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Xiao already knew, he even said so, that it would be a bad idea to come to this party, but nobody ever listens to him. It can't be good if that Childe and his evil air have anything to do with it, though he doesn't quite know how exactly this is his fault, but it doesn't even matter, the point is he had a bad feeling about this. Nobody ever listens to him, even though he's always right.
And now look at this. He's reaching his shaking hand out towards Kazuha who seemingly doesn't even care about the blood basically pouring from his palm. He's sitting in front of the oven with his legs wide apart, blinking at the open wound. He isn't even bothered by Xiao tremulously bending back his fingers just a bit so that he has better access to the cut, and it’s a pathetic try, he doesn’t even know what he intends to achieve with it, but he clumsily puts the tissues from the little pack he had with him on Kazuha’s hand, but they get completely soaked in seconds.
Xiao doesn’t panic. He just doesn’t, but there’s so much blood, he didn’t even know this much could come from somebody’s palm, and he’s beginning to get idiotic thoughts like what if Kazuha bleeds out and dies, then he starts thinking about how in any case, he wouldn’t like to be anywhere near Beidou when she finds out about Kazuha getting hurt.
Crouching in front of Kazuha in despair, with smaller puddles of blood between them, Xiao doesn’t even notice the loud taps as Keqing strides into the kitchen, only when she stoutly stamps her high heel sandals next to Kazuha and starts cleaning up the pool of beer. She has picked up the shards of glass earlier, but not before Kazuha fell hands first onto the biggest one of them, right after stumbling into the corner of the kitchen island in a drunken haze, then falling, beer bottle in hand.
As soon as she finishes, Keqing takes a dish towel and pushes it into Xiao’s aura. His drenched tissues fall pathetically to the floor as he bunglingly ties the towel onto Kazuha’s hand and he jerks his head in the direction of the living room the same time as Keqing, as they both try to make out, through the blaring music, how well Yanfei is doing in trying to get a completely hammered Hu Tao to give her her car keys so that they can take Kazuha to the hospital. Xiao has no idea for how long they're doing that, maybe it's just half a minute, but it seems more like half a day to him, and he only remembers to breathe again when Yanfei puts one foot over the threshold in the kitchen, dangles the keys in the air, then quickly takes off towards the front yard. Xiao swiftly springs up to the jingling sound, just like a trained animal, and Keqing, whose presence of mind he genuinely admires, helps him get Kazuha off of the floor.
He leads him to the front yard as fast as he can; they’re halfway out as he’s trying, with more or less success, to put Kazuha’s coat on him. He could recognize Hu Tao’s car anywhere, it’s small and champagne gold with multiple tiny skulls and cross-bones on the sides that weren’t there when she bought it. Xiao doesn’t have a license so their driver is Yanfei, who’s already started the engine, and, for once, doesn’t bring up how he didn’t pass his driving test.
Xiao stays with Kazuha all throughout getting his hand patched up. The nice doctor is constantly talking to him, but it’s probably mostly out of routine, obviously he can tell that it’s completely unnecessary. Kazuha is only ever physically there, even now he’s just lying there motionless, as if he was lazing around in his own bed, and he’s noticeably about to fall asleep.
Xiao’s getting goosebumps the entire time. Kazuha and hospitals aren’t a good match, and the white walls, the sterile smell remind him how he’s still a bit angry at him.
He was with him in this same hospital two weeks ago, although it wasn’t Xiao who took him in that time, and he can’t decide if he’s happy about that or not. Kazuha wasn’t willing to tell him anything, he was being obscure, and Beidou was the one to fill him in that he took half a box of fentanyl and Ningguang found him passed out on their bathroom floor. And sometimes it’s just so tiring, how he never says anything about anything. He will just occasionally mention how he’s a political refugee from Inazuma because it happens to be relevant to what he’s about to say.
And Xiao still went to visit him every day he was kept in, and even though he doesn’t like to speak, he talked in excruciating detail about his day, about what they learned about in his incredibly interesting Disciples of the Knowledge of Mankind class, which Kazuha listened to ever so intently, and also about how much Hu Tao got on his nerves again. When this happens, Kazuha will sometimes ask why he’s friends with Hu Tao if she annoys him so much, to which Xiao has to admit, with an uncharacteristically rich colored face, that which you couldn’t waterboard out of him; that he’s actually quite fond of Hu Tao, and that she’s funny sometimes.
And he was expected not to ask anything, not to want to know anything, just pretend like it’s a completely normal Tuesday afternoon program to pass the time on those uncomfortable hospital chairs for hours on end everyday, as he counts down the days until they let Kazuha out.
According to Kazuha, his most important trait is his being a poet. This is always the first thing others find out about him, even if he doesn’t say it, because he always whips out his little notebook to jot down his ideas, and if he has a new poem, he wants to show it to the person closest to him. That person usually tends to be Xiao, who enjoys listening to them beyond measure, since to him it’s kind of like taking a shallow trip around Kazuha’s brain, his own little world which he was always so curious about. Xiao sometimes feels like Kazuha’s living his life as if he were a character in a game, and he wonders how many lives he thinks he’s still got left.
So he’s Kazuha, the poet. He’s also a political refugee from Inazuma. He’s also a trained swordsman. He’s also a literature major if he so likes and goes to class. He’s also gay, but he also doesn’t like putting labels on himself. He also has depression, he also has OCD, he also has a panic disorder, and probably also a bunch of other stuff Xiao isn’t aware of, because Kazuha doesn’t text him on a Wednesday morning asking if he would like to go to the pharmacy with him, just for Xiao to ask him what kind of medicine he takes, to which Kazuha would say a bunch of names none of which ring a bell to Xiao, it’s only at home that he takes to the internet and it tells him that those are a bunch of antidepressants and anxiety meds.
There’s only one last stitch left, and then the doctor neatly, carefully bandages Kazuha’s hand. Now he’s telling Xiao, as Kazuha’s sober next of kin, that the wound wasn’t too deep so he pretty much just has to keep it clean, and Xiao nods repeatedly in understanding, then takes Kazuha in his arms and escorts him for the nth time that night. This time to the waiting room, where Yanfei is anxiously shifting her weight, while spinning Hu Tao’s keys around her finger by the Pikachu keychain.
Yanfei lets out a big sigh, her body relaxing, shoulders sinking as she sees Xiao and Kazuha’s unmistakable figures. Xiao is holding onto Kazuha by the upper arm so hard that his nails and knuckles have all turned white, on top of which he’s keeping him so close, it’s a wonder they don’t coalesce. The three of them set off towards the parking lot, meanwhile Yanfei nervously gabbles on about something like how they need to go back to Childe’s real quick, because Hu Tao just called saying she can’t find her keys, and she almost burst into tears because she doesn’t know how she will get into her apartment.
Yanfei eventually sits behind the wheel, fastens her seatbelt just like a responsible driver would, then before starting the car, she looks into the rearview mirror and asks in an unusually panicked voice, Kazuha isn’t going to die, right? Xiao assures her that he won’t.
When they pick her up at Childe’s, Yanfei initially struggles with Hu Tao wanting to kiss her for like two minutes straight. But Yanfei is honestly not in the mood to make out, and she can’t drive with somebody glued to her face anyway, so she almost drives off the road a few times. Then Hu Tao gets bored and falls asleep with her head to the window.
Xiao sometimes wishes he could talk half as much as Hu Tao or that he had inherited the same hyperactive gene as Yanfei, them being cousins and all. Then he could fill the space created by neither him nor Kazuha knowing what to say because that’s simply the way that they are, and maybe he wouldn’t be so surprised by these random infos or by what smart things he says out of nowhere. But instead they usually just put on a movie, and Kazuha falls asleep halfway through. Then Xiao always tells him the end in the morning and when Kazuha is done listening, he goes to take a shower and borrows one of Xiao’s T-shirts. Then he goes home but always leaves his stuff at Xiao’s: his keys, his documents or his favorite pen. And Xiao calls him when that happens, even though he knows Kazuha’s phone is always on mute and he never picks up, no matter who calls him.
Yanfei goes with Xiao as he’s escorting him up to his apartment. Xiao reaches into the pocket on the left side of Kazuha’s coat because that’s where he always keeps his keys, when he doesn’t lose them somewhere that is.
They step inside as silently as possible in order not to wake Ningguang or Beidou – especially not Beidou.
Beidou is a few years older than them, and she’d be doing her master’s at the same university as them if she hadn’t left college after only one semester. That didn’t make her any less of a lady though, so she waits for her girlfriend in front of the school whenever she can, so that they can go home together when her last class ends.
That’s exactly what she was doing when Kazuha, fresh out of Inazuma, was waiting for his tram that could take him back to his dorm. Beidou, having nothing better to do, started a conversation with him, and she grew pretty fond of him quite quickly with that muzzy look in his eyes and his soft speak, then one day in November, she offered to let him live with them if he wanted to leave the dorm.
Beidou always says that Kazuha came right in handy because Ningguang keeps saying how she wants a dog but they can’t have one in their apartment, and Kazuha is basically almost the same because they give him food, he sleeps on their couch and they take him out to walk from time to time. Then she has a laugh over her own joke before taking a drink from her beer, and no matter how much she jokes about it, his love for Kazuha is just as obvious as the sky is blue. Sometimes it’s a little bit like she had a son.
Xiao doesn’t dare to make the couch into a bed in case it’s too loud, so he just lays Kazuha down. He even takes his coat off of him and adjusts the cushions under his head, while Yanfei is writing a message to Beidou and Ningguang, assuring them that Kazuha is going to be fine and they had nothing to do with him getting hurt. Then she puts Ningguang’s ashtray on the corner of the sheet of paper to make sure it’s not gonna disappear.
It kinda bothers Xiao how Kazuha keeps moving around and fidgeting when he’s trying to make him as comfortable as possible. He strokes Xiao’s neck, who instinctively grabs onto him, Kazuha flinches when he squeezes his hand a little too strongly, and Xiao’s annoyed expression softens as he whispers ‘sorry’ to him as many times as he can.
Xiao can’t leave because whenever he attempts to distance himself, Kazuha gets his hands on the collar of his coat, so he has no choice but to watch that dumb smile of his until he calms down.
“I love you so much, Xiao,” he says out of nowhere, this is not the first time, to which an emotionally and physically exhausted Xiao mechanically answers with "I know, I love you too.”
For seconds he stares into Kazuha’s eyes; They’re so red, they’re noticeable even in pitch darkness and they always, always have a sort of weird twinkling to them that Xiao can never decide how to feel about.
His fingers slide down Kazuha’s bandaged hand. He hangs his coat before leaving the apartment, then they close with his keys and slide them underneath the door so that Kazuha can find them in the morning, or whenever he wakes up.
Xiao is annoyed by how loud their steps are in the dark stairway as he and Yanfei walk from the fifth floor in silence. He’s thinking about when one of the tenants is going to come out and snap at them, telling them to walk quieter and that it’s well past midnight.
They find Hu Tao in tears in the car. According to her, she didn’t know where they had gone and she was feeling lonely all by herself, so they don’t go anywhere until Yanfei is busy solacing her.
As the two of them are hugging in the front seat, Xiao thinks about the weird twinkling in Kazuha’s eyes and that he wants to call him sometime around noon tomorrow. He wants to know how he’s doing, but Kazuha isn’t going to tell him because he’s not going to pick up the phone.