Work Text:
Xiao raised his hand to press the doorbell, the sun burning down onto his back mercilessly. However, before he was able to push it, the door in front of him opened already.
“Oh!” Lumine stopped abruptly, almost running into him while leaving the apartment complex. “Xiao, hey! Aether didn’t tell me you’d come over today.” She held the door open for him and nodded inside. “He’s been playing switch for the last three hours so you better make yourself comfortable.”
He was overwhelmed by the wave of information Lumine dumped on him in a few seconds only and before he was able to answer her, she has brought a gap between them already.
“I’m sorry, I’m late for my date with Ayaka. See you!” She waved at him with a cheerful smile but didn’t see Xiao waving back because she turned around before he had the chance to process her words.
When the door has closed behind him, Xiao took the stairs up to the apartment the twins shared. In front of the door he knocked, and waited for Aether to open the door for him. They didn’t meet up for any particular reason other than Aether wanting to show him his new game.
“Xiao!” Aether greeted him, opening the door way too energetic and grabbed his wrist to pull him inside. “Come on, I’m in the middle of a boss fight and it’s a-ma-zing!”
Stumbling into the apartment behind Aether, he barely managed to slip out of his shoes before his friend got too impatient and pulled him alongside into the living room. Xiao sat down next to Aether on the sofa, a pile of different chips and snacks bags on the table in front of them.
The TV on the wall showed an impressive graphic and the music starting once Aether left the pause screen was incredible as well. “What’s the story about?” Xiao asked and tried to follow Aether’s cursor on the TV and the actions he made his characters do.
“Oh, it’s the new spin-off from Fire Emblem.” Xiao knew Aether was a huge fan of the games and owned every single one of them, some even in different editions. “So we are saving the country from some evil powers, the usual you know?” Aether stretched over to grab the case of his game. “Inside is a booklet with all characters if you want to take a closer look at them.”
Xiao took the case and the booklet, skimming through it while he listened to Aether talking. He mentioned everything that has happened in each chapter so far and didn’t seem to miss any details. Adding all the strategies he came up with the development of his units in between. Xiao did understand only around half of it but the character design looked pleasing and hearing Aether talk about something he loved was calming.
Somewhere between the ‘and then I got a super strong bow’ and ‘but the avatar’s conversations seem to lead to big plot twists’, Xiao received a message from Zhongli. It wasn’t much, just Zhongli telling him that he would be home late because the business meeting would take longer, and he wasn’t sure if he would get the last train.
A wave of sadness washed through his heart because he was looking forward to seeing him again before the weekend was over. Zhongli’s trip was from Friday to Sunday, leaving Thursday evening already. It was the first time since they moved in together that they were separated for several days in a row.
Even Xiao would never say it out loud, he felt lonely without him and the apartment felt cold in the middle of summer.
The second message that followed, twisted Xiao’s stomach uncomfortably, and he felt all the warmth leaving his body. ‘Ajax offered to drive me home. Please don’t wait for me, take your medicine and don’t forget about dinner.’
“Xiao?” Aether waved in front of his face. “Are you listening?”
After blinking a few times, Xiao looked into the worried eyes of his friend and it took him a moment to remember that he was sitting next to Aether, in the twin’s apartment and Aether was still talking about Fire Emblem. “Ah, my bad, sorry, I was spacing out. What did you say?”
Aether squeezed his eyes at Xiao when he put his phone aside, taking a glimpse of the screen before it went black. “Did Zhongli text you? When is he coming home?”
The twist from his stomach now took over Xiao’s heart and it was hard to not brush the answer off. “He didn’t mention a time, just that I shouldn’t wait for him and that his coworker drives him home.”
“Hmm,” Aether didn’t avert his eyes from Xiao even he saw how uncomfortable Xiao felt. “Is there a problem then?”
Xiao stayed silent because, objectively, there wasn’t anything wrong with it. It was good that Zhongli didn’t need to be lucky to get back with the last train thanks to his coworker but Xiao didn’t want to talk about how it made him feel either. “No, there isn’t a problem.”
“Well then,” Aether fell back against the backseat of the sofa and put the controller of the switch aside, the credits rolling through on the TV screen. “What about ordering wraps for dinner then?”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
A second later, Xiao rubbed his forehead because Aether flipped his fingers against it. “You don’t even like wraps,” he scolded him. “You’ve been sulking and spacing out since Zhongli’s message, what’s up?”
There wasn’t an immediate answer from Xiao but at a point, he gave up with a long sigh. He knew better than anyone that Aether wouldn’t give up until Xiao got his mind free from whatever was bothering him before it would eat him away alive. And he was glad about that. Most of the time.
“It’s dumb.” Xiao answered eventually. “And it’s not like I have any saying here anyway.”
Aether waited for more but when nothing came for several minutes, he asked: “Nothing you feel is dumb, Xiao. So tell me, what's going on in your mind?” His voice and eyes were softening, and he slipped closer to Xiao, showing him he wasn’t alone, he didn’t need to fight his thoughts alone.
“It’s nothing new, business trips are happening all the time but it was the first time it was a full weekend.” Xiao paused for a moment. “And I don’t want him to be so close to Zhongli.”
The silence between the two of them stretched out, Xiao feeling more and more uncomfortable, the words hanging between them and Aether not quite sure what he was supposed to say.
“Who?”
Xiao didn’t want to use that man’s name but that was all he knew from him. “Ajax.”
“Oh-” Someone seemed to have understood what was going on here. “You’re jealous!”
The heat flaming up in Xiao’s face was answer enough, the most honest answer, but he still denied it. “I’m not jealous!” he hissed. “At all! He just gives him that- that weird, flirty look and I don’t like it!”
Aether squeezed his eyes at Xiao.
“We’re just friends!”
A groan escaped Aether. “Are you joking?” he asked then, “Zhongli looks at you like you’re his entire world! Your feelings are mutual!”
The blush on Xiao’s face deepened, and he was unable to give a snippy answer back. He never told Aether, or anyone else, about his feelings for Zhongli but it was no surprise to Xiao that he knew about them. “Don’t say this to cheer me up.”
It was a weak comeback, Xiao knew. Aether and Lumine always knew what was going on.
“I wouldn’t do that and you know that, Xiao.” Aether wrapped his arms around Xiao, a little bit clumsy due to their sitting positions. “I would never lie to you, and you shouldn’t lie to yourself and accept your feelings for Zhongli.”
Not knowing what he was supposed to do with his arms, they were just hanging down next to Xiao’s body.
“How far is it away?” Aether asked. “Where the trip was, I mean.”
Xiao was confused. “Around four and a half hours?” Why did he want to know that now, out of nowhere?
“Alright,” Aether let go of Xiao and fell back on his butt, grabbing Xiao’s phone and holding it in front of him. “You call Zhongli and tell him to wait for you because you have something to tell him, and I’ll grab some fresh clothes and the car keys.”
In disbelief, Xiao was merely able to stare at Aether in front of him before he breathed his answer out: “Aether, no, we can’t, that’s-”
“Crazy? Yes, it is. But what do we have to lose?” For a moment, Aether and Xiao just sat there. It was a rhetorical question. “Well, Lumine will kill us both,” Aether said then, and the horror was written all over his face. “For not bringing her with us and leaving her out of everything, but we do it anyway because I don’t want to see you sulking until Zhongli is home.”
Xiao’s mind was blank and his heart was beating fast.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Aether bumped his fist against Xiao’s shoulder. “You’ll have around five hours to think about your words, better use them wisely.”