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Chongyun tries to be rational about most things. He tries really hard, because the outcome of him not trying would be catastrophic.
Xingqiu, obviously, does not qualify under most things.
Xingqiu drapes himself over Chongyun’s back and whines into his ear in a way that is entirely unbecoming of the second son of the Feiyun Commerce Guild. Xingqiu hates carrots and makes the same exact face every single time Chongyun tells him he’s busy. Xingqiu doesn’t ask, when it comes to Chongyun.
He demands. Playfully perhaps, but they are demands. Plain and simple. The sun shines each day, and Xingqiu demands things from Chongyun. Things like being read to, for instance.
“Please,” he says, dragging the word out to thrice its usual length. They’re alone now, there’s really no need for the theatrics, but Chongyun doubts Xingqiu will ever give up his flair for the dramatic.
Writers.
“No,” Chongyun says firmly, because—
He knows what will happen. Xingqiu has picked up a strange form of diplomacy from his family over the years. He likes to start small, simple. Something like read to me. And what it actually means is, of course, give me your undivided attention until I don’t want it anymore.
The second part doesn’t seem to apply to Chongyun, though. Xingqiu is always eager for his attention, and Chongyun has to try really, really hard not to think about that. It’s enough to get him to start overheating.
It’s horrible.
Chongyun doesn’t know if Xingqiu realizes. He’s always been eerily perceptive, but surely he wouldn’t torment him like this if he knew. Him trying to sneak Jueyun Chilies into Chongyun’s meals is one thing, and it’s quite another when he plops his head down onto Chongyun’s lap and makes a show of getting comfortable.
None of this would be a problem if Chongyun wasn’t a coward, though. If he wasn’t the kind of person to keep his feelings tightly clutched to his chest and never dare speak them aloud. Pining, Xiangling calls it, usually right before she scoffs and tells him she’ll stop giving him discounts if he doesn’t do something about it. Thankfully, she’s too nice to follow through.
As much as Chongyun loves her for going out of her way to make Inazuman food for him, he knows that if she ever put her foot down, he’d simply have to give up his noodles.
The prospect of facing rejection, of watching the light in Xingqiu’s eyes dim into shock and permanently change how he regards Chongyun is—terrifying. He’d much rather not say anything.
So.
Chongyun runs his hands through Xingqiu’s hair—just once, because that’s all the indulgence he can allow himself—and clears his throat. “We could—we could do something else?”
Xingqiu looks up at him with a smile. “Such as what, my dearest Chongyun?”
My dearest. Selfishly, Chongyun lingers on that. He wants it to be true. Wants to be dear to Xingqiu. Wants to be—well. Wants it all, really. Everything, when it’s about Xingqiu. Wants to be by his side for the rest of his life, even if he can only dare think this when Xingqiu makes it impossible for him not to.
“Whatever you want,” Chongyun says. Means it. Archons, he’s in over his head.
Xingqiu arches an eyebrow. “Whatever I want?” he echoes.
Chongyun swallows. “Yes,” he says. “Anything.”
“Wouldn’t that include being read to, then?”
“Xingqiu—”
“Read to me, Chongyun. I like listening to your voice.”
Not for the first time in his life, Chongyun catches himself staring at Xingqiu’s mouth, catches himself thinking I want to kiss him.
He can’t, though. That’s the issue. He could never do something like that to Xingqiu. Could never try to unfairly take what doesn’t belong to him.
Chongyun sighs. He recognizes a lost battle. “What do you want me to read?”
Xingqiu’s smile grows brighter. “You truly are the best,” he says. “Hm. How about…”
(At least holding up a book will help cover the red on his cheeks.)
…
“Are you dumb?” Xiangling asks.
Chongyun blinks at his bowl of noodles. “Excuse me?”
“Young and Hopelessly Smitten, Chongyun,” she says, leaning over the counter to flick him on the forehead. Ouch. “Young and Hopelessly Smitten.”
“Oh,” Chongyun says. “That.”
“Yes,” Xiangling echoes impatiently. “That.”
“Wait, how did you—I thought you had left already?”
“I have my ways,” Xiangling says. “Look, Chongyun, you’re my friend and I love you, but you really—you can’t be this obtuse.”
“I’m not—”
“Xingqiu likes you. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know. I like him too. We—we’re friends. He’s—I mean, I—I want—,”
Xiangling raises an eyebrow at him. “Yes?”
“I want him to be happy,” Chongyun says softly. “He deserves to be happy.”
Xiangling sighs, a hand rubbing at her forehead. “Well, then go make him happy.”
“Me? But I don’t—”
“Yes, you,” Xiangling insists, fiercely enough that it makes Chongyun genuinely fear for the safety of his food. “What are you so afraid of, anyway?”
Ah.
That’s—
It’s a fair question, all things considered.
Xingqiu is his best friend. Surely that wouldn’t change. What is Chongyun afraid of?
(Probably that Xingqiu will stop holding his hand when no one else is around, that he will stop clinging to Chongyun at every given opportunity, that Chongyun will no longer be the first person Xingqiu comes to when he wants someone to go along with his latest whim.
Of losing Xingqiu for good in all the ways that matter, if Chongyun had to guess. You know, off the top of his head.)
“Everything,” Chongyun admits, slumping in his stool. He tries to reach for his bowl of noodles, but, predictably perhaps, Xiangling doesn’t let him.
“You’re going to have to be a little braver than that if you want me to keep feeding you,” she says. It’s an old threat, but the determination in her gaze is very much new.
“Why me?” Chongyun laments, staring wistfully at the noodles she’s taken captive.
Xiangling stares. “Xingqiu could go through every single book in Liyue before learning how to ask for what he wants,” she says. “You know he would.”
Chongyun can’t argue with that. Everything Xingqiu’s taken for himself, he’s taken in secret. He’s a best-selling author in another country under a pen-name, he reads his martial arts books under the covers and keeps them tucked under his bed, and he can usually spare the time he has to spend with Chongyun because he’s found a way to surreptitiously delegate his duties for the day.
Of course he doesn’t know how to look someone in the eye and ask plainly for what he wants. Chongyun wouldn’t either, in his stead.
But Chongyun has spent most of his life staring directly at what he was told he couldn’t do, and doing it anyway. Quietly, and to his own detriment, perhaps, but he has yet to back down from a challenge.
And, even if the thought of Xingqiu makes his clenched hands shake in his lap like nothing else, he decides then and there that he’s going to try. He’s going to do his best, and hope it suffices.
…
Granted, Chongyun needs a plan of action. (Xiangling’s phrasing, said as she gleefully rubbed her hands together before handing Chongyun back his food.)
It would be best to minimize the potential for failure on his part as much as possible, so perhaps—a gesture? Something that leaves no room for ambiguity. No room for Chongyun to trip over his own tongue before overheating to death, either.
Xingqiu’s birthday is coming up, but he’s already read every book that has ever entered the borders of Liyue, placed advance orders for the ones about to, and he’s far from wanting for material things in general. Chongyun has always chosen the sentimental route with gifts. Friendship tassels. I appreciate you as a friend is a lot easier to convey via gifts than I love you so much my body feels like it can’t bear it, though.
Nuance, as Xingqiu would say. Nuance is important.
Maybe Chongyun should simply ask him what he wants.
But that might ruin the sentiment, and besides—Xingqiu has always taken special pleasure in causing Chongyun minor inconveniences, in sitting back and covering his laughter with a dainty palm as Chongyun does his very best to run through whatever hoops Xingqiu deems necessary.
(Xiangling called him whipped once, and, privately, Chongyun sees her point.)
Anyway, the point here is—
Chongyun needs to get this right. By himself. Because Xingqiu—Xingqiu means a lot to him, and he needs to be made aware of that. Properly.
…
Xingqiu, in typical Xingqiu fashion, ruins all of Chongyun’s careful planning by choosing to be entirely unpredictable. Not that Chongyun’s careful planning had yielded many fruits thus far, but—
Still.
It’s the principle of the matter.
(Chongyun spent three hours at Wanwen Bookhouse browsing through their 100 Gift Ideas for Your Special Someone catalog, only to come up empty, and have to duck under a bookshelf so Xingqiu wouldn’t spot him when he stopped by.)
“Chongyun,” Xingqiu says now, tugging at Chongyun’s sleeve.
Chongyun’s throat feels inexplicably dry. “Yes?”
“It’s my birthday.”
“I know,” Chongyun says. “I was trying—I meant, I mean—happy birthday, Xingqiu.”
“Thank you,” Xingqiu asks. He waits for a bit before asking, rather bluntly, “So? Where’s my gift?”
Chongyun fights the urge to smile. Moments like these, when Xingqiu fully gives in, when his prim and proper façade slips, shows all the beautifully flawed bits underneath, make him want to cup his cheeks and squish. To call him one of those ridiculous pet names he’s overheard couples walking together along the harbor use like baby or sweetheart or just—mine.
But that’s not—
Chongyun shakes his head. “I didn’t know what to get you,” he admits. “You have—well, you could have everything. Anything you wanted.”
Xingqiu looks at him. “Not everything,” he says, sounding strangely wistful for a single heartbeat, and then— “Unless—I mean, I suppose you could help. With that. If—if you feel predisposed.”
“Sure,” Chongyun says immediately.
(Whipped, echoes Xiangling’s voice inside his head.)
Xingqiu takes a deep breath. “You’re my best friend,” he says, as if this is something that could have somehow slipped Chongyun’s mind.
“I know,” Chongyun says. “You are—you’re mine too.”
Without warning (without time for Chongyun’s frail heart to prepare), Xingqiu reaches forward, and takes both of Chongyun’s hands into his own. “There is something,” he confesses, “that I’ve always wanted.”
He’s worrying at his bottom lip, and, suddenly, Chongyun can only think about reaching forward as well, about running his tongue over the reddened spot until he knows what Xingqiu tastes like by memory alone.
His wants must somehow morph into a full-blown auditory hallucination, because what Xingqiu says next is— “A kiss. Would—would you kiss me, Chongyun?”
“What?” Chongyun hisses, entirely taken by surprise.
“Unless,” Xingqiu says. “Unless you would mind terribly. I wouldn’t want my—I wouldn’t want to force you.”
“You wouldn’t be forcing be,” Chongyun blurts, squeezing Xingqiu’s hands tighter. “At all. I—I want to.”
“You do?” Xingqiu asks, like he’s not the prettiest boy Chongyun has ever seen, like Chongyun wouldn’t be an absolute fool not to want to kiss him, like—like Chongyun hasn’t thought about it ever since they were kids chasing after each other and playing in the dirt until their mothers called for them to return home.
(He’d told his mom he wanted to marry Xingqiu when he grew up, once, and she’d laughed until tears had slipped down her cheeks, and told him to wait a little bit and ask him first before sending him on his way with a plate of peeled oranges for them to share.)
“Yeah,” he says, tucking a lock of Xingqiu’s hair behind his ear and leaning in, “I do.”
I really, really do.
Xingqiu’s mouth is soft. Chongyun’s always imagined that would be the case, but feeling it is—it makes him forget everything that isn’t kissing Xingqiu, makes him thread a hand in Xingqiu’s hair and tilt his chin to kiss him deeper, because if he only gets to do this once he wants it to be good, wants it to mean something.
It means everything, to Chongyun. It is everything. He could die happy now, convinced there couldn’t be a higher point of life than feeling Xingqiu’s mouth move against his own, clumsy and eager.
He gets a little carried away. You don’t kiss friends like that. You don’t kiss friends at all, as far as Chongyun knows, but Xingqiu is surely asking because he trusts him, because he wants the experience, and not—not because it’s Chongyun.
And now he must realize, because Chongyun just—went and kissed him like that anyway. (Like an idiot.) Like he wanted him, like he loved him, because he does. He does, he does, he does, and it’s horrible.
Chongyun swipes a thumb over Xingqiu’s mouth as they pull apart, unable to stop himself.
“Oh,” Xingqiu says. “That was—thank you for doing that for me, Chongyun.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Chongyun says, because something about Xingqiu thanking him like this is a service, a recently completed transaction they will never have to speak of again just—doesn’t feel right. “I mean—you did ask, but I—I did it because I wanted to. Because I’ve been half in love with you since we were kids.”
“Oh,” Xingqiu says, again. A giggle. “And here I thought I was being hopeful in vain all this time.”
“Ah,” Chongyun says. This is where the bravery leaves him, of course. “You were not. If anything, you could have hoped a little more and still been—still been painfully correct.”
“Is that so?” Xingqiu asks.
Chongyun breathes in. He thinks of Xiangling’s cooking, of Xingqiu’s palm pressed against his own. “Yes,” he says. “I—I wanted to tell you, I was going to—you have to know I’m—I’m being serious. About this. About, um, us. Assuming, of course, that you want there to be an us.”
“Chongyun,” Xingqiu says softly. “This is the best birthday gift you have ever given me.”
“I didn’t actually get you anything,” Chongyun protests.
“This is still better,” Xingqiu says, reaching up on the tips of his toes to place a kiss high on Chongyun’s cheek.
Well—
When he puts it like that, Chongyun can’t help but agree.