Bro | Chapter 61

Wei Qian actually did not know how to kiss. It was a technical skill, and he had never done it before.

As for gentle kissing, all he knew was the kind where you lightly press your lips to someone, like coaxing a child to sleep. As for rough, passionate kissing… he could not really imagine what that looked like.

Well, to be honest, during his lunch break Wei Qian had once flipped through one of the dirty books on Lin Qing’s desk. Unfortunately, after finishing it, he was still completely confused and had gotten no guidance from it at all. According to the book’s fantastical descriptions of “kissing,” his barren imagination simply could not construct a single movement that any human being could actually carry out. If he had to make an association…

After reading it, what surfaced in Wei Qian’s mind had been those special-effect shots from wuxia movies in the eighties and nineties… the kind where someone shouted “Hah!” and then a string of firecrackers exploded in multicolored aurora lights behind the protagonist.

So the only thing he could do was ravage Wei Zhiyuan’s lips like he was venting his anger.

Autumn in the north was dry, and people’s lips chapped easily. Wei Zhiyuan neglected that sort of upkeep, so with just a slight tug, his lips split. Very quickly, Wei Qian keenly tasted a trace of blood, and only then did he come back to himself a little from his surging emotions. Embarrassed, he realized that the way he was acting made him look exactly like a horny thug. It was truly a complete loss of dignity.

He had only just started to pull back a little when Wei Zhiyuan suddenly clamped a hand hard around the back of his head and fiercely, greedily kissed him back.

It was different from the first time. That time, after the annual party, he had instinctively punched Wei Zhiyuan, and afterward he only remembered being shocked and furious. He had no other impression of it.

This time, Wei Qian hesitated for a moment, and in that instant Wei Zhiyuan slipped into his mouth with lightning speed, sweeping across every corner he could reach.

The stimulation made Wei Qian go a little numb, and for a moment he forgot to breathe.

At some point, one of Wei Zhiyuan’s hands had wrapped around Wei Qian’s waist. Pulled by him like that, Wei Qian’s waist involuntarily bent backward a little. Most adults were not that flexible at the waist, and after holding that position too long, it became exhausting. Wei Qian felt like a bow that Wei Zhiyuan had bent.

His taut muscles had already started to ache. Unable to help himself, he reached out and braced a hand against the wall, while Wei Zhiyuan still refused to let up.

At some point, Wei Zhiyuan’s hand had rolled up the hem of his pajama top. Wei Zhiyuan’s palm burned as though it were on fire, scorching hot. It did not feel like a caress at all. His hand was so heavy it almost felt as if he wanted to tear off a layer of flesh. It quickly roamed across Wei Qian’s lower abdomen and continued farther back.

Wei Qian felt the hollow of his waist get squeezed hard. The pain made him jolt, and then a numb, tingling sensation shot up along his spine. His waist immediately went weak, and he instinctively struggled a little, a blurry, protesting moan slipping from his throat.

After that, Wei Qian felt something pressing against him below the waist.

He stiffened involuntarily.

Only then did Wei Zhiyuan finally end the kiss. He slowly and shakily suppressed his rapid breathing. After a long while, he let out a low sigh, and as though it took enormous willpower, he forced himself to loosen his grip and slowly release Wei Qian.

Wei Qian had been standing off balance. He tipped backward a little, then took two steps back before managing to steady himself.

The light in the room was off. Wei Zhiyuan leaned against the door, his eyes like a wolf’s. Even in the darkness, they gleamed with a near-hungry light that could not be ignored, while his chest rose and fell violently.

Wei Qian’s heart skipped a beat. Then he savagely cursed himself inside, What the hell am I doing?

“Qian’er,” Wei Zhiyuan called him. He had changed the way he addressed him, and his voice was so low and hoarse it sounded like metal scraping across rough sandpaper. “I’ve been wanting you for almost ten years. Can you stop testing me like this? I… I really can’t hold myself back.”

Wei Qian had no reply.

“You… you, forget it. Let me calm down first.” Wei Zhiyuan’s breathing was extremely rough. He seemed a little annoyed, and walked straight to Wei Qian’s bed, because the chair was piled full of things and there was nowhere to sit.

Wei Qian’s blanket was spread to one side, and there was still a bit of ambiguous leftover warmth inside. Wei Zhiyuan had not expected his desire to be ignited so easily by him. Feeling uncomfortable, he simply let both legs hang down to the floor and leaned his upper body forward, like a lion lying prone, closing his eyes and briefly resting on Wei Qian’s pillow.

Wei Zhiyuan’s original intention was to quiet himself for a while and calm his desire down, but very quickly he realized this was the worst idea possible.

Because a certain someone had gone to bed without even drying his hair, the pillow towel carried a very obvious shampoo scent. The darkness heightened Wei Zhiyuan’s sense of smell, and besides the shampoo, he could also smell a faint trace of body wash mixed in with it, as well as a certain unique scent that belonged to Wei Qian.

The smell surrounded him from all directions with almost provocative intensity. And not only that, there was also the slightly sunken bed, the blanket behind him still holding Wei Qian’s body heat. Right then, Wei Zhiyuan’s nose began to itch a little, and when he unconsciously rubbed against the pillow, the side of his face actually brushed against one of Wei Qian’s hairs…

“Fuck!” Wei Zhiyuan completely lost his temper. By nature he had never been an impatient person, much less after all these years of settling his mind and cultivating self-restraint. He could barely even remember how many years it had been since the last time he got this irritable.

Like a corpse suddenly sitting up, he abruptly straightened and said in a low voice, “My blood vessels are about to burst.”

Wei Qian seemed a little out of it. By this point, what he thought was his calm brain had actually gone entirely blank. Standing two steps away, he asked a completely irrelevant question. “What did you call me just now?”

By the faint moonlight, Wei Zhiyuan saw the complicated, chaotic expression on his face. Several buttons at Wei Qian’s chest had been rubbed open by him, and Wei Qian seemed not to have noticed. A narrow strip of his chest was exposed.

“Just keep torturing me.” Wei Zhiyuan stood up. In the midst of blazing desire, he managed with difficulty to control his actions, but he failed to control his mouth. “Wei Qian, I really hate you.”

As they brushed past each other, Wei Qian suddenly grabbed Wei Zhiyuan by the wrist.

The almost blank look on his face was shattered by that resentful sentence Wei Zhiyuan had just blurted out. In an instant, he seemed to recover his composure again, and his tone sounded even calmer.

Wei Qian said, “Get on the bed. I’ll help you.”

Wei Zhiyuan’s strong heart skipped again. All he remembered was that Wei Qian gave him a light push, and he immediately seemed to float back onto the bed as though he weighed nothing at all. His revolutionary integrity had long since gone who knew where. The moment Wei Qian’s cool hand slid into his pants, before it had even touched much of anything, his whole body shuddered and he cried out first.

Seeing him like that, Wei Qian actually relaxed instead. He even instinctively tossed out a sarcastic comment. “What are you yelping for? You said your line too early. Could you stop jumping at everything? What are you, a cat in heat?”

Wei Zhiyuan’s reason had long since shattered into scraps. Even though Wei Qian’s technique was rough and clumsy, in the hands of the person he had daydreamed about day and night, what the hell did little technical details matter?

Wei Zhiyuan called out to him in a muddle, sometimes “ge,” sometimes his name, completely beside himself.

It definitely was not all that comfortable. Wei Qian knew that very well. When he took care of himself, he was always numb and detached. It honestly felt less good than having the blind massage guy at the massage parlor work on his neck. It was purely a matter of dealing with a need… but could one person really become so utterly enthralled because of another person?

Wei Qian was used to other people relying on him and obeying him. All along, he had done his best to make himself more dependable. To him, that had almost been the closest kind of emotional intimacy he knew.

But Wei Zhiyuan was different. He had gotten far too close.

Wei Qian could not help finding it unbelievable. Was he really that good? Where did Xiao Yuan’s stubborn devotion even come from?

He had not even received the most natural, the most unconditional kind of love in life, the love of parents. He had never established even the most basic trust in the world, much less in something so insubstantial as…

love.

And yet, in Wei Zhiyuan’s bright, shining eyes, he saw his own reflection. For the first time, he felt that kind of extreme intimacy, as though without him even knowing, someone had quietly tucked him away inside their heart.

Wei Qian’s heart suddenly softened, as if someone had lightly brushed it with a feather. Even his movements unconsciously became gentler… although even his gentleness was still rather clueless.

By the time Wei Qian wiped his hands clean, Wei Zhiyuan was still sprawled on his bed, unwilling to get up.

Wei Zhiyuan said, “Ge.”

Wei Qian tossed the tissue into the wastebasket. “What is it?”

Wei Zhiyuan called again, “Qian’er…”

Wei Qian shut the window that had been left open for most of the night. “Hm?”

Wei Zhiyuan had nothing to say. He simply wanted to call him.

Lying amid the soft bedding, the young man closed his eyes and murmured again like sleep-talking, “Qian’er.”

This time Wei Qian finally got impatient. “What now? Are you done yet?”

Wei Zhiyuan laughed to himself and said softly, “Even if I died, it’d be worth it.”

The sincerity in that sentence was so obvious that anyone could hear it. Wei Qian’s chest seized hard, but he had no way to express it. He only walked over and smacked Wei Zhiyuan on the leg. “Get up. You’ve rolled the bedsheet into a pickled vegetable skin.”

Wei Zhiyuan obediently climbed up and stood aside, watching him pull the crumpled bedsheet straight again and drag back the blanket, which had already curled into a bundle in the corner by the wall.

“Ge, can I…” Wei Zhiyuan paused. “Mm, forget it. It’s nothing. I’d better go back to my own room.”

Wei Qian had his back to him and could not see his expression, but after a second, Wei Qian said flatly, “There’s a spare pillow in the closet. Go get it.”

Wei Zhiyuan abruptly lifted his head. “Xiao Bao is still home, you…”

Wei Qian cut him off. “It’s fine.”

He did not know that Xiao Bao already knew. Nor was he so shameless that he could immediately adapt to this bizarre relationship, immediately and fully accept the fact that his younger brother had climbed into his bed. Wei Zhiyuan could tell… he just did not want Wei Zhiyuan to feel embarrassed, that was all.

Maybe he even thought what had happened earlier was something he himself had provoked, so he planned to bear it alone in silence.

Wei Zhiyuan gently set down the pillow, slipped under the blanket, and tentatively reached out to hold Wei Qian, who had already lain down and shut his eyes, seemingly falling asleep at light speed.

Wei Qian did not move, nor did he open his eyes. He did not want to show any embarrassment or shyness in front of that little brat, so he could only nervously put on an act of it’s no big deal and pretend to be calm.

But ten minutes later, Wei Qian finally could not endure it any longer and pushed Wei Zhiyuan’s hand away. “Could you stop staring at me like a searchlight?”

Wei Zhiyuan immediately narrowed his eyes while continuing to stare.

Great. Now he had turned into a microscope.

He pulled Wei Qian back under the blanket and said softly, “Go to sleep first. I’m still doing today’s homework.”

Wei Qian said, “What homework?”

“Reflecting.” Wei Zhiyuan closed his eyes and whispered to Wei Qian, “Starting from this morning. When I got the photos, for one instant I was happy, and I even couldn’t help secretly looking at them several more times.”

Wei Qian said, “How come I couldn’t tell?”

“I didn’t notice it myself either,” Wei Zhiyuan said. “It was just a fleeting thought, which is exactly why afterward I had to recall it little by little and pick it apart thread by thread. I remember the pattern on your teacup coaster. I’ve spent so much time in your office, but I never once noticed what kind of coaster you used. Today was the only day I noticed it, because that photo by the wall was sitting right next to the cup at the time. I must have looked at it several extra times for it to leave such a deep impression.”

Wei Qian was shocked. He had never known that anyone could study him the way Sherlock Holmes examined a corpse.

Who on earth had taught him that?

It definitely could not have been Lao Xiong. If Lao Xiong had that kind of insight, he would have become a true immortal long ago. Why would he still need to put on airs and play fake immortal every day?

“I’ve analyzed that secret burst of joy, and there were probably two reasons for it,” Wei Zhiyuan continued. “One is that my feelings for you have been something shameful, hidden from the light, for a very long time. Of course I hope that one day they can stand in the open, but that could hurt you and hurt a lot of people, so this time, when it came out through someone else’s hand… whether it was real or not, I still had this illusion that my wish had come true while I remained ‘innocent.’”

He paused, then continued. “Of course, there’s another reason, a deeper one. I still wanted to torment you… I accidentally let the truth slip just now. Even though in my heart I’ve resolved to cultivate myself for your sake, I still can’t help resenting you for not responding to me. I still can’t be completely open-hearted about it. If you suffer because of me, I get this illusion that I carry weight in your heart… then I can pretend I’m very important to you. You could say it’s… my way of asserting my existence.”

“Hold on, wait.” Wei Qian propped himself up on one elbow. “Every night before bed, you do this… this… this bloody dissection?”

Wei Zhiyuan opened his eyes and said frankly, “Yeah, and there’s more. I said just now that even dying would be worth it, and at the time I really meant it. But now that I’ve calmed down a bit, I’m dissatisfied again. While holding you, I had another thought, that it would’ve been nice if we could’ve done the whole set just now. Greed really knows no bounds… sigh, once one desire is satisfied, a new dissatisfaction appears very quickly.”

Wei Qian: “…”

He had no idea how Wei Zhiyuan could say something like that so openly right in front of him, the very person he was fantasizing about.

Wei Zhiyuan smiled at him. “I swear, it really was just a thought. It hasn’t reached the stage where it grows bigger yet. Pull the blanket up. Don’t get cold.”

Before they went to sleep that night, Wei Zhiyuan whispered in Wei Qian’s ear, “This isn’t bloody. There’s already a belly between one person’s heart and another’s, so why put another one between yourself and your own heart? A lot of things are just self-deception. Hiding them does yourself no good. Hide too much, and a person becomes weak easily. The more honest you are with yourself, the more you can gain a kind of indestructible strength.”

The next morning, Wei Qian woke up with the beginnings of a cold. Maybe it was because of the draft from the first half of the night, or maybe because during the second half he had kept worrying that the single blanket was too small and kept tugging it toward Wei Zhiyuan’s side, which ended with him catching a chill.

But all that was a side issue. The most chaotic thing that morning was that Song Xiaobao had gotten up early, put on headphones, and was doing leg stretches. After finishing one round and preparing to relax a little before the second, she saw her little gege come out of her eldest brother’s room and affectionately ask the person inside, “Ge, what do you want to eat this morning?”

Even after Wei Qian came out, Xiao Bao’s mouth, wide enough to fit a duck egg, still had not closed.

Wei Qian glanced at her but explained nothing. He tried his best to act natural as he washed up and got ready, and as usual, called her over to eat as if nothing had happened… except that he never once made eye contact with her that whole morning.

After that, using work as an excuse, he fled in disarray… a full twenty minutes earlier than usual.

There was still no one in the meeting room. Wei Zhiyuan poured a cup of tea, opened the computer, and said to Wei Qian, “I forgot to tell you last night. We used a somewhat illegal technical method and hacked into the computers of a few people around Wang Dongliang. We pieced together some information. They have two sets of books, but unfortunately it was handwritten. Only a few scanned pages leaked out, and the information is incomplete. But we’re already tracing the transactions in several of the accounts involved. Take a look.”

Wei Qian was silent for a moment. “I don’t want you getting involved in this kind of thing.”

“How do you want me to be?” Wei Zhiyuan asked with a bright smile, bracing both hands on the conference table. “Like some model student quietly writing my code, making a little pocket money, then coming back to you and asking for a reward?”

He picked up a pen, spun it between his fingers a few times, and sighed. “How lacking in security do you have to be, to only have feelings for things you keep penned up yourself?”

Wei Qian said expressionlessly, “Who am I penning up? You? Am I sick, raising a bastard like you just to get angry every day? How have you gotten more shameless the older you get?”

Wei Zhiyuan seemed to love hearing himself get scolded by him. He did not argue with a single word, only grinned and turned the laptop screen toward Wei Qian, immediately shutting him up.

Half an hour later, the management team had all arrived.

“The local government just had a leadership reshuffle, and the top man is an outsider parachuted in from elsewhere,” San Pang said. “That’s why something happened at this critical moment, and why Wang Dongliang is in a hurry to reconnect all his ties. The people on the municipal side are very ambiguous in their attitude right now. First, the new leader just took office and hasn’t had time to figure out exactly how deep the water runs with this local snake. Second, that big leader is close to retirement too, and wants to wrap up his term without merit and without fault. He doesn’t want any incident to break out during his tenure and ruin his reputation in his later years.”

“Whether an incident breaks out or not is not up to him, and it’s not up to Wang Dongliang either,” Wei Qian said.

Ma Chunming was flipping through some internally circulated secret materials and, like an upright gentleman, raised his hand, preparing to offer his lofty opinion. “We can report him to the judicial authorities. This person…”

Everyone’s eyes turned toward him.

“Shut up.” Wei Qian ended his speech in two curt words.

Ma Chunming was a straight-arrow. On what he believed were matters of principle, he had never been stingy about butting heads with the big boss, and he immediately jumped to his feet. “I oppose using improper methods!”

“No one said we were going to use improper methods.” San Pang shoved him back into his seat. “Doctor, if you don’t understand, then listen first. Proper methods aren’t limited to your kind of blunt, straight-ahead ones.”

“Even if he has plenty of dirt on him, this still has to be done by the local government,” Wei Qian said, lighting a cigarette. “What would it make us if we stepped in? That’d be dogs biting dogs.”

Ma Chunming said, “But didn’t President Tan just say…”

“Fine. I’ll go over there in a couple of days and make the first move,” San Pang said, cutting across him and picking up where Wei Qian had left off.

Ma Chunming looked at him blankly.

San Pang usually did not handle business, and Ma Chunming usually did not handle public relations. Put the two of them together and they might as well have been a chicken talking to a duck.

San Pang sighed and could only patiently explain it to this doctor who, in some respects, had a blockhead’s brain.

“Through a few old friends, I can invite several people from the local public security bureau. We’ve also gotten in touch with the disciplinary inspection side, and then add a few people to accompany them,” San Pang counted on his fingers. “Along with a few from the municipal government, that’ll fill one table.”

He paused, then added in a low voice, “By then, the investment department will have to hurry and get the project proposal done.”

The investment department manager smiled. “Xiao Yuan and I hit it off right away. With his help, it’ll definitely be fast.”

Even though everyone was speaking vaguely, Ma Chunming was smart after all. After staring blankly for a moment, he still caught on. He muttered, “This… this is too…”

“Keep the internal materials confidential. Meeting adjourned.” Wei Qian did not explain. He just patted Ma Chunming on the shoulder.

“Too sinister,” Ma Chunming said.

“You’ve seen a couple of bad people and you’ve got the nerve to puff out your chest and say the world is sinister?” Wei Qian looked at him and smiled. “I still think it’s all pretty peaceful.”