Silver Linings

Chapter Thirteen - You Should Just Ride On Top Of Me

[10 June 2020]

⁂ GONG JUN ⁂

It was 7:15 a.m. and Gong Jun was in his gray car and heading for hair and makeup. It was raining and the humidity made him grateful for the climate control in the car. He watched the people on the sidewalks, walking under their umbrellas and going about their early morning business.

When he spotted what he though was a couple walking under the same umbrella, a soft smile curled his lips. Just a few days earlier, he had been trying to shield his face from the sun using his script, whilst they were going through one of the scenes for the day. He had waved off Xie Wenrui when she had moved towards him with his umbrella, but Zhang Zhe Han had beat her to it. He had taken the umbrella from his own assistant, to hold it over the two of them himself. His co-star had done it solely so that he wouldn't be bothered by the sun, even though he had motioned towards him that it wasn't needed. Zhang Zhe Han had even kept at it, until he found that one angle that shaded them both.

It was such a simple act of kindness, but Gong Jun wasn't used to anyone doing things like that for him on set. Not unless it was his assistant, or some other staff member. He was pretty sure that this was just who Zhang Zhe Han was—a very warm and thoughtful person. There was nothing else behind the gesture and he would shield his heart with everything he had in him, until it was quiet and stopped fluttering.

He refocused his eyes, watched the water flow lateral on the car window and actively ignored that delicate but stubborn flutter inside his heart. He hoped that the rain would stop soon, since wet grass would almost certainly wreck wreak havoc on their wigs in one of the scenes that they had to shoot today—they would be rolling in the grass.

The scenes they were filming weren't anything in particular by themselves, but the context behind them were laced with inuendoes and double meanings. Wen Ke Xing and Zhou Zi Shu had just escaped captivity and would be rolling down a steep tunnel, come flying out of the opening and then roll down the slope. Well, some of it—okay most of it—would be done by their stunt doubles, but he and his co-star still had to do the last bit of the rolling.

Going into a tunnel and then shooting out of it was an obvious euphemism for sex. He smirked at the fact that Wen Ke Xing was tentative enough to allow Zhou Zi Shu to 'roll out of the cave' first. He was fairly sure that this scene would make it through the censorship board, but it was still daring to do it. And flipping through the script, it wasn't the only one of its kind.

He wondered if Zhang Zhe Han had come to the same conclusion regarding these scenes. However, considering the conversations that they had during dinner a few nights back, the never-ending stream of suggestions to improve the scenes, and the sixteen page long character essay he had been given, Gong Jun was pretty sure that his co-lead had studied the script enough to see through the double meanings and visual cues.

He admired his co-lead for his vision and dedication. They were only a week into production and he could see that Zhang Zhe Han was immersing himself into Zhou Zi Shu. There were still changes every day, but Zhang Zhe Han's mind clicked a lot faster and he was throwing out ideas—real ideas—on how to change a line subtly or how to add a gesture. Lots of small ideas that in the big scheme of things, made each part better. Gong Jun was intent on learning as much as he could from his senior. And so far, they had only spent one day of filming apart but the rest had been mostly shooting scenes together, at least for some of the day.

The day they had spent apart, they had still chatted a bit during the morning in the hair and makeup studio, that they four of them shared. Though with Zhou Ye usually glued to her phone and Sun Xi Lun with his nose deep in his Harry Potter book, it was mostly just the two of them chatting about music and sports. Zhang Zhe Han had started playing music in the morning, which distracted him a bit when he was trying to read his lines, but it was still a nice change from the previous awkward silence.