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Huang Shaotian never expected himself to be stood in Yu Wenzhou’s room watching him back for the summer. After all the harsh words he’d snapped at the other boy, the careless taunts he’d let fill the air around them, standing here now felt almost surreal in the end.
Yu Wenzhou was mumbling something under his breath as he packed, likely running through a mental list, even as he ticked items off a list he held in his hands. Huang Shaotian had tried to sneak a peek and then tried to pluck the list from Yu Wenzhou’s hands, but it hadn’t worked. For someone who had slow hands in Glory, Yu Wenzhou had annoyingly fast reflexes and, terrifyingly, the ability to read his mind.
Huang Shaotian snorted as that thought crossed his mind, attracting Yu Wenzhou’s attention, the other boy looking up from his suitcase, a question written in his eyes. Huang Shaotian flapped one hand dismissively, but when that didn’t deter Yu Wenzhou’s gaze, he waved his hand more vehemently while speaking.
“Ah there’s no need to look at me like that, I was just thinking of something silly, it’s so silly really, no one would even want to hear about it at all!” Huang Shaotian tried really hard not to simply turn tail and flee when Yu Wenzhou tilted his head to the side, eyes fixed on him, even as he continued to fold clothes for his suitcase.
“If it’s so silly, then surely it’s no trouble to tell me what you were thinking?” When Huang Shaotian opened his mouth, a futile effort as he hadn’t thought about what he was going to say to refute Yu Wenzhou’s words, the other boy was already speaking again. “Besides, you’re wrong that no one wants to hear it, I’d like to hear the thought.” Huang Shaotian thought that someone should really tell Yu Wenzhou that when he smiled like that, he was wreaking havoc on his- people’s ability to think clearly.
“Ah, I mean if you’re so eager to know, if you want to hear every silly little thought that ever crosses my mind, I was just thinking that, sometimes you have very annoyingly fast hands and also that maybe, sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes I think that you can read my mind, which, isn’t very fair, because how are we supposed to be friends if you have that advantage and I don’t?” Huang Shaotian forcibly silenced himself, hearing his teeth click together when he snapped his mouth shut. He noted that Yu Wenzhou had been distracted enough by the deluge of nonsense that had just left his mouth that he’d actually stopped folding his clothes in favour of staring at him.
The silence stretched out for long enough that Huang Shaotian was seriously considering either climbing out of the window, or climbing under Yu Wenzhou’s bed, anything to escape the growing tension in the room.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up his reflexes, I spent so long being cruel about it, maybe I just reminded him of how much of a jerk I was and now he doesn’t want to try and be friends with me anymore.” Which, if Yu Wenzhou didn’t want to be his friend anymore, would be terrible, and Huang Shaotian was keeping his fingers crossed on the hand that was out of sight of Yu Wenzhou.
The growing tension was suddenly, abruptly broken by Yu Wenzhou’s laughter. Huang Shaotian, not expecting to hear laughter when he was preparing himself for a sharp request for him to leave, startled so hard that he jumped, promptly stumbling over his own feet, and yelping at the indignity. All this did was make Yu Wenzhou laugh even harder, face flushing red as he began to run out of air, making an inelegant wheezing noise, clutching at his stomach and shaking.
If the entire surreal experience hadn’t begun with noises that were reminiscent of laughter and not a slowly dying seal, Huang Shaotian might be a bit more concerned that Yu Wenzhou was actually going to die. As it stood, he wasn’t entirely sure that Yu Wenzhou was going to live through this experience, and he fumbled for the bottle of water, noting with disappointment that there was still fruit in the infuser, despite his impassioned speech trying to dissuade his friend from continuing to drink what amounted to perfume water that didn’t even smell good.
Yu Wenzhou, lacking any self-preservation instincts, had simply waved the water bottle away, seemingly content to choke on air, but Huang Shaotian kept the bottle close to hand. It wouldn’t do to have one of Blue Rain’s most promising soon-to-be Glory players dying over a laughing fit. Their reputation would never recover, and if nothing else, Huang Shaotian was committed to Blue Rain.
He watched as Yu Wenzhou slowly started to calm down, face losing the red flush as he started to breathe normally again. Huang Shaotian had a fleeting, idle thought that Yu Wenzhou had looked very pretty flushed, and promptly stomped on the thought, hard and violently, it wouldn’t do for Yu Wenzhou to somehow read thoughts like that.
“I can’t read minds Shaotian,” were the first words out of Yu Wenzhou’s mouth once he’d sufficiently recovered and while Huang Shaotian wasn’t interested in kick starting another life threatening laughing fit, he couldn’t let his reputation be maligned like this.
“Wenzhou did I ever say you could read minds?” He could see Yu Wenzhou’s mouth opening, likely ready to offer up a breakdown analysis of what he’d just said, and he decided to barrel on before he could. “Wenzhou, I never said you could read minds, I just said that sometimes, and not all the time, but sometimes I think you can read my mind.”
“I know, I was listening, but either way, I can’t read minds, no matter how much you may believe I can read yours.” Huang Shaotian started to open his mouth, wanting to clarify further, to make his point more effectively, because Yu Wenzhou, as it turned out, delighted in gently revealing every moment he’d said something unfathomably ridiculous, and in the end he couldn’t even bring himself to mind, because of the aforementioned, unfair smile that Yu Wenzhou liked to whip out.
“Besides, it’s good I can’t read minds.”
“I know you can’t Wenzhou, why do you keep reminding me that I worded it wrong-”
“It’s good that I can’t read minds, because I wouldn’t want our friendship unfairly balanced by my telepathic abilities. This way, there’s nothing to stop us from being friends.” Yu Wenzhou smiled at Huang Shaotian again, eyes bright and expression unfairly devastating, before going back to folding his clothes, as if his stupid smile hadn’t just knocked all coherent thought out of Huang Shaotian’s head.
And there were a lot of things that Huang Shaotian thought about saying in response to Yu Wenzhou’s softly earnest statement, I think it’s good too, I never said you had telepathic abilities, or maybe, thank you for letting us be friends, but in the end, he settled for reaching for a shirt, and helping Yu Wenzhou pack.
“This is not me admitting I can read minds, but I know that you think Xinjie is too smart for his own good.” Huang Shaotian turned to protest the another use of the ever-present jokes, but he’s stopped in his tracks by Zhang Xinjie’s hum.
Huang Shaotian puts a hold on complaining to Yu Wenzhou for another joke about his poor wording, as if it wasn’t his captain’s fault in first place for being distracting and beautiful, because Zhang Xinjie looks like a shark that’s just tasted blood, and as good as it looks on him, Huang Shaotian thinks it bodes poorly for him.
“Why would you ever need to admit you can read minds?” Zhang Xinjie’s tone is lilting, carrying all the soothing tones that premeditated a trap. Unfortunately, while Yu Wenzhou is fully capable of recognising a trap, he’s not currently the one sitting in its gleaming jaws, and therefore, has no qualms about setting it off and letting Huang Shaotian get crushed in its maw.
He knows Yu Wenzhou is looking forward to bringing Zhang Xinjie into the loop of mockery, and Huang Shaotian is aware that there is nothing he can do to stop this from happening, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to take the mockery lying down.
“Shaotian thinks I can read minds.”
“I never said that captain, I said that sometimes it seems like you can read my mind-!”
“You know that just because every emotion is scrawled across your face, doesn’t mean that Wenzhou can read minds.” Huang Shaotian narrowed his eyes at Zhang Xinjie, refusing to simply lie down and let Zhang Xinjie win this round.
“Does Han Wenqing know that you’re plotting with Ye Qiu on WeChat?”
“You don’t have any proof of that.” Huang Shaotian prided himself on hearing the note of concern colouring his tone.
“Ye Qiu doesn’t care enough about his chats to keep them to himself.” Zhang Xinjie frowned, clearly trying to calculate whether or not he was bluffing. “Retreat Xinjie, I won this time.”
Zhang Xinjie’s scowl is balm on Huang Shaotian’s bruised ego, but he still retreats, returning to his captain’s side, shooting warning looks at Blue Rain’s leadership team from time to time.
“Ye Qiu has never left his computer long enough for you to gather any proof of what he and Xinjie are up to.” Yu Wenzhou’s voice is low, murmuring his words into Huang Shaotian’s ear, keeping them too low for Zhang Xinjie to catch.
“It’s not my fault that Xinjie decided to back away before obtaining any proof.” Yu Wenzhou huffed out a laugh and Huang Shaotian just waved cheerily when Zhang Xinjie shot them a suspicious glare. “He must be up to something big if he’s willing to retreat without forcing my hand.”
“I wonder what he’s up to,” Yu Wenzhou’s musings are idle and Huang Shaotian grins up at him.
“I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.” Yu Wenzhou’s head tilts to the side when he meets his eyes, curiosity written across his features.
“You know what he’s up to?”
“Captain how could you even accuse me of that? Just because I am good friends, the best friends with Xinjie, that doesn’t mean I know what he’s plotting all the time.” Yu Wenzhou simply raised one eyebrow and Huang Shaotian wilted slightly. “Well, in this case I know but I’m not going to tell you, it’s going to be a great surprise! You’re going to love it!”
While Yu Wenzhou doesn’t look convinced, Huang Shaotian is certain that he will love watching the fallout of Zhang Xinjie’s latest scheme, so he’s content to beam up at his captain, holding his friend’s plan close to his chest, knowing that for the next two weeks Yu Wenzhou will try his best to coax the knowledge from him, and he can verbally spar with his captain for the foreseeable future.
Life is good for Huang Shaotian.
“Song Xiao don’t come out from under that umbrella until you’ve finished putting on your suncream!” Yu Wenzhou knows that he will be called a fussing auntie for the next month after saying that, but he’d rather not have a repeat of the sunburn that had relegated half the team into lying sadly on the cool tile of the kitchen, commiserating together.
He smiles when he sees Xu Jingxi helping Song Xiao out with his back, one of the ones who’d avoided the sunburn, and had been designated to run back and forth to the pharmacy to pick up more lotion. He caught the grateful look Xu Jingxi offered when he noticed that Yu Wenzhou was carefully rubbing suncream onto Huang Shaotian.
After all, no one wanted a repeat of sunburnt Huang Shaotian, reminding everyone about how the sun worked for three months after the ordeal. At the memory, Yu Wenzhou put another dollop of suncream on Huang Shaotian’s shoulders. Just to be safe.
Zheng Xuan is lying underneath one of the large umbrellas, a large and floppy brimmed hat over his eyes, studiously ignoring the noise around him. Li Yuan is trying to convince him to come build a sandcastle with him, he’s doing his best to construct a town with his cracked spade and while Yu Wenzhou wishes him the best of luck, he doesn’t have much faith in his tools.
He’s making an admirable effort at the castle, even if some of the turrets are a little wonky. Zheng Xuan just waves one hand lazily, not even sitting up or removing the hat from his face. Li Yuan rolls his eyes and recruits Song Xiao, now freed from suncream jail, joins in his efforts with enthusiasm, donating willing hands, and a pile of seashells to the project.
Xu Jingxi kicks at Zheng Xuan’s arm, watching with amusement as it flops back down onto the blanket and it doesn’t seem like Zheng Xuan cares.
“We’re at the beach Zheng Xuan, you should come into the water and cool off, even in the shade of the umbrella you have to be feeling too warm!” There’s a disagreeing noise mumbled out from behind the hat and Yu Wenzhou huffs out a laugh, turning a page in his book.
“The beach is where we’re allowed to do nothing, you are meant to stay very still and not move a single muscle, it’s the rules.” Xu Jingxi opens his mouth, ready with a rebuttal, but the Yu Feng calls out from where he’s in the water with Huang Shaotian.
“Jingxi come here and tag in, Huang Shao is trying to take my head off with the frisbee!” Huang Shaotian’s protests about his frisbee skills are cut off when Xu Jingxi takes a running leap at the water and splashing a good deal of sea water into his mouth.
As the captain, Yu Wenzhou is expected to be on his vice-captain’s side no matter what…however the drowned rat look is very endearing on Huang Shaotian, and he’s getting to a very good point in his book. From the screeching that starts up in the water, it seems that Huang Shaotian is holding his own in the two against one splash fight, and Yu Wenzhou feels like that absolves him of any responsibility of getting involved.
“Too stressful,” Zheng Xuan’s catchphrase floats up from under the hat and Yu Wenzhou hums in agreement as he turns another page.
When he next looks up from his book, Yu Feng has made his way out of the water, from the way he’s panting, it’s probably more accurate to say he fled from the water, and is sat beside Zheng Xuan, holding one hand over his friend’s stomach and letting the water drip off onto the bare skin. Zheng Xuan lifts one hand and ineffectually bats at Yu Feng’s hand, trying to stop him, but as he still doesn’t remove the hat over his eyes, nothing much changes and Yu Feng seems to be enjoying his new entertainment, and Yu Wenzhou decides that it’s not his problem unless Zheng Xuan explicitly asks for his help.
“Hey if I join in to help I bet we can do that even faster, watch how fast I can dig, better than either of you and I don’t even have a spade to help me!” Huang Shaotian’s chatter brought Yu Wenzhou back to the real world, he realised that Li Yuan and Song Xiao have apparently finished building their sandcastles, and have decided that what they really want to do is dig a large moat around the area they’ve set up camp on.
Huang Shaotian, upon spotting their efforts, had bolted out of the water and set himself to task with a great amount of enthusiasm. He hasn’t even bothered picking up a spade, content to dig with his bare hands, sand spraying behind him as if he were a particularly eager dog. While this gets a raised eyebrow from Yu Feng, Xu Jingxi just offers to help, but the other three seem committed to the project with just the three of them.
Yu Feng digs out two paddles and a ball and wiggles them at Xu Jingxi with a question in his eyes.
“I’d ask captain, but he seems content with his book, and Zheng Xuan isn’t moving any time soon.” Xu Jingxi returns the frisbee before he’s quickly involved in an increasingly cutthroat game of beach tennis. New rules are made up on the fly and adhered to religiously, with Song Xiao occasionally getting called in to mediate when the other two couldn't come to a decision.
The next time Yu Wenzhou looks up from the pages of his book, everyone is once again sprawled out under the umbrellas, faces flushed from exertion. There’s a complicated scoreboard written into the sand, and Yu Wenzhou isn’t entirely sure of who won the game of beach ping pong, and from the aggressive rewriting, he’s not sure it’s safe to ask.
Huang Shaotian, Song Xiao and Li Yuan have succeeded in creating their moat around the area of the beach they were on. Yu Wenzhou was still unsure what the point of it had been, but they seemed content and it had kept them busy.
“I’m hungry, who wants to come with me and get an ice cream?” Li Yuan’s question was met with enthusiastic assent and Yu Feng calls out to Zheng Xuan.
“Come on, you will surely get up for ice cream right?” When there’s no response, not even a mumbled slur of nonsense, Xu Jingxi leans over and lifts the hat off Zheng Xuan’s face.
He snores in response.
For some reason, this sets them off, Huang Shaotian tilting his head back and laughing at the sky, the rest of his teammates following suit quickly. Their laughter rang out across the sand and Yu Wenzhou felt that it was fitting that Zheng Xuan’s snores continued in the background, complimenting their laughter.
Eventually, once everyone calms, manages to scavenge up their wallets from the mass of bags, Xu Jingxi and Yu Feng are sent off on an ice cream run, with the rest of them calling out the orders one last time at their backs.
Throughout all of this, Zheng Xuan slept on.
“Pspsps captain,” Yu Wenzhou could hear the voice trying to coax him out of bed, he could hear the soft voice in all its cajoling and earnest hope, and he was going to ignore it until it went away. It was still dark in the hotel room, it wasn’t time to crawl out of his nice, cosy, warm bed, to venture out into the cold harsh world.
Besides that, he wasn’t a cat, and no matter how much video evidence Huang Shaotian was collecting, he wasn’t immediately attracted by anyone making a pspsps noise at him. He was already being eviscerated by his fellow tacticians when Huang Shaotian had stolen his phone for the express purpose of sending one of the videos to the tacticians chat.
On one hand, he had fortunately sent the video to the chat that he, Zhang Xinjie and Xiao Shiqin kept for the express purpose of trying to annoy Ye Xiu by excluding him from tactician discussions. It wasn’t used much, occasionally one of them would send a photo of one of the other two from a particularly unflattering angle, but overall, the chat existed merely as an attempt at antagonisation.
However, the video going to that tacticians chat simply delayed the inevitable by a few moments, as it was sent during the exact window that Zhang Xinjie would always set aside to check his messages. Yu Wenzhou didn’t believe for a single second that this had been an accident, Zhang Xinjie sent his schedule to them every week, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that Huang Shaotian had timed his opportunity down to the very last detail.The video of an off-screen voice offering a pspspsps , and his head snapping around to attention had been sent to Ye Xiu almost immediately, and the cat paw print mousepad arrived soon after.
Huang Shaotian had been in hysterics, declaring that friendship gifts had to be used and appreciated. Yu Wenzhou would have accepted this if he hadn’t used the week that he’d used the cat mousepad to collect six more videos that he added to his pspspsps Fishy folder.
With all of this in mind, Yu Wenzhou was determined to ignore every attempt that was being made to have him open his eyes. It was cold, it was dark, he was content not to move. He tucked his face away from the cold fingers that poked and prodded with care at his exposed skin, but he refused to open his eyes.
It was early! It was cold! There was never any need to get up this early unless they had a flight, and they didn’t, he’d wrangled a late afternoon flight because he was a very smart captain.
“You are a very smart captain, but you are talking out loud right now, which means I know you’re awake, which means you can come on my adventure.” Yu Wenzhou cracked one eye open carefully, and he saw Huang Shaotian peering hopefully at his face. He brightened up when he saw Yu Wenzhou’s eyes opening, fingers poking more insistently. “Captain I can see your eyes are open, open them the rest of the way please, Wenzhou please?”
And Yu Wenzhou was capable of many things, and was likely capable of keeping his eyes closed even if Huang Shaotian was making a soft hopeful face at him. However, he didn’t truly want to ignore him, and he opened his eyes with a grumble, with the background noise of Huang Shaotian’s cheer. The grumble was neutralised by the offer of a mug that was filled with warm coffee, and Yu Wenzhou thought that he could pause his sulking to drink his coffee.
While he was doing this, he could hear Huang Shaotian rummaging around in his suitcase, nearly certainly rumpling the contents, all the while mumbling about warm clothing and gloves for protection. As Yu Wenzhou hadn’t bothered to get his glasses, coffee didn’t require glasses, he was unsure of what Huang Shaotian was up to and was content to remain ignorant. After all, he’s called it an adventure, and Yu Wenzhou knew that Huang Shaotian always enjoyed the adventures more if the participant was surprised by the outcome.
He made another quiet grumbling noise when Huang Shaotian slid his glasses on his face and brought the room into a sharp, jarring focus, but it was nice to see his vice-captain’s bright, excited grin. He was almost vibrating in place, his eagerness radiating off of him, a pile of warm, winter clothing gathered in the centre of the room. Yu Wenzhou finished the last dregs of his coffee, before he began to tug on his clothes, Huang Shaotian flitting around him, offering random bits of clothing for Yu Wenzhou to take.
While being offered a sock when he was zipping up a jumper didn’t help him get dressed any faster, at least Huang Shaotian was having fun.
The moment he was fully dressed, Huang Shaotian had a pair of gloves on his hands before firmly wrapping a hand around his wrist and towing him out of the room. Yu Wenzhou was content to follow without a word, the likelihood that it was going to be something dangerous was fairly low, management tended to frown upon making a ruckus outside of their home city.
Admittedly, they didn’t like things causing ruckuses in their home city, but that was neither here nor there.
“Look captain!” Huang Shaotian tugged him out of his thoughts, voice hushed but full of excitement. Yu Wenzhou turned his gaze out into the street and realised what had Huang Shaotian so excited that he’d dragged him out of bed at an ungodly hour.
“Snow , captain!” Yu Wenzhou couldn’t help the matching grin that spread across his face, Huang Shaotian’s delight grew exponentially at the sight of it and Yu Wenzhou barely had a moment to laugh before they were moving again, heading towards a park not far from their hotel.
Yu Wenzhou had to laugh again at the sight of the shovels already waiting at the park, before he had an opportunity to say a word, there were papers in his hands detailing out Huang Shaotian’s plans.
It was mostly corgis, but Yu Wenzhou shot him an unimpressed look when he noted there were plans for a few cats. No it didn’t make him feel better that they were the ones snuggled up against the corgis, Huang Shaotian’s word couldn’t be trusted.
Overall, Yu Wenzhou didn’t do much, mostly in charge of shovelling snow into piles for Huang Shaotian, it wasn’t difficult, and Yu Wenzhou found himself getting frequently distracted by the way the snow was falling and collecting on Huang Shaotian’s eyelashes.
“Captain, captain you can’t get distracted like this and stop your job, we still have three more corgis to complete before we leave!” Huang Shaotian brought him out of his musings and Yu Wenzhou let his lips quirk up into a smile as he returned to his task.
“You owe me for this Shaotian, I haven’t looked at the time, but it is far too early to be out and about like this.”
“Wenzhou it’s important to learn how to wake up early, what would we do with a sleepy captain in the morning? What if we’re getting on the bus to go to the stadium and you fall asleep and we leave you on the bus? And then we won’t have our beloved captain with us when we face all the other teams, would you leave me to face Ye Xiu all by myself?” Yu Wenzhou blinked at Huang Shaotian for a long moment before dumping the snow on the shovel onto Huang Shaotian’s head instead.
The offended screeching and unprepared flailing brought another wider smile to Yu Wenzhou’s face, one that was quickly wiped away when Huang Shaotian took the moment of distraction as an opportunity to shove a handful of snow down his back, causing him to jump into the air with a yelp.
Huang Shaotian protected himself from any further retribution by returning his attention to his corgi snow sculptures, knowing that Yu Wenzhou wasn’t going to do anything that would put the safety of Huang Shaotian’s project in danger, something that he wasn’t shy about exploiting.
It only took another hour before Huang Shaotian was finished with his project, each little cat tucked up with its respective corgi. He’d also left Yu Wenzhou with the task of building the little igloo, something that Yu Wenzhou took to with great gusto. He surveyed the park with a bright grin but before he could leave, Huang Shaotian caught his arm.
“Smile for the picture captain!” The flash went off without another word and Yu Wenzhou blinked the afterimages out of his vision.
“You don’t want evidence of this, surely?” Huang Shaotian just shrugged, one arm slung around Yu Wenzhou’s shoulders as they made their way back to the hotel.
“It’s nice to remember adventures captain.” Yu Wenzhou hummed, mulling that over in his head for a few moments.
“Send it to me?” Huang Shaotian’s fingers flew across his screen and Yu Wenzhou felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He smiled as he leaned into Huang Shaotian’s touch.
Unknown sculptors leave park decorated in snow decorations!
The headline flashed up on Yu Wenzhou’s for a moment before his phone started pinging with a deluge of messages, and he slipped it back into his bag, more interested in getting through security than paying attention to the incessant buzz of his phone. He caught Huang Shaotian’s eye and he returned his vice-captain’s beaming grin, watching as he started tapping away at his screen, already refuting the claims that the mysterious corgi snow sculptures were anything to do with Blue Rain.
And if Yu Wenzhou has a copy of the article hung up in his room, well that doesn’t prove anything at all.
And if you flipped the frame around, you might find a selfie of him and Huang Shaotian surrounded by snow and sculptures, which some might say is incriminating. But then again, who’s going to do that?