Work Text:
And true love waits
In haunted attics
And true love lives
On lollipops and crisps
Just don't leave
Don't leave
The autumn wind of Liyue Harbor rolls past the balcony of Wangshu Inn, but it doesn’t make Xiao feel cold.
Rather, what sends a chill up his spine is the emptiness of the balcony, devoid of any activity or anyone.
Looking around, he paces back and forth on the worn wood, trying to calm himself down. Above him, the bright white moon illuminates the balcony. The brown wood shines in the moon’s glow, though it also reveals that Xiao is in fact the only one there.
“Venti, where are you?” Xiao angrily whispers to himself, looking at the moon as if it’ll tell him of his lover’s whereabouts.
Sighing, he rests his arms on the balcony’s railing, looking off in the distance towards Dihua Marsh.
The sight of the marsh brings Xiao back to long, long ago. To when he first met Venti. To when he first fell in love.
He could really use one of Venti’s comforting tunes right about now. Xiao’s anxiety was leaving him restless.
Venti always arrived at Wangshu Inn before Xiao, and if he was ever running late, it wasn’t this late. Maybe he should ask Verr Goldet if she had seen or heard from Venti? Who knows, maybe the playful bard had some sort of trick up his sleeve.
As he turns around to head towards the front desk, the doors to the balcony burst open, and a panting Aether stumbles out, his gold hair a mess. Hands on his knees, he tries to regain his breath.
Behind him, Paimon floats out, her big blue eyes filled with tears.
“Adeptus Xiao!” She calls out. “I-It’s Venti!”
“We came as fast as we could,” Aether says. Finally picking his head up, Xiao startles at his friend’s pale face. “Xiao, I… I-I’m sorry.”
“W-What… What do you mean…?” Xiao slowly asks, his fear spiking. “W-Where’s Venti?”
“I’m sorry,” Aether repeats, surging forward and embracing Xiao in a hug. “I’m so sorry, Xiao. We tried to save him. B-but the Unknown god got to him.”
Paimon joins in, one of her tiny arms hugging Xiao. Xiao, who feels frozen in time.
He feels his breath stutter, and Aether and Paimon back away, their eyes wide.
As their shouts become static, Xiao feels himself slip away, and lets himself succumb to his karma.
After all, there was no point in continuing to go on for Xiao. For he just lost his everything.
“They say that the story of Barbatos and Alatus is one filled with a love like no other, but also, a tragedy so immense, that the Adeptus had succumbed to his untamed karma.”
Up until just now, Xiao had been tuning his art professor out. After all, Xiao wasn’t good at art - this class was just one of the requirements his university had all of its students take.
And up until this point on the field trip, Xiao had no real interest.
Until he saw the painting.
He never thought art could shake him to his core, but that was before he saw this particular painting.
It wasn’t the art style that struck a chord in him, but rather, who was in it.
It depicts two characters: one ethereal and glowing, with dark blue, almost black hair, with twin braids that adorned aqua dyed tips. He wears a bard’s outfit, and lays his head in the other character’s lap. And the other character has one hand in his lover’s hair, while the other hand gently places a windblume flower in the depths of the bard’s hair.
And it’s the other character that had Xiao stopping in his tracks. As his class marches on ahead, Xiao stays to stare. Because he swears the other character looks like… well, himself .
And even the first character, the bard, seems so… oddly familiar. How?
Has he gone mad?!
No, the Adeptus warrior looked eerily similar to himself. From the hair, to the bone structure in his face, to his build - all of it.
“What the…” Xiao breathes.
“...fuck?” Someone breathes from next to him.
Xiao’s neck snaps towards his right, to see who voiced aloud his exact thoughts.
And when he makes eye contact, he feels himself flooded with a foreign emotion that somehow simultaneously feels so natural.
He thinks it’s…
Love.
“V-Venti…?” Xiao finds himself saying, not even knowing where the name came from.
“...Xiao?” The other man breathes. Who also happens to look exactly like the bard character in the painting.
Stumbling forward, Xiao embraces the stranger, and feels tears slowly slide down his cheeks.
“Heheh, w-what the fuck is going on?” The man, who Xiao presumes is named Venti, says.
“I-I don’t know,” Xiao responds. “But… I know that I finally found you.”
Venti embraces him back, and the two don’t say a word. There’s no need.
After millennia, the two lovers had finally rendezvoused, as promised all those moons ago.
Whether it be at a moonlit inn, or an art museum, true love will wait. No matter the circumstances.