Chapter 21: Xi Xingling
After dinner, Li Dong claimed he was worn out from the trip and headed to his room to rest.
Gu Xichen followed and cornered him right at the door.
It was Li Dong’s first time being wall-pinned by someone. For a split second, he was actually stunned.
“What do you think you’re doing?” He steadied himself, lifted a brow, and looked at Gu Xichen.
“Yubai, have we really become this distant?” Gu’s gaze locked on him. The tip of his nose hovered less than a centimeter away, far too close. “I hope you stop avoiding me. If you have thoughts, say them to me.” They used to talk about everything. Every worry, every joy, Li Dong had always come to him first.
“Thoughts?” Li Dong pulled a face, then asked the handsome man a very serious question. “Are you top or bottom?”
Even though Gu Xichen looked like Xi Xingling and wasn’t especially brawny, nothing about him read as bottom.
The question knocked Gu off balance. His lips parted. For a moment he had no answer.
He had honestly never examined it, like a straight guy halfway to coming out, muddled and undefined.
“That is not the point.”
“No, that is the point. A very big one.” Li Dong leaned there, lazy and a little wicked. “I’m a solid one. The kind that will never bottom. If you want to be with me, you have to accept getting f*cked by me.”
Gu choked again, whether from shock or from rejection, even he was not sure.
Judging from his expression, it was probably the latter, so Li Dong pressed harder. “And I am very controlling. I do not accept my partner resisting me. If I say kneel, he kneels. If I say lie down, he lies down. You definitely cannot do that.”
“That is how he pleases you?” Gu asked quietly, releasing Li Dong and studying him with a stranger’s eyes.
“More or less. He listens to me and behaves.” Li Dong shrugged. “If you don’t believe it, I can let you meet him.”
“How about tomorrow?” Gu stood there in a suit, like a competitor too proud to back down but still perfectly polite.
What a waste, Li Dong thought. Such a prime specimen, doomed to be cannon fodder with me.
“Sure.” He agreed on the spot, took out his phone, and called Xi Xingling while Gu stood there.
He deliberately turned on speaker so Gu could hear exactly what his current partner sounded like.
Xi truly had a voice that killed on contact. Getting a call at that hour sent him straight to the stratosphere.
“Second Young Master, mwah~~ oh my god, you actually called me! I missed you so much!” He poured on the syrup for a good while before asking, “What’s wrong? Do you need anything?”
Li Dong originally felt a bit embarrassed holding the phone, but seeing Gu Xichen’s stiff expression, he suddenly felt great. Because he wasn’t the only one whose ears were being assaulted. The feeling of having someone share the burden was mysteriously delightful.
“Second Young Master?” Xi waited and waited. When Li Dong did not answer, his heart skittered. Was this a pocket-dial? That would be too cruel.
“Keep tomorrow open,” Li Dong said, taking the call off speaker.
“Huh?” Xi froze. A date? Really?
“Someone wants to see you,” Li Dong added, lifting his eyes to Gu and smiling. “Someone I used to like.”
“Ah…” came the small cry on the other end.
“Come on, it is just meeting someone. Be generous about it and don’t embarrass me.”
The little balloon of courage Xi had just blown up deflated at once. The thought of meeting Li Dong’s white moonlight made his stomach twist. He felt small again. He remembered what Han Tianlin had said that Li Dong’s person was excellent, not someone he could hold a candle to.
“That’s it. I’ll pick you up in the morning,” Li Dong said, and hung up cleanly.
He looked up to find the man in front of him wearing a very funny expression, like he really had been singed by Xi Xingling’s heat.
“What?” Li Dong cocked a brow. “You alright?”
“That is your type now…” Gu stared, incredulous. “How could you like that sort of person? I thought only vulgar men would.”
Li Dong’s eyes lifted, amusement lurking. “Then consider me vulgar.”
“You’re not, which is exactly why I don’t understand.” When he left two years ago, Li Dong had been too young and untested; Gu had no confidence in their future and chose not to touch it. Marriage had not been a good ending either, so he divorced. “Even if you do not like me and do not want to be with me, I cannot approve of you being with someone like that.”
“You sound just like my brother.” Li Dong frowned. In the original story, Gu’s feelings for Han Yubai were always brotherly. Why come back now and accept him? That, even Li Dong could not answer. “Forget it. If you plan on meddling in what kind of partner I choose, there is nothing more to say.”
“Yubai.” Gu’s face darkened.
“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.” Li Dong pushed his shoulder aside and walked past.
Gu watched his back disappear down the hall, frown digging deeper. The boy he had watched grow up, how had he become like this?
When he flew home, he had never considered the possibility of being refused. He barely treated it as a question.
Whether they would be together depended on circumstances. It was not a must. At first he did not even feel something that strong, because in his mind Han Yubai had long since been beneath his “skirt.”
“A-Chen.” Han Tianlin came up behind him, a hand landing on Gu’s shoulder. “Yubai told me. He—”
“Doesn’t like me anymore, right?” Gu said flatly.
“Tell me honestly, do you like him?”
“You know me. I do not say these things unless the win is guaranteed.” He was blunt. That was the kind of man he was.
“Then I will not get in the middle.” Tianlin believed Gu would not hurt his little brother, but he had no plan to interfere.
The next morning, Sunday, nine thirty.
Li Dong pulled up beneath Xi Xingling’s apartment and called. “I’m here. Downstairs.”
What came through the speaker was clattering, crashing chaos. Li Dong pinched the bridge of his nose. Again?
“Take your time,” he sighed. “No need to panic.”
“Uuugh… I haven’t picked out what to wear…” Xi whimpered. He was in a bathrobe on his knees in front of his wardrobe, despairing. “I think every single thing I own is ugly. Not a single outfit is fit to be seen!”
My god.
“My hair is awful, and I have a pimple on my face. I am going to die!” he wailed into the phone.
“My shoes…”
“I am nowhere near shoes yet!” he groaned, then after Li Dong’s prompt he clutched his head. “I think my shoe cabinet is ugly too…”
“You are poisonous,” Li Dong muttered, rubbing his eyes. He took a breath. “I’m coming up. Open the door.”
“Oh, come quick!” Xi chirped, tears vanishing instantly because seeing Li Dong mattered more.
When Li Dong reached the door, the boy was shivering in a bathrobe in the hall, eyes watery and pitiful from the cold.
Li Dong’s mouth twitched. He walked in. “I’ll pick the outfit. Get dressed and let’s go.”
“You won’t even kiss me…” Xi looped himself around Li Dong’s arm and grumbled, “You called last night and I couldn’t sleep all night.”
He had woken up to a pimple and wanted to mourn.
“Was that necessary?” Li Dong stepped into the bedroom and froze at the sight of the bed buried under clothes.
So many clothes, and he was claiming he had nothing to wear.
Li bent down, picked up a “sexy” shredded sweater, and tossed it aside. In this cold? Suicidal. With his straightforward masculine taste, he chose a clean, standard outfit and threw it to Xi. “This looks good. Put it on.”
“How is this good?” Xi pouted. “This is the ugliest outfit in my closet.” No contest.
“The color and cut are good. Keep babbling and you can go out naked,” Li Dong said calmly. Even a glance from him carried authority.
Xi shut his mouth at once, changed obediently right in front of him, then fixed his hair and face, layered on a few accessories, and did not complain again.
“Carry this bag.” Li Dong’s tone allowed no argument. In five minutes flat, he had assembled a complete look: clothes, shoes, scarf, even lip color.
“Is this really good?” Xi asked in a small voice, twisting in front of the mirror. He worried that going out like this would not do Li Dong credit because it was too plain.
“What’s not good about it?” Li Dong shot him a look. “We’re not going to a costume party. Why do you need to dress like a firework?”
“I want to make you proud, since we are meeting someone you used to like…” Xi mumbled. He looked only nervous, with no trace of jealousy. He did not dare ask whether Li Dong still liked that person.
“Proud my *ss. You’ve already lost me plenty of face,” Li Dong said, walking out toward the door.
“Second Young Master, wait for me.” Xi called, finishing the last touch-ups, and grabbed his bag to run after him.
What Li Dong had picked was warm above all. It did not pop the way Xi’s usual outfits did; it made him look like a simple boy next door.
But Xi’s skin was clear and pale, his build tall and lean, fresh with youth in a way that could choke a late-twenties-almost-thirty man like Gu Xichen.
When Gu Xichen saw them, Li Dong was standing at the entrance of a milk tea shop. A boy in a padded coat and snow boots was hooked on his arm, sipping milk tea and chattering nonstop with a bright smile.
Li Dong looked like he disliked the fuss, yet he stayed. Now and then he bent to kiss that clean forehead or reached up to straighten the boy’s hat.
Author's Note:
Triple update complete! Kisses to everyone~
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