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“Have you ever… you know. Kissed anyone?”
Chu Wanning blinks. Then, he blinks a little harder, as he looks at Mo Ran, who’s still the tiniest amount smaller than him, because Chu Wanning’s growth spurt came earlier than Mo Ran’s. He knows that’s probably because he’s trans, and the way he was born meant an earlier growth spurt, as opposed to Mo Ran, but…
What?
“What?” he croaks out, already feeling heat climb to his face quickly and violently. He hates how easily he gets embarrassed, but in his defense, that’s his crush! Who’s just asked him whether he’s ever kissed anyone!
“’Cause I haven’t,” Mo Ran admits all sheepishly. He lets his controller sink. Chu Wanning keeps firm hold of his, though he’s kind enough to stop the current MarioKart race that they were doing on Xue Meng’s Wii. The Xues are all out of the house today, so Mo Ran invited Chu Wanning over for a hangout and some food.
And given that Chu Wanning has been in love with Mo Ran for roughly six years now (because he fell for him the first day of primary school), and he craves every single semblance of time spent with his crush, he agreed. Naturally.
Mo Ran just started to learn how to cook from his adoptive mom too, so Chu Wanning figured well, he could try Mo Ran’s food. Since he told him that he’d make some noodles with vegetables in tomato broth. Not a grand meal, sure, but it’s tasty regardless. So, they had that for lunch, and for dinner they’ll just order takeout (Mo Ran’s parents left some money for them), and then Chu Wanning will sleep here.
Or maybe he won’t, if Mo Ran decides to kill him before dinner and before managing to fall asleep. Not like Chu Wanning ever really does, if Mo Ran is within vicinity.
Mo Ran doesn’t say anything else. He just awkwardly scratches his head, like he isn’t sure why the hell he’s said this, either. As if Chu Wanning would know the answer.
“…So?” Chu Wanning eventually asks, because he takes pity on Mo Ran, whose cheeks are about equally as red as his own. It’s just…
Why would Mo Ran ask him that?
“So, have you?” he asks, and Chu Wanning scoffs, trying to calm himself down.
He knows this isn’t because Mo Ran wants to kiss him. He’s probably just interested in it.
Oh.
Oh no.
What if Mo Ran has a crush on someone? As far as Chu Wanning knows, he’s never had a crush. Well, they’re only twelve, so that figures. Chu Wanning just happened to develop the absolutely hugest crush on Mo Ran the literal day they met.
“…Obviously not,” Chu Wanning responds eventually, his heart starting to beat out of his chest. Yup, calming himself down is not going to work.
“Well, I was just- wondering. I guess.” Mo Ran says. He looks down at his controller, and he doesn’t pick the joycon in its steering wheel back up at all. He just stares down at it all miserably.
“Mn,” Chu Wanning says.
A very, very, very awkward silence unfolds between the two of them, then. Chu Wanning rakes his brain for things to say, but he can only panic, because what if? What if Mo Ran has a crush on someone, and it isn’t him, because why would it be? Sure, they’re friends, and they have been for a long while now, but that’s already too good to be true, if he’s honest.
Chu Wanning doesn’t even understand why Mo Ran would want to be his friend. So, considering the possibility of Mo Ran liking him?
Yeah, no.
Absolutely not. That’s not going to be the case.
Neither of them dare to look at the other, and Chu Wanning, in the end, is right about to open his mouth to ask Mo Ran why the hell he’d ask that. But he doesn’t get to in the end, because Mo Ran seems to deem the silence to have been long enough, too.
“Would you want to?”
It’s all hasty, and Mo Ran stumbles over the words, and then, Chu Wanning does look up at him, because, huh?
“Why?”
“Not- why?” Mo Ran says. He gives an awkward laugh. “I mean, people kiss all the time and they seem to like it. Are you not interested in it at all?”
Chu Wanning gives him a glare, just because of what he’s like. Obviously he’s interested in kissing. Who isn’t? Well – if not for Mo Ran, he likely wouldn’t care at all, if he’s honest with himself. But obviously he’s interested. Now, is he going to voice that, with his thin face and all?
The answer should be obvious.
“Ah- I guess not, then,” Mo Ran mumbles. He clears his throat, because his voice did the little jumpy thing again, but then, he suddenly looks back up at Chu Wanning, and his gaze is fiercer and more determined this time.
“I think about it,” he says. Which Chu Wanning already knows from the question alone, obviously. Then, Mo Ran decides to straight up murder him, though. “I think about kissing you.”
That awkward silence that they were trying so hard to break is right back at that.
What does he mean? He’s thinking about kissing Chu Wanning? All of Chu Wanning’s thoughts fly right out of his head at that. He blinks, and he’s looking at Mo Ran, his eyes so fucking pretty that Chu Wanning genuinely just doesn’t know what to anymore.
Mo Ran thinks about kissing him.
Mo Ran thinks about kissing him.
“Wh-what?” is everything that Chu Wanning manages to say. His cheeks feel like they’re being set on fire right now, and he feels himself burning, and the sincerity written all across Mo Ran’s face is just too much. He means it. Chu Wanning, in every way possible, tries to convince himself that this isn’t at all what’s going on, but not even he manages to tell his self-deprecating brain that Mo Ran doesn’t mean this.
“Sorry,” Mo Ran mumbles. “I just… I’ve been thinking about it lately. Every time we see each other, I guess, and I don’t really know, but I just kinda- I want to. So I was wondering, whether you’d like to… try it, I guess?”
“Why?” Chu Wanning asks again, because he’s really, really not computing it.
The Rainbow Road melody is still playing in the background. Has been, for this entire conversation.
“I don’t know,” Mo Ran says. “I just really like you, I guess, and whenever I think about kissing anyone, you’re the only one I can imagine kissing, and then suddenly I want to. And once I first had that thought, it wouldn’t get out of my mind. So I just figured I’d ask, and if you say ‘no’, then at least I’ll know that you don’t want to, I guess?”
Mo Ran wants to kiss him, and Mo Ran likes him. Chu Wanning swallows. Does Mo Ran-
He wants to ask.
He wants to ask so, so, so badly. Can he? Is he allowed to ask this, is he allowed to believe this?
His throat feels all dry. Chu Wanning opens his mouth once, and it almost slips his tongue, but then he gets too scared again, except he quickly grows annoyed with himself about it, because surely that’s…
Surely this is…?
“Mo Ran,” he mumbles, looking at the boy in front of him, looking just as nervous as Chu Wanning feels. His dimpled smile is gone, and he looks like he’s barely hanging on anymore. His cheeks are so red that it almost hides his freckles.
“Y-yes?” Mo Ran asks, his voice going so high that it’s practically a squeak.
“Do you-“ Chu Wanning starts, and then he decides to just bite the bullet. He’ll just ask. He can’t not ask, at this point. When he opens his lips back up, it feels like he’s plummeting straight towards death, with how nervous he is, and he squeezes his eyes shut, because he can’t possibly look at his best friend when asking this. “Do you have a crush on me?”
And he keeps his eyes closed, because when it come down to it, Chu Wanning is a horrible little scaredy-cat that doesn’t dare take ‘no’ for an answer, because he knows that it might kill him.
Mo Ran doesn’t answer. Chu Wanning still doesn’t look, and he still thinks that he’s dying right now. His heart is racing so fast that blood is rushing to his ears, and he can barely even hear Rainbow Road in the background anymore, muted as it is, now that they’re on the pause menu.
Then, Mo Ran does speak up.
“Oh.”
Chu Wanning, carefully, blinks his eyes back open.
“Oh my god.”
Mo Ran’s cheeks are, possibly, even redder, and he’s looking at Chu Wanning so intently, and so surprised, and then he’s awkwardly reaching out for Chu Wanning’s hand, his fingers trembling. Chu Wanning is so taken aback that he lets Mo Ran just kind of… poke his fingers, once.
Because Mo Ran seems just as confused about it.
“I think I do,” he says, suddenly. “I do have a crush on you, it just- it just kinda didn’t occur to me?”
He does?
Mo Ran does have a crush on him?
Chu Wanning still feels like he’s dying now – just in the exact opposite direction. Mo Ran does have a crush on him?
“I didn’t realize, even though that’s so obvious!” Mo Ran stutters, and then he properly takes Chu Wanning’s hand. “Of course I do! Oh my god, I have a crush on you. Oh-“ He lets go of his hand then, suddenly, as if burnt. “Oh. Oh my god, I’m so sorry, A-Ning, but I do have a crush on you, and I want to kiss you, and you probably don’t even… I’m so sorry, I really, really like you, so even just as a friend, I’m totally fine with that, if you just want to stay friends, but I think I-“
Because Mo Ran looks so destroyed and because his eyes are glimmering with something that looks like it might devolve into tears the next second, and because Chu Wanning can’t believe that Mo Ran has a crush on him, too, he feels just a little braver then.
Chu Wanning aims to take Mo Ran’s hand. Properly. Except then he does get too scared of doing that, so he only ends up tugging at his sleeve a little.
Mo Ran goes quiet, and Chu Wanning wants to tell him so badly. He has to, right? Because that fear he felt a moment ago, Mo Ran is feeling right now, correct? So he has to tell him. Because Chu Wanning doesn’t Mo Ran to feel this fear, either.
He’ll just have to be properly brave this time.
“Me too,” he rasps out.
Their gazes meet again, then, and Mo Ran’s eyes go all wide, and in the light of the afternoon sun and the dark yet bright background on the TV, they gleam almost purple.
“You… you have a crush on me too?”
Chu Wanning nods. He does manage the nod.
“Really?”
His fingers close harder around Mo Ran’s sleeves, but he does manage another nod.
“So I- So you think about kissing me, too?”
Another nod. It’s everything Chu Wanning can manage right now.
“And I- I… I could do it right now? If we both want to kiss each other, then we could do that like, right now?”
And another.
The way Mo Ran lights up immediately is so much. His whole face changes. He starts smiling, and he grabs Chu Wanning’s hands, both of them, and then he squeezes them like he usually does, when he’s having a panic attack and Chu Wanning is trying to calm him down.
“Then I will!”
With the declaration made, Mo Ran does, well.
Nothing at all.
Increasingly, his smile drops, and Chu Wanning starts to get scared that Mo Ran doesn’t actually want to do it, but luckily, he’s quickly proven wrong.
“I don’t know how, actually,” Mo Ran admits. “I mean, in the movies they kinda… they usually like, touch each other, I guess? Can I take you like, by the waist, or something?”
The pure idea of Mo Ran’s hands on his waist feels like it might just annihilate Chu Wanning whole, but he also really, really wants that. He wants Mo Ran to do that.
“…Yes,” he says. He’s honestly really proud of himself for managing to say that out loud, if he’s honest.
Again, Mo Ran visibly lights up. He instantly lets go of Chu Wanning’s hands, and instead places them on his waist indeed. They’re so warm. Mo Ran’s hands are really warm like this, and it feels like they might set Chu Wanning on fire any second, and his own hands shoot up, resting (or trembling, really) on Mo Ran’s arms.
“I can kiss you? Really?” Mo Ran asks again, and Chu Wanning swears that if he asks one more time-
For one last time, Chu Wanning nods, and he wants to cast his gaze down, but he’s actually physically unable to take his eyes off Mo Ran when he’s like this. Because he looks so happy, and so stoked, and then he’s already leaning in, and their noses are brushing, and they’re breathing each other’s air, and Chu Wanning holds his breath so they’re not doing that anymore at all, and Mo Ran’s hair tickles his forehead and he’s so close and so much, and then, he feels something pleasantly warm pressing against his lips.
And Mo Ran is kissing him.
Really and truly, Mo Ran is kissing him. It’s a really quick peck on the lips only, and it’s so fleeting, gone so soon, but Chu Wanning still feels like he’s going to fly and soar into the sky and disappear there forever.
They just kissed.
His crush just kissed him.
Both of their eyes are still open.
The first to do anything is Mo Ran – Chu Wanning is still too stunned. And what Mo Ran does is give one really, really happy laugh, and then he pulls Chu Wanning into a hug and wraps his arms around him until Chu Wanning is buried whole in him.
“…So, can we be boyfriends instead of friends, then?” he asks into Chu Wanning’s shoulder, and Chu Wanning brings his arms up to his back and just holds onto him.
That has to be answer enough.
He very arguably does not have another godforsaken nod in him right now.
Mo Ran seems to understand, because he then tries to crush Chu Wanning’s ribs, but that’s fine.
Chu Wanning would let him.
“I’ll kiss you again once I’m done hugging you, okay?”
“…Okay,” Chu Wanning mumbles, and he nuzzles a little closer, because his crush likes him back.
He knows that the two of them are still young, but Chu Wanning can’t imagine liking anyone else this way again, so it might as well just be forever in his mind already, now.
“Good,” Mo Ran answers. His hands on Chu Wanning’s back are trembling, too. “’Cause I really want to.”
So does Chu Wanning.
They’re fine then.