In the Same Boat

Dou Yucong asked Qu Yiheng, “Why aren’t you in a relationship?”

Qu Yiheng glanced at him, “There’s no one I like.”

“You haven’t met anyone in over thirty years?”

Qu Yiheng didn’t say anything.

People in their thirties who haven’t been attracted to others are probably sexually indifferent. He doesn’t have that problem, so it was impossible that he hadn’t had one.

In the past two relationships, he was wholehearted. Even if he fell in love with the mindset of ‘living to die’ in the second relationship, when he was with the other person, the feelings were true.

But, so what if it was love? In the end, it’s still a mess of glass all over the place.

“Why do you suddenly think of asking this?” Qu Yiheng cooked the noodles and placed them in front of Dou Yucong.

The night before, Dou Yucong got too drunk and said he was dizzy and insisted on asking Qu Yiheng to cook noodles for him. Qu Yiheng took out a pack of braised beef noodles from the fridge, but Dou Yucong refused, wanting the kind of hand-rolled noodles that he cut his own beef into.

Qu Yuheng sometimes has no choice but to do as his brother says.

“It’s not sudden, I’m emotionally hurt now.” Dou Yucong drank the wine, although he was still unhappy in his heart, but he was a little better after drinking, “I was just thinking, you have always been so cold and aloof, you have never been in contact with people, it’s waste of that face which is more beautiful than a girl’s face.”

Qu Yiheng was cleaning up the pot of noodles. Hearing what he said, he turned his head to look at him.

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m not hitting on you,” Dou Yucong said, “Although you are good looking and I’m emotionally hurt, I’m not so hungry that I can’t choose what I want.”

“That’s a bit of an odd word for you to use.”

“I mean, no matter how good looking you are, you are still my brother, and I’m not that much of a beast.” Dou Yucong said, “And even if you’re also gay, I bet we’re the same type, so it’s not gonna workout anyway.”

Qu Yiheng understood what he meant, but he had always thought Dou Yucong was a top. After all, his height was there, 5’7″, this big, tall guy had people pressing him into bed like this and that?

He shook his head and shook the image out of his head.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.” Qu Yiheng cleaned up the pot and washed his hands, “I’m going to work, you can clean up after eating.”

Dou Yucong bit off the noodles and looked at Qu Yiheng’s back as he went out. Something doesn’t seem right.

“Hey,” Dou Yucong said, “If you like men, what kind do you like?”

Qu Yiheng, who was washing his hands, froze for a moment, and his first thought was that it was Yao Zhan.

Pretending not to hear him, he finished washing his hands and went back to his room, closing the door by the way.

He said he was going back to his room to work, but in fact he had nothing to draw. It was as if his mind had been blocked lately and he had no inspiration at all. He blamed it on the weather, the summer was too hot and he was too restless and had no desire to be creative.

Despite this lack of inspiration, he set up his drawing board and picked up his paintbrush.

Qu Yiheng looked at the blank drawing paper in front of him, and for a moment he didn’t know where to start.

He remembered what his teacher had said, saying that he had talent and aura.

He smiled to himself, and after putting away his smile, he viciously flung the paintbrush onto the bed.

The light grey sheets were stained with paint and he stared at the spot, getting more and more irritated by the sight.

The phone rang suddenly, not WeChat, but a phone call.

He didn’t really want to answer it, because he knew it must be another editor looking for him for help.

“Hey, is that your phone ringing?” Dou Yucong heard a buzzing vibration through the door, and he knocked on the door, “Won’t you answer it?”

Qu Yiheng ignored him and walked over to pick up the phone. It showed an unknown number, but the number was from that city.

Now to him, that city was equivalent to Yao Zhan, so, after hesitating for a moment, he picked up the phone.

Qu Yiheng: “Hello.”

A very simple sentence, but he was a little nervous when he said it.

He had expected Yao Zhan’s voice to come through, but to his surprise, another voice that he was very familiar with sounded over there, and the other party said, “Ah Heng, it’s me.”

When Qu Yiheng was about to hang up, the other party said, as if he had already expected it, “Wait a minute, please don’t hang up yet.”

Qu Yiheng didn’t want to hear this voice, but he forced himself to hold back his discomfort and asked in a cold voice, “Just say what you want.”

“Well, I’m out of town and I need money for an emergency, it’s not much, five thousand yuan, can you ……”

Qu Yiheng hung up the phone.

While he was taking deep breaths of anger over here because of the call, there was a burst of laughter around the very person who had been hung up on over there, and then someone shouted, “Loser! Drink!”

The ex-boyfriend, who had been drinking with no control over his mouth, was drinking and playing a game with a group of friends. He lost the last game and was assigned to call his ex to borrow money.

Shao Wei was also there and had the intention to stopping it, but before he could move, the man had already picked up a phone in his hand and dialed the number.

‘How fucked up do people have to be to do such things?’ Shao Wei was truly disgusted with the person in charge of the project he was working with. He wanted to call Yao Zhan right now to tell him to quickly take in Qu Yiheng and stop letting him harm by other peoples.

Qu Yiheng had heard a saying since he was a child: Who didn’t love a few scumbags when they were young?

He has always kept his mouth shut about the good and bad about his ex, and of course, there is nowhere to talk about it. The only person who is close to him, Dou Yucong, doesn’t even know that he is gay, let alone that he has ever been in a relationship.

He is more used to swallowing everything than talking about it. It doesn’t matter if he can digest it or not, the important thing is to hide it first.

The phone in his hand seemed to be the accomplice of that person, which annoyed him, but before throwing it away, Qu Yiheng suddenly remembered something and opened WeChat.

A few hours ago Yao Zhan had sent a message saying that he was coming over here on a business trip.

Qu Yiheng froze. Just looking at those few words, he thought of that day, when they were under the covers and made the sheets wet.

To put it bluntly, if in Qu Yiheng’s case, that city is equivalent to Yao Zhan, then Yao Zhan is equivalent to sex.

One can not believe in love, but you cannot hide from lust and desire.

Many times, a tacit understanding can easily arise between adults, just like that day when Qu Yiheng said his hotel was nearby, Yao Zhan knew that he had acquiesced to what was going to happen next, just like now when Yao Zhan said he was coming here on a business trip, Qu Yiheng understood what he was about to face.

The fact that they both are in their thirties and single, this kind of relationship between them is not shameful. After all, it is better to have a regular fuckbuddy than to go out and make friends.

Qu Yiheng thought so, but he didn’t know what Yao Zhan thought.

But no matter what Yao Zhan thinks, he feels that the two of them have reached this level, and they will meet each other to have a good time when they have the opportunity and then spend most of their time busy with their own affairs in their respective lives.

This kind of physical relationship will never hurt more than love.

He asked Yao Zhan when he would arrive and if he needed to pick him up.

Yao Zhan replied: ‘No, I’m here to study. There is a special bus to pick me up. It will probably arrive in the afternoon. I’ll contact you when I arrive.’

Qu Yiheng replied with the word “hmm” and didn’t say anything more.

He sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about it, and after a while, he walked to the front of the wardrobe.

Opening the wardrobe, the clothes inside were all folded neatly, which Dou Yucong had packed for him. Even the clothes that had been washed before were stuffed in by him in groups.

In Dou Yucong’s words, he lived too casually.

In the drawer under the wardrobe were underwear and trousers. He squatted down, pulled them open and picked them out.

All dark-coloured briefs, no fun at all.

He remembered the black panties that Dou Yucong mentioned, but it was just a thought. He felt that he probably couldn’t stand that one.

In the end, although many people think that people who engage in art live very freely and unrestrainedly, in reality, Qu Yiheng is so conservative that the most daring thing he has ever done was to give blowjob to Yao Zhan at school a long time ago.

Those ambiguous images reappeared in his mind. Qu Yiheng himself didn’t know what had happened during this period of time. It was probably because he had eaten vegetarian food for too long, and suddenly he was greedy by Yao Zhan’s mouthful of meat. For those who had no desire, it was like spring during this period of time.

He lightly rubbed the fabric in his hand, squatted there, leaned his back against the bed and closed his eyes.

“Brother! What are you doing?”

Dou Yucong who was watching TV by himself in the living room. He was so bored and wanted to chat with someone. He came over and knocked on the door, startling Qu Yiheng who was picking out his underwear inside.

“Something wrong?” Qu Yiheng hurriedly closed the drawer and opened the door, looking at Dou Yucong with blushing cheeks.

Dou Yucong frowned and sized him up for a moment before apologising obediently, “I’m sorry for the disturbance.”

“Huh?” Qu Yiheng didn’t understand what he meant.

Dou Yucong smiled and said, “We’re all men, I get it.”

Qu Yiheng understood, this guy thought he was hiding and mastrubating himself.

“You’re thinking too much, I’m painting.”

“Painting?” Dou Yu Cong probed over, “You paint brushes on the bed, human body painting?”

Qu Yiheng was a little embarrassed and pushed him out saying, “Go play with yours!”

Dou Yucong was driven away and had no choice but to go back and continue watching his TV series.

On the other side, Yao Zhan, who had finished messaging with Qu Yiheng, was packing his luggage. While packing, he was wondering about what would be the best time to contact him tomorrow.

If he contacted him as soon as he arrived at the hotel and settled in, it would seem that he was too impatient, but if he contacted him too late, he was afraid that Qu Yiheng would not be able to make it by then.

He was not going there to study, but to find Qu Yiheng.

‘What’s that saying?

‘To travel halfway across China to sleep with you?’

‘I think that’s what it says.’

It was more than a thousand kilometres, and it was not close. Yao Zhan zipped up his suitcase, thought about it for a while, and went downstairs with his mobile phone key.

When he came back again, he had two more boxes of condoms and a tube of lubricant in his hand, which he rolled them up in a piece of clothing and put into his suitcase.

A mature man must be prepared for whatever he does, and he was ready to indulge in a week’s worth of sex, depending on whether Qu Yiheng could handle it.

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Yao Zhan smiled, lying on the bed and looking through the chat records between him and Qu Yiheng, his mind filled with the other party’s thin but comfortable body to hug.

The words and patterns tattooed on the white and clean skin. He planned to take a good look at them one by one this time.