Luo Wenzhou himself ordinarily lived in the guest room—because the guest room and its bathroom were the closest to the front door, so if he slept late in the morning, he could discharge the whole mission of dusting cat hair off his face, getting dressed, and washing up within two minutes.
So when, using the master bedroom as a guest room, he carried in fresh bedding to lay out for Fei Du, Fei Du evidently got the wrong impression.
Luo Wenzhou hadn't yet straightened up when a familiar Mu Xiang scent came up from behind him. Then he was hugged from behind, one very badly behaved hand hooking around his waist, the other hand lightly brushing past his neck and pressing his lips; then there was a breath at his ear.
Luo Wenzhou's ear buzzed. His body didn't wait for instructions; without authorization, it was already half on fire. He grabbed Fei Du's wrist, thinking his own palm was so hot it was humiliating.
Luo Wenzhou said, "Don't mess around."
Fei Du had discovered long ago that Luo Wenzhou couldn't resist Mu Xiang, especially when there was only a tail-end left of it, so before leaving the hospital, he'd especially had his assistant bring over a bottle. Now, he turned a deaf ear on Luo Wenzhou's weak resistance, obligingly letting him grab his wrist, licking the back of his neck. "Shixiong, you're pretending to be a saint."
Luo Wenzhou shivered. He was caught off guard when Fei Du pushed the backs of his knees, pushing him onto the quilt he'd just spread out.
Fei Du's freshly-washed hair was wet, water droplets gathering at the ends, glittering in the dim light of the bedside lamp, dazzling. A droplet suddenly took shape and dripped down. Luo Wenzhou's throat rolled with it.
Fei Du, with a smile that wasn't quite a smile, added, "Though I like your type of 'pretend saint' that shows the wolf into the house. You must taste very good."
"Get off." Like a Chinese soft-shelled turtle, Luo Wenzhou was internally hot and bothered but still reached out a hand to push him. Gritting his teeth, he said, "Just out of the hospital and you're courting death?"
Fei Du had seen that the enemy's will to resist was very half-hearted. He let him push, not dodging away. As expected, Luo Wenzhou's strength was no greater than Luo Yiguo's. He only gave a light shove. Fei Du didn't retreat, so Luo Wenzhou's hand on his chest changed its meaning; it seemed he wasn't refusing but taking advantage.
Luo Wenzhou felt Fei Du's heartbeat. He'd heard that it had stopped once, so when Fei Du had just gotten out of the ICU, he'd been unable to resist listening to Fei Du's heart, thinking that he'd have done anything to make that weak and sluggish heartbeat liven up again.
…now that it had livened up, Luo Wenzhou was somewhat regretful, wanting to eat his words from back then.
As he was lost in thought, Fei Du came close. All the muscles in Luo Wenzhou's body suddenly tensed, and his breath caught.
Fei Du first faintly touched the corner of his lips. Then, with a trace of huskiness, he said like a sigh, "If I'm courting death, dying in bed with you would be a fine ending."
Luo Wenzhou really didn't want to hear the word "dying." His countenance instantly changed. "Stop talking…"
The poor rebuke "stop talking nonsense" hadn't made it out when Fei Du sealed his mouth.
This time there was a faint taste of lemon between the lips and teeth—the new toothpaste he'd bought.
Fei Du demonstrated for him on the spot the "gift of gab" that could tie a cherry stem into a knot, stirring Luo Wenzhou, who'd firmly believed himself to be "free of distracting thoughts," into a pot of porridge, boiling away his last bit of reason. By the time Luo Wenzhou came around, he was already helplessly kissing back. He subconsciously pressed Fei Du's back, his hands escaping the control of his brain, starting to grope around on Fei Du's body under the direction of a different organ…until he accidentally touched the back of Fei Du's shoulder.
Being touched in an injured place obviously made Fei Du give a start of pain, but he really was something; for the sake of certain unspeakable aims, he bore up without making a sound. But Luo Wenzhou's head cleared instantly; he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
He suddenly pulled a trick, unexpectedly turning over, pressing Fei Du onto the fluffy quilt with incomparable swiftness. Before Fei Du could react, there was a chill at his wrist, and he heard a click. His left hand had been cuffed to the head of the bed.
Calming his wildly racing heartbeat, Luo Wenzhou, his face stern, twisted his neck, which had become stiff as a stone. "Settle down."
Fei Du tilted his head and shook his wrist. The handcuffs made a crisp sound. He laughed carelessly. "Are you planning to be this intense right at the start?"
The taste of "pretend saint" really could be called superb; it lived up to the hype.
Luo Wenzhou rolled his eyes at him, irritably grabbing a handful of his own messy hair. He stood and shook out the quilt, pulling it out from under Fei Du, quickly and efficiently wrapping him up into a big cocoon. Then he tapped Fei Du's head.
Fei Du: "…"
No, this didn't seem to be the right direction.
When he'd finished tapping, Luo Wenzhou impartially and incorruptibly smacked him a few times through the quilt. "Sleep."
President Fei absolutely hadn't expected this Officer Luo, who'd said he wanted to frame a nude drawing of himself, to really be a "true saint." As if he'd unexpectedly met one of the country's guardian beasts in the middle of a downtown street, he stared blankly in shock for a while, pulling in disbelief at the handcuff locked on the head of the bed. "Luo Wenzhou, are you going to make me sleep like this?"
Of course that wasn't what Luo Wenzhou was thinking. After a moment, he came back in carrying a blowdryer. He turned it up to its highest setting, aiming it at President Fei's "sexily dripping" head and blowing noisily, using exactly the same movements as when he dried Luo Yiguo's fur after giving it a bath.
Hearing the familiar sound, Luo Yiguo looked in through the crack at the door, discovered that the litter box attendant was carrying out the "infeline abuse" against another person, and was instantly worried, afraid that it would be its turn next. It hurriedly slipped noiselessly away on the pads of its paws.
Long hair in his face, unable to speak without eating hair, President Fei could only close his mouth.
Luo Wenzhou did this task very proficiently. In less than five minutes, he'd simply and conveniently finished dealing with President Fei's precious head. He not very gently grabbed at it, then was about to turn off the bedside lamp. "That's better. Go to sleep."
Fei Du deftly reached out his remaining free hand and pulled Luo Wenzhou back. "Shixiong, I was wrong. Let me go, I guarantee I won't mess around."
Luo Wenzhou looked at him expressionlessly. The TV in the living room was just replaying a skit; a timely line of dialogue floated in through the crack in the door: "You thousand-year-old fox, what strange games are you playing with me1!"
Fei Du: "…"
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
In this strange situation, against this strange backdrop, the two of them looked at each other helplessly for a moment, then finally found the humor in this scene and simultaneously began to laugh.
Fei Du, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, leaned back against the pillow—the pillow was very soft, with a slightly sweet scent.
Perhaps Luo Wenzhou had sprinkled some sleep aid onto it, or perhaps Fei Du had been tired out by the tossing around; as soon as he touched the pillow, his eyelids began to droop. He raised his free hand against the gentle light of the bedside lamp, half screening his eyes, murkily saying, "Then what did you bring me home for?"
Luo Wenzhou sat silently at the side of the bed for a while. "I want to take care of you. Can't I?"
Fei Du paused. His eyes, about to close, silently opened wide again. "Haven't you been taking care of me these last couple of months?"
Luo Wenzhou turned, propping his elbows on his knees and putting his face in his hands, looking at him. "Do you think I was taking care of you because you got in the way of a bomb for me?"
Before Fei Du could answer, Luo Wenzhou slapped him through the quilt. "You bastard."
Fei Du moved slightly, making the handcuffs at the head of the bed rattle. With his head of messy hair blowdryed fluffy and soft by Luo Wenzhou, he looked helplessly at him, not knowing which of them was the bastard.
Luo Wenzhou suddenly remembered something and asked, "When we were going to grab Zheng Kaifeng, what was the 'personal question' you wanted to ask me in the car?"
Fei Du thought about it a while, lowering his hand, firmly blocking his eyes. "I forgot it at the hospital. How about I think of another one? For example…what position do you like?"
"That wasn't what you wanted to ask then," Luo Wenzhou said positively. Then, when Fei Du thought he was going to avoid the question, Luo Wenzhou unexpectedly answered in earnest.
He said, "I like it when you can see each other's faces.—This sort of question you'd know the answer to at once if you tried doesn't have any value. President Fei, are you this witless when you're conducting business? How come your company hasn't shut down yet? I'll give you another chance to make a deal, all right?"
With Captain Luo forcing a deal, Fei Du didn't agree or disagree. He was silent for a while under the soft bedside light. Then he said, "Xu Wenchao… The one who kidnapped and murdered those children. The place where he disposed of the bodies belonged to a project company under the banner of the Guangyao Fund. Because some formalities couldn't be completed, the project was constantly put off, and that unused piece of land became a safe burial ground—you already knew that. I'll tell you something you don't know. The project plan for that project came into Fei Chengyu's hands for him to invest capital in. Fei Chengyu didn't, giving the reason that there was 'no mature profit model.'"
Fei Chengyu was Fei Du's father, the founder of their conglomerate.
"No mature profit model" didn't sound at all unusual, but Luo Wenzhou could hear something horrifying in Fei Du's voice. He subconsciously sat up straight. "Your dad had a connection to the Guangyao Fund?"
"They used to be very close cooperative partners." Fei Du held up two fingers, indicating that this was his second question. "I investigated after I took over the company. Before, he contributed a great deal of money to a public welfare fund under Guangyao's banner. In its early stages, the company's management was irregular, and the accounts were very hard to look into. But judging from the few remaining materials, this Guangyao Fund is long-established, and almost none of the projects they collaborated on ever made any money—"
The corner of Luo Wenzhou's eye twitched.
"I understand Fei Chengyu. He was very greedy, astute, and unfeeling," Fei Du said slowly, each word seeming to stick in his throat, coming out very heavily. "There were some projects you could tell from looking at the name were ridiculous investments. I don't believe he'd have been fooled time and time again."
Luo Wenzhou pondered this silently for a moment. "Is there anything else?"
"No." Fei Du shrugged. "Do you think it was easy for a 'young master' to get into the convoluted conglomerate he left behind? It took me nearly two years just to get access to the company's key encrypted documents."
Both openly and in secret getting rid of a whole stumbling block of reinforcement.
Fei Du swallowed back this last sentence and, feigning high spirits, leaned back against the head of the bed, half sitting up. "Now it's my turn to ask you. Do you…"
Luo Wenzhou reached out to block his lips. "Do you want to think about it? Don't waste another opportunity. If you really can't remember, I can repeat everything we said in the car that day."
Fei Du was silent for a long time, his originally frivolous-seeming peach blossom eye growing calm. After a while, he finally said, "This is my first time meeting such an energetic competitor in answering questions."
Not letting him off, Luo Wenzhou stared into Fei Du's eyes.
He'd felt that when Fei Du had made him trade personal business for information, it hadn't been entirely a joke. He really had wanted to ask something then, but he'd quickly regretted it and hadn't wanted to say it. Zheng Kaifeng's truck had appeared then, giving him a chance to extricate himself—if Fei Du had only wanted to make a somewhat obscene joke, he could easily have said it while they followed; matters hadn't reached the stage where there was no time to say a sentence.
The corners of Fei Du's mouth tensed involuntarily.
Luo Wenzhou waited for a moment. His expression somewhat dismal and his voice slow, he said, "All right, or you can tell me tomorrow…"
"I wanted to ask…" Fei Du started hastily, then, partway through, he smiled. "It's a silly question. If you didn't insist on asking, I'd have forgotten.—Didn't you say then, that you weren't the sort of scum who'd confess his feelings to a person and then turn around and suspect him? So I wanted to ask, when did you confess your feelings, and why don't I know about it?"
"You don't know?" Luo Wenzhou raised his eyebrows. "I don't think I was very subtle. You're such an expert at picking out meaning from other people's punctuation marks, how can you say you don't know?
"Do you really not understand, or are you playing dumb? Fei Du." Luo Wenzhou sighed, reaching out to stroke Fei Du's chin. "You're going to say you don't understand why my mom went to the hospital to bring you food, either, isn't that right?"
Fei Du: "…"
Luo Wenzhou held his chin, making him look up. "Also, you came here today planning to sleep with me. You never meant to stay for long, right?"
Fei Du was temporarily speechless.
He was clearly the one who'd made provoking sexual advances first, the one who'd gone out of bounds in his attempts, but when he really was pulled in, he was at a loss and instinctively wanted to take to his heels.
But while his instincts wanted to run, in his heart he didn't really want to run. The two impulses collided, throwing him into a dilemma. He could only stay where he was, stiff with panic.
Luo Wenzhou laughed, cutting off his other road.
He said, "Dream on."
Then he came over carrying a quilt, threw it down next to Fei Du, put some cotton around Fei Du's handcuff, and turned off the bedside lamp. "If you want to get up to go to the bathroom at night, wake me up so I can uncuff you. Sleep."
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Authors note:
(1) There's a reference here to 聊斋志异/Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a collection of stories including many loves stories between humans and fox spirits or ghosts.