The exhaustion after the passion faded made Xia Xiqing powerless. He sat on the toilet without doing anything, letting Zhou Ziheng take the shower head and rinse him from head to toe. After helping him wash, Zhou Ziheng quickly washed himself. The bubbles of shower gel splashed on Xia Xiqing's arm from time to time, and he pressed it away with his index finger, then raised his head to continue admiring.
They were so close that they seemed like a real couple, living in a small corner of the city and leading an ordinary life.
Just very similar. Xia Xiqing pulled a handful of wet hair and put them all behind her head.
"What are you thinking about?" Zhou Ziheng walked over barefoot on the wet tile floor and touched Xia Xiqing's face without wiping his body.
Xia Xiqing opened his mouth and bit Zhou Ziheng's thumb, then raised his eyes and looked at him.
“I just think we’re being ridiculous.”
"It's quite ridiculous." Zhou Ziheng rubbed the tip of his teeth with his fingers, "I used to be so pure."
Xia Xiqing sneered disdainfully, "People who fool around with me are not qualified to use the word pure." His slightly raised face was filled with the afterimage of lust, "Who would have thought that this studio would be used for the first time? It's not like we're here to shoot pornographic films."
Zhou Ziheng pulled out his thumb slightly and gently rubbed Xia Xiqing's soft lower lip. He smiled, and in Xia Xiqing's eyes he was too handsome.
"If it's with you, I don't mind filming a movie." His deep eyebrows always take on a childish look at some inadvertent moment. "The completion of an actor's career lies in the expansion of scale."
Xia Xiqing slapped his hand away and rolled his eyes, "Don't give me that." He tilted his neck back and leaned against the water tank, "It's so stuffy here."
After hearing this, Zhou Ziheng immediately stood up, "I'll go out for a while." He walked to the sofa in the living room with his wet shoes, took out his clean underwear from his bag and put them on, as well as the white cotton short-sleeved shirt and dark blue sports shorts that he always used as pajamas. Just as he was about to put them on, he hesitated for a moment, put them on the sofa, and ran to the bedroom to open the closet. There were not many clothes in it. Zhou Ziheng felt a little sorry and thought that he should not touch other people's clothes casually.
So after a lot of hesitation, he finally went to the living room, quickly changed into his pajamas, put on a mask, and went downstairs in his wet sneakers.
Xia Xiqing heard him running back and forth in the bathroom, wondering what he was doing. After more than ten minutes, the half-closed door of the bathroom opened and Zhou Ziheng walked in wearing a pair of dark blue rubber slippers, holding clothes, slippers and a new towel in his hands.
"You came downstairs?"
"Well, I went shopping." He put the clothes on the washing machine, turned on the tap to wash the new towel several times, wrung it out, and took Xia Xiqing's hand to wipe the water off his body carefully. Seeing Zhou Ziheng like this, Xia Xiqing felt warm in his heart.
He wanted to say, you don't have to do this. He had said this too many times, and every time it worked without any obstacles, but for some reason, when he saw Zhou Ziheng's face, he couldn't say this. But in his heart, he still felt that Zhou Ziheng didn't have to do this for someone like him.
"Okay, put your hands up." Zhou Ziheng put on his white T-shirt that he always used as pajamas, as if he was taking care of a child. It was also the shirt he changed into after going upstairs after shopping. He himself put on a black short-sleeved shirt that he had just bought downstairs for thirty yuan.
After helping Xia Xiqing put on his clothes, Zhou Ziheng took out a pair of dark blue slippers of the same style as the ones he was wearing from a plastic bag, held his white ankles, and put them on him one by one.
In fact, he really wanted to kiss his ankle, but Xia Xiqing might be angry now, so Zhou Ziheng gave up the idea for the time being.
"Have you recovered?" Zhou Ziheng took his hand and pulled him up. He weakly supported Xia Xiqing's waist with his hand, but Xia Xiqing took it away. "I'm very strong." He walked out of the bathroom in the slippers that fit him. The chemical reaction between sweat and air finally ended at this moment. Xia Xiqing wiped his hair with a towel and felt refreshed. It was completely dark, and the lights in the living room were not very bright. The dark yellow light filled the small space.
When he turned around, he saw Zhou Ziheng, who was wearing a black T-shirt, pinching the back of his shirt with his hand and turning his head as if he wanted to see something. Xia Xiqing walked over and asked, "What's wrong?"
"My neck is itchy from the collar tag."
"Sit on the sofa." Xia Xiqing looked around and found an old pair of scissors on the second layer of the TV cabinet, so he walked over and picked it up. The rubber leather on the handle was so old that it was cracked. When he turned around, Zhou Ziheng was sitting on the sofa waiting, his unstyled hair was fuzzy after drying.
"Where did you buy those low-quality clothes? It couldn't be the night market downstairs." Xia Xiqing came over, and Zhou Ziheng patted his thigh at him, smiling with a row of white teeth showing, "Yeah, how are you so smart."
A big star, how unrefined. Xia Xiqing couldn't refuse seeing this smile, so she spread her legs and sat on his lap, and put her hands around his neck to cut his collar tag.
"Don't move. Don't blame me if you cut your flesh."
"Um."
Zhou Ziheng was extremely satisfied. He wrapped his arms loosely around Xia Xiqing's waist and buried his head obediently in his shoulder. This time, there was no smell of perfume on his body, only the remaining mint scent of shower gel, mixed with a little bit of the passion that had not yet dissipated.
When desire comes, it surges like a tsunami and makes people dizzy, but in fact, for Zhou Ziheng, being with Xia Xiqing, the ups and downs of throbbing and aftermath when the tide recedes are also beautiful.
Carefully cutting off the last bit, Xia Xiqing tore off the inferior collar tag with his hands. Although he was very careful, it still left some small holes on his short-sleeved shirt. It didn't matter, as it was obviously cheap clothes anyway.
"alright."
Zhou Ziheng was still reluctant to look up, "Hold me for a while longer."
“Are you a puppy?”
"No." Zhou Ziheng hugged him tightly, raised his head, and looked up at him with a nostalgic look, "Kiss me."
Xia Xiqing didn't move. Zhou Ziheng asked again. He finally relented and kissed Zhou Ziheng on the lips. "Is it okay?"
"No." Zhou Ziheng kissed her, getting deeper and deeper. Xia Xiqing held the scissors in his hand and threatened in the gap between the lingering kisses, "Do you believe me, I will stab you with this?"
"I don't believe it." Zhou Ziheng kissed the side of his neck, grabbed his hand holding the scissors, and brought it to his chest, "Go ahead and stab me."
Xia Xiqing has won the hearts of too many people. Each of them has made beautiful vows to him and shown him the intensity of their emotions. To him, these are all the same. To be honest, he doesn't have any emotional fluctuations because he knows very well that if they really knew what a bad person he is, no one would love him.
But Zhou Ziheng's heart is completely different. His emotions are blue magma, which looks like a calm ocean. When the tide floods, he finds that he has been swallowed up by the boiling magma and melted in it.
Throwing away the scissors in her hand, Xia Xiqing hugged Zhou Ziheng's head and kissed him deeply.
When did I learn to adopt such a passive and lazy tactic of taking one step at a time
The delicate balance between them is a bubble as long as Zhou Ziheng doesn't burst it.
Xia Xiqing would sometimes think darkly that maybe he was too narcissistic, and maybe Zhou Ziheng was just playing around, simulating love with his superb and natural acting skills.
That's true and not bad.
The moist tongues intertwined, and the summer wind came in through the gaps in the old window lattice, covering the eyebrows and eyes of the two. This kind of tender kiss rarely happened to Xia Xiqing. He always invaded others with a desire, but he never thought that one day he would become the one who got everything he wanted.
When they were reluctant to part, Zhou Ziheng's stomach suddenly growled, breaking the sweet entanglement like honey.
"You are really hungry this time." Xia Xiqing smiled and got off him, glancing at the pendulum hanging on the wall, "Come on, I'll take you to eat."
The humidity still hadn't evaporated, but the summer heat had mostly dissipated with the disappearance of the sun, and the night breeze felt warm on people's bodies. Zhou Ziheng and Xia Xiqing walked downstairs shoulder to shoulder. The previously chaotic community was now illuminated by thousands of lights. The curbs, which were not wide to begin with, were occupied by stalls of all sizes, selling clothes, flowers, birds, fish and insects, and all kinds of strange small shops, densely packed on a long street, separated from each other by ropes with strings of small light bulbs, and also sharing each other's light.
"You've never been to a night market, have you?" Xia Xiqing reached out and pulled Zhou Ziheng's hat brim down a little. Zhou Ziheng pushed up his glasses frame and said, "No, there's not even a small dirty stall in Beijing now."
"That's right. We need to improve the city's appearance." Xia Xiqing pulled him to the sidewalk. This was not the main action area of the night market, so people wouldn't be so close to each other. He pulled his mask and reminded Zhou Ziheng, "Be careful with your phone. I had three phones stolen in the night market before."
Zhou Ziheng smiled and naturally put his hand on Xia Xiqing.
"Aren't you afraid of being photographed?"
"Let's take a picture." Zhou Ziheng hugged her tighter, "It's very down-to-earth for celebrities to visit the night market." Just after he finished speaking, Xia Xiqing felt the hand on his shoulder being taken away. He turned around and saw Zhou Ziheng quickly holding up a cart that was about to fall. The gray-haired grandmother holding the handle of the cart kept thanking him, "Luckily, you are here, otherwise my whole night would have been in vain and I would have lost everything."
Zhou Ziheng didn't quite understand, so he could only help her push the food to the fixed stall with a smile, and communicated with his mother-in-law in Mandarin with great effort. He was too tall, so he could only keep his back hunched and his head lowered to get close to his mother-in-law.
"Be careful, this leg is not stable." Zhou Ziheng half squatted down, took out a tissue from his trouser pocket, folded it a few times, and put it on the lowered wooden leg. "Okay." He grabbed the wooden leg of the cart and shook it. "It won't shake now." He looked up and happened to meet Xia Xiqing's eyes not far away, and smiled at him.
Xia Xiqing felt like he was hallucinating from the heat.
It felt like a pair of glowing wings had grown behind Zhou Ziheng.
Why would such a good person want to hang out with me
He followed and took a look at the large stainless steel thermos bucket and the cut fruits on the cart. He said to his mother-in-law in Wuhan dialect, "Grandma, I want a cup of mung bean smoothie and a bunch of water chestnuts."
After picking up the smoothie and water chestnut skewers, Xia Xiqing left the stall and continued walking forward. Zhou Ziheng followed behind him, "I want to eat too."
"Go buy it."
"I want to eat from your hand."
Xia Xiqing turned around suddenly, and Zhou Ziheng almost bumped into him head-on. He quickly took a step back. Xia Xiqing had five cleanly peeled water chestnuts on a skewer in his hand, each of which was white, tender and round. He stuffed the cold green bean smoothie into Zhou Ziheng's hand, "Don't drink it yet." He took a small water chestnut with his hand and was about to hand it to him, "Eat it. I don't think you people eat this as fruit."
Unexpectedly, Zhou Ziheng lowered his head and bit the water chestnut with Xia Xiqing's hand. He tilted his head back and put it into his mouth. He chewed it twice. It was crispy, tender, fragrant and juicy.
"Delicious!" The eyes behind the black-framed glasses brightened up a little, "I want more."
Xia Xiqing also laughed, snatched the green bean paste from his hand and turned around mercilessly, "Go buy it yourself."
"No, give me another one. This one is delicious."
“This is the horseshoe.”
"Really? In our place, water chestnuts are used to make dumplings and meatballs. They are rarely eaten raw. Besides, they are not tender at all." Zhou Ziheng put his arm around Xia Xiqing's shoulders. "It's better here. Grandma peels all kinds of fruits and sells them to you. They're cheap."
No matter when, it is a pleasant thing to be praised for your hometown.
In the middle of the night market were row upon row of food stalls, all doing a booming business. Xia Xiqing led Zhou Ziheng to a secluded spot to sit down and ordered four large plates of barbecued food, all of which were skewered with various meats, sizzling with oil, and sprinkled with a handful of cumin, chili peppers, and chopped green onions, which was extremely fragrant. He also went to the stall next door and bought a small bowl of stewed food and two baskets of tomato-flavored soup dumplings, filling up the small, low table.
"Try it."
Zhou Ziheng picked up a string of roasted crispy bones and put it in his mouth. He usually doesn't eat chili peppers, but this time he was stunned by the spiciness. He grabbed the mung bean smoothie next to Xia Xiqing and took a big gulp.
"It's so spicy!" He opened his mouth and inhaled like a big golden retriever, laughing so hard that Xia Xiqing almost choked. "I ordered it slightly spicy."
"Don't eat something so spicy. Just now..."
Xia Xiqing hit his knee hard with his knee, "Shut up, if you mention it again I will leave you here alone."
Zhou Ziheng grinned, grabbed Xia Xiqing's hand and rubbed it, as if to please him. Xia Xiqing pulled his hand out again and picked up a braised kelp knot for Zhou Ziheng, "This is delicious, I love it the most."
Hearing Xia Xiqing's words, Zhou Ziheng stuffed the kelp knot into his mouth without thinking. The kelp that had been simmered in the old stew for several hours was already soft, sticky and dense, salty and delicious, "Hmm... This is delicious." But the next second, the spicy aftereffect hidden in the stew surfaced again, and Zhou Ziheng stuck out his tongue, "This is spicy too."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk." Xia Xiqing shook his head and ate a bunch of roasted green peppers. "Most of the food here is spicy."
Finally, Zhou Ziheng finished two baskets of soup dumplings by himself. He was addicted to it and ran to order two more baskets. After a while, an uncle came over with two baskets of soup dumplings and put them down for them. "Handsome guy, your soup dumplings." At this time, Xia Xiqing had finished eating and put on his mask again. The uncle glanced at his tied hair, looked at his eyebrows, and joked to Zhou Ziheng, "Handsome guy, you are very lucky. Your friend is very beautiful."
The boss spoke Mandarin with a strong dialect. Zhou Ziheng roughly understood what he said and thought he was complimenting Xia Xiqing on her good looks, so he smiled. Just as he was about to reply, Xia Xiqing suddenly pulled down his mask, looked up at the boss and said seriously, "I'm a man."
"Ah?" The boss took a closer look and found that it was indeed a man. He immediately smiled apologetically and said, "Oh, I made a mistake. I'm sorry. My wife just told me that a tall and pretty girl bought two baskets of tomato soup dumplings. I thought it was you."
Xia Xiqing said with a forced smile that it was nothing, and the boss chatted for a few words before leaving.
"Did he say you're pretty?" Zhou Ziheng kept asking. He was just curious. Why did Xia Xiqing have to explain that he was a boy after the boss said that? He recalled what the boss had said before.
Play with friends.
"What is a play friend?"
Xia Xiqing, who had just bitten a small hole in the soup dumpling, was burned on the tip of his tongue by the boiling soup. The soup, which could no longer be contained by the thin skin, flowed out in the small plate like a secret that could not be hidden.
The tables were close to each other. The half-drunk middle-aged men at the table next to them suddenly laughed. One of them touched Zhou Ziheng's back with the back of his hand holding a beer can, "You are from the north, right? Are you visiting Wuhan?"
Zhou Ziheng subconsciously pushed the frame, and the other party didn't seem to recognize him, "Yes."
The other person laughed a few times and explained to him in unstandard Mandarin, "Playing with friends is like being in love, do you understand?"
Talk, talk about love
So, the boss treats Xia Xiqing as his girlfriend
The tip of his tongue was burning and painful. After hearing the conversation between Zhou Ziheng and the big brother, Xia Xiqing could not even raise his head. He just turned his face away and sipped the empty mung bean soup. The water droplets condensed on the wall of the cup made his hands wet, as if they were considerately cooling down his burning palms.
After having supper, the two walked out side by side from a fork in the road, gradually moving away from the noisy night market. The Hua'anli community is surrounded by railways, and the roar of trains whizzing past could be heard, causing their hearts to vibrate along with it.
Zhou Ziheng was still thinking about what the big brother had just said. He always felt that Xia Xiqing was a person who really fit the character of this city. He even described his love life as playing with friends. He was unruly and had the spirit of a ruffian.
"You feel… "
Zhou Ziheng, who was walking behind, spoke in a low voice. Xia Xiqing did not look back. He threw the plastic cup of mung bean paste in his hand into the trash can in the distance like a basketball, scoring a perfect score.
"Should we play now..."
The sound of the train came over like an overwhelming force, swallowing up all the sounds of the summer night like a monster, including Zhou Ziheng's last two words.
The roar faded away, and everything returned to silence. Xia Xiqing turned around, half-clenching his fists.
"what did you just say?"
Xia Xiqing is such a smart person. Zhou Ziheng stared at the flawless face under the moonlight and was silent for two seconds.
"nothing."
His disguise warned his anxious heart.
not the right time yet.
The author has something to say: Chu Chu: The whole world thinks you are just playing friends.
Sometimes we also say "dating friends", boys say "playing friends" more, probably like the Sichuan dialect "playing friends"~