Work Text:
Historians will call them anything but.
It was quiet.
Lan Xichen could feel his heart clench as Mengyao caressed the young woman’s hand, a sense of weight falling at each heartbeat. The background noises of chatter were of a blur, even the voice of his uncle calling for him to pay attention not registering. He only watched as Mengyao continued his advances with Qin Su, the collapsing feeling of heartbreak making his eyes sting and his fist clench. His fingers were busy clamping at each other, attempting to break free from the feeling, but he kept his half-truth smile, ignorance at the back of his mind.
“Lan Xichen!” called a voice, belonging to Lan Qiren, but Xichen left it ignored, only waving a hand in acknowledgement before proceeding to walk himself out for fresh air. The doors were wide open, guests pouring in and out, but even with the whole crowds of bodies bumping into one another, Xichen could not help but feel lonely. His smile dropped when he found himself alone by a corner of a dark-lit courtyard, lips tilting to frown and eyes stinging with water blooming by his skin. He was looking down, staring at his feet as he turned to face the wall and rest his hand, forcing himself to keep his tears back, to keep his emotions secluded from his surface appearance.
“Xichen ge?”
The voice was quiet, contrary to the harsh beats overlapping in Xichen’s head, and he could only stay silent as he gathered his thoughts and forced himself to put a smile again. “Yes, Mengyao?” he said as he turned around. No A-Yao because that would only make him fall deeper.
Mengyao seemed to notice the faked expression, his smile twitching into a look of worry, eyebrows furrowing with an unreadable expression. His face was blurry to Xichen, whose eyes were red from rubbing it too hard, and his lips trembling as he attempted to control them. “Are you okay, ge? Do you want to go somewhere else? Should I…” Mengyao trailed off, the first time Xichen saw him so nervous and unprepared with his words. He wanted to lie, but he could not. Even if he broke the rules, even if he spoke a yellow truth, he could only convince himself more than Mengyao – the latter knowing him too well.
“Should you not be with Qin Su?” asked Xichen, filtering the bitterness from his heart as the words initiated contact with sound. Mengyao’s expression changed, shifting into a confused state, and Xichen could feel his heart clench from the conflict of emotions pounding through his head. “Why should I be with her right now, ge?”
He had stepped closer, and Xichen could feel his back against he wall as he attempted to step back, his composure slowly crumbling like a wall of dried bricks – no cement used. Almost as if carefully, considerate so that Xichen could stop him if ever uncomfortable, Mengyao continued his pace, a foot in front of the other until the distance between their feet from touching was no more than a few cun. “Ge,” he whispered, “why would I be with her when you left without a word, looking as if you were lost and close to tears? Why would I leave you like that?”
Xichen blinked his eyes, long and slow, taking a careful step forward to close the gap between them, their bodies close to touching the same way the hems of their robes were swaying in unison as they folded against each other. “Why would you not?” he said. “Why should you care for me more than the person that you are to marry, Mengyao?”
The returned reaction carving on Mengyao’s face was devastating, his expression more than confused and his eyes showing so much that it filled further than the borders of his eye lids and the surrounding patches of skin. His voice was tiny, disturbed, as he muttered quietly, words only picked up by Xichen as the wind blew, “you do not seem to want to call me A-Yao anymore.”
He lifted his head to look at Xichen in the eyes, emotions shivering as if cold for being bare on his face. “Because, ge, what if the person I am to marry is not the person I love? What if the person I want to marry, instead, cannot marry me because… because there is just something that is stopping us?” Xichen did not answer, lips sealing as he pressed his heart to stop beating so quickly, expecting so much. “Then who is the person you love?” he asked, the hopes and dreams fluttering by his lips gone so quickly.
“It’s you, ge! Can you not tell? It’s you!” Mengyao confessed, and his finger was poking Xichen’s chest each time he pronounced a syllable, and the broken tears trembling across his cheek as it slid along his skin made Xichen’s heart break. “It’s always been you.”
Xichen, hesitantly, wrapped his arms around Mengyao, bringing his right hand to hold Mengyao’s head against his chest, his heart beat audible to him. “A-Yao,” he whispered, breath tangling with Mengyao’s scent of freshly harvested flowers, odour making Xichen gain confidence. “I love you too.” The words easily carried itself through the air to Mengyao’s ears, and he pressed his lips tight against Mengyao’s forehead to reassure him, words of love floating at the back of his tongue that he did not seem to say. “A-Yao, A-Yao, A-Yao,” he said, “I hope you know I love you.”
Too long, he thinks. Too long to have loved him.
“But you are to wed Qin Su, Mengyao,” he said, voice cracking as he spoke. He could feel the sect leader stiffen slightly in his grip. “You need to learn to love her.”
Their hearts snapped like strings tightened by too.
“Xichen ge,” Mengyao called, “please still call me A-Yao?”
“Of course,” promised Xichen.
“A-Yao.”
But history hates lovers.