interesting description.

“You are so smart.” Pei Tingsong tapped his chin and made him face himself. The projected light cast a layer of illusion on his three-dimensional facial features, making them look rather like a bust. His speech was also more pleasant than Lucian in the film, and it enthralled people.

“Then should you have figured out that I like you early on?” Pei Tingsong looked into his eyes, the light in his eyes like a turbulent lake. “I look at you like that too.”

The candy in his mouth had melted by a third.

The raspberry flavor and chocolate taste of the drink made Fang Juexia intoxicated.

“I didn’t figure it out,” Fang Juexia replied honestly.

On the projection screen, Lucian fell onto Allen’s leg, holding the fingers he had reached out to touch his cheek. On the sofa, Pei Tingsong held out his hand, grasped the white slender lollipop stick extending from Fang Juexia’s lips, pinched it, and rotated it.

A sweet raspberry planet, spinning slowly in a wet and soft universe.

The just-born ambiguous nebula flowed into the throat and ignited in his stomach.

“Why?”

Because he also looked at Pei Tingsong like that, so how could he have discovered it? His heart and eyes had long been full of Pei Tingsong.

Fang Juexia answered with this within his heart, and then bit at the shrinking lollipop in his mouth. 

Love is blind, because the lovers could only see their passion for each other.

The planet exploded, and his mouth was full of debris. His tongue needed to be saved, so Pei Tingsong came at just the right moment. He held his waist and gave him a complicated kiss under the play of light and shadows.

He thought of the lines that were uttered not so long ago, when Allen had said that ‘it’s complicated’.

Lucian had replied, “Great, I love complicated.”

Fang Juexia didn’t like it. He liked simple things that could be solved with the use of logic. The only complex thing he liked was Pei Tingsong, and everything related to Pei Tingsong.

Simple couldn’t cover him, and Pei Tingsong was attractive because of his complexity.

Rum, sweet saliva, coke bubbles, folded oral lining, raspberry and Irish Baileys, tiny taste buds at the tip of the tongue, milk, and smooth teeth.

The candy fragments were pushed around by them, and gradually lost their attacking power, melting into a round shape, sticking to their lips and tongue as their breaths grew deeper and deeper.

The lines of poetry being recited in the movie were too suitable as background sound right now.

[Be careful, you are not in Wonderland.

I’ve heard the strange madness long growing in your soul.

But you are fortunate in your ignorance, in your isolation. 

You who have suffered, find where love hides.

Give, share, lose

—lest we die, unbloomed.]

Fang Juexia was in Wonderland, and he couldn’t hear anything. Unconsciously, he lay down on the sofa, like a burnt out white candle. His long thin white legs knocked into the glass on the floor, which led to the eustoma falling and water flowing to the floor.

His head began to grow dizzy, and there was an indistinct halo in front of his eyes. Half a glass of Irish Bailey had some effect; he felt hot all over, but he wasn’t drunk, he was still sober. 

Pei Tingsong took off his black coat between kisses, just as he had torn open the candy wrapper just now. But they clearly still had candy in their mouths, and it was too much to hold.

Pei Tingsong seemed to be outlining the shape of his lips, gliding along the subtle curve and small and exquisite bow they formed.

Every part of the inner part of their mouths was bared open with no reservations, and Fang Juexia began to lose the ability to swallow. He could only accept and accept this invasion passively.

This kiss was too long, to the point that the candy had melted. Fang Juexia was also about to melt on the sofa.

The dissolved candy and saliva were mixed together and dripped down. They were shining under the sunlight shining in the movie, and made for an image more beautiful than the Milky Way.

Their hot hands turned unsteady, and every place they stuck was left stained with their heat.

The rescue was temporarily suspended. Pei Tingsong retreated back a little and looked at Fang Juexia from a distance.

That kind of pure white beauty set against the colors of the night—it was a kind of defilement to describe it using the words “beguiling and exotic.”

“Are you not going to watch it anymore?” Fang Juexia was talking about the movie. He lay on the sofa, and with soft eyes, continued, “We’ve only seen half of it.”

Pei Tingsong leaned down and licked the sugar from the corner of Fang Juexia’s mouth, like an animal.

“The second half isn’t that good.”

Poetry doesn’t lie.

Yes, Pei Tingsong was so infatuated that his soul now contained a peculiar madness within itself. 

“Alright ba, then we won’t watch anymore.”

(5000 words as a gift)

Quick preview of the translated smut (NSFW warning):

“Really?” Pei Tingsong maliciously rubbed Fang Juexia’s cock. When he heard him squeak, he smiled. “Our Juexia drank a lot of water, so what should we do? I can’t just pull out.”

“You can, Tingsong,” Fang Juexia revealed a pleading expression that was too beautiful. “Just for a moment.”

“I can’t leave you for even a second.” Pei Tingsong ruthlessly said some sweet nothings before picking up his lover, and with his legs wrapped around his waist, carried him to the bathroom. With every step, he thrust in and out of his body, going even deeper than the last one.

He was Fang Juexia’s only fulcrum, the sword that would kill him, but also his life-saving straw.