Deep in the Act: Chapter 45

They shouldn’t be in a relationship where they say “love,” Zhang Zhun thought. For them, love was a terrifying word.

“Little Zhang?” Chen Zhengsen noticed he had spaced out and patted his shoulder. “Things have basically blown over. Adjust your mindset better, don’t let it affect filming.” The situation had indeed settled down. Zhen Xin’s crisis PR had been handled very well. Now online public opinion had unanimously labeled this as production crew hype. Probably because of Xie Danyi, Zhang Zhun’s media image had become fuller, even trending on the hot search list. “This is also a good thing for you,” Chen Zhengsen said seriously. “Don’t blame Zhen Xin, and don’t bring negative emotions into the role.” He turned back to Zhou Zheng and the others. “Aren’t we also taking the blame? But the show’s visibility has gone up. Everyone should still view this positively, right?”

The main creative team all nodded. This was at 3815, three days after the same sex scandal, a mid progress meeting. “For our show, purely from a filming perspective, we’ve already passed two thirds. Next…” He was still speaking when Zhen Xin arrived. Entering the room, his eyes first landed on Zhang Zhun. Strangely, those entangled and ambiguous looks were gone from his eyes. Instead he stiffly averted his gaze. Chen Zhengsen caught this change, turned to look at Zhang Zhun, who was the same, head lowered, looking very cold. “Got too comfortable at the Grand Hyatt, don’t want to come back huh,” Chen Zhengsen teased him through a joke. “Coming so late to the meeting!”

Zhen Xin had intentionally come late, to avoid crossing paths with Zhang Zhun. “Overslept, these past two days have been too chaotic.” “And you’re still saying that, if you hadn’t gone crazy getting your ears pierced, would there have been so much trouble!” Chen Zhengsen clapped his hands. “Alright, everyone’s here. Let me say this,” he took the latest shooting schedule from Zhou Zheng’s hands. “Your minds have all wandered these past few days of stopping. I’ll give you one day to get back into character. Day after tomorrow, cameras roll!”

Someone cheered. Camera, lighting, costume departments all listened carefully to the following arrangements. Zhang Zhun’s phone rang. He pressed the green button and called out very warmly, “Shige.”

Wu Rong’s carefree voice came through. “What the hell happened last night, in the middle of the night, that surnamed Zhen…”

Everyone was discussing filming when Zhen Xin suddenly stood up and snatched Zhang Zhun’s phone. In a joking tone, he said to Wu Rong, “I say, why are you calling all the time, got no work to shoot?”

Everyone stopped to listen. The call quickly ended, and everyone threw themselves back into discussion, but secretly exchanging glances. Even Chen Zhengsen asked curiously, “When did you and Wu Rong get so… close?”

Zhen Xin tossed the phone back to Zhang Zhun without answering. Each department went through their items one by one. When it came to the leads, Chen Zhengsen first briefed Zhang Zhun. “Going forward you and Zhen Xin have relatively few scenes together. Your two male supporting actors arrived today. Don’t leave in a bit, get ready to meet them, get familiar, find the feeling.”

Throughout this whole process Zhen Xin had no particular opinion. Hearing “male supporting actors” mentioned, a pair of melancholy eyes lifted up, about to speak. Chen Zhengsen saw this and cut him off. “Qin Xun’er is also returning to the team soon. Don’t give me trouble.” Zhen Xin crossed his legs, giving him face. The short forty to fifty minute meeting finished. Staff members dispersed in twos and threes. Zhen Xin dawdled and dragged until the end. Chen Zhengsen had gone to the bathroom. Zhou Zheng and Xiao Wang hadn’t left, one checking the shooting schedule, the other playing a mobile game. Zhang Zhun saw Zhen Xin walking toward him, glancing around in panic. Zhen Xin followed his gaze around too, carefully, with some of the thrill of a secret affair.

“Give me the room key.” Walking up close, he said against Zhang Zhun’s ear. Zhang Zhun fished it out while blushing. It was a deliberate question. “What are you… going to do?” “Just give it to me.” Zhen Xin grabbed the card and casually stuffed it in his pocket. Right then Zhou Zheng looked up. He very naturally greeted him. “Brother Zhou, I’m off.” Secretly, he turned back and winked at Zhang Zhun.

As soon as darkness fell, Zhang Zhun came back. He rang the doorbell, and the door quickly opened from inside. The room was pitch black, with only a small bedside lamp lit. Zhang Zhun somewhat didn’t want to walk into the room, but was hugged by Zhen Xin from the darkness. “Met them?”

Zhang Zhun’s eyes and lips both avoided him, his feet circling. In a flash, he saw two bottles on the table. One was wine, the other looked like olive oil. “Not as handsome as you, far from it.”

Zhen Xin didn’t speak, his chin resting on Zhang Zhun’s shoulder, sullen, like he was jealous. Zhang Zhun rubbed the hair at the back of his head, wanting to speak but holding back. “With them… there aren’t those kinds of scenes.”

Zhen Xin let go of him, went to the table and got the wine, used a corkscrew to open it, and poured two glasses. Zhang Zhun took it, watching him go fiddle with his phone again. Before long music started playing. It was Luz Casal’s “Piensa En Mi.”

“Let’s dance,” Zhen Xin clinked glasses with him, then used his free hand to wrap around his waist. “Actually of all the scenes in the script, this is my favorite. Too bad you’re acting it with Wu Rong.”

Zhang Zhun was slightly resistant. “Don’t pull that chasing a girl routine on me,” he said this with his mouth, but his body was still compliant, leaning into Zhen Xin’s embrace, hearing him murmur in his ear. “Did you already shoot this scene?”

“Mmm,” he hadn’t even touched the wine, how was he already getting drowsy? Zhang Zhun swayed gently with his steps. “The day of your bar interview.”

Zhen Xin nodded, kissing his cheek while looking at his glass. “Why aren’t you drinking?” Zhang Zhun’s eyelashes trembled. “Can we… not do it that way?”

“I won’t come inside,” Zhen Xin hugged him tighter, his fingers pinching his flesh through his clothes. “I swear.”

Zhang Zhun didn’t make a sound. Zhen Xin brought his own glass to Zhang Zhun’s lips. Zhang Zhun turned his head away, muttering. “You think I’m some eighteen year old silly girl, believing you?”

Zhen Xin burst out laughing, holding his head and pecking his mouth. After kissing enough, he wanted to say something, but was cut off by Zhang Zhun asking from the side. “Not regretting it?”

“Regretting what?” Zhen Xin asked back, his playful smile not yet faded.

“If we don’t do it that way, we…” Zhang Zhun seemed not to know how to say it, hesitating. “We could still pretend to be buddies, you know, buddies sometimes also… help each other out and such.” He lifted his eyes, looking at Zhen Xin with an indescribable kind of gaze.

Zhen Xin’s expression changed, stopping his steps. “Otherwise?”

“If we go that far,” Zhang Zhun’s gaze dropped, as if blocked by some nameless fear in his throat. “Then…”

He looked so tormented and so dejected. “There’s no turning back.”

It would be true depravity, no more excuses, no more self deception. They would be genuine “homosexuals.” Zhen Xin couldn’t speak for a long time. Only the phone on the table sang alone. Think of me when you suffer, when you cry also think of me, when you want to take my life, then take it, I don’t want it at all, such a thing is useless to me without you… Zhen Xin’s young face twisted up. He was surprised, confused. The hand holding Zhang Zhun’s shoulder loosened, unconsciously stepping back. Zhang Zhun was ready, ready to pull a perfect smile for him at any moment, whether he stayed or left.

The fine wine in his hand like the setting sun, Zhen Xin stared like a fool possessed. Suddenly, he looked up and glared at Zhang Zhun fiercely, like a desperate outlaw taking a reckless gamble. He raised his glass and downed the wine.

This was his answer. Zhang Zhun watched his Adam’s apple slide up and down. The glass emptied. He directly smashed the wine glass on the floor. Because of the carpet, it made a thud. The glass quickly spun a few times and rolled toward the door. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he stared hard at Zhang Zhun. The meaning was, your turn.

Zhang Zhun seemed afraid to meet his eyes, brushing past him to walk to the table. “Clink,” it was the sound of a glass landing on the table. Zhen Xin felt his heart was about to shatter. A tear escaped on its own, sliding down his nose into his mouth. So bitter.

He clenched his fist tight, watching Zhang Zhun lower his arm, then watching him raise it again, watching him look at him tenderly, then watching him grasp the wine bottle on the table. Like a traveler dying in the desert, he actually started drinking straight from the bottle.

Zhang Zhun knew his alcohol tolerance. Halfway through, his esophagus was burning like fire. His temples throbbed one after another. His heart pounded wildly at his eardrums. Suddenly, someone hugged him from behind, like they wanted to tear him apart and rip him to shreds, stripping him bare and throwing him on the bed. Immediately after, a fiery body pressed down on him. Almost simultaneously, he heard the sound of a bottle opening, and smelled some scorching fragrance. So fast, everything was too fast. From his two legs being spread open, to his butt crack being greasily massaged, to being fiercely penetrated by a penis, it seemed like just the blink of an eye. The alcohol hit him, but that pain, the pain of his most tender place being torn apart, Zhang Zhun could only swallow with tears. He was someone who could endure hardship. The hardship of stretching tendons and pressing legs, the hardship of being beaten and injured, the hardship of slicing flesh and breaking bones. He moaned and relaxed the muscles of his lower body, to make it easier for the person on top of him.

Zhen Xin’s humming couldn’t be said to be pleasure or pain, like being suddenly choked at the throat in a moment of triumph. “My god, you… you’re too tight!” He was squeezed tight by Zhang Zhun, unable to go in, unable to pull out, like a ridiculous virgin, holding Zhang Zhun’s thighs. Beyond his imagination, Zhang Zhun’s body had almost no limits. Beneath solid muscles were supple bones and tendons, easily able to bend into strange angles.

“Give me the wine…” Zhang Zhun hurt too much, his fingertips trembling from the pain. Zhen Xin passed him the bottle. He poured it into his mouth while spreading his own buttocks open himself. “Hurry the hell up!”

Zhen Xin lay down hugging him. It was different from hugging a woman. So precious, so careful, but his lower half was the exact opposite, forcefully and even brutally barging in. “Does it hurt… does it hurt?” He couldn’t help asking, lewdly rocking his waist. Zhang Zhun bit his teeth, holding his shoulders like he was dying, humming in a strange voice.

Zhen Xin felt this wasn’t sex at all, but a sacrifice of blood and flesh. In his mind there seemed to be rumbling drum sounds, and meaningless incantations and orange red firelight. This was the most primitive impulse from ancient times. Once the sacrifice was offered, it was a promise for a lifetime. He thrust forward fiercely, thrusting to the bottom and then stirring in circles. Then that raw intestinal tract trembled, sticky, sucking him in.

It didn’t take long before Zhang Zhun’s voice changed. His two legs seemed not to know what to do, constantly rubbing against Zhen Xin’s back. While rubbing, he bounced his buttocks up and down. He opened his mouth wide, because of the drunkenness, and because of oxygen deprivation, his whole person looking lewd, like he had taken some powerful aphrodisiac. “Harder…” he collapsed on the pillow humming. “Harder damn it!”

Covered in hot sweat, Zhen Xin tucked his neck down to look. The light was very dim, barely able to see his blood stained lower body going in and out of the innocent anus. “No, you’re bleeding…”

Zhang Zhun didn’t let him finish speaking, twisting himself, wrapping around him and desperately clenching his buttocks. Zhen Xin couldn’t quite handle him, hissing as he shrank back. The more he shrank back, the more Zhang Zhun pressed his advantage. Taking advantage of being drunk, he suddenly flipped Zhen Xin onto the bed, kneeling with both legs, sitting on his stomach and riding him wildly.

Zhen Xin passively grabbed his waist. Zhang Zhun was truly too fierce, too powerful. The feeling of squeezing himself and being worked by Zhen Xin were completely different forces, startlingly vivid and magnificent. The mattress was almost broken from being sat on. That force wasn’t something “sexy” could describe. That dancer, whatever Tommy, was right. Once he “got into it, he was especially slutty.”

“…Zhun… Zhang Zhun!” Zhen Xin propped himself on his arms and rubbed backward, wanting to rub out a gap to breathe from under him. But Zhang Zhun wouldn’t let him, obsessively thrusting his waist. The whole room was filled with those “smack smack” impact sounds. Zhen Xin shuddered and came, without warning, without holding back, all inside Zhang Zhun. He panted in frustration. Zhang Zhun was still foolishly moving on top of his crotch, drunkenly sensing something was wrong, humming “mmm mmm,” struggling to stick his buttocks up looking for that feeling. After wildly twisting like this a few times, Zhen Xin’s soft penis slipped out from his buttocks, dangling crooked on his groin.

Terrible! Zhen Xin pinched his forehead. This was completely different from what he had imagined. To be honest, only at this moment did he soberly realize that he was making love with a man, a man who could easily make him roll his eyes back and climax.

“What… happened?” Zhang Zhun spread his legs looking under his own buttocks, grabbing Zhen Xin’s soft thing in his hand, again and again stuffing it into his butt crack, but it wouldn’t go in. Without shame he spread his buttocks open, grinding hard on Zhen Xin’s pubic bone. “Damn!” Zhen Xin mustered his strength and flipped him down, first cupping his face and kissing him wetly all over, then shamelessly grabbing his lower parts wanting to jerk him off. Zhang Zhun’s two eyes were misty. Saying he looked pitiful, but Zhen Xin also found him hateful. No matter how he stroked or coaxed, Zhang Zhun still twisted his buttocks at him, wanting it from behind. Zhen Xin helplessly got up, sat at the edge of the bed with his head hanging down, pouring olive oil into his palm and rapidly jerking off. He had been squeezed too hard just now, and now his mind and body were both numb. While stroking he said resentfully, “I’m crazy, letting you drink!” Speaking of “crazy,” don’t know which nerve connected right, his lower body suddenly stood up. He froze for a second, like a mindless fool, jumping onto the bed in wild joy. “Alright, come here!” Like a defeated boxer making a comeback, he shamelessly pounced on Zhang Zhun, licking his ear and murmuring. “How about that, fast right?”