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The first thing Xia Fei’s face does when he realises he’s being photographed is fall so drastically and tragically, Vein is transported back to visuals of men making their peace with fearing death before the blade kissing their neck severs it.
Edo Japan used to thrill itself with the art of decapitations. The shogunate executed with blades when the crime fit and the reigning local power ordered it, and it became reason for pride to wield a cut so sharp and delicate, so quick and efficient, that the executed never knew the pain of the first incision, and the veins and arteries protruding from neck and head would take a solid few moments to even bleed as profusely as a properly placed bite to a jugular usually causes.
Vein gets a flash of Xia Fei kneeling uncomfortably before whichever nobleman was supervising his execution, adoringly expressive features and so easily startled, widened eyes hidden by the fabric used to cover the executed’s head, lest the nobleman must stomach the sight of his own power-display. He can see the hidden expression, the fear on Xia Fei’s features, far too raw to be in any way useful to survival, so easily offered to any kind of predator who is efficient enough to see it.
But he’s been getting better.
Not so much at hiding his reactions, as changing the very reactions themselves. Nowadays Xia Fei startles more than he fears. He side-steps dangerous with a tangible sense of discomfort, but not the signalling of recognizing the nearby threat as one that he couldn’t brush off to tell the tale around dramatic sighs and tired lines etched into his face.
He’s been getting braver.
Or you’re spoiling him too much.
Vein lowers his phone. The shutter hadn’t gone off and judging from the minute dissipation of unjustifiable tension in Xia Fei’s shoulders, he must have assumed Vein hadn’t taken a picture - as if he couldn’t turn the sound of it off.
That’s another thing.
The changes in Xia Fei take a moment to take proper hold. He sprouts easily enough, but he has the same facilitated penchant for simply stomping onto fresh soil and the saplings protruding from it, walking a line between growing into the full potential of himself, and holding tight onto the concept of holding on itself, as opposed to keeping anything actually gone close.
Xia Fei isn’t a particularly nostalgic man, or he doesn’t paint himself to be one. When he speaks of what he was like - who he was - before Vein had fished him out of water, he does it with a badly concealed distaste buried in the back of his throat.
Rusty scissors hovering over the thread keeping that Xia Fei, stiff and unhappy and angry, tied to this Xia Fei, loose and spoiled and bratty. Vein tries to sharpen them. But it’s not his job to get Xia Fei to figure himself out. Especially not when he’s having so much fun oscillating near enough to note the shifts, lick the altered paragraphs clean off the repeatedly crumbled and smoothed out pages.
He knows, with the right push, Xia Fei could be made into something mellower than he is. He’s soft already, in a way, though not in most. Soft to regard, soft to the touch, but not necessarily soft-hearted.
Having beliefs to stick to and, god forbid, morality, adds strength, as far as Vein is concerned. No, Xia Fei is as domesticated as an injured dog you nursed back to health. He understands the difference between the street where he’d been hurt and the place that had taken him in at his lowest. He’s smart enough, beneath the dissatisfaction and the propensity for letting his actions affect his opinion of himself, to know that he’s better off staying in his dog house, than trying to run through the gate when it opens.
But it’s a decision he’s making. Not a choice taken from him.
And even if the right push could make him a lap dog, it would involve breaking too many parts of who he is for it to be worth the hassle.
Vein doesn’t want Xia Fei to be obedient because that’s all he is.
Vein likes watching Xia Fei enjoy his privileges, likes the unspoken understanding in Xia Fei’s pretty eyes - wide and so expressive, if he had a leash on him he’d only tug on it to make sure Xia Fei doesn’t lower his head, doesn’t stop letting him see them - that there’s an agreement here, that Xia Fei is allowed to be leash-less so long as he respects curfews and doesn’t wreak more havoc than he’s worth.
Except.
Vein lifts his gaze from the phone screen. The face Xia Fei is making in the photo, the forlorn half avoidant gaze over the reflex of starting on a smile - death row. And the sighs Xia Fei breathes occasionally, turned away from him, reaching for the bowl of peanuts with the same listless way he’d been grabbing single peanuts out of it for the past 30 minutes. All of Xia Fei’s colleagues that had likely dragged him to this karaoke room had started filing out even before Vein had walked through the door. He’d ignored the flitting glances of those he was blocking the way of, smiled his usual smile and acknowledged the people still sitting and eating in the private room solely because his gaze had happened to cross them when he’d assessed who else had been here.
Xia Fei would have left too, likely, night already tiring, the semi-obligatory social gathering already mostly at an end, if Vein hadn’t sat down next to him.
Vein would feel bad, if he actually did, but Xia Fei had slumped into himself the moment he’d delivered the last forcefully friendly ‘have a good night!’, dropped his smile to the floor and leaned back, closing his eyes to the dim light and the bad air of a place as shut as this.
Vein hadn’t said anything. Why would he? Xia Fei relaxed around him like a red string finally liberated of whatever tension was pulling him so tight. He mollifies, spreads and sinks, lifts his head, bears the weakest parts of his body without the awareness of it to even turn it into an offering, the length of his throat and the pulse relaxing within it.
He’d unwound, muttered nonsensical complaints about a hard day at work and the ‘two-faced bitches’ he has to deal with, nibbled at the salted peanuts and the straw in his glass of water, leaned away from Vein to meet his eyes better, leaned into him when he thought he could make it look casual.
It’s Vein’s fault if he’s pulling into himself again.
Because there’s the ‘except’, if Xia Fei is the dog in the dog house, why is Vein course-correcting to fix his mood.
Vein leans closer, elbow resting on the back of the frankly tasteless sofa that makes up part of the equally mortifyingly boring and cliché interior design of this place -introduce the designers of this building, English and arrogant, to a good, luxurious, well "staffed" KTV and watch them become horridly, embarrassingly, dishonestly prude and cheap - and digs his fingers into Xia Fei’s hair. The reaction is instantaneous, domino-cascading over Xia Fei’s features in all its various layers and details: the initial widening of Xia Fei’s eyes, the immediate weight against Vein’s palm when he instinctively leans in, the sudden halting as minute as the rest when Xia Fei so very visibly debates if he should hesitate, when he goes through all the different ways he figures he should behave, all while Vein waits and watches, makes a reason for worship out of every step that leads Xia Fei down to the conclusion he could have reached moments earlier, had he simply let go from the get-go.
He spreads his fingers through the fine locks, drags them back scraping along Xia Fei’s scalp, to watch the guarded, interrupted fluttering of Xia Fei’s eye-lids, the way his lips part as if to sigh or because he doesn’t know how to say what the rest of him displays with an ease that should be startling.
It makes him easier to read, sure.
It’s unnerving, when Vein catches himself wondering how many others try to pick him apart like this.
But Xia Fei is getting better. Smarter. His intelligence, unoffered in directness, lies partly in being a better actor than he gives himself credit for. If Xia Fei lets you read him, it’s because a part of him wants you to.
The pull he was going for turns into a push when Xia Fei turns his head his way at the last moment, as if to face him, whisper things through the eye contact he makes as opposed to the tongue he keeps so safely secured behind relaxed, closed lips.
There’s the threat of Xia Fei, the injured dog who’d have bitten had he not been bleeding out. The attentive gaze, picking apart the commas between the words Vein doesn’t speak, reading the fine-print behind his smile.
Vein’s hand splays in Xia Fei’s hair and Xia Fei doesn’t resist when he’s forced closer. There’s a twitch of feigned displeasure, petulant in the small frown on Xia Fei’s face, but Vein simply tuts silently, and Xia Fei drops the act.
When he leans in to kiss the corner of Vein’s lips, Vein tries not to laugh at the mental image of a wolf submitting by licking another wolf’s jaw.
Ignores the mental image of Xia Fei’s ‘there there’, soft and sweet because he’s put a collar around Vein’s neck while Vein was too busy watching him supposedly bend backwards to keep him from walking away.