Chapter Text
The summer humidity soaks into Xiao’s surely sun-burnt skin, angry and red where his hiking pack digs into flesh. Heavy, from two-people’s worth of water. Likewise, scaling the dirt steps next to him, that are saved from erosion only by the root density within them, Aether carries two-people’s worth of food. It's odd, perhaps a little amusing, that they cover for each other’s forgetfulness that way. Xiao, at least, is guilty of only grabbing a handful of nutrient bars before setting off for the day.
Cicadas ring in his ears, and he hears the rest of the group stumble over fallen branches as the light around them dims. The Snezhnayan man claims their campsite is just around this last hill — has been claiming as such for at least half an hour now. Xiao should've known he had no real grasp of Liyue’s vertical landscapes. Aether still marches on, unbothered by this unending hike, though he's stopped sharing stories with Xiao quite some time ago.
Xiao offers him a water bottle. Aether takes it with a smile. It feels kind of weird, looking at his smile, but Xiao has long learnt to ignore the ways his stomach chooses to respond to Aether’s pleasant expressions.
Even with his blond hair riddled with sweat, and light breaths escaping his dried lips, Aether offers a hand to pull Xiao up a particularly steep climb. His fingers lock around Xiao’s wrists, not once budging even on sticky-damp skin.
“Found it!” Lumine calls ahead, waving at the Snezhnayan who's predictably climbed too far ahead. “Dumbass, check a map next time you decide to navigate!”
“Hey, you can't blame me for enjoying the journey!” He scrambles back down, unceremoniously.
Tar-something or other is his name, but he goes by… ‘Child’. With an E. Somewhere. Xiao has never bothered figuring it out, he does not care for this obnoxious man nearly as much as Aether’s sister does. Nor does he care to hide that he thinks it's a rather stupid nickname to be called by.
The campground they've been journeying to for the better half of the day is a fairly popular one, but the summer weather seems to have deterred other visitors this night. Lumine quickly dumps her pack nearby the pre-existing fire pit and gets to work looking for suitable wood pieces. The Snezhnayan arrives last in the small grove, bringing with him a thick log from his homeland as well as one of the tents. At least, he understands the concept of kindling, and doesn't immediately smother the fire with the needless log he's brought. Or maybe he would have attempted it if Lumine didn't kick him away to pitch their tent.
Between them, they've only brought two. Lumine and this Tar guy will share one, then Xiao and Aether the other — Aether is carrying their tent, and says he will see how the fire turns out to decide where to pitch.
Even with summer’s longer days, it's already nightfall when they finally set up camp chairs around a crackling fire, watching the Snezhnayan whose hair matches the flames kneel on the ground and cook up a bean soup for dinner. Lumine is poking all around him, trying to add some questionable ingredients, but he easily fends her off with his longer limbs and a cheesy laugh. Eventually, she settles with her small form against his back, watching over his shoulder impatiently.
The weather hasn't cooled down at all yet, and being just some metre and a half from a fire surely wouldn't help — Xiao couldn't imagine cuddling up to someone while there's salt-waterfalls running off his own skin. The four of them had been planning this trip for months now, their otherwise conflicting schedules ruthless in separating them, and if not for that sole reason, Xiao at least would've put off this trip for a cooler day. When the warms of flames would be welcome on his skin, rather than searing what's already burnt.
Regardless. They're here. And he's not the one being smothered under someone else’s body heat, so really he should just ignore it.
It's just… weird.
There's a soft tap against his elbow, playful yet considerate, fingers lingering as Xiao turns to look at the perpetrator. Aether smiles back at him, he always does when they make eye contact.
“Did you bring a bowl?” He asks, just loud enough to be heard over the fire and cicadas. His fingertips flirt with the hairs on Xiao’s arm.
He doesn't really mind that. It's just fingertips. It's just Aether. “No, it didn't cross my mind to pack eating utensils.” He feels a little stupid admitting as much, until Aether gleefully reveals that he's brought enough for two. Typical, really. He always says it's because he's in the habit of packing for Lumine, but it's been years since the twins lived together, let alone went adventuring with the other for company.
Aether really does it for the same reason Xiao brings extra water and clothes. And it's nicer that way. It's like all the endorphins from hugging him without having to deal with sweat and body odour, or the prickle of stubble on Aether’s cheek.
It's too hot for hugs anyway.
“Supper is ready!” The ginger head calls out, and when Xiao looks up he sees him once again holding Lumine at lanky-arm’s length. She appears to be trying to scoop her bowl directly into the pot, fake whining about how she's starving to death because of him.
Xiao’s learnt that she's almost always joking, when he asked Aether why no one takes her complaints seriously.
“How hungry are you? Or do you want to get your own?” Aether asks him, already standing up with a bowl in each hand.
Xiao hums, trying to picture how much room he has in his stomach, and how the beans will feel on his tongue. “About half a bowl…?”
Aether nods. “Sure. You can always get seconds, anyway.” He smiles. Again. And makes his way around the fire, contributing somehow to the chaos of Lumine and the Snezhnayan resulting in the taller guy barking with laughter as Lumine whinges louder. Their banter is effortless, thoughtless, a second nature. Aether laughs, smaller than the others’ bellows, but still congruent. He makes it look too easy to fit in, and participate. To understand what's going on even when there's no clear answer.
Xiao used to envy him, when they were all younger. He's since learnt that social interactions are simply too exhausting to bother fretting over, that it's easier to let conversations wash over him like waves breaching the shore. He still prefers the silence, no matter how good he's gotten at weathering those storms.
Except with Aether, who strides back over with two steaming bowls, handing one to Xiao and shuffling his chair a bit closer. “Say what you will about Childe, he's a pretty good cook.” There's already a spoon in Aether’s mouth, and he hands one over to Xiao with the handle facing away from himself, so that Xiao can grab it without ever having to let their fingers brush.
“I guess I don't mind having him in the family somewhere down the line,” Aether continues, “‘cause it means I don't have to cook every single meal every single day. And he'll look after the kiddos.”
“You think he and Lumine are that serious?” Xiao asks, hesitantly trying the soup. It's decent enough.
Aether waves around his hand as he talks, interrupting his motions only to scoop more food into his mouth. “Yeah, well. I started off hating the guy but Lumine fought to have us reconcile, and—” he chews a little— “he's dropped everything he used to have just to make everything work out with her, other than paying visits to his family here and there. That, and Lumine is talking about proposing to him already.”
Xiao hums again. “He should pick a better name for himself.”
Aether’s hand shoots up to cover his mouth as he swallows down laughter; his shoulders shake vibrantly with his eyes screwing shut. He doesn't really laugh like that with other people. It makes Xiao feel warm, in a nice way. “He…” Aether bites away his smile, clearing his throat. “He actually has a fairly normal name, he just doesn't use it anymore. I don't know why he picked ‘Childe’ of all things, though.”
That's not so different from Xiao himself, having a name he no longer wishes to acknowledge. That doesn't explain the choice of something so infantile, though. “What's the other name? The… Targa one…?”
Aether giggles again, a little less intense than before. “Tartaglia, you mean? It's from when he was in the military. Something about a character who stutters a lot, and that he used to have trouble keeping up with his own words.”
“That's certainly not the case anymore.”
Even from over here, they hear Tartaglia’s incessant babbling, almost as much as Lumine’s. His words are clear, if a little childish, but Xiao supposes a squabble is inherently immature in nature. It seems growth has only netted the man a better ability to talk everyone’s ears off. Xiao could list quite a few people with similar downfalls to their character, including the one who sits next to him right now, constantly battling to keep the food in his mouth as he rambles mid-chew.
Not that Xiao minds his voice all that much. It’s… pleasant. Calming.
In all fairness, Aether does spend a decent amount of their time together mute, not for any kind of anxiety or misery, but rather that he simply has nothing to say. In that way, the two of them are similar.
Tonight, Aether’s chatty, quiet and muffled with spoon and drink, and he veers away from the topic of Tartaglia soon enough. “Right, while we were walking, I saw a lot of dove trees— you call them gong tongs? And I wanted to take a photo of them but I think I left my phone on my bed this morning.”
Xiao raises an eyebrow. “Careless, as usual.”
“Hey!” Aether shovels the last of his soup down to dramatically slam the bowl to his lap, and points the spoon at Xiao. “I don’t make fun of your forgetfulness around food, be grateful! Anyway, it’s nice to have a screen detox sometimes. Maybe I left it behind on purpose.”
“So that you’d miss out on photographing the gong tongs?”
Xiao does smile a bit at his pointed frown.
It’s gone soon enough, as Aether picks up his chair and wiggles it closer to Xiao’s yet again; they may as well be conjoined, now. He whispers, almost conspiratorially, and Xiao listens just as intently. “Those white parts, the ones that look like the doves, aren’t real flowers. They’re just bracts— leaves, sort of, though they pretty much function the same for pollination purposes. You’d be surprised how many ‘flowers’ are just bracts, and that the real flower is way smaller than you expect. The same goes for Inazuman naku weed.”
The last two spoonfuls of soup are stubborn in Xiao’s bowl, insisting on at least double the amount of attempts of Xiao scooping it up for half the amount of soup actually ending up in his mouth. His brows are tight as he wonders if it would be rude to drink the last like it were a cup instead. Most likely. Equally likely, is that Aether will not care, and the other two won’t notice to begin with. He’s seen Tartaglia commit much greater cutlery crimes, so with the confidence of an old recording of the Sneznayan’s miserable first attempts at chopsticks — the skill of which he has not gotten all that much better at — Xiao gulps it down.
It’s incredibly unsatisfying. Most of the soup doesn’t even make it to the edge of the bowl, and the little that does isn’t enough to taste like anything other than bowl. To top it off, his stomach immediately bubbles, demanding more.
“Nothing wrong with seconds,” Aether quietly chuckles, having been amidst a long tangent on cross-invasive species between Inazuma and Liyue while Xiao was battling his soup.
The way he says it, feels like the unspoken permission Xiao hadn’t realised he was waiting for. Nodding, he puts his spoon carefully in the cupholder of the camp chair so that the bowl does not touch anything he’s deemed as tainted, before standing.
He makes it about halfway around the fire before halting. Turning on his heel. And returning to Aether, who’s face quickly goes from confusion, to the same horror that cloud’s Xiao’s, to eventually, laughter. Which Xiao does not mirror in the slightest. His stomach rumbles no longer, whatever appetite he had probably burnt in the fire, the billowing smoke of which does not cover as much of the couple across from them as he’d hope.
“Yo!” Aether yells over the fire, “Keep your damn tongues to yourselves!”
Lumine pulls her mouth away from Tartaglia’s, all too wetly, sticking said tongue out back at her brother. “We can do whatever we want, Mr. Chastity.”
She’s back on him all too soon. Xiao stares quickly at the bottom of his bowl, the mere idea of it being full again making him nauseous. He feels Aether’s elbow bump his own, though doesn’t look up, he just nudges back to indicate he’s listening.
“I found a spot to pitch our tent.” He jerks a thumb in the general direction, towards the corner of the grove, and Xiao gives it a brief glance. It’s a healthy distance away from the fire, and therefore from Lumine and Tartaglia’s tent, too. Aether continues, “There’s some more food buried in my bag, too, so we can have that instead.”
Xiao, truthfully, does his best not to think about the food lest what he’s already eaten make a reappearance. He and Aether make rather efficient work of setting up their tent, the only real issue being that they’re working mostly blind as there’s no good place to set up any effective torch. Aether wrangles all the tent poles into solid lines while Xiao is the one to slide them into place; Aether takes a mallet to the tent pegs while Xiao casts the fly overtop it all, then dragging their hiking packs inside and setting up their small gas light to hang from the apex. Even with the admittedly far easier jobs of the two, Xiao feels the sweat stick on his skin, wishing there was a shower facility here, but he’ll survive.
Aether practically crashes atop his pack, uncaring as something makes a horrid crack beneath him. The sweat that glues the sides of his hair to his face like terrible fake sideburns doesn’t seem to bother him, either, as he wipes it off casually with the back of his hand. His chest dramatically rises then falls with a heavy sigh, and his eyes flutter as though he’s warding off sleep.
Xiao admonishes him under his breath. Louder, he says, “We should get our sleeping gear set up sooner rather than later. Lest one of us gets too comfortable and ends up with a crick in his neck come morning.”
“Yeah,” Aether sighs again, “that’s a pretty good idea. Someone is already developing a crick in his neck.”
“Would that someone be you?”
“No, not at all.”
Again, a twinge of a smile haunts Xiao’s lips, and it sort of settles his stomach. Sort of makes it worse, too. Sparing a look to Aether, who’s lethargically yanking his sleeping bag out of the iron grip the pack seems to have on it, Xiao is caught off guard by the easy smile he wears.
He might be able to stomach the extra food, after all.
It’s a hell of a lot easier to roll out the sleeping bags than it will be to try squeeze them back into their impossibly small sleeves in the morning, and the tent is just long enough for Xiao to lay down without a single bent joint, just wide enough to ensure a healthy metre between himself and Aether in which their now relatively empty packs, as well as Aether’s scattered snacks, lay. The night bodes well, all things considered; the crackle of the fire is distant as it dims, and the second tent is pitched even further away than that. Even if Lumine and Tartaglia should decide to… continue what they started at dinner, it’s unlikely to outcompete the chirping crickets around them.
A sharp frown quickly draws upon his face as he tries to settle in for the night; a rock has decided to meet with his back, through the layers of the tent floor and sleeping bag, yet when he tries to search for it with his hand to wiggle it out of his sleeping spot, it’s conveniently nowhere to be found. That’s not to say it’s gone, because barely the moment he decides to lay back down and ignore it, it returns with a vengeance. Like it’s single handedly making sure his night is not too good.
He turns on his side, away from the cursed thing, towards the other side of the tent where Aether nibbles on some beef jerky, reading an e-book. Aether glances back at him, another wide smile accompanying the look, though his attention is back on his story soon enough.
He has a lot of different kinds of smiles, many of which Xiao has grown familiar with by now. There’s his usual polite smile, with which Aether nets himself many positive acquaintances, and even though he’s managed to crinkle his eyes in such a convincing way, Xiao knows it is hardly genuine. It’s not that Aether is a bitter person — far from it — only that Xiao has seen the facade crack a few too many times.
When Aether is actually enjoying himself, his lips part to show off his ever-so-slightly misaligned teeth, and the more he laughs, the less his eyes stay open. Usually Aether hides it all behind the back of his wrist, as if he’s embarrassed to have such an endearing expression of happiness — lately, though, he’s been doing that less, at least when it is only the two of them to witness it.
And there’s the times like this, the quiet reassurances Aether makes with quirks at the corners of his lips, raised eyebrows and sideways glances, all which feels like he’s telling Xiao: ‘There’s nothing to worry about; we’re here together.’
Xiao likes all his smiles, but these ones especially so. Maybe because it’s the marker of their pleasant silences, the conversations they don’t need to have because enough has already been said. Maybe because it’s only him who receives them. They’re contagious, first tainting his stomach and making his limbs weightless, until even his mouth draws upward.
Aether’s smiles feel like gravity doesn’t matter anymore.
“Have you ever kissed someone?”
The words leave his mouth before he even has time to realise he’s thought them at all. When they finally do register, Xiao’s body sinks back into the earth, all his limbs now weighing twice as much. But he doesn’t retract his words. That would only make it worse, and— now, there’s curiosity crawling along his skin, begging to be answered.
Aether drops his device against his chest as he exhales sharply through his teeth, one of those genuine smiles tugging his mouth open to speak. “Puh, no,” he breathes, turning to face Xiao with a shudder of his shoulders. “I don’t think I’ve ever had an opportunity to, even if I did— ugh, I dunno.”
Xiao quickly breaks the eye contact Aether establishes, staring at a green food packet on the floor next to him.
“I haven’t really felt like I wanted to, either,” Aether goes on. “I mean, I’ve liked plenty of people, but when I tried to imagine… that, it just kinda freaked me out, if anything. Maybe I’m just sick of seeing it everywhere. Especially from Lumine.” He makes a sour expression, setting down his jerky.
“It looks weird,” Xiao offers flatly.
Aether nods a vigorous agreement. “It does, and if I have to watch one more person do it right in front of me, I swear I am going to deck them. I don’t care who, even if it’s my own sister. I won’t tolerate this any longer.” He says the last with a dramatic cross of his arms over his chest, sighing loudly, before sitting up sharply. “Have you ever—”
“No,” Xiao answers before he can finish. He looks back towards Aether, narrowly avoiding his gaze and settles for looking at the freckles that smatter his cheeks more heavily now than they once did. “It’s… not something I think about.”
Aether leans more weight onto his elbow as he contorts his body to face Xiao better, humming in response. There’s no smile on his face now, though it is not unkind; Xiao feels like he’s being studied, like Aether is trying to look straight through him and peer at his deepest secrets.
Xiao doesn’t have a single secret that he hasn’t already shared with Aether, yet he twists the tips of his fingers anyway, finding it harder to keeping looking at Aether at all with every passing second. A sentence forms slowly in his mind; he’s not sure where it’s come from, nor if he wants to say it at all, yet the creeping curiosity tugs his jaws open, puppeting Xiao’s voice. He doesn’t know what’s come over him.
“I’d like to try,”
Maybe he’s contracted some kind of delirion-inducing fever,
“With you,”
Or maybe he’s so shell-shocked from seeing Lumine and Tartaglia do it earlier,
“If that’s alright?”
But his chest is racing, and sweat forms under his neck, maybe from the weather, maybe from this. He wants to know the answer. Needs to, almost.
Aether stares agape at him for a second too long, a second not long enough for Xiao to backpedal as he shifts his knees around to fully face him, hand coming down atop Xiao’s fidgeting fingers and effectively stilling them. Their hands interlocking, not unlike a few times they’ve done so in the past, seems as much as a reassurance to Xiao as it is to Aether.
“I don’t mind, at all,” Aether eventually answers, voice quiet.
The air in the tent feels thick, as Xiao slowly sits up to face him too. He swallows. Aether swallows, too, brushes off its loudness with one of those false laughs he shows everyone else, takes up one of Xiao’s hands in each of his own, and pushes skin over knuckles in circular patterns, clasps their fingers all together and meets his eye. Xiao does his best to look back.
“So, um…” Aether says, “since neither of us have done this before, it’ll probably be really bad, so let’s not overthink it too much. And also, I don’t want you to think that this will somehow ruin anything, alright? We’re friends—”
Xiao cuts him off with the only thing racing through his mind. It’s awkward. It also hurt his own lips, with the intensity at which he collided their mouths together, and he doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s supposed to be doing other than just sitting here with his flushed face pressed to Aether’s, as he grips onto his hands like he’s instead falling down a cliff face. It’s weird. It’s wrong, and Xiao pulls away quickly.
He turns his head down, shameful as Aether stares at him breathlessly again, wondering if he should pray for the sudden ability to turn back time a few minutes, so that he never went and said something so peculiar to begin with.
Aether slides a finger gently under his jaw, but rather than tilting his chin up to face him, Aether instead leans down and closer into Xiao’s space, eyes full of that compassion Xiao is so familiar with, and his breath is a pleasant warmth on Xiao’s parted mouth. “Hey,” he murmurs, “what was I saying before you cut me off? Don’t overthink it so much.” There’s another smile, one of those rare ones that he doesn’t show anyone else, that effortlessly makes Xiao’s heart beat harder in his throat.
He leans his head into Aether’s hands, lets his eyes trail down and linger on that smile until finally drifting shut in the moments that Aether tilts their faces together once more. Gentle, and patient, as he mouths the same sort of kiss to Xiao’s lips as he would to any other part of his skin. Xiao can feel the way Aether struggles against a smile, and he’s having palpitations now.
It’s slow, when Aether finally opens his mouth against Xiao’s, inviting Xiao to do the same. There isn’t a tongue to follow like Xiao suspected, all he does is clamp Xiao’s bottom lip between his own, run a cool finger down the side of Xiao’s neck. He releases just enough for their lips to slide together, to tilt his head the other way, and though Xiao’s lips are chapped while Aether’s taste quite salty, and they have differently shaped noses, when it all comes together like this, it somehow fits just right. Aether pushes his bottom lip gently into Xiao’s, mouths over the skin where his moustache would grow if Xiao had the genes for it. Xiao can’t keep up, can only press his nose closer into Aether’s cheek, but he feels his lips being tugged against like Aether’s given up on preventing his smile.
He’s only just getting used to it when Aether puts a gentle hand against his collar to separate, leaving his mouth feeling all too empty. Aether is quick to run a hand down the back of his own neck, turning his grin into the side of his elbow while he mumbles something incoherent about how he was trying something he read about one time. Xiao can’t hear anything over the static in his ears.
His mouth stays ajar.
Aether pins him with a particular look, raised brow and smile teetering on teasing. Xiao quickly snaps his jaw shut, clearing his throat.
“I guess I can see the appeal,” he mutters, turning away to wriggle back into his sleeping bag, wishing his ears weren’t full of rushing blood so he could actually attempt to sleep this all off. And, of course, the moment he’s on his back, his spine is reacquainted with the rock from earlier. He barely suppresses a sigh, listening to Aether settle into his own sleeping bag, clearly not ailed as Xiao is.
It’s hard to act normal, after what’s just transpired, and especially with a sharp reminder in his back that he cannot make himself comfortable. He flops himself over with a huff, staring at Aether who’s already staring back at him. There’s a cock to his brow that asks a silent question all too loudly.
“...There’s a rock,” Xiao answers, wetting his lip.
Aether laughs softly, already gathering the bags between them on his lap as he pats the now clear space between them. “You could’ve said so earlier. We’ll sleep next to each other, I can put all this where the rock is.”
Xiao nods, unceremoniously wriggling his sleeping bag to be seam-to-seam with Aether’s, sticking out an arm to help drag their empty hiking packs over to the other side of the tent. Aether leans over him to arrange them to his liking, and only when he retracts to settle right next to Xiao, does Xiao realise how close they are. His face heats up the longer he stares at Aether’s side profile. Apparently, there’s some unaddressed sentiments Xiao should probably deal with.
Aether meets his eyes with a steady smile, sliding an arm over to brush the hair out of Xiao’s eyes. “You know, I’m always willing to try these things with you,” he murmurs, the curled knuckle of his index finger fitting nicely against the soft bridge of Xiao’s nose as he caresses over his skin. “You’re my best friend, Xiao. You’ll always be.” His smile widens as he retracts his hand, turning to face the ceiling of their tent. “Hope you sleep well.”
Xiao nods, inching closer so that their shoulders press together. There’s a ghost of Aether’s lips still plastered over his own, but it’s not as haunting as it usually would be. He knows Aether’s words to be true, knows that nothing will change between them that Xiao isn’t ready for, no matter how convoluted his own feelings get. It’s what Xiao appreciates most about him, about the relationship they share.
“Thank you,” Xiao quietly replies, doesn’t specify what for. For understanding. For the kiss. For the ‘sleep well’.
For being you. For letting me be me.