Shoutout to Kari for the commission!
When Le Cheng and Zhou Shirui had first gotten together, Le Cheng would sometimes deliberately call Zhou Shirui while he was away on business to make him feel secure, euphemistically calling it a “check-in.”
Actually, as someone who didn’t lack a sense of security, Le Cheng wouldn’t have felt anything particularly special about being controlled or held tightly by someone. But if that person was Zhou Shirui, then he was willing to accept it wholeheartedly, and it made him feel very safe.
He was simply that biased when it came to Zhou Shirui.
So every time Zhou Shirui landed, Le Cheng would calculate the time and give him a call.
Zhou Shirui had always been quick to answer his calls. After only three rings, his familiar, deep voice came through the phone. “Chengcheng.”
“What are you doing?” Le Cheng lay on his stomach on the bed, with his laptop in front of him, kicking his little legs as he asked, “Did you get to the hotel? Are you tired?”
“Not tired. Just got here.” Zhou Shirui said, “I’m getting ready to take a shower.”
Le Cheng immediately said, “Really? Then I want to watch. Hurry and turn on the video!”
Rustling sounds came from Zhou Shirui’s end, as though he were undoing his buttons. After listening for a while, Le Cheng said, “I want to watch you take your clothes off too. Did you take off your glasses?”
Zhou Shirui ignored him, but Le Cheng continued chattering. “Did you take off your pants? I heard the sound of your belt buckle.”
Zhou Shirui gave a quiet “Mm” before saying, “I’m going to take a shower.”
Le Cheng wasn’t very happy about that. “Weren’t you going to let me watch?”
Zhou Shirui seemed to give a very soft laugh from the other end. “Who said I agreed to that?”
Le Cheng immediately started playing dumb. “I clearly heard you! You said ‘Mm’!”
Zhou Shirui seemed to have no choice but to indulge him. He switched to video as requested, but he didn’t look at the camera. He simply held the phone casually in his hand as he walked toward the bathroom, creating something of a downward-looking angle. His shoulders were broad, and even from such an awkward angle, he looked incredibly handsome.
Actually, Le Cheng was very familiar with this angle. Whenever Zhou Shirui pressed down over him on the bed, Le Cheng could barely see the ceiling.
After entering the bathroom, Zhou Shirui set the phone down again and turned slightly to grab the shower gel. The muscles on his body moved smoothly, his broad, firm back exposed. The lighting cast a delicate layer of shadows over him, and pale red marks crisscrossed his perfectly defined back muscles.
Le Cheng had still been muttering away, but he abruptly fell silent. After hesitating for a while, he lowered his head and secretly glanced at his own claws. His face flushed as he wondered, Did I scratch Zhou Shirui yesterday? I did, right? Did I? … Was I really that forceful…?
When Zhou Shirui looked back at the screen, Le Cheng had already lowered his eyelashes, revealing only half of his face. He no longer looked at him.
This wasn’t the first time Le Cheng had called and said he wanted to watch, but every time, Le Cheng would get embarrassed halfway through. They had already done much more intimate things, yet Le Cheng was always bold with his mouth while actually being a coward.
So Zhou Shirui deliberately asked him, “Weren’t you going to watch? Why did you stop?”
His voice was cool and indifferent, as though he were being completely serious.
Le Cheng raised one finger and scratched his cheek. “I wasn’t, I wasn’t really that interested in watching…”
Before Zhou Shirui could answer, Le Cheng hurriedly added, “Hurry up and take your shower, or you’ll catch a cold later!”
Zhou Shirui didn’t expose him. He reached over and turned off the video, while Le Cheng listened to him shower on the other end. There was the sound of rushing water. When Zhou Shirui showered, he neither watched videos nor listened to music, much less sang. He was completely quiet, with only the sound of water, almost like white noise. It was actually rather soothing.
After finishing his shower, Zhou Shirui would sometimes go out to eat with his business partners. Le Cheng would ask him, “How many people are there? Men or women? You have to behave yourself, okay? Don’t go drinking behind my back.”
One instruction after another, like he was giving a child a list of things to remember.
Zhou Shirui would tell him how many people there were and promise that he wouldn’t drink. He would just say he had a cold and had taken cephalosporin antibiotics before coming.
Le Cheng would laugh. “You even know how to come up with excuses like that.”
As the time they spent together increased, Zhou Shirui’s somewhat obsessive need for reassurance gradually lessened.
At least, it wasn’t as excessive as before. Le Cheng no longer deliberately called him to check in, because whether he checked or not, it was the same. Zhou Shirui would definitely tell him what he was doing.
But sometimes Zhou Shirui would have special circumstances, such as being away on a business trip for a long time.
The two of them had both gotten used to this kind of intensely close life together. Whenever a business trip lasted too long, Le Cheng would miss him terribly.
Le Cheng generally said his feelings directly. For example, two or three days into a business trip, when they were on the phone, Le Cheng would blink at him and say, “I miss you. Why aren’t you back yet?”
He could express his feelings with precision, but Zhou Shirui was comparatively reserved and wasn’t as direct as him.
Le Cheng’s longing could come straight out of his mouth. He valued expressing himself and liked putting his feelings into words, so whenever he missed Zhou Shirui, he would poke at him and tell him that he was thinking about him.
Zhou Shirui contacted him much less frequently. Le Cheng had always thought it was because he poked at Zhou Shirui so often that Zhou Shirui hadn’t even had time to miss him before he had already received Le Cheng’s signal.
But once, quite by chance, Le Cheng was watching a video and was recommended a little gadget. It had the appearance of a tiny cat’s head, was fluffy and adorable, and was only about half the size of a palm. It was called a long-distance couples’ “love sensor.” The principle was actually very simple: when one person pressed a button, the little cat head on the other person’s end would light up. It was so childish that it looked like a child’s toy.
But Le Cheng got caught up in the moment and impulsively placed an order. When it arrived, he gave one to Zhou Shirui and told him to take it with him on his business trips.
“When you miss me, just press it.” Le Cheng said with complete seriousness. “When I see it, I’ll know you’re thinking about me.”
Zhou Shirui picked up the little cat head and didn’t say anything, only replying that he would.
When Zhou Shirui went on another business trip, they hung up that night. In the middle of the night, Le Cheng groggily got up to use the bathroom and discovered that the little cat head was actually lit up. It looked like it had been on for quite some time, because it felt rather warm to the touch.
He glanced at the time.
2:10 a.m.
The next day, while he was drawing at home, Le Cheng kept the little cat head beside him. He discovered that it would light up every so often, then light up again a moment later. The frequency was so high that Le Cheng was afraid it would burn out the light bulb.
Zhou Shirui was away on a business trip and was very busy, so Le Cheng put up with it for most of the day before contacting customer service. He sent them a photo and asked why the little cat head kept flashing on and off, even in the middle of the night. Was it broken?
At this point, he was actually a little annoyed, thinking, How could it break so easily? The quality is terrible. This is practically cheating consumers!
Customer service asked him to open it up and inspect it. After carefully checking again, they replied:
[Customer Service Little Chen: Dear, it shouldn’t be broken.]
[Orange: Then why does it keep flashing?]
[Customer Service Little Chen: You can check whether there’s a child or a friend at home who keeps pressing the button on the other end.]
Hearing this, Le Cheng became hesitant. That evening, when he called Zhou Shirui, he asked him about it.
“The little cat head on my end keeps flashing,” Le Cheng said. “Did you accidentally press it?”
Zhou Shirui replied, “I didn’t press it accidentally.” After a pause, he added, “I’ve been the one pressing it the whole time.”
And that was when Le Cheng understood.
It turned out it wasn’t that Zhou Shirui missed him less often, nor was it that he himself contacted Zhou Shirui too frequently.
It was simply that Zhou Shirui missed him too much to say it out loud.
So after Zhou Shirui returned home, he discovered that a security camera had appeared in one corner of the house. It had a clear view of the living room, including the places where Le Cheng often stayed: the sofa and the balcony.
Actually, having a security camera installed at home was perfectly normal, especially in households with a nanny or pets.
But Zhou Shirui had never done it before.
Le Cheng seemed to say innocently, “I feel like having a camera would be really convenient. I see everyone installing them. What do you think?”
Yet Le Cheng had gone ahead and done it.
After saying that, Le Cheng looked at Zhou Shirui’s expression, only for the other person to suddenly lean over and kiss him.
Le Cheng still stubbornly asked, “What do you think?”
Zhou Shirui said, “I think it’s very good.”
The camera was normally turned off. They would only turn it on whenever one of them was going away for an extended period. Most of the time, it was Zhou Shirui who watched. He would look at the rooms that were normally empty, where Le Cheng would be curled up on the sofa hugging a pillow, lounging lazily, and suddenly the whole place would seem full.
Zhou Shirui had always had fairly strong needs in certain respects.
Even when they spent all day glued to each other, those needs were already considerable. When he was away on business for a long time, everything would accumulate and become even more intense, to the point that for a period of time, whenever Le Cheng saw Zhou Shirui return from a business trip, his legs would go weak.
But that situation only lasted for about half a year. Le Cheng noticed that even after returning from a business trip, Zhou Shirui no longer acted like a wolf seeing a rabbit. He was the same as usual. Although they were still intimate frequently, it wasn’t to the point where, once they got started, it would continue for the entire day.
Le Cheng found it fascinating, though he couldn’t help feeling a little puzzled. But he trusted Zhou Shirui very much, so he simply assumed that Zhou Shirui had finally passed the intensely passionate stage of a new relationship and had gotten used to their time apart during business trips.
But quite by chance, when Le Cheng used Zhou Shirui’s phone to take photos, he discovered that its storage was being used up incredibly quickly. There weren’t even many large games on the phone.
He looked for the reason and quickly discovered that the thing taking up the most storage was recordings. He kept scrolling down and it took a long time to reach the bottom. There were probably over a hundred of them.
Curious, he clicked on one and listened.
They were just ordinary recordings of the conversations from his and Zhou Shirui’s everyday phone calls.
And it was easy to tell that most of them had been recorded while Zhou Shirui was away on business trips.
Le Cheng scrolled further down. The contents were all more or less the same. Because he always liked to chatter on about random nonsense, while Zhou Shirui always listened very seriously, conversations like these had a high degree of repetition.
Le Cheng was puzzled, so he went to the study to ask Zhou Shirui. He leaned against the doorframe and called out loudly, “I found your little secret!”
Zhou Shirui reached out to him, and Le Cheng happily trotted over. Zhou Shirui pulled him onto his lap and asked, “What little secret?”
“You secretly recorded our phone calls!” Le Cheng deliberately drew out his words. “I caught you, didn’t I?”
“Mm, you caught me.” Zhou Shirui held his waist with one hand. “What do you want to do about it?”
“Then…” Le Cheng thought for a moment. “I’ll punish you by making you tell me what you wanted the recordings for.”
“To listen to them.” Zhou Shirui answered very simply.
Le Cheng tilted his head. “Why listen to them?”
Zhou Shirui said slowly, “Sometimes when I can’t sleep in the middle of the night, I listen to you talking to help me fall asleep.”
Le Cheng hadn’t expected that answer. His heart instantly melted into a soft mess. He lowered his head slightly and kissed his lips. “Then you can call me.”
“It’s too late, and it’s not like I often can’t sleep.” Zhou Shirui answered.
Only then did Le Cheng relax a little. He casually fiddled with the recordings, and out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one recording that the system showed had been listened to dozens of times. Curious, he opened it.
It turned out to be him throwing a tantrum.
Calling it throwing a tantrum wasn’t quite accurate. He had mostly been speaking softly, repeating himself over and over, accompanied by the sound of him sniffling. He sounded so pitiful, yet so cute.
Le Cheng remembered this. One time, Zhou Shirui had been away on business for too long, nearly half a month. He had missed him terribly, and then watched a tearjerker before bed. When he called Zhou Shirui, perhaps because he missed him too much, combined with the emotional effect of the movie, he had barely said a few words before tears started falling.
It was also after that that Zhou Shirui never again went on a business trip for quite that long.
Under normal circumstances, the number of times Le Cheng cried could practically be counted on one hand. He wasn’t someone who liked crying. Of course, what happened in bed was a different matter.
Halfway through listening, Le Cheng hurriedly paused the recording out of embarrassment.
Then, with very little confidence, he asked, “Why did you even keep this? And why did you listen to it so many times?”
Zhou Shirui lowered his eyelashes and didn’t answer. Le Cheng hadn’t thought much of it at first, but seeing him like this was so unusual that he immediately became curious. He buried his head under Zhou Shirui’s chin and nudged against his chest, pestering him until he had no choice but to answer.
After a long while, Zhou Shirui finally gave in. After a pause, he said, “…Sometimes I miss you a lot. When I can’t call you, I listen to this.”
As he said this, his tone was emotionless, his eyes dark and deep, and his voice barely fluctuated. He was the picture of composure.
Le Cheng was stunned for a full half a minute before he understood what Zhou Shirui meant.
His face instantly turned red, like a fully ripened tomato. The impact was too much, and he stammered, not knowing where to begin. “You… Then you could listen, you could listen to something else too…!”
Why did it have to be this one?!
Zhou Shirui raised his eyes and looked at him calmly. His thin lips moved. “Listening to this makes it feel stronger.”
Le Cheng immediately covered his mouth, unable to even speak properly. “…You’re not allowed to say anything else!”
Zhou Shirui readily complied and stopped talking. They could just do it instead.
After being tossed around until the middle of the night, Le Cheng shed no fewer tears than he had in the recording. Completely exhausted, Zhou Shirui helped him shower first, then took a shower himself. He returned quietly, and just as he lifted the covers, Le Cheng groggily wriggled over and reached out for him to hold him.
Zhou Shirui’s heart softened. He wrapped his arms around him and held him close, then turned off the last bedside light. Suddenly, he heard Le Cheng mumbling something.
Zhou Shirui leaned closer and heard clearly: “…You… You can listen to that at home too, okay…”
Zhou Shirui curled his lips and deliberately said, “No.”
Le Cheng mumbled, “You’re so annoying,” but still burrowed into the arms of this “annoying person.”
“Mm.” Zhou Shirui accepted it without argument. “I’m an annoying person. Go to sleep.”
So what if he was annoying?
Zhou Shirui lowered his head and kissed Le Cheng’s soft cheek.
There was still this adorable little thing right here.
