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The heat is oppressive, and you are suffering.
Summers are always your least favourite part of the year; you sweat through your clothes even when you’re shaded by a parasol, you chomp on popsicle after popsicle and give yourself endless headaches because of it, and most days you try to nap through the worst of the heat, but that’s not something you can do forever.
You’re breathless and panting by the time you reach the top of Mount Tianheng, and you sling your rucksack off of your shoulder to rummage in it and find a popsicle, perfectly frozen where it’s nestled beside your vision. You stick it in your mouth, grab a paper fan and try to figure out the best place to sit for some shade.
The heat is oppressive, and you are suffering, and Xingqiu does not know how badly you are suffering.
Xingqiu enjoys the weather when it’s like this and he relishes the chance to get out and about. He enjoys wandering the markets or stopping for tea or food at one of the many vendors in town. It isn’t that you don’t enjoy those things, because you do. It’s just that a trip to Dragonspine sounds like it might be a good idea. Your aversion to hot things is not limited to food, and the sun threatens to ruin your entire August.
Despite his fondness for the city, Xingqiu says there’s nothing quite like reading a good book under a tree with a view of the Harbour. You wonder sometimes if he’s just saying it because he knows his tastes are expensive. You wonder if he’s just saying it because he knows you can’t keep up with him and don’t want him to take pity on you.
But then you look at him as he leans against the tree trunk. His legs are crossed in front of him, pale even though he’s worn shorts all summer. His hair falls in front of his eyes and he tucks the strands that he can behind his ear. It’s long enough now that he really ought to invest in a hair tie, and you think about telling him this, but when you mentioned it off-handedly to Hu Tao a few days ago she got that devilish smirk on her lips and said, “Oho? Does it bother you? Does it make you want to run your hands through it? Don’t you want to touch it and find out if it’s as soft as it looks?” and you can’t not think about it now.
And worst of all, or best of all, he’s expressive as he reads. A small smile here, furrowed eyebrows when he’s concentrating, pink lips falling open with the tiniest of gasps at plot twists.
You find yourself watching him, even when you’re supposed to be reading a book of your own. And he catches you doing it, over and over and over, and he looks at you with big amber eyes, and he laughs and returns to his reading with a kind of smile that wasn’t there before.
And you don’t know what it means.
The heat is oppressive, and you are suffering, and Xingqiu does not know how badly you are suffering, and he is in fact the cause of at least half of the suffering in question.
After you eat the lunch that you’d packed to share, he declares that he’s going to stretch his legs. You opt to stay behind; the sun is at its highest, and you’ve taken to laying flat on your back on the grass beneath the tree in just your undershirt to try and stay cool. He bends down and pats you on the head as he leaves.
You’re upright again when he returns, though at first he looks nothing more than a distant mirage, image distorted in the distance with how the heat bends the air.
But then he is beside you and you know that he is not a mirage, and he holds a plump yellow berry to your mouth and you lick it in with your tongue. Your lips catch on his fingertips and he doesn’t pull away immediately. He stares at you. You stare back until you can’t take it any longer. You pull away.
You watch him shove a whole handful of berries into his mouth. Yellow juice runs from the corners of his lips. You have an urge to lean forward and lick it off.
But you stamp that feeling down. You watch as his tongue licks the errant juice back into his mouth, and you stamp down another feeling, too, the way you stamp down so much, so often.
You reach into your backpack for another popsicle and find it half melted. Xingqiu laughs at you again.
The heat is oppressive, and you are suffering, and Xingqiu does not know how badly you are suffering, and he is in fact the cause of at least half of the suffering in question, and you are sure you are losing it.
The sun is setting when Xingqiu nudges you with his foot. “We should head back,” he says. You nod and pack your things.
He takes your hand in his once you’ve reached flat ground. You’re sweaty and you’re sure it must feel gross, but he says nothing, no, he flicks his eyes to the side to look at you, and he catches yours flicked to look at him, and he gets that smile on his face again.
You wonder if you’re the only person he smiles like that for.
He does not drop your hand once you’re back in the city. He does not drop it until he is at his front door, in fact, and you are sure you must have heatstroke and are hallucinating this whole thing, despite your best efforts at cooling the air around you all day, and the sheer quantity of ice and popsicles you’ve consumed.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” You say.
Xingqiu doesn’t say anything for a moment; instead he looks at you, looks up at you, and you feel as though you are on display. He tiptoes up and presses a peck to your clammy cheek, hand resting on the other. “See you tomorrow, Yunyun,” he says, like it’s nothing.
You watch in a daze as he goes.
The heat is still oppressive, and you are still suffering, and Xingqiu probably does not know how badly you are suffering. He is in fact still the cause of at least half of the suffering in question, and you are still sure you are losing it.
But if this is what losing it is like, perhaps it isn’t all that terrible.