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The thunder rumbled quite loudly, making Xie Yuchen jolt awake. His cheek hurt and he was pretty sure he got a red mark on his face from napping on his fist, and for a moment he felt as if he didn’t sleep at all, but fought off some thugs. His whole back ached, but the most uncomfortable things were his legs. He couldn’t feel them anymore.
A quick glance downwards provided him with an answer for that question. A snoring Hei Xiazi had fallen from his previous sitting position, and got comfortable with his head on his lap. Xie Yuchen tried to be mad for a good twenty seconds, then broke into a fond smile, trying to move the hand that didn’t hurt from his unexpected nap to pet the other man’s hair, but he found he couldn’t move it at all: Hei Xiazi had a deathly grip on it, keeping it close to his chest.
Xie Yuchen never expected that things would lead to this. When he met Hei Xiazi back then, a purely coincidental meeting, he had thought they would end up killing the other someday. He could never have guessed the both of them would feel comfortable letting their guard down to the point of falling asleep around each other.
Truth be told, Xie Yuchen didn’t dare wishing for any of that. Feeling secure around someone wasn’t something he was used to. Even near his childhood friends, Huo XiuXiu and Wu Xie, he couldn’t let his guard down, afraid they would take advantage of him, or that he would cause them some harm. He didn’t even dare go out and have fun with trusted friends, too afraid that could be seen as a weakness, much less letting his walls down around someone.
But he should’ve known that Hei Xiazi was set to derail everything in his life the moment he met him, because they were actually the same: if he felt scared when he caught himself worrying a little too much about the man in glasses, he could at least be reassured by the simple knowledge that the other felt the same.
Hei Xiazi walked into his neatly organised life and made a mess of it. Similarly, he walked into Hei Xiazi’s and put everything in the right place instead. It was scary for both of them, they couldn’t find what they needed anymore, perhaps because they carried it with them and lost it once they made a mess out of the other’s life.
Maybe they left it there on purpose, in a promise of “I won’t leave, you have something of mine”
Xie Yuchen curled a strand of Hei Xiazi’s hair, and smiled fondly when the other stirred slightly under his touch. He would never bend down and kiss him, but he hoped the smile on his lips would be telling enough.
He saw the other man’s eyes twitch and then slowly open, staring down blearily at him.
Xie Yuchen’s heart felt way too small to contain all of his feelings, but he refused to let them spill over, even by a bit. He would keep them all safely in his chest, a visual record of all the other’s most vulnerable moments. Something only he could keep, perhaps the piece Hei Xiazi left for him. Xie Yuchen looked into Hei Xiazi’s eyes, the same eyes that could kill anyone who looked at them, but not him, and let the weakness of the other settle in his heart.
“Did I wake you up?” he asked, his voice unbearably soft, barely above a whisper. Hei Xiazi looked around, letting the question slowly register in his drowsy brain.
“No, it was the thunder” he croaked out, his throat still refusing to collaborate. “I didn’t even mean to fall asleep, it’s fine” he added after coughing a little, when Xie Yuchen frowned slightly.
Hei Xiazi pulled himself up, but Yuchen immediately pushed him down again, with a light touch on his chest.
“Stay, it’s comfortable” he lied, because why would he give up the warmth of the other, and why would he want to break the moment? No one would get hurt if they stood like that for a bit longer, wouldn’t they?
Hei Xiazi laughed lightly. “I could feel your legs moving while I woke up, it really mustn’t be that comfortable. Let me get up, I’ll rest my head on your shoulder”
And that was good enough, right? What Xie Yuchen craved was closeness, anyway. Because all those years ago he might’ve thought about Hei Xiazi as someone who he could easily get rid of, another liability in his life to put right next to the countless people he already knew. But now? Now it was so incredibly different, sitting in his living room, the thunder loudly rumbling before the lighting came, adding a more sharp and cold light to counter the warm one coming from the table lamp next to him, Hei Xiazi became someone he needed close. The lack of warmth on most nights, when the other was away for work, was suffocating.
He nodded, helping the man sit up by placing an hand on his lower back, and then wrapping his arms around him as soon as he got his head on his shoulder.
Hei Xiazi laughed softly near his hear. “Clingy tonight, huh? What happened Hua’er, did you have a bad dream?”
Xie Yuchen closed his eyes and shook his head. He knew the other was lightly making fun of him, but he got used to it at this point, this was their whole dynamic. Hei Xiazi knew that he was showing a softer side now, and he was giving him an easy way out but, for one night, Xie Yuchen allowed himself to be vulnerable.
“It’s just nice to have you around” he murmured, his words low. There was something left unspoken there, a sentence left hanging in the silence, but perhaps the words were buried too deep in his throat and would never come out. Luckily, Hei Xiazi knew him inside out.
He meant to say “I never let anyone this close”. He was saying “I trust you more than anyone else”. The unspoken “I’ve been lonely for far too long” hung by his lips, tightly pressed against Hei Xiazi’s head, in an almost there kiss.
“I won’t go anywhere” Hei Xiazi replied, adjusting his position, his long legs shifting farther away from the sofa.
Perhaps the roles should’ve been inverted, Xie Yuchen was really too short to let the other man rest on his shoulder. But in their silly fight for power, Hei Xiazi had always been the one being held. He didn’t mind, and Xie Yuchen wasn’t used to it anyway, since he grew up to be someone who could only protect himself, he would never let anyone else shield him, be it from zombies in abandoned tombs or from his own weaknesses. He could only hold others and hope he wouldn’t let go of them at the last moment.
Xie Yuchen hummed, finally placing the kiss he had been holding on the top of the taller man’s head. “Thank you” was engraved in the kiss that came right after, placed on the man’s forehead. “Don’t ever leave me” came right after, with a kiss right below the other’s eye. A rather pathetic “Please” was left on his nose, and then came the “I love you”, on Hei Xiazi’s lips.
They kissed for a while, little pecks broken off with little smiles.
Xie Yuchen had left softness behind the moment his father died and he became the head of the Xie family. Feelings, he found out, were ephemeral, lasting only a split second. He didn’t let people hang around for enough time to trust them with something so delicate.
But Hei Xiazi walked right into his life and just stood there. He didn’t ever leave, and he took his feelings with both hands and careful fingers, never afraid of dropping them, not because he didn’t care about them, like Xie Yuchen feared, but because he knew he could never do that.
Xie Yuchen’s feelings stuck to his hands like glue, and he let them. They were delicate like paper, soft like the steps Xie Yuchen took when he danced, yet powerful like his voice when he sang. They weren’t loud, but they were strong, and Hei Xiazi took them as they were, just the way Yuchen modelled them, like an artist does with clay, and held them in his hands like they were the most beautiful piece of art in the whole world. Perhaps because they were Yuchen’s. Perhaps because he truly thought that. Maybe both.
Hei Xiazi lifted his head from his shoulder and put an hand at the back of Yuchen’s neck, slightly pushing him to let his forehead fall on his shoulder.
“You must be tired,” he spoke softly, letting his fingers play with the ends of Xie Yuchen’s hair, his palm tickling the shorter hair on his neck. “Sleep a little. I’ll be right here”
Xie Yuchen breathed in, the scent of Hei Xiazi quickly filling his nose, then smiled. It came quickly and left even quicker, filling the split second it took for him to close his eyes and hide in the crook of Hei Xiazi’s neck.
The thunder rumbled, softer this time, and the rain finally started pouring, after being delayed for the past half an hour. Xie Yuchen kissed the skin on Hei Xiazi’s neck, the last conscious decision he remembered taking before falling asleep.