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The night air is crisp when they walk out of the restaurant. The heat of Gao Yingjie’s cheeks feels scalding in the contrast. How badly has she coloured, she wonders; how long has the charged intimacy been keeping her blushing. Because it has been charged—has been very charged, she isn’t so wilful about her feelings to pretend it hasn’t, but… it’s all still so new, so gleaming: the idea that Wang Jiexi has seen it (seen her) and chosen not to run.
Qiao Yifan may win their old bet yet. The thought makes Gao Yingjie swallow a laugh, makes her cheeks burn warmer. She appreciates the wind’s immediately cooling touch.
A little further down the footpath, Wang Jiexi is finishing up his phone call. He’s speaking with Fang Shiqian, she knows—Wang Jiexi had passed on Fang Shiqian’s greetings to her when he’d first somewhat awkwardly answered the call, apologised, and headed outside.
Gao Yingjie hadn’t minded the unexpected interruption. Anyway, they’d more or less already finished eating, and it had given Gao Yingjie the chance to pay for their meals for once. It had given her the chance to catch her breath, as well. To steady herself. To open her messages app and find the sticker Qiao Yifan sent earlier that evening—an adorably cute critter cheering her on.
Gao Yingjie stands to one side of the restaurant’s door. She doesn’t want to hurry Wang Jiexi. The wind makes her shiver—dig her hands in her pockets, puff vaguely at the hair flying loose from her bun.
She’d spent ages on her hair, this morning, back when she’d been getting ready for work. She’d been aware of their date this evening. The bun she’d swept her hair up into had been this artfully messy creation—the kind of painstaking production she didn’t usually have the patience for. Now, she’s pretty sure, it’s actually just messy.
Well, and anyway, she’d spilt soup on her top while laughing, and there’s still some pen on her hands from afternoon note-taking, and the light powdering of make-up her skin can tolerate has almost certainly been worn-away from a day of smiling and rushing and fussing. She would have been stressed about it, once—worried about looking less than perfect (or… at the very least, as good as she could manage) in a context like this.
She finds, instead, that she really just wants to dismiss the idea as soon as it occurs to her.
Perhaps it’s already having been loved so very well by Qiao Yifan. Perhaps it’s just that she’s older now, or too tired by a hundred other responsibilities to mind all that much about her hair.
Perhaps it's the way Wang Jiexi glances over to where she’s standing and falls silent, for a second, his expression very flatteringly that of a man seeing something so much more impressive than she knows she is—as though Gao Yingjie, framed beneath the flickering light of a family restaurant, is something far more startling than a woman simply grown close to comfortable within the confines of her skin.
Gao Yingjie smiles at Wang Jiexi. Wang Jiexi’s own smile warms like slow, good soup as he farewells his boyfriend and slips his phone into his pocket. He touches uncertainly at his coat, as though he isn’t sure what to do with his hands now the phone is away. Then, he shakes his head, and comes to where Gao Yingjie is waiting.
He stands barely within reach. He reaches out, despite that, tucking the more wayward of Gao Yingjie’s hair behind her ear. His fingers have grown cool in the wind; Gao Yingjie shivers. Wang Jiexi colours, and shifts somewhat restlessly; he clears his throat and says, ‘Shiqian says he’s already given you enough pep talks to be tired of them, so he’ll not bother with asking me to pass on another.’
Gao Yingjie startles into laughter. ‘I wasn’t actually sure he’d told you about that.’
She isn’t surprised, really. She often tells Qiao Yifan these kinds of things, and she’s been working under the assumption that Wang Jiexi and Fang Shiqian are the same.
Wang Jiexi smiles, somewhat wryly. ‘Only since I admitted I—’
Gao Yingjie’s face heats a little. She can’t stop smiling, and it’s starting to feel a little silly.
‘I think Yifan almost lost patience,’ Gao Yingjie admits. ‘All his hints seem terribly unsubtle in hindsight. I think he might have started fantasising about simply locking us in a closet until we made out with each other.’
They haven’t, actually—made out with each other. Not yet. Not—not in a seriously-making-out-kind-of-way. Gao Yingjie feels a little thrill at mentioning it, while old habits urge her to read Wang Jiexi’s face with care in case she’s said too much.
Gao Yingjie knows she hasn’t said too much. Gao Yingjie knows she’s allowed to study Wang Jiexi’s expressions for the sheer pleasure of it, and not because she’s worried.
She looks at him, and thinks of the few small kisses they’ve shared—sweet and chaste, pulse-racing. She thinks of Wang Jiexi tilting her face toward him, right here, beneath this fluctuating lighting, and slipping his tongue inside her mouth.
It would, of course, be a wildly un-sensible move to make. She’s always been so discreet with Qiao Yifan. She can only imagine how very funny he’d find it for her to date him for actual years without the press being able to prove it, only for her to go and land herself front-and-centre in some trashy magazine after her first proper date with Wang Jiexi.
Well, and anyway—Wang Jiexi is laughing as he reaches closer and hooks their arms together.
Wang Jiexi’s laughter is a wonderful thing.
Without needing to discuss it, they step away from the restaurant and start walking. The wind seems to strengthen as they go, tugging at Gao Yingjie’s clothes and hair whenever they catch a space without the slight shelter of tall buildings. They haven’t discussed where they’re going, but it’s late enough in the evening to be heading home for the night, and both Wang Jiexi’s apartment and Tiny Herb’s dormitory lie roughly in this same direction.
Gao Yingjie isn’t sure which location makes her feel more flustered—the idea of how their evening could continue, should they return together to one of those places, setting her skin to tingling warmly in defiance of the chilly wind.
The wind seems quite determined to rein victorious. It grows colder, fiercer. It gusts again, this roughly forceful push, clutching at her bun and yanking.
With a huff, Gao Yingjie finally stops and starts undoing her bun herself. She’s sick of all the strands of hair whipping around her eyes. All she’s thinking is that she’ll redo it into a simple ponytail, nothing complicated. She hasn’t remembered just how many pins she’d used that morning; at least, not until her hands are half full of them. She swears, very softly, beneath her breath.
Wang Jiexi has been waiting quietly while she wrangles hair pins. Now, one of his hands settles comfortably against her shoulder. ‘If I may—?’ he starts. He gestures toward her half-mangled hairdo, with which the wind is now having an even more enthusiastic field day.
Gao Yingjie’s throat tightens as she nods. She stays still beneath his touch, heart pounding as he steps behind her. His fingers begin to shift and dance, making short work of the multitude of hair pins. She feels slightly stunned until she remembers—Fang Shiqian’s hair is as long as hers, isn’t it? And hasn’t it been even longer, in the past?
She bites her lip and tries not to overheat at the sudden thought of Wang Jiexi handling with partner’s hair with such care, such consideration, and then all that experience making him so skilled at touching her hair now. She shivers roughly; it’s difficult to know where the arousal ends and the faint guilt starts.
‘Cold?’ Wang Jiexi asks. ‘Sorry, I’ll try to work faster.’
Gao Yingjie is cold. It wouldn’t be a lie, exactly, if she were to say yes. But—they’re still so new to this, and Gao Yingjie has become a firm believer in starting the way she plans to continue and, anyway, the icy wind has rather thinned out the city’s usual evening bustle.
‘I—was thinking how good you are at this,’ Gao Yingjie admits.
Wang Jiexi makes a listening noise. Relaxed, yet slightly uncertain.
‘About how much I like it,’ Gao Yingjie explains. Wang Jiexi’s fingers don’t stop working; she wonders where he’s putting all the stupid pins. ‘About liking it because… because it feels really nice. But also because—’
She hesitates.
Wang Jiexi’s fingers are so confident. They make her scalp tingle. The wind has stolen her hair from his grip at least twice, but he’s calmly gathered it back up and started again each time. He really must have put her pins somewhere—a pocket, probably—because both hands are right there, entirely focused upon her, and combing her hair so gently. He’s braiding, she realises. It makes her belly heat.
‘Mm?’ Wang Jiexi prompts.
Gao Yingjie swallows. ‘I like the idea of you having maybe done this with him, too,’ she admits in a low voice. ‘And I know I’m not supposed to—that this isn’t supposed to be—well, I mean, I know we’re not in one big relationship or anything. That it’s him and you, and you and me, and me and Yifan, but I—’
‘Shiqian wouldn’t mind,’ Wang Jiexi says. ‘You’re allowed to think about him and me together.’
He doesn’t have to stop and think about it. There’s such certainty in his voice.
Too much certainty, Gao Yingjie realises.
‘Oh?’ she asks, throat tight. Blood thumps behind her ears.
Wang Jiexi’s hands are so busy in her hair. Rhythmic. Meditative. He’s braiding it, she suddenly realises, only to have the wind tug it away again. His hips press against her bottom when he leans forward to gather her hair a third time.
‘I think a ponytail will have to do,’ he complains. ‘I was trying for something nicer, but the wind is defeating me.’
And then—before Gao Yingjie can be too distracted by the image of sitting with Wang Jiexi indoors, some time, specifically so he can braid her hair—Wang Jiexi adds, ‘Did Yifan ever tell you about the shovel talk he gave me?’
Gao Yingjie startles. She glances behind her without thinking, tugging her hair from his hands and making him frown.
‘Sorry!’ she says immediately. She gathers her hair herself, holding it toward him, and a hair tie taken from her wrist, too. ‘He—didn’t say, no,’ she adds, curious, once Wang Jiexi’s fingers have curled around hers and re-taken possession of her hair.
Wang Jiexi makes a thoughtful noise. ‘It was more a—well, to be entirely honest, it seemed a bit mad at the time. I only remembered it again more recently, after you and I—well, and anyway, then I had to deal with the uncomfortable realisation that he’d understood my feelings so long before I had. It’d be lovely if people stopped doing that.’
Gao Yingjie can’t help laughing. She knows the feeling well.
She can hear Wang Jiexi’s smile when he adds, ‘He really cornered me, you know. It was slightly intimidating, ha, I had no idea what I’d suddenly done to offend him. Only to be unexpectedly on the receiving end of this little speech about how I was allowed to like you as much as I wanted—his girlfriend, you know; it was really unsettling—but that he needed me to understand you had the same privilege: to love as hard as you wanted, and whomever you wanted. That if I couldn’t accept that, and hurt you, then—’
Gao Yingjie hadn’t known Qiao Yifan had ever done such a thing. He’s going to be getting sternly messaged, later. And also very kissed about it, the next time she sees him.
Wang Jiexi clears his throat. ‘Anyway, the—ah, the point of that anecdote was supposed to be, I find it—appealing. What he said. How he said it. Well, I’d found it slightly alarming back then, of course, since—you know, I’d always assumed—monogamy, et cetera. Shiqian couldn’t stop laughing when I finally told him, naturally. He just said this was always going to be messy. That that’s what you get when you fall for someone already halfway to married.’ Wang Jiexi’s fingers have stopped moving. He’s just standing there, holding Gao Yingjie’s hair and talking. ‘He’s said that a few times, actually, was my point. That the fact we aren’t all—together—doesn’t mean the borders wouldn’t blur.’
‘I see,’ Gao Yingjie murmurs, because if she says anything more she’ll mess up whatever it is that he’s doing with her hair, not least because she’ll be turning in his arms and doing something she really shouldn’t.
‘Anyway, he won’t mind if you think about—him and me,’ Wang Jiexi continues, his voice more confident as his hands snap her hair tie gently into place. ‘Because he hasn’t minded whenever I’ve done the same with you and Yifan.’
Gao Yingjie is turning the moment his hands leave her head—before they’ve finished leaving, really—and she’s probably messing up his work, actually, but right now she needs to look at him, needs to see him, has to get his face beneath her palms as she leans up and kisses him, open-mouthed and hungry.
It’s not at all how she’s planned on doing this—it isn’t remotely what she’s been fantasising about—but Wang Jiexi’s body jolts against her, and his fingers are in her hair, and his other hand is sliding down to the small of her back and nudging her closer, closer.
Wang Jiexi’s mouth his hot and good, and he welcomes her tongue inside with the stroking touch of his own.
‘I’m—I’d like—’ Wang Jiexi starts, when they finally pull away for air. She’s never heard him sound so winded, and his face feels warm beneath her fingers.
Gao Yingjie’s chest is pounding, and her thighs are hot.
Wang Jiexi can’t seem to say whatever it is he’d wanted to say, however, so Gao Yingjie takes the risk for him, trusting she’s got it right as she whispers: ‘We could go back to yours, if you wanted. I’m not sure I’m ready to take this to the dorms, but I'd—I’d really like—’
‘Yes,’ Wang Jiexi agrees, voice deeply fervent. And then, ‘In a minute.’
He kisses her again, hand working her hair back into a flying, whipping mess, and Gao Yingjie’s heart full to bursting.