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They’ve been starfished on the grass for a while now: legs in the sunshine, faces cool with shade, Tang Rou’s fingers sticky with melted icy-pole sweetness. There’s strands of Chen Guo’s hair breezing loosely across Tang Rou’s cheek—the weight of Chen Guo’s head to keep Tang Rou restful—and all would be well with the world if only Tang Rou couldn’t guess the presence of an uncertain little frown etching itself (again, again) in between Chen Guo’s brows.
Chen Guo—no matter the conversation currently tumbling out of her mouth—is focusing on Wei Chen again.
Wei Chen, who is quite literally juggling a hot potato beside the smoke-belching barbeque—the one he’d insisted he’d be great at—his cursing growing all the more colourful the more earnestly Baozi scolds him for not taking care of his hands. (An Wenyi, who had argued against grilling in the first place, looks about ready to disembowel the both of them with a skewer.)
Tang Rou has been watching Chen Guo watch Wei Chen like it’s some kind of summer-new habit. She’d found it irritating, at first—the sort of shapeless annoyance she’s always disliked the most; the type without a clear target for her to point some energy at. Once, she’d have simply turned away from it without another thought, but… once, she hadn’t had Chen Guo as her friend.
(‘Maybe… maybe it’s that she gets that expression on her face?’ Qiao Yifan had hazarded a guess, when Tang Rou had cornered him about it. ‘That sort of… self-doubting thing, you know?’
Tang Rou had figured out her target, after that.)
Tang Rou still doesn’t quite.... get Chen Guo’s interest, herself. But, hey; it’s not as though she personally needs to.
Anyway, Tang Rou has been working on her patience. And… possibly finding entertainment in the way Chen Guo can get so entirely derailed by Wei Chen doing the silliest things. Like in this very moment, when Chen Guo loses track of her sentence because Wei Chen has huffed and postured and pulled his t-shirt over his head to wear it like a hat.
Chen Guo makes an… expressive sound at the sudden expanse of skin that displays.
Tang Rou doesn’t mean to laugh, but it’s a little hard not to. ‘Oh, Guo Guo.’
Chen Guo’s head swivels like something out of a horror film, blotches of pink high upon her face as she squirms around to glare at Tang Rou. ‘I wasn’t looking—’ she blusters, all defence, until her brain suddenly catches up with her mouth, and she registers that Tang Rou hadn’t actually mentioned anything about… anything.
‘Uh-huh,’ Tang Rou agrees mildly, albeit while also perfectly enunciating her disbelief. (Tang Rou’s a good friend, after all.) ‘Sure you weren’t.’
‘You—,’ mumble-hisses Chen Guo; then, she flops back with a grunt against Tang Rou’s shoulders. There’s a graze of teeth through blouse, though her cursing comes out small and defeated. Her hair sticks, sweat-damp, in against Tang Rou’s neck. After a long moment—breeze swishing softly through leaves above them—she mutters, ‘Ugh. I think I... maybe… Do you think maybe I was wrong about… you know. Not…?’
It’s Chen Guo’s hesitance to say it that finally slides Tang Rou over the edge. Chen Guo isn’t supposed to be hesitant. She isn’t supposed to check herself. She’s a glorious bulldozer, prone to letting herself crash over anything and everything—at least, when it’s between the two of them, anyway. They’re friends. Friends aren’t supposed to feel the need to hide.
Or second-guess what they want.
Not if Tang Rou can do anything about it, anyway.
And so, Tang Rou says it for her—because she’s the best of friends—the most merciless of friends—‘Wrong about being into men? Yeah, Guo Guo. I kind of think you might’ve been. I’m pretty sure they can see your crush from space.’
It’s well worth the way Chen Guo jerks up onto her knees, the better to splutter and slap.
It’s always worth that, especially once Chen Guo has worked her feelings through her hands enough to also let them properly into her brain. Only then can Chen Guo ask, in an aggrieved-sounding whisper, ‘You wouldn’t judge me for…?’
Tang Rou stretches her legs against the grass. She smiles up at Chen Guo. ‘I love you, dummy. You’re supposed to be happy. I want you to be happy. Even if happiness looks like…’ And then Tang Rou pauses—because, honestly, they make it far too easy—and turns a dead-eyed stare upon Wei Chen (who is seriously—and what the hell, really—acting as though he thinks An Wenyi won’t actually follow through on a threat to smack him with a flip-flop if he goes near the barbeque again). ‘…that.’
Chen Guo pokes out her tongue and grumbles, but there’s still a frown squished in between her brows.
‘Hey,’ Tang Rou says. ‘Don’t I always have your back? Besides, it’s not like I haven't supported you through far, far worse choices.’
For all that she wrinkles her face in a huff, Chen Guo’s eyes have started to smile.
‘No, really,’ Tang Rou teases. ‘Remember the redhead? The one who stood in queues for a living, which was somehow the most interesting thing about her? Or, oh god, hey, what about the accountant who turned out to be secretly super-obsessed with—’
Chen Guo squeaks, outraged, at the mere mention of the accountant. Tang Rou laughs, sits up, and catches her busy, flailing hands into a hug. Chen Guo melts in against her side, all sticky and sweaty and sweet.
Wrapping an arm around her, Tang Rou says, far more gently, ‘I sometimes think, you know—I think your Dad would have liked him.’
Chen Guo rests her head against Tang Rou’s shoulder. Tang Rou can hear the smile in her voice when Chen Guo says, ‘Yeah. I think so too.’
Together, they turn their gazes toward where Wei Chen—now thoroughly banished from the barbeque—is watching Qiao Yifan lose to Mo Fan at jianzi.
Qiao Yifan grins and tosses the shuttlecock to Wei Chen on his way over to help An Wenyi. ‘Please, Old Wei, someone has to be able to beat him.’
Mo Fan’s eyes glint; his grin is weaponized delight.
They’re both wildly sweaty, and Wei Chen is all noise to Mo Fan’s quiet, and—and, honestly, Wei Chen is going to land on his face again if he doesn’t stop trying to play sport in the world’s least sensible footwear.
‘He really is crazy about you, Guo Guo,’ Tang Rou says. ‘They can see that from space, too.’
Wei Chen is sunburnt and ridiculous and, when he catches sight of Chen Guo watching him, he lights up like the goddamn summer sky itself, never mind what else he’s doing.
Chen Guo goes through the motions of sitting up straighter and making like she’s busy with something else—but not before her answering smile has already given her away.
‘Honestly,’ Tang Rou says, mustering up the serenest voice she can manage. ‘Just ask the guy out already.’ And then—because what else are friends for?—she adds, ‘Anyway, you have no idea how much work I’ve been putting into planning my shovel talk. It’s going to be the highlight of my year.’
‘You—!’
Tang Rou’s fingers are sticky with icy-pole sweetness, and her ankles are staining green, and Chen Guo’s falling-down braid is tickling across her face as Chen Guo shrieks and tackles her back down against the ground. There’s breathless laughter while Chen Guo makes like she’s tough, and then they’re starfished together on the grass again—Chen Guo’s cheek smooshed against Tang Rou’s belly, Chen Guo’s chin digging in, and Chen Guo’s eyes dancing with a fond, merry smile.
And Tang Rou relaxes—with her legs warm, and her face in the shade, and Chen Guo heavy against her—easy, now, at the knowledge that all really is well with the world.