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A week after they break up, Xiao moves back to Liyue.
"It's probably temporary," Lumine says, carefully avoiding his eyes. Venti can see Twitter opened up on her phone. He has Twitter too, but he's taking a break from social media, from everything really. Which is why he's here, bumming around Aether and Lumine's like he owns the place. He holds his guitar a little closer as he watches the rain pour against the window from his spot on the floor.
"He's staying at Zhongli and Childe's," Lumine continues before snorting. She grins at him from the couch. "Thought they hated each other."
Venti keeps strumming. He grins back. "Childe and Xiao? They get along well enough with Zhongli acting as a buffer. Childe doesn't even really dislike him." He looks back down at his fingers against strings. "All one-sided on Xiao's part."
Lumine doesn't answer right away. It would be normal, if not for what they – what everyone knows happened a week prior. She must think it's cruel, how easily that last sentence escapes his lips. She must regret taking his side, seeing how... chipper he is. Venti saves her from the burden of having to respond.
"I hope he has fun. That he comes back soon. Here's boring without him."
Lumine stares. Her gaze is unreadable. She looks away after lightning lights up the sky.
"I hope so too."
When it becomes clear that Xiao isn't coming back, Venti takes the plunge and decides to shoot him a message. He's waited long enough. Two months of silence is far too lengthy. He'd've messaged sooner honestly, but everyone told him not to. Just like they'd told Venti to give Xiao space the first few days. Pft. Like that needed to be said.
(They always tell him he carries himself like an airhead. Venti's a lot smarter than that. He knows why Xiao left. He knows why Zhongli barely texts him nowadays. He hadn't asked Lumine if Xiao seemed happy because he'd known the answer to that too.)
Hi, Xiao! How's Liyue?
Xiao leaves him on read for three days and sixteen hours. Venti knows this because it takes the same amount of time to write his new song, appropriately titled i'm sorry. He crumples the paper the lyrics are written on an hour after he'd finished writing it. He already knows the words by heart.
Fine. Settling back in. Zhongli and Childe gave me their extra room.
Oh, I remember that one! Didn't you hate it though? Said the window let the sunlight shine on your eyes too much.
The bed was right next to the window, Venti recalls. He remembers sleeping against Xiao, curled up in warm arms and waking up to grumbles about how it was always too bright.
I moved the bed, is Xiao's reply, three hours later.
Nice! Did you do any more redecorating?
Venti makes the mistake of thinking they're friends again. When Xiao replies next, it's faster and that shouldn't make his heart sink but the response does.
I can't do this.
Venti takes the paper with the lyrics from the wastebasket and burns it instead. Just because he feels like it. There's something therapeutic about seeing smoke blow up into the sky. Even if it goes against his love for good, clean air. The smoke is free this way and so is Venti from ever having to look at physical proof that Xiao is hurting somewhere when Venti's all but moved on.
I'm sorry, he sings into the night before calling Diluc and Kaeya, so he can get drunk on the ridiculously expensive alcohol they keep in their wine cellar.
Venti respects Xiao and his processes, loves him because of them. Xiao deserves space. He deserves time. He deserves to cope in whatever way he sees fit. Just like Venti is going to do now. By chugging alcohol until he passes out.
Is it really coping though, when there's not much to cope with?
"You seem happier," Jean tells him, just as he's on the brink of oblivion. Diluc, Kaeya, and Lisa's bickering is all but a distant hum. "More free, I mean. Was.... Was it really so bad?"
It's a loaded question. One he's not really capable of giving a coherent answer to right now. He answers a different question instead.
"I was happy. I loved him."
I still do. I always will. Just not... not-
He chokes on all that he cannot say and Jean's puzzled gaze is the last thing he sees before blacking out completely.
He never gives her an answer. She probably thinks something in the way he acted that night is answer enough but it's not. No one else asks again though, so the answer he's carefully crafted is only known to him. One month. Two months. In that time, he realizes he didn't exactly lie to Jean. In the twisted sense that he is happier now and that he still loves Xiao.
For a while, things are okay. Venti busks, he drinks, he plays, he lives his best life until that ever present guilt that usually stays dormant within him claws itself out from the depths when Zhongli calls him one night.
"We're coming to visit Mondstadt." Zhongli, as usual, sounds cordial and polite over the phone, but there's a weight there. Venti can tell by the inflection. "All three of us."
A lightbulb goes off in Venti’s head. He knows who consists of the three. Enough pictures on Instagram and tweets tell him exactly who composed this fabled three.
"Weird way to give me a heads up, you blockhead."
Zhongli is unruffled. "I only wish to inform you, so that you aren't surprised. We plan on coming to one of your shows."
"You can say his name, you know," Venti says instead of asking is that really a good idea? "I'm not going to shrivel up and die or something."
Zhongli is silent for so long he almost thinks the call's been dropped, but sounds of shoes on hardwood floors and the clicking of doors have Venti waiting on the line.
"Why I did not mention him specifically was not for your sake. Xiao and I were in the same room."
Venti looks up at the ceiling of his own room. "And you didn't want him to know you were talking to me."
"No, I did not."
There's a lot of things to dissect here, but Venti can't help but laugh in relief. Because of course it's not for his sake. Zhongli – bless him, Zhongli knows him and sometimes it's scary how well he does, but right now Venti's just grateful. The ceiling is starting to blur. Ah, his eyes are glistening. He'd hurt Xiao so much. He brings a hand over his head and tries to smile.
"Can't wait to see you guys again. Please bring alcohol."
"I'll see if I have anything that will last more than ten seconds."
The conversation ends with no fanfare. Zhongli never asks him if he's doing alright, how he's coping nor does he tell him how Xiao is doing. He knows better. Venti is thankful, but it makes him sick. Because Zhongli isn't the person he owes that to.
He sees that person for the first time in months at a decent club under Diluc's name with the glare of multi-colored stage lights on him. Venti's music blasts from speakers and all around him are the shouts of excited clubgoers. He is looking at only one in particular.
Xiao looks more or less the same. If Venti didn't know any better, he'd think the guy was perfectly fine, but he does. He notices it in the way Xiao holds his gaze and never moves from his spot in the crowd. Venti nearly starts singing i'm sorry right then and there, but no one wants that.
(No one needs a front row seat to what’s become of their relationship.)
It's easy to slip away after. The night is pitch black and everyone is busy catching up with each other and enjoying the absence of tension that comes with the absence of him. He slips out of the backdoor he'd asked Diluc to keep open for him and slides down against the wall, guitar in hand. Away from amber eyes.
It's not that he can't face Xiao. No, he'd barged in his apartment the day after they'd broken up to have drinks with him and it wasn't until after the trip to the bar does Zhongli call him up to say that that was unbelievably stupid of him. An eye opener, considering this was Zhongli, the biggest blockhead ever to exist.
(It hadn't clicked then. Just how much of Xiao's puffy red eyes were his fault. How much light he'd taken away from them and the blood on his hands.)
"He can't say no to you," Zhongli had told him after Diluc finally kicked Venti and his boyf– his ex out of the bar that night. The alcohol had made the words ring so loudly. It was as if Zhongli was in the room with them, not an entire plane ride away. "You have to give him space."
"But we broke up." Xiao had curled up on his lap that night. Somehow, he'd gotten more smashed than Venti. Venti's pants were wet with tears. "He can say no to me."
Zhongli had sighed then and Venti had felt the weight of it from even miles away.
"I'm afraid that isn't how it works."
(So he had lied. Venti had been an airhead at first. People did need to tell him to leave Xiao alone, to see the bigger picture, what he'd done. How Xiao had been shattered and what the pieces Venti still has in his hands mean. He knows better now. He hopes he does.)
So it's not that he can't face Xiao. It's that Xiao can't face him. He's afraid that might still be the case. Because it's been four months and all Venti has wanted to do since day one is be his friend again.
"Hey– uh, you okay?"
The man looks like Diluc, but not quite. A distant relative perhaps. Attractive all the same. He is examining Venti with concerned eyes and the familiarity of being pinned down by that gaze has Venti standing up from the floor a little too quickly. He staggers. The man catches him.
"Sorry, sorry." Venti's pretty sure he's drunk and he is a very wobbly drunk, so he holds on for dear life. "Just needed some fresh air. Thank you. For checking in and catching me. Did Diluc put you up to it?"
"Yeah, I'm a cousin-"
"I knew it."
The man laughs, swaying with him. "That obvious?"
"The red hair gives it away."
"It always does," he says before adjusting his grip on Venti's waist, " do you maybe want to-"
"Excuse me."
Venti hasn't heard that voice in four months. It sends chills down his spine.
"Xiao."
The lights from the club light up his ex-boyfriend's figure from behind. Expression contorted into a fierce glare and the shadows falling just right on his face, Xiao’s entire demeanor is probably what has Diluc's cousin detaching himself so quickly. Venti grabs onto a wall just in time.
It's been so long.
"Oho! Your face scared him to stone, Xiao! New achievement accomplished!"
Hu Tao pops up from behind Xiao, grinning, blissfully ignorant of the tension. She stares at Venti and throws in a little wave he weakly returns before staring at Diluc’s cousin. Then back at Xiao. She makes a decision.
"Diluc was looking for you! Just came to bring you over," she chirps, taking the man's hand and dragging him away. "Hope you both work things out!" There's something in the way she touches Xiao's shoulder as she leaves that tells Venti she definitely means it.
The door slams shut. Xiao is staring at Venti. Venti is staring at Xiao. History wafts up in the air and the silence rings.
"It's great to see you again." Venti smiles at him, stepping closer.
"You too."
"Eh? So curt! It's been a while, hasn't it? I missed you."
Xiao recoils ever so slightly. He looks away, clenching his fists. He still looks so handsome. Hu Tao did a great job with his eyeshadow and, Venti's guessing, the outfit too. Venti waits, but a minute passes and Xiao still has yet to say a word.
Venti steps closer. "We should talk more! You ignore my texts so often these days." Venti takes Xiao's hands. They're shaking. "I really did miss you," he says softly.
"I've been busy."
Venti perks up. "Oh? With what? New friends?"
Xiao still isn't looking at him. "A few."
"That's great! How's living with Childe?"
"Tolerable."
"Does he pay rent for everyone? I bet he doe-"
Xiao yanks his hands away. Venti deflates.
"I can't do this."
Venti feels his heart sink.
"Xiao, I still want to be friends."
"And I still love you." His voice cracks on the word love. He is still shaking. Venti doesn't have to hold his hands to know. "So much."
"Xiao-"
"Was it really so easy? Moving on?"
He doesn't sound mad. Defeated, if anything. As if he's just an empty shell and it hurts Venti to see what he's done.
"I still love you, you know."
Xiao tenses. "Then wh-"
"Just not in the way you love me. I... I don't think I was ever capable. I'm a little messed up like that." Venti tries for a smile, but it's sad. "You were too good to me. You never said no to me. That's when it became obvious. You loved me too much, you forgot about yourself. And you don't deserve that from someone who can't even love you in the same capacity."
Venti takes another step closer. They're only an arms length away.
"You deserve so much more, Xiao. I hope you know that."
(He so desperately hopes. Because being subjected to Xiao's love was suffocating. Drowning. Overwhelming. Venti has never- could never deserve that. Being subjected to Xiao's love meant watching him disappear until Venti was all that was left. It meant words slowly ringing hollow, eyes losing their light, and silence that cut.
Being subjected to Xiao's love meant losing Xiao.)
Xiao is silent for a long time, but he doesn't step back. He doesn't move at all, in fact. His gaze is fixed on the ground and his knuckles are turning white and Venti just wants to hug him. So badly. Like before.
"I need time to think," Xiao finally says, sounding more than a little choked. "I need to go."
So.
Venti lets him go.
And he doesn't hear back for days. Weeks. A month. Xiao flies back to Liyue and life goes back to normal. He's back to talking to Zhongli more often now and his friends no longer look at him like he's some heartless airhead or a pitiable little idiot. Recovering. They all are. The heaviness in his heart slowly starts to dissipate at a snail's pace, but it's going. Going. Going.
He never forgets the words to i’m sorry. He doesn’t think he can. Whenever he sings it, he sings it for Xiao and desperately hopes he is doing well wherever he may be.
He almost thinks Xiao's never coming back until he shows up at his doorstep one day. He looks better, much like he did when they started dating. Venti feels hope light up inside him like a fire.
"I think," Xiao holds his gaze, "I can do friends now."
Venti smiles so wide his cheeks hurt. He crosses the threshold and takes Xiao’s hands.
"I mean that'd definitely be a little complicated,” he says, laughing, “so maybe just friends?"
Xiao blinks before getting the joke and chuckling lowly.
It's the most beautiful thing Venti's heard in a long while.