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There was a faint pressure on his chest as Venti arose from sleep slowly. He wakes up in increments— most times— first registering the mattress beneath his back and the soreness of his neck as he tries to relieve the kinks. He feels hot all over; not in the way of billowing flames but a comfortable warmth, fighting the coercion of sleep as he lays lethargic.
His hand is stuck in a tousle of hair, he realizes, soft strands and the smell of soap creating a rift over the air. If soap had a generic smell he thinks this would be just that. His hand moves arbitrarily, not even attempting to break through from the cage of hair, meticulously undoing tangles as to not rouse the other.
Venti’s body is still pressed down, made more evident as he slowly comes back to the world of living, trapped underneath pairs of limbs, arms numb from staying in one place for too long. He doesn’t even know what time it is. He doesn’t know how long his arm has been wrapped around Xiao’s waist either.
Xiao’s head is tucked in the crook of his neck and the soapy-smelling hair tickles his chin lightly. He seemed to fall asleep mid kissing Venti’s neck, lips still on his skin, the thought making his cheeks turn a soft pink. He was never good at hiding his blushes. There’s no reason to anymore, anyway, so they gradually became more and more evident.
Venti tries to move Xiao’s head but to no avail. The feeling of his lungs being pressed down has caused his breathing to turn a little erratic— and as much as he wants to stay here, Xiao’s muscles carry too much weight for his lithe body to carry. Maybe if he followed his husband’s everyday-two-hour-extreme-work-out-regime he’d be able to bear the weight, but he doesn’t, and would much rather make out for two hours instead.
He struggles a little before noticing that it’s pretty much fruitless, instead opting to just wake Xiao up outright and lull him back to sleep after. They both have off days from work anyway so it’s not like they need to do anything important other than lay and bed and watch cheesy rom-coms.
“Xiao.” He says, tousling his hair until it's sticking up all over the place once again. “Xiaaaooooo… wake up… you’re too heavy.” He makes notes to squirm underneath him in hopes for Xiao’s “something’s wrong” intuition to come in— but to no avail. Not even a grunt.
He instead raised the leg not trapped under Xiao’s body and kicked him, albeit a little softly, right in the ass. There was nothing more than a grunt in acknowledgment, the hands around Venti’s waist tightening briefly, and a soft hum that Venti could feel reverberate through his neck.
“Xiao,” Venti wasn’t too sure if Xiao could hear him. He looked trapped between dreams and reality with his eyes still closed tightly— but still, Venti continued. “you’re too heavy!”
Xiao’s voice was hoarse when he mouthed an “oh” against Venti’s skin. He felt arms tighten around him before the world spun in circles. Before he could even register what happened, the mattress below him was replaced with a chest breathing up and down.
“Go back to sleep, love.” Is all Xiao said. But Venti couldn’t possibly sleep after being manhandled and flipped around and rendered dizzy in his own bed. His face probably had a look of surprise on it, gaping mouth and all, and he sat up swiftly to look down just to see golden eyes staring directly at him.
Xiao’s expression always carried a hint of solemnity— not that he was— it was just etched permanently into his features. His faded green streaks of hair was strewn all over the place from where Venti tousled it, lips chapped from sleep, and Venti couldn’t help but notice how soft he looked with the sun streaming through the cracks in the blinds to streak across his face.
A hand rubbed up and down his side as if soothing him. Venti couldn’t even feign being angry while being looked at like he was the world sequestered into a being. There was a glint in those gold eyes of his, like the sun awoke inside them, like watching life come back to the dead.
He opened and closed his mouth then let out an estranged exhale after realizing he couldn’t quite find the words. He wanted to say many things— that Xiao was beautiful, that he really does love him, that the contentment he feels only leads back to him— he wanted to say many things, but they all lodged into his throat and died there, choking his breath in fractions until he was only breathing in the look of Xiao, sleepy and disheveled.
He was infatuated. Through and through.
“Venti.” His voice was deep strewn together with the qualms of sleep. Venti watched as Xiao sat up to envelope him, trapping him inside his arms. A sense of safety. Security. “I love you.”
He pressed a brief kiss to his lips, closed-mouth and chaste, then lingered there, as if waiting for something to happen.
Venti craned his head to the side and asked: “You do?”
There was a teasing lilt in his tone, one that made his voice take on a slightly seductive ambiance, which proved to be futile by the way Xiao just dug his head into his neck and pressed a kiss there, too.
His lips took on a pattern. They’d trail up then press a kiss, trail up again, press a kiss, journeying across his neck, jaw, cheeks, forehead, mapping out his countenance with reverence. Xiao’s movements were languid and he barely even moved his hands up and down like usual— yet they were soft and sweet— making Venti want to melt into him and merge as one.
“Hey, Xiao,” Venti’s hands found their way to Xiao’s face to cup his cheeks, pulling away from the kiss he was setting on the crease between his eyebrows. “lips? They’re cold. I’m afraid that only a kiss from my beloved can warm them up.”
“Only a kiss from your beloved?”
“Mhm.”
“Who's that?”
He pulled back swiftly to find that small smile on Xiao’s face. The one where his lips curve up and expose dimples at the corner of his lips, making his cheeks look fuller and pink. Utterly vanquished. Venti threw himself right into him, throwing him on the bed and kissing him silly.
“What do you mean ‘Who’s that?’.” Venti kissed him again. “You! Who else???????”
He didn’t even let Xiao answer the question before once again seizing his lips.
By the time he was content with his work, Xiao was wide awake and his hair was frizzy from the friction of the bedding, and Venti was dizzy with love and warmth, and they both looked at eachother like they were holding back from doing it again.
“I love you, too,” Venti said, and he meant it. “My beloved.”
“Yes, you’re beloved,” Xiao conceded defeat so easily. It only proved to boost Venti’s morale. “We can go back to sleep, now.”
“Do you think I can sleep after that?”
“No. But I can.”
Xiao did not go back to sleep. Instead, his hand found Venti’s hair and pulled him to his chest, basking in the comfort connected through their embrace.