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Aether was, for the first time in a very long while, incredibly nervous. He hadn’t even been this nervous when he was accused of killing Rex Lapis (though it hadn’t been the first time he’d been accused of killing a god. Still, that sort of thing tended to get to a person).
The Windblume Festival was in full swing in Mondstadt. The atmosphere never stopped feeling joyful in the town, especially with the young love blossoming everywhere. Venti was making frankly insane amounts of Mora off of the people who needed help in said romantic endeavors. Well, Mora and alcohol.
Lucky bastard. How he was allowed to buy alcohol, Aether had no clue, especially since Venti looked younger than Aether! And he, himself, couldn’t convince anyone to let him have any, beyond Diluc, Jean, and Kaeya. And he dearly loved Mondstadt, but he quite wanted to try Liyue alcohol, too. And Zhongli had thought that wine-fermented rice balls were perfectly acceptable.
Ugh.
So here he was, putting off finding a way to get into Ningguang’s palace for now, trying to do something that required a lot more courage. And without a bit of the liquid courage he so desperately desired, it was infinitely harder.
Shit. Damn his thoughts for straying again. He clutched the stupid poem he’d written tighter to his chest as he made his way to the plaza of the city, weaving through the throng of people celebrating outside. He had no reason to fear, he told himself. Venti was actually really good at the whole romance thing. Even if Venti didn’t return his feelings, he was certain that Venti would at least let him down gently.
Taking a deep breath, Aether climbed the stairs to the plaza and lingered near them, watching Venti chat with his students from a distance. There weren’t that many left at this time of day; Venti had claimed sunset was the most romantic time of day, so most of the students who had “graduated” were off presenting their perfected poems to their loved ones. Like Aether was about to do.
His heart pounded against his ribcage, kicking it up several notches when Venti’s students dispersed and Venti noticed him, waving him over with a big grin.
“Hey Aether!” he called out cheerily.
Crap. He’d been spotted before he was ready.
“Hey Venti,” he greeted back, striding towards him in big steps.
“Watcha got there?” Venti asked, motioning to the paper tightly clutched in Aether’s hands.
“Um, a poem,” he said, voice just a little quieter than normal. “For you,” he clarified after a moment.
Venti’s eyes lit up. “Well, I wouldn’t dream of charging one of my favorite assistants for his poem-fixing!” he declared, snatching the paper from Aether’s hands.
Aether swallowed, body feeling weak. Oh no.
Venti clicked his red pen and started marking the poem up before Aether’s voice had a chance to come back to him after Venti blindsided him with that serious misinterpretation.
After several agonizing minutes, each ticking by with Aether getting more and more tense, yet unable to dissolve his own tension by untying his tongue and attempting to explain what was really wrong, Venti finally handed the paper back over with a triumphant smile.
“That was really good for a first draft,” he said kindly, blithely unaware of the hours of work Aether had really put into this, “I think just one or two more re-writes and that cute bard of yours will totally fall for you with this!”
Idiot. Aether wasn’t sure if he was talking about himself or Venti.
He nodded dumbly, seeing Venti still waiting for a response, and his heart ached at the beaming smile he got back.
Archons damn it all, he had it bad for this particular Archon.
“See you tomorrow!” Venti said with a wave as Aether walked away.
Not trusting himself to speak, he waved back over his shoulder (not seeing the curious and sad frown on Venti’s face this way) and headed back to the room Jean had granted him in the Knights of Favonius headquarters when he’d first become the Honorary Knight. He flopped face-down on his bed with a heavy sigh, drawing the attention of Paimon.
“I guess it didn’t go so well, huh?” Paimon asked, floating over and patting Aether’s back.
“He thought I was writing for someone else and graded it,” he said bitterly.
Paimon gasped. “Oh no! That’s…” She bit back an impolite chuckle at the situation. “But if you never actually confessed, you haven’t been rejected, right? You just need to try again! And speak up this time!”
“Not tonight,” Aether said tiredly, “tonight I just need to wallow in my feelings.”
He hadn’t even looked at Venti’s corrections to his poem. He was pretty sure he’d just end up crushed even further. Archons, but he was ridiculous, putting himself through all this for likely no reason.
“Paimon understands,” she said quietly, rubbing Aether’s back gently. “Love is hard, huh? Sleep now, and Paimon will make breakfast for you in the morning, ‘kay?”
Aether smiled a bit, turning his face to look at her. “Thanks, Paimon. You’re a good friend.”
He hadn’t really liked her at first, or for a long while, with how much she, personally, tripped up the problems he was trying to solve along the way of trying to meet all seven Archons to try and find his sister, and making things worse. But she’d slowly started to grow into a much more mature… fairy-person-thing than she’d been so long ago.
He hadn’t stopped making jokes about eating her, though. And Xingqiu stating she didn’t need her legs since she floated, validating his jokes, had been quite the highlight of that day. He smiled at the memory of Paimon’s grumpiness and himself making up for it with that fisherman’s toast she loved so much.
Paimon smiled gently back, floating back over to her own bed. “You only get to do this wallowing for tonight,” she said, waggling her finger at him, “Tomorrow will be a new day and a new chance to confess your feelings of true love!”
“We’ll see,” he said, yawning. He finally stood back up and stripped down to his underwear before crawling under the covers to sleep.
*
In the morning, Aether chose to torture himself by looking over the marked up poem. He made it through three of the corrections before he shredded it in disgust, chucking it in the nearest bin.
Paimon woke at the sound and ignored what was happening on the other side of the room in favor of heading down to the kitchen to make good on her promise and also give Aether a bit of privacy to think.
God, this sucked, Aether thought, looking at the bits of paper in the bin. Well, if Venti hadn’t liked that poem, he’d write a better one. Or, at least, something different enough there was no deniability. He pondered for a few hours, writing and re-writing, slowly munching his way through the stack of toast Paimon had brought him at breakfast until he realized he really ought to go have lunch.
Finally giving up on the perfect poem, he scribbled out what one world he’d visited would’ve called a “shitpost”.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Venti, you’re a dumbass
But I love you.
It wasn’t anything particularly special, but he needed something that would work first. Then he could be romantic, once he finally got through Venti’s apparently thick skull.
He finally stood from the desk and stretched, exciting Paimon.
“Did you finish?!” she nearly yelled, holding her fists in front of her at the ready to be thrust in the air at good news.
Aether smiled. “Yup,” he said, not clarifying at all that “finished” was only, well, finished, and not good. He didn’t need her to scold him for not being romantic enough, really.
Sure enough, she pumped her fists into the air. “Yes! Okay, Paimon thinks we should get lunch and then go see Venti! You can’t confess on an empty stomach or you’ll just throw up with nerves!”
Aether raised his brows. “But if there’s nothing in there to throw up, I won’t,” he said, smirking.
Paimon huffed. “That’s not how that works!”
Aether snickered. “Okay, we’ll go eat, I know you’re a bottomless pit. You’ve probably been starving since breakfast.”
“Yup!”
Aether snorted, gathering his things and heading out. After a quick bite to eat (well, Aether was quick, Paimon was still going when he decided to go ahead and go talk to Venti), he made his way to the plaza again where Venti was holding class.
He waited patiently for a break to be called and strode up, handing over his new poem.
“I really fixed it so the person I’m giving it to gets the message clearly,” he said matter-of-factly, staring intently into Venti’s multi-colored eyes—patterned just like his hair.
Venti grinned, taking the paper and reading it over.
Then it fell from his hands as his face froze in an expression of open-mouthed shock. Quickly, Aether grabbed the paper before the wind could take it away.
“So… So that poem, yesterday,” Venti stammered, flummoxed, and blushed when Aether nodded, “Oh my Me, I’m so sorry, Aether.”
Aether rubbed the back of his neck, also blushing. “So…” he said a bit awkwardly, wondering how to proceed from here.
Venti jumped slightly, a little too far into the air to be natural, and started nodding frantically.
“Yes! Yes, I would love to date you,” he said, finally answering the question that hung heavy in the air between the two of them, “You… You’ve done so much for me, and for my people, Aether. And you don’t even belong here. You have your sister to find, and you could’ve done so many other things besides help us, but you are. That’s worth… that’s priceless, Aether.”
He laughed a bit, hanging his head. “Of course I’d fall for a mortal,” he said, shaking his head and sending his braids flapping about.
Aether smiled, nudging Venti’s shoulder a bit. “Who said I was mortal?” he said softly, “Do you really think a mortal would be able to travel between so many worlds without any consequence? I’ve told you of numerous worlds I’ve been to, yet I apparently seem childlike enough to never get any fucking alcohol in this town, and so on… Was it really not obvious?”
Venti blinked. “...Huh. I guess I never thought of it that way,” he mused. “I guess… I always have had a hard time remembering how short the lives of mortals can be.”
His eyes gained a vacant, faraway look, and Aether gave him some time to come back from wherever he’d gone. It wasn’t right to try and jolt him out of it.
After a few moments, Venti shook his head again, launching himself at Aether and hugging him tightly. He burrowed his face into Aether’s chest.
“I’m so unspeakably happy,” he mumbled, “I love you, Aether, I really do.”
Aether choked up a bit, dipping his head to bury his face in Venti’s hat and wishing it were his hair.
“I’m glad,” he said, voice scratchy from trying not to cry.
“I’ll do everything in my power to help you,” Venti whispered, leaning back to look up at Aether with wide, determined eyes. “I know… I’m a pretty lazy Archon. But when my friends—when those I love —need help… I’m going to be there. We’ll find your sister. I promise.”
Furtively glancing around, making sure nobody was too close, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “And we’ll also make time for a lot of fucking.”
Aether snorted, laughing a bit in surprise at the frankness. “Definitely,” he agreed, keeping his voice just as low and smirking. “I’d say we should get started, but I think you have a class to resume.”
Venti pouted. “Can’t I just mooch off you? You get all that adventurer Mora,” he whined.
Aether shook his head. “Nope. Not when adventuring is expensive. You gotta have a job too, for now.” He tweaked Venti’s nose. “At least finish your course. We’ll talk about Mora again then, okay?”
Venti pouted further, then surged up and kissed Aether softly.
Aether made a surprised noise, but closed his eyes, leaning into it with a happy shiver, barely hearing the jingling of his Mora sack—
“Venti!” he said with a laugh, dancing away before Venti could steal his pouch from his belt, “Did you only confess so you could steal my money, Shady Bard?”
“No!” he replied, voice a bit shrill as he noticed a lot of people suddenly paying very close attention to them, “I was just having a bit of a jape with you!”
“Oh, so telling people you love them is funny now?” Aether said, still very amused and biting his lip to hide his laughter.
“No!” Venti insisted even louder, stepping closer, “The taking-your-Mora bit was the joke, I swear, I really do love you, Aether! I want to be with you, kiss you, feel you, talk and laugh with you, until we both grow old and have a bunch of kids and—!”
Aether beamed, sweeping Venti into a dip and a passionate kiss to cut him off, to the cheers and whistles around them.
“You really are a romantic,” he teased, watching Venti’s dazed expression.
“That was manipulation of the public, you know,” Venti sassed.
“Maybe, but it worked. Everyone’s happy for us. And perhaps your students could’ve used a little example that you’re not so perfect at love, either, despite your great advice.”
Venti pouted up at him again. “Ruuuude,” he whined, kissing Aether again, “But… I love you for it. You’re amazing, Aether.”
Aether lifted Venti back on his feet, intertwining their hands. “You’re pretty amazing yourself,” he said quietly.
They stood in silence for a few moments, just enjoying the moment, and then—
“So, ‘a bunch of kids’, huh?”
Venti gulped. “Well, I, ah, maybe not, like, a bunch, but some would be nice.”
“So you don’t want dozens of little ones running around?” Aether teased.
“Three at the most!” Venti said vehemently.
Aether snickered. “You’re so fun to tease,” he noted, pulling on one of Venti’s braids gently, “I love it. I love you. But you’d better get back to teaching. If you can focus.”
“Is that a challenge?” Venti raised his eyebrows.
“Sure, why not?” Aether shrugged. “Just meet me for dinner at Angel’s Share. I’m gonna run a couple of commissions nearby, so I’m not late.”
Venti leaned up to nuzzle at Aether’s cheek. “See ya at about 20:00?” he confirmed.
Aether nodded. “See you then. Cutie.”
“Farewell for now, my strong, sweet love,” Venti said, pulling away to gather his students together again.
Aether walked away. Oh, man, Paimon was going to be peeved she’d missed all the drama.