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When Xiao asked Ganyu to teach him how to do makeup, Xiao didn’t think it would be like this: Ganyu straddling his waist, her periwinkle hair tickling Xiao’s cheeks as she carefully drags the brush across the crease of his eye, painting deep browns in a V shape in the corner of his eye. The smell of citrus blossoms cut his nose, and the bedsheets seem to swallow him as he sinks deeper into the soft mattress with the addition of his and Ganyu’s weight.
“Sorry, Xiao!” Ganyu apologizes sweetly and pulls her light summer dress down her thighs. She shifts around to grab another eyeshadow brush from the charcuterie spread of makeup products to her right, and her thighs dig into Xiao’s waist. “You’re still comfy, right?”
They’re so close that if Xiao leaned up a couple of inches, they could potentially kiss. Xiao can see it all play out in his head. Suffocated to death because the girl he’s been in love with for the better half a decade unknowingly drove him insane. Zhongli waxing on and on in his eulogy for Xiao riddled with metaphors that don't make sense to anyone else but him and about how Xiao is just like his beloved osmanthus boba tea: very mildly sweet with a slightly bitter twang pulling through the sugar. Childe audibly snickering that the silent arrow of a heart attack which smashed his life into his death was due to his unreciprocated schoolboy crush even though it took a solid six months of Xiao pushing him into asking out Zhongli. Venti popping up in the most colorful, most obnoxious outfit lingering in his closet and another one of his boy toys of the month just to spite Xiao because, in other cultures, people don’t wear depressing black to funerals, but rather blood red and moon whites and bring whoever’s heart they’re playing around with that.
“Y-yeah, don’t worry about it. Are you gonna use the domed brush now?” Xiao asks before blowing away any thoughts of kissing Ganyu away. He feels faint at being in such close proximity to her, their faces almost touching, but not, like two passing ships in the night. It’s like Xiao’s been climbing Mount Everest for the past month, the shallow mountain air barely reaching his lungs with enough oxygen for his head to work properly.
“Mhm, it’s the one you use to pack in shadow. You should buy one especially since you want that punch of color for all of your emo looks,” Ganyu teases as she shows Xiao the brush smeared with black eyeshadow all over the bristles. Her voice floats slowly, syrupy sticky through the air to Xiao’s ears. The RIP Xiao 200X - 2022 branded into his tombstone flashes before his eyes.
“Uh, sure. I’ll make sure to buy one,” Xiao manages to stutter out, the words thick like honey on his tongue.
“I can go with you to the store, and we can choose one together!” Ganyu says cheerfully while her bright, sweet smile short circuits his brain, throwing his thoughts listlessly about like a skippy in a storm. She picks up the bottle with the fading words liquid tattoo eyeliner stamping across the body of the bottle like a scar. “Just give me a moment. I’m almost done. You can look in the mirror after I put on your eyeliner.”
“Wait, are you putting liquid eyeliner on? I’ve only ever used pencil,” Xiao sputters in protest.
“Trust me. It’ll look way better than pencil. Close your eyes,” Ganyu assures while swiping thick lines from the edge of his eye to the tail of his eyebrow for the lifted cat eyeliner look that Xiao’s never quite been able to perfect just yet. The liner feels cool against his skin, but the rest of his body burns where Ganyu sits on top even through his flimsy clothes.
When Ganyu finishes putting the last stroke on Xiao’s eyelids, she leans back and gasps softly, proud of her work. “You should go look at yourself in the mirror, Xiao.”
-
Xiao peers into the mirror. The LED lights of Ganyu’s movie star-like vanity burst brightness down on the contours of Xiao’s face, chiseling his face into sharp clarity. Ganyu’s painted darkness on his lids so it swoops up towards his temple like a bird taking flight into the sky. His liner is so sharp it could cut straight through stone, and the eyeshadow pulls his bone structure up like a model’s on the catwalk.
“How do you like it?” Ganyu asks, her hands messy with makeup. She’s wiping her nails clean with makeup wipes.
“I like it, a lot,” Xiao murmurs just loud enough for Ganyu to hear, and a smile spreads over her lips. “Thank you.”
-
Dinner is a cozy affair, punctuated with soft silences that quickly perk up again when one of them brings up another topic that surrounds the room with conversation again. The Panang curry is slightly sweet, but nothing’s sweeter than the bright girl sitting in front of him, their knees knocking into each other like marbles when they reach across the table for various dishes Xiao ordered from the rundown Thai restaurant Ganyu had insisted they order from until a pout puffed on her rouged lips, and Xiao had immediately caved and called the restaurant to order from.
Laughter fills the dining room and the kitchen like the warmest vanilla baking scent as they clean the dishes and move to the living room to give their stomachs time to handle all of the food they’ve digested with soda cans in their hands. The conversation resumes once again but stoppers a little bit after that like how all conversation does.
“Xiao, do you like me?” Ganyu asks out of the blue. She’s looking down, her fingers pressing tight into the aluminum soda can as if she could press out all of her anxiety for the can to absorb.
Xiao chokes on his coke, and it thrashes on its way down his throat, the carbonated bubbles almost burning. He thinks of all of the spare glances he threw at Ganyu carelessly, trusting that she’d never pick up on them, but he never accounted for her meddling friends. He had heard tales of how Yanfei and Hu Tao roped in Keqing and Ganyu for their various episodes of mischief from setting up class president Ningguang and basketball captain Beidou together to unleashing at least a minimum of a thousand ducks used for rice farming in the college pool.
Ganyu continues, her voice just a little bit quieter, seemingly indifferent to Xiao’s raging dilemma inside, “Hu Tao and Yanfei told me that you liked me but I didn't think it was true. No way someone as cool as you likes someone like me. They were the ones who suggested I do your makeup like this.”
“What do you mean?” Xiao asks once the soda stops prickling his throat. He clears his throat after asking, and his fingers play tag with one another, anxiety running through his nerves like an electric shock.
“Yeah, they said to do this.” Ganyu gets up and stands in front of him, placing her hands softly on Xiao’s shoulders, reminiscent of the events that happened earlier in the day before she started doing his makeup. His breath jumps in his throat like a flying fish leaping out of the ocean as she lifts one leg to one side of Xiao’s waist and places the other on his other side, straddling him except she doesn’t push him down like she did earlier today, the back of the sofa fissuring and taking their combined weight.
“And Hu Tao to do this because it would…” Ganyu starts rambling, her anxiety threaded through every word.
“I do,” Xiao says to Ganyu’s widening eyes, and a soft oh whooshes from her lips as she pauses her rambling, jaw slacked. “I do like you, Ganyu.”
The bright, show-stopping grin of Ganyu’s beaming down at Xiao and illuminating up the rest of the room with its sheer intensity is all the confirmation that Xiao needs to know that she likes him back.