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Xiao didn’t believe them when they told him that they couldn’t do anything about it. And the next thing he knows is that he’s moving his things into a new home–which weren’t a lot to begin with but they’re belongings that he actually claims to be his.
And there’s another one of his belongings in front of him. But he doesn’t exactly claim her as one.
Xiao lifelessly stares at her, she’s standing so innocently across him from where he materialized out of thin air. She looked scared for a split second, he almost felt bad for surprising her.
“Xiao, right?” She offers a hand.
Xiao stares at it and decides to walk past her.
So much for introductions.
He marches around the house to inspect it. The Qixing had signed a treaty that the couple they’re getting wedded would own a house paid in full expenses. He would riot if he notices something amiss.
The house was fully furnished, like they promised. It had everything that a normal married couple would have had on a small budget. He doesn’t even have the right to be mad because he didn’t have to pitch in any money for this one, not like he had any drop of mora on him at the moment anyway.
But who would have thought that marriage could actually solve a nation’s problem? Xiao would have never.
It was something about economic conflict. Zhongli tried his best to give him the gist of it, yet Xiao was far too irritated to hear of the conditions that he didn’t listen at all.
He tried several times to stop it from happening. Not appearing when his name is called, and even hid for weeks on end so people assumed he had died in a tragic, unrecorded accident. Long story short, they didn’t fall for any of it.
When they dragged him to the church, he stood still like a rock. Venti, if he remembers his name correctly, was the one who suffered his big baby tantrum the most. They spent about five hours just having to get him past the line of the doors of the cathedral, and it took more than five men to carry him over to the front because he just kept disappearing when they grabbed ahold of him.
And after all that, he still got married.
He hated it, honestly. The moment the wedding ended, he teleported straight back into his room in Wangshu Inn and punched the thin walls out of frustration. (He had to pay for the repairs after, and he realized that it was not worth it.)
The last night he spent in that room, he even cried. As much as Xiao wanted to help in this social crisis that his nation was going through, he despises the feeling that rumbles in his stomach.
The feeling of having his freedom stripped away from him.
“Are you hungry yet?” She perks up another time. Xiao turns towards her with the same lifeless look in his eyes, the girl frowns at it but didn’t dare utter another word.
He doesn’t say anything either, making the silence grow more condensed over each passing second. It was the suffocating kind, it was horrible.
“I’m guessing you’re not,” she mumbles sadly, moving past the living room and into the kitchen. Xiao watches her shadow disappear from the floor before he walks up to their bedroom.
He lays down on the bed, staring into the ceiling. As the sun fades into a more orange hue, he closes his eyes and doesn’t remember what had happened in the past few hours.
When Xiao opened his eyes, there was silence. The night had already arrived and he sits up to move his muscles around.
That was until he notices a different smell.
Xiao curiously makes his way back down to their living room. He sees her seated on the couch with a plate on her hand, and it didn’t take two and two for Xiao to realize the stench was coming from her food.
“What are you eating?” He merely yells, fanning the air in front of his face away. The girl turns around with widened eyes, panickedly setting down the food in hopes to hide it and shakes her head.
Xiao deadpans. “You’re seriously trying to make me think you weren’t eating?”
The girl doesn’t move or say anything. She’s as still as a statue, the stench protruding Xiao’s senses stronger as the minutes pass by.
Looking at her properly now, she looked quite young. She was very petite, not any taller than Xiao and had eyes that were full with wonder and life. She was even pretty if Xiao wanted to admit it.
He rolls his eyes and attempts to step closer. But the moment he lands his feet on the floor, a ghost appears from behind her and floats around him like a coil.
Xiao tries not to yelp and captures the little thing in his hands. He looks at her pointedly. “You have demons in your hold?”
The girl widens her eyes again in protest and furiously shakes her head. “Those aren’t demons! They’re souls, they’re very friendly!”
“Do you know what demons are?” He crosses his arms as if to nag her. The ghost struggles to escape his grasp but manages to anyway, hurriedly floating back to its ‘friend’.
The girl smiles at the ghost and pats it gently. “Demons are souls of evil guys, right? Ghosts aren’t. I swear they’re very nice.”
Xiao scoffs. “Evil guys?”
The girl hums proudly and nods. “Evil guys! They’re the ones who beat up random people like uhhh… treasure hoarders!”
“So you’re saying when treasure hoarders die, they become demons?”
The girl thinks about it for a moment. Fairly enough, it wasn’t nice to accuse mere humans like treasure hoarders to be of any evil entity, right? She shakes her head and splatters to explain herself.
“No! That’s not what I meant!”
Xiao lets out a small chuckle and walks towards the table to snatch the plate. He sniffs it out of sheer curiosity once again and couldn’t control the way his face contorts into a look of disgust. That belonged anywhere but a human’s stomach.
“I’ll be out for a while. Do you want anything?” he nonchalantly offers, throwing the food into the bin. She turns around in astonishment to find her food gone and even gasps in fascination. “How did you-”
Xiao spins his spear and looks at her. “Steamed fish it is.”
And he disappears.
The first month of their married life went by smoothly.
He hadn’t even noticed if it weren’t for her dancing around the living room while humming a song only she knows.
For the most part, they don’t necessarily hold any conversations. If she’s lucky, Xiao would greet her good morning and good night, but that would be all of it. Their interactions merely consist of Xiao leaving food for her at meal times and then the casual exchange of glances.
She was the more happy one between the two of them. Even if he doesn’t want to say anything about it, he’s quite grateful for the happiness that radiates off of her as it makes their house feel more of a home than a business trap.
“Good mood?” Xiao perks up. She then spins on her heel with a delighted yelp, her arms are raised in joy and the look on her face was something that even Xiao couldn’t resist. He wanted to keep it on her, maybe just for the whole day.
“Of course! I readied some food—” she excitedly moved to the dining area. “I didn’t make them, don’t fret.”
Xiao laughs and follows her inside. There are rows of good smelling food on the table, a flower vase in the middle to make one’s appetite better, and a cake that has the words ‘HAPPY ONE MONTH’ written with cream.
It’s been a month already? He thought to himself, eyes immediately panning towards the lady on the other side of the table.
Contrary to popular belief, Xiao does not eat. Mainly because he didn’t get to eat much during his past. That doesn’t mean he can’t digest any of it, he would eat anything given to him especially right now since they aren’t very blessed with wealth.
He sits down and smiles at the amount of food she had prepared for such a useless occasion. Apart from that, he really didn’t want to spoil anything for the girl after all the effort she had asserted. He doesn’t even know her name.
“I hope it’s not too much. We can always leave food for until the next few weeks,” she shyly offers as she sits down across him.
Xiao gulps and nods. “Maybe just a week. Two weeks old would draw near to being inedible, correct?”
She only agrees with a nod before she begins feasting happily on the food. Xiao follows suit and puts as much food as he can on his plate.
In the middle of their meal, he remembers something he’s supposed to ask her and looks up.
“By the way,” Xiao begins. “What’s your name?”
The birds were chirping when Xiao gets up from his bed that day. He doesn’t usually dream but recently, he remembers events that he’s sure has happened but really did not.
He then brings it up in a conversation with Zhongli when the man came over to check on him and his wife. “I swear I ran up to her just this morning, but when I checked, she was still asleep,” he narrates, confusion evident on his furrowed eyebrows.
Zhongli only laughs. “You used to never dream, right?”
Xiao’s eyebrows etched closer. “Dream? Yeah, dream. What’s that?”
Zhongli dismisses the topic and proceeds with the business talk. Xiao can tell that he knows, but decided against prying over it to discuss more important matters.
He hoped Zhongli would say anything about it before he left, but he didn’t. And for the rest of the day, Xiao is left restless thinking about what the scenarios he saw before opening his eyes were. He kept theorizing, pacing back and forth while he waits for the chicken in the stove to finish heating.
It’s not that dreams were foreign to him. He used to eat them for reasons he doesn’t want to elaborate. But that was all in the past and he never had to sleep back then anyway.
So he questions, why is he having them?
It wasn’t until his wife enters the kitchen to check on the food herself when he asks. “Say, you know what dreams are, right? Aren’t they nightmares?”
His wife blinks at him as if to ask ‘are you alright?’ but she shrugs. “No? Dreams are like… hmmmm…” she taps her chin in wonder.
She snaps her fingers after a long pause. “Think of it as like dreams are like ghosts while nightmares are like demons!” she animatedly tells him, smiling proudly of her analogy.
“So… I’ve been falling asleep?”
“Yeah? How else would you be dreaming?” She turns off the stove and pulls out the plates from the cupboard. “Do you mind helping in setting the table?”
Xiao sighs and shakes his head. “I won’t be eating tonight.” He looks at her. “Make sure to stuff yourself though.”
She hums and settles comfortably on her seat in the dining table. “If you ever want to energize, I’ll leave them here,” she tells, placing the chicken under a cover. Xiao smiles softly. “Alright. Thanks, Hu Tao.”
And he walks out of the dining area.
Hu Tao was left to eat dinner all alone. It’s been like that ever since that’s why it doesn’t bother her. But for some reason, she couldn’t stop smiling tonight.
Maybe because he actually called her by her name. Or because he sounded gentle in saying her name. She doesn’t know but she’s very giddy.
She’s kicking her feet under the table when she replays the way he said her name in her head. And with another bite of the chicken, Hu Tao grins.
He’s a very charming guy, any girl would like him, especially Hu Tao.
Xiao lands on the entrance of their house. Usually, he’s greeted with her tending to the flowers she planted a few weeks back. But today had other plans as the garden was bare.
He opens the door. “Hu Tao?” he calls out.
With the lack of response, Xiao walks further into their house. The living room was oddly quiet, everything left untouched since this morning he left.
He peers into the staircase in hopes of finding anyone but he winds up to see no movement at all.
He hurriedly runs up the stairs, opening the door to their shared bedroom with his eyebrows knitted together in confusion.
When he checks inside, it all made sense.
Hu Tao lays on their bed, coughing. She weakly smiles at him and waves with her ghost by her side. No wonder she didn’t get up as early as she used to.
“How are you feeling?” he speaks softly, his hands coming up to feel her forehead.
Hu Tao scrunches her nose. “My body is really heavy,” she manages through a hoarse voice.
Her eyes dart around the room, a disappointed frown settling on her face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t clean the house today.” She sniffles and pouts. “I even missed a day at work.”
Xiao chuckles and fluffs the pillow on her head. “Don’t apologize, the cleaning isn’t your job at all. Leave it to me.”
Hu Tao whines slightly. “But I wanted to do it!”
Xiao only smiles at her and motions for her to calm down. He knows she’s just really bummed for missing work, never the cleaning.
A few days back, she complained about how hard it was to sweep the floor around the living room. She tried to use her pyro vision to speed things up, but she had then realized that it didn’t really help.
Since then, Xiao took it that he should help with the sweeping. His anemo powers were enough to scoot away all the piling dirt in their house, he even enjoys it because unlike her vision, his abilities actually make it easier.
“I’ll bring up some soup when I’m done so don’t move, okay?” Xiao orders while closing the bedroom door. He caught a glimpse of Hu Tao attempting to protest so he locks the door just in case.
He starts in the hallway on their second floor.
He remembers all the paintings displayed here from when they first moved in. He dusts them off and mentally notes to find some replacements to make the home feel more authentic.
They weren’t anything special. It’s the generic type of paintings that you’d see in any active household. He needed a more heartfelt image to spark something in him. [He counted his savings after that and went to meet an artist he knew down the street.]
He almost didn’t notice how clean and organized his wife was if he hadn’t been stuck with cleaning duty today. All he has to do is check if there had been any new dust collecting, blow it away and done. He doesn’t even know why he bothered to check the bathroom when he expected it to be spotless as it is. Not even a sign of usage for today so that adds onto something.
With nothing left to clean, he switches off the lights and maneuvers downstairs.
It took around fifteen minutes before the door opens in front of Hu Tao’s face. She yelps and rushes back to the bed (which is deemed no use since she’s already caught red handed).
Xiao narrows his eyes at her before placing the bowl of soup on the bedside table. “What were you doing?”
Hu Tao stammers to answer him. Xiao didn’t have the time to hear her scramble for excuses.
He gets comfortable next to her on the bed, scooping up the soup to her mouth. “Ahhh,” he says, expecting her to mimic him.
Xiao had been keeping an eye on the couples scattered around the harbor in hopes of learning something. Plenty of the ones who sees that liked to take walks around with fingers intertwined, never growing tired of being attached to each other.
While he’s observing them, he looks at his own hand and tries to imagine how it must feel. With his palm open, he sees her hand holding his, and he catches himself smiling at the thought of it.
Somehow, he wanted it too.
The next thing that he noticed is the way they treat each other.
Although Xiao had never been gruff with her, only cold at times but that’s how he usually is to everybody, he took into account on how husbands and boyfriends would smile at their significant other.
He had asked Zhongli about it and he said it was something called ‘Admiration’.
They were gentle. Smiles are ever so sweet, exchanging between the lovers every now and then. He almost grows jealous.
His little survey took about weeks. He tries to do them little by little, paying close attention to how she reacts to all of them. So far, Hu Tao hadn’t reacted so scandalously, not until now though.
Hu Tao blinks at him with eyes wide like saucers. There’s a faint blush on her cheeks as her mouth falls open hesitantly.
Xiao puts the spoon into her mouth and cocks his head to the side. Had he done something wrong? Don’t they usually feed them like this?
She then lets the spoon go and fans her mouth. “It’s hot,” she mutters quietly. “Ah!” Xiao flinches, “sorry, I was supposed to let it cool, wasn’t I?”
Hu Tao nods but doesn’t violently react. She lets him feed her the soup and once she’s done with it, she’s tucked back into bed.
“I’ll clean the bowl and then I’ll get some rest myself.” Hu Tao acknowledges him with a hum and the lights were switched off.
When Hu Tao was drifting into sleep, she feels the bed dip as a warmth closes in next to her. As she falls deeper into her sleep, she feels arms wrapping around her, and it makes her smile.
Out of nowhere, it dawns on him that he’s getting too comfortable in referring to her as his ‘wife’.
What made him think of that? He doesn’t know.
But when Xiao was out in the harbor to buy something out of the scraps of money he had left to bring home, he gets asked by the chef on whether he eats them or someone else.
Naturally, he’d answer it without thinking twice. Of course my wife eats it, I’m not very fond of human food .
He says that in his head and then out loud. And it was only when the chef snorts that he hears what he had just said like a broken record in his mind.
The five times he was asked about her in a day, four of those times he referred to her as his wife, unprovoked.
Even when he’s walking to their house, he spots a toy that he thinks she’d like and in his head, he calls her that name. “My wife would like that,” his thought process goes.
He grumbles when he notices it, giving up on the walk and just teleporting to their front door.
Xiao gets lost in his train of thought while moving inside their house. He leaves the food on the table lazily, contents nearly spilling out of the bag it came with, but he’s too preoccupied to notice.
There wasn’t anything wrong about it, they are actually married and he can’t call someone he’s married to as a girlfriend, right? Maybe he could but that was if he was an asshole that takes marriage as a joke.
It just bothers him somehow. More so that he lived a month as her husband without knowing her name. And he has the guts to refer to her as ‘my wife’ without shame.
What would Zhongli think of him? Xiao cries internally.
Hu Tao makes it home not short after him. She closes the door behind her and greets him with a smile. “Hi! I’m home!”
“Yes, hello, welcome home,” he says in a single breath, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. She doesn’t ask about it and trudges to the dining area to satiate her hunger from work.
Xiao finally regains his composure and looks over to the dining table where she’s situated at. He hasn’t really fully come into terms with his inner dilemma of this ‘wife’ thingy.
But he stopped thinking about it when he just admits that ‘my wife’ has a nice ring to it.
Hu Tao makes a beeline for the doors of the funeral parlor. Zhongli merely jumps when she appears next to him buzzing with her usual excitement.
“Always beaming to meet customers, aren’t we?” he smiles at her. Hu Tao nods eagerly, pushing the doors open to greet her new clients.
The funeral parlor hasn’t had any customers in a while and it’s stressing her out. The first few days were normal, deaths happen everyday but not necessarily around their vicinity. She takes those days as opportunities to endorse their discounted coffins, but of course, who would take an offer about a coffin at such a raw age of 24?
Since they weren’t having any customers, she decided to go look into the condition of her husband whenever he gets home. The problem is, she was looking too close into it.
Xiao has a heavy shoulder? Maybe he destroyed some ruin guards today… that’s not enough to kill someone.
Xiao has a headache? Yakshas get headaches? Maybe he got hit in the head by a hilichurl! That still won’t result into any deaths though.
Every night, Hu Tao is just met with disappointment and this close observation didn’t go unnoticed by her husband either.
Xiao raises an eyebrow at her one night, watching as she tries to count the new bruises in his skin, she loses count midway when she couldn’t tell if it was old or new. That was then when Xiao decides to call her out and she yelps, merely hitting him in the process.
“What are you doing?” he pushes her forehead with his forefinger.
Hu Tao scrambles to find an excuse, grabbing his arm and pointing to his tattoos. “These are so cool!” She blatantly lies.
Her husband knew better. It was no use.
Xiao then tries to make it a habit to report to her if he had encountered any dead bodies. But he hasn’t winded up onto a single one so he doesn’t have anything to tell her. That’s why Hu Tao gave up.
But today was different. They received a call not any later than their opening for the day. Zhongli even tried to hide it until they arrived but Hu Tao was eavesdropping on the clerk handling calls that she knew as soon as they were booked.
The discussion on the funeral went well. Despite Hu Tao’s eagerness, she listened and agreed on all the requirements that the client wanted for the funeral. And by the end of the day, she almost falls into her seat out of exhaustion.
“I think you ran around too much,” Zhongli states the obvious, placing down a glass of water on her desk. “You should get going now since your work’s all done.”
“Mhmm, I will.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Just make sure to check on the papers you haven’t scanned yet,” Hu Tao reminds him all the while tapping the papers on her desk. Zhongli acknowledges it with a curt nod, closing the door behind him.
Once she’s gotten comfortable of the silence, and her limbs had regained enough strength to hold her up. Hu Tao collects her things, she pulls out her wallet and counts her money to see if she had enough for dinner. And then she turns on her heel to face Xiao.
Wait. Xiao?
Hu Tao almost falls back to her chair, a scream comes out of her throat as she stumbles back in shock. “When did you get here?!” she exclaims, clutching her chest in an attempt to calm down her thumping heart.
Xiao blinks innocently. “Zhongli called me over to take you home.”
Zhongli? Hu Tao turns to the door, and then back at Xiao, and then tilts her head. How did he get here in just one simple call? No one knows.
“You do look tired, can you walk?” Xiao perks up all of a sudden, his voice making her ears ring. Hu Tao tries to move a step but ultimately fails, making Xiao flinch and catch her before she falls.
She looks up at him and frowns. “You didn’t have to see me like this,” she shys away from him. Xiao looks at her confused but refuses to comment on it. She was human, of course she’ll have days where she’s tired, even he grows tired sometimes.
Xiao starts to walk out of her office, he feels her wrapping her arms around his neck securely, head resting on his shoulder. Xiao then turns his head to whisper into her ear.
“Rest. I’ll take you to our home.”
She rips off the page of the calendar to reveal the new month. It took her about 5 minutes before she realizes why the month seemed to echo in her mind endlessly. She gasps and runs up the staircase, stumbling into their bedroom to greet her husband with a wide grin.
Xiao quietly faces her from his seat on the bed, curious as to what had his wife bouncing on her toes.
Hu Tao bites her lower lip to keep in her shrieks and opens out her arms wide.
“Happy Anniversary, Xiao!” she announces.
Xiao blinks.
It’s been a year?
He bursts into a short fit of laughter, standing up to pinch her cheeks and smile at her [lovingly] sweetly. “Happy Anniversary as well, Hu Tao.”
He tries to walk past her but she captures him in a hug. She’s smiling so hard that her eyes were closed, Xiao feels the warmth in his chest grow more intense when he looks down at her smiling face, and so he returns the embrace.
He doesn’t even remember how they got here.
When he first moved in, he was irritated, mad even. He wanted to curse every person that walked past him as if it was their fault he got dragged into some political discourse. He thought his life was over.
For several days, he loathed her. He wanted her gone from his sight forever, that dinner treat was supposedly a one time thing. But the longer he stayed with her under the same roof, the harder it was to hate her.
If you asked him now what he felt for her. He wouldn’t answer you.
(Because he loves her now, perhaps?)
Sometimes, he sits on their bed to stare out the window. On those days and nights, he remembers how difficult he was to deal with during the wedding and the guilt starts eating him up.
It was too late to apologize. He would repeat that in his head like a mantra.
Up until today, though. Xiao doesn’t understand why it had to be him. There were plenty other options that were far more influential identities compared to him who was a mere protector of the nation.
Maybe they could have taken Xingqiu instead, he was a well known author, if he got wedded to someone as popular as him, this political crisis might have been all sealed and solved.
But no. It had to be them. It had to be the lone yaksha and a simple funeral parlor director.
They never gave him any reasons as to why it was them. Not to mention, they were handpicked by Ningguang herself, chosen as sacrificial lambs for until one of them perishes—words reiterated from Zhongli.
Maybe it was just a random pairing, or that’s what he tries to convince himself to believe every night.
He felt bad for her, immensely. Because she was set to die with someone she was forced to be with, nothing decided by her own account. Xiao wouldn’t have any regrets even if he died tomorrow, but it’s not very easy of them to die just like humans in the first place.
So Xiao realized by then, that he wasn’t the one who had the right to throw tantrums, but Hu Tao. Because between the two of them, she was the real victim.
Yet, Xiao has never seen her oppose to it. Even when he barely talked to her, she never said anything.
Why was he making it such a big deal? He had plenty years ahead of him to make up for the ones he “wasted” on this marriage. Hu Tao doesn’t have any.
It ate him up to think about it every now and then. The guilt crawling underneath his skin to haunt him when he’s all alone with his thoughts.
He wishes he could tell her how sorry he was.
“Thank you for taking care of me for the past year,” her soft voice snaps him out of his trance. He looks down at her, gazing at her sweetly, hands holding up her face with gentle touches.
Xiao laughs. He doesn’t take his eyes off of her, his eyes glazed with an emotion that Hu Tao can’t quite tell.
He sucks in a breath, panting as he regains all the air that was blown away from him. He gulps down the lump in his throat and grimaces. He doesn’t remember when she got so beautiful.
At night when Xiao doesn’t feel like resting, he sat next to her sleeping figure.
She’s dreaming pleasantly, judging from the way she’s smiling in her sleep. Xiao carefully cradles her head and combs her hair with his fingers.
It was nights like these that Xiao treasures deeply.
Apart from the comfortable silence that surrounds him, he genuinely feels at peace. He sees her well rested face, one that promises him she’s not having nightmares, and no one else gets to hold her as close as he does.
For once, Xiao lets himself be selfish.
All his life, he’s dedicated himself to the general people, to the environment. And if not that, he’s forced to be taken into someone else’s authority, gobbling down everything in his line of sight like a monster.
Xiao doesn’t know anything of the concept of belongingness or security. Not until now, exactly.
He wanted to keep her all to himself. That if she had to choose, it had to be him. Because if Xiao was given the choice right now, he might risk it and just take her without hesitating.
He had fallen down that deep into this whole marriage thing.
The night was older when Xiao was admiring her on his lap. She’s still deep in slumber, snoring softly as her dreams continue to consume her into all its wonderful sights.
Xiao continues to comb her hair with his fingers, placing a ghost of a kiss on the side of her head.
With his face close to hers, Xiao closes his eyes and wonders how things would have been if none of this ever happened.
Xiao still sees her, her grin and the way her hand fits into his. Without all of this, he still sees her.
And that night, Xiao decided that if life had taken a bigger twist than this, or maybe if they lived at the same time in another life. He would still choose her.
Even when they aren’t bound to any promises. Xiao knows… he’ll still end up with her.
One year and two months in, Hu Tao notices her husband isn’t home as much as he used to.
She’s aware that they’re both working two different jobs, to which his wasn’t paying him any mora. His job was a lot more important than hers ever will be, so she was very understanding of the times he arrives home.
But these days, he’s more out than he’s in at their own house.
It’s gotten to the point that the times Hu Tao eats dinner alone grew tenfold, and he doesn’t even remember to ready her food anymore. He was becoming a bad husband, and Hu Tao was going to confront him about it.
The clock ticked about 1 AM in the morning, Hu Tao restlessly sitting on the edge of their bed, bored out of her wits. She sat down fresh out of work with no dinner to gain momentum if they were to ever fight.
It’s been three hours since she sat there confidently. Her shoulders had started to slump due to impatience too.
Hu Tao yawns and begins to rethink about it. Xiao was never an unreasonable person, so there was no reason to doubt him at all.
But it was getting lonely at their home. Hu Tao thought of their house as some getaway from all stress in her life. One look at his face was enough to send her flying to the moon in joy.
Whenever work had gotten way too much, she’d always look forward into coming home, even drawing doodles of the possible dinners that Xiao could have bought home for her.
Recently, it hasn’t been like that. When she’s done with work, she’d catch herself guessing whether he had left her anything or nothing instead of deciding what would it be.
She was practically dragging herself home because she was dreading it. She misses him, and she wants to know if there was something she could do to squeeze herself back into his life.
Hu Tao’s eyelids were dropping by the time she smells him. She jolts up and calls out to him with a very loud and accusing ‘AH!’.
Xiao doesn’t say anything but gives her a perplexed look, obviously wondering why she was still up at this hour. Hu Tao returns the perplexed look to him and crosses her arms.
“You’re late again! I suppose Liyue had a several things going on…” she urges him to explain himself. “Enumerate everything you did today.”
His eyebrows knit together with a frown. He looked almost angry if Hu Tao squints but she’s stayed up long enough that she didn’t want her efforts to go to waste if she ever drops fast asleep right now.
Xiao remains silent, arms crossed like hers but his gaze was distant, face turned away as if he was avoiding eye contact.
Hu Tao’s face falls in realization. “You’re… mad at me, are you?” she sadly inquires, falling apart to the thoughts swirling in her head.
She tries to recall any incidents to what could have angered him. Yet she remembers that she’s too intimidated by him to pull even the slightest pranks so there was no other reason apart from maybe… how loud she was?
“I’m sorry,” she whimpers, tears quickly forming in the brim of her eyes. “I didn’t mean to annoy you. I swear I’ll behave better next time!”
It wasn’t long until she fully submits to the tears. She’s crying excessively at the overthinking, wiping them away aggressively as if to blame herself. She hated it. She hated being lonely and she hated realizing that it was her fault that she’s lonely even more.
In her intense sobbing, Hu Tao spills out a string of apologies, she doesn’t even know if Xiao was still there but she just couldn’t help herself.
She stops when she feels something on her face.
Warm fingers held her head in place, the same warmth wiping away her tears. She only begins to process what was happening when her visions clears out from crying.
Xiao was worriedly consoling her, constantly rubbing at her cheeks to rid of any more tears that were falling.
“I’m sorry for making you feel that way. It isn’t what it looks like,” Xiao starts to explain once he sees her calm down.
The truth about Xiao’s absence wasn’t anything complicated. If it were anything, it’s just him being immature.
Lately, he’s been drawing closer and closer to her. For someone who’s made a big impression on everyone for rarely smiling, he smiles way too much at her. He even catches himself thinking about her while being idle from work.
It was horrible.
Xiao thought he could gobble it down, maybe for a day he could ignore all kinds of things that would remind him of her. He obviously didn’t think that through because at this point of his life, a mere tree branch would remind him of the color of her hair.
He tried it everyday, rushing to leave the house and think of anything but her.
All his tries came in vain. The skies would remind him of the times he catches her on bed to watch the clouds move slowly as a way to relax.
And another contrary to popular belief: Grass, in fact, did not help.
At the sight of it, he remembers her garden in front of their house, all flowers growing with the unending love and care that she gives them. He hoped that he could give her a full blown garden with a yard once he had enough budget.
That very moment, Xiao understood that there was no use in brushing it off now. His stomach churns at the lack of attention he’s gotten from her and he feels off balance because he hasn’t been knocked over by a surprise hug.
He couldn’t deny the fact that he was in love with her now.
Hu Tao then sniffles to keep the tears at bay, feeling his fingers move at the first sighting of forming tears. “If it’s not what it looks like,” she says with a catch of her breath. “Then what is it?”
Xiao thinks about how he’s going to say it. His hands squeeze at her face gently, a grin making its way to his lips. “Well, there’s no other way to put it…” he trails off.
“I think I’m in love with you.”
[And the thunder rumbles, pouring rain in its wake. The weather grows cold enough to make goosebumps crawl under their skin. They’re unbothered by it, it’s overpowered by the warmth that they sharing each other at that moment, their lips moving in sync as they kiss their worries away.]
On her way back home, Hu Tao meets her husband in the harbor.
As if sensing her presence, he immediately turns his head to her direction, a soft and loving smile flashing in his features as a greeting. She grins back and runs to him at full speed.
She merely tackles him with a hug- Xiao welcomes it wholeheartedly and chuckles once she’s settled in between his arms.
“You’re on your way home too, right? Let’s go walk together!” She excitedly offers. Xiao looks over to the view of the sunset and shrugs. He can just make up for it tomorrow.
Waving goodbye to the merchant that Xiao had brought back to the harbor, he takes her hand in his and intertwines their fingers.
He lifts their hands into his view. It’s been a while since they had professed their love to each other but he never gets used to the feeling of how her hand fits just the right way into his.
When he thinks about it, he used to crave this type of touch so badly. Now, he doesn’t even have to ask to get it.
He’s glad over the growth of their relationship. Admittedly, he wasn’t the best at the beginning, but if he didn’t try harder, they wouldn’t be here right now at all.
With the sun setting and the harbor growing busier, the couple continues their walk down the path, still close together.
“Do you want anything for dinner?” Xiao inquires, having been reminded by the various scents of food scattered in the harbor.Let’s buy it on the road,” he faces her with a gentle smile. Hu Tao cheekily smiles in response.
“Actually,” she drags on the word with a teasing tone. “I want you to eat dinner with me tonight.”
Xiao widens his eyes.
That’s not going to lead into anything good.
“I’m guessing you’re making me choose the food for tonight,” he says a matter-of-a-factly. Hu Tao curtly nods with a sneer hidden behind her palm. “I’m just lazy to pick but you know, a wife still has to eat with her husband, don’t you think?”
There’s a groan that escapes his lips when Hu Tao was practically dragging him towards the nearest restaurant in their path. He tries to convince her to take back the offer with a side glare, but he knew her the most and she wasn’t very easy to persuade.
Especially if she puts her mind to it.
So Xiao, accepting defeat with a sigh, hands over his heavy heart (money) to the chef and receives the two servings of the food.
“You’re lucky I love you,” he snarls, basically asking the food for a fight.
If only he could fight bowls of noodles.
[“Did these paintings come with the house or were they replaced?” Hu Tao asks once they had arrived home. Xiao hides the smirk he has on his face as he turns his back on her. “I don’t know, look closely.”
Hu Tao doing as told leans closer to the portraits. The painting was beautiful, with the way the details were all intricately crafted to copy the view of a couple seated on their bed, watching their window for its view of the sky.
She likes it. But she has no clue on what its supposed to depict so she cranes to her husband in forfeit.
Xiao grumbles. “That costed actual mora, if you were wondering.”
“So you bought these? Pre-made?” Hu Tao points at them.
“Honey, that’s literally us.”]