Until Xingyu figured out how to get into Liu Baiyan’s office, he didn’t have anything to do. “Laying low” was a passive activity; it wasn’t something that required any amount of thinking or work. It just meant staying inside one room and ordering room service whenever the kitchens were open. The television only provided entertainment for an hour or so—motels were never generous with their channels—and his computer was next to useless until he set up a better internet connection, which Xingyu said not to do until they absolutely needed it—and the motel’s wifi could only feebly offer just enough bandwidth for Weiran to check his email, which he didn’t need to do anyway. Any friendships that he had abroad were on hold. None of them were as important as getting revenge on his parents’ killers. Hell, none of them were as important as Xingyu.

Shit.

He’d been trying not to let himself think about Xingyu, because thinking about Xingyu meant he thought about Liu Xiaokai.

Liu Xiaokai, naked except for that open robe, Liu Xiaokai on the floor in front of him, reaching for the belt of Weiran’s pants—

He groaned and dropped his face into his pillow. Screamed.

Everything that had happened in those short few minutes had been playing on loop since Xiaokai had opened the hotel door and walked out. Even if Weiran was lucky enough that he could figure out how to think about something else—if what was playing on television was exciting enough, if he found something intriguing enough on his phone—it was still just on the edges of his mind, waiting for something to remind him.

Liu Xiaokai was really, really…hot.

That was the biggest problem. He was almost the same height as Xingyu, and he had a similar build, if not a little slimmer. Weiran had never seen Xingyu when he wasn’t fully properly clothed, to the point where most of his fantasies had Xingyu still mostly clothed—even when they lived together, Xingyu had been remarkably modest and careful. But now that he had the image of his brother who was almost identical…

Shit.

His hand slipped into his pants before he could talk himself out of it.

The part of his brain that always screamed at him during these moments, demanding he stop, reminding him that Xingyu was his friend and his confidant and his means to finish his parents’ work and it was a mistake to have any more feelings for a person who was that important—that part of his brain was being pushed aside for the part of his brain that said, much calmer and much more reasonable: “This isn’t changing anything. It isn’t as if he has to know. You don’t have anything else to do, anyway. You’re already hard. Get it out of your system.”