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Xiao’s hands shook slightly as he lowered the flute, the last note of the piece echoing softly into the night. If not for the light press of a warm back against his own, the scene would have been no different from the ones that had plagued these landscapes for months now: One of a lone solitary adeptus perched upon the roof of the Wangshu Inn long after everyone had fallen asleep, quietly practising and perfecting the same piece over and over through the night.
Except it was different, and this time, he had poured all his heart and soul into performing the piece perfectly, his entire mind so focused on the piece that in its completion, he could barely begin to guess if he had performed it adequately or if it had been a shaky mess. He had thought that perhaps a reaction might have clued him in, but even after what felt like several long minutes, the pressure against his back remained stubbornly silent and still.
Frustratingly, despite his best efforts to recall it, he could not place whether the performance he had just done was decent or not. Perhaps it had been terrible, too focused on perfecting individual notes over the flow of the music, or on the perfection of the techniques over the scene it should have conveyed. These were problems he often had after all, and though he had practised endlessly to resolve them, perhaps in his discomposure with this highly unusual act, they had all gone flying out the metaphorical window, and he had reverted to his usual inadequate playing.
Maybe it was cruel to make the god of hope and songs respond to something like that. What was one to say to something so clearly lacklustre despite its best effort, without unwittingly crushing one’s hopes? Xiao had the rare privilege of knowing how much effort and care Venti put into keeping up people’s spirits, so how could he intentionally put more pressure on him for such a response, when there was no need for it? He knew his faults. He simply had to do better.
“It’s okay,” he muttered quietly. At his unexpected words, the figure at his back shifted abruptly, nearly startling him too. “You don’t have to… Thank you for listening.” There was barely even a hitch in his voice.
Before he had the chance to teleport elsewhere (somewhere far, somewhere safe, somewhere he could…), perhaps even to return to his duties, a sudden hand shot out to wrap itself around his left wrist, fingers brushing gently against his vision. “No, just…” Venti’s voice sounded almost strange. Xiao heard him take a quiet breath. “Just give me a moment.”
It sounded off, wet, almost as if…
He crawled around to face Venti hurriedly, and sure enough, he found Venti using his free hand to wipe at his eyes. That… that wasn’t his intention. At all. Lost and a little unsure, Xiao reached out tentatively, opening his arm slightly in a subtle quiet invitation should Venti wished to take it.
To his relief, he didn’t ruin everything Venti released his wrist and dived right into his arms, wrapping his own arms tightly around Xiao’s neck as he burrowed his face into the yaksha's shoulder. After a moment, Xiao raised his hand to comb through the bard’s hair gently, the way he’d seen Venti do to children from a distance. “It’s okay,” he whispered, in crude imitation of Venti’s own words. “It’s good to let it out sometimes?” he tried, wincing as his assurance came out more as a question than a statement.
Venti giggled. “It’s not a bad thing, Xiao, I’m not sad,” he insisted, the sound of a slight smile clear even through his watery voice. “It’s happy tears.” And Xiao would trust Venti with everything regardless, but the way Venti settled into his arm, content to be held and soothed, calmed his panicked heart anyway, reassured by the fact that Venti would not have stayed—especially not within his arms—if he had been truly upset with Xiao.
”I’ve just…” Venti rubbed his face against Xiao’s scarf in an attempt to wipe his tears, his voice soft as the rustling of leaves. “You’re always so quiet sometimes I’m not sure if you’ve caught the scent hidden in the wind, and yet”—Venti leans back, fingers circling the back of Xiao’s neck loosely—“I’ve never felt so seen.”
“In so many ways, you’re the sweetest being I know. I know it is difficult for you to bare yourself like this, so…” Venti pressed a soft kiss against Xiao’s lips. “Thank you for trusting me with your heart.”
Flustered by the sudden declaration, Xiao blushed, lowering his eyes to stare at Venti’s lips instead. The bard made the gesture sound so grand, and Xiao would not delude himself into believing that this act had been easy, yet he wasn’t sure it deserved the gravitas the god was granting it. It was never as difficult to be quite as bold with just the two of them. Xiao did not know how Venti had done it, yet with him, it was easy to let go of the tension within him and to fall back into a comfortable state. It did not feel wrong or risky to do so with Venti.
“You make it easy,” he murmured. “It is easy to love you, and…” You make it seem easy to love me.
“It’s easy to love you!” Venti pressed his forehead to Xiao’s. “Joyous and lovely and fun. I’ve seen the mortals talk of the beauty of romance for centuries, but meeting you was the revelation and enlightenment of all I’ve heard about.”
Xiao shut his eyes in embarrassment. “You’re exaggerating.”
This close, he could feel Venti’s little huff at his statement. “I’m not! I love you so, so much!!”
Xiao wrinkled his nose a little, unsure of what to say. A sudden stray scene he had seen a few days ago resurfaced in his mind. “I love you more,” he declared, voice wavering uncertainly.
Venti giggled, hands tightening around his neck to pull him closer so their noses were touching too. That’s good, Xiao thought, relief flowing slowly into his chest. That’s a good sound from Venti. He might have cried a little, but that was supposedly all right sometimes. He was happy now.
“No,” Venti insisted, sticking his tongue out childishly. “I definitely love you more.”
“But… I wrote a song for you,” Xiao tried, his lower lips jutting out almost subconsciously with a little frown as he tried hard to conjure good arguments. He adored the bard, yet he hadn’t realized it would be so difficult to verbalize proof of it. Perhaps…
Venti let loose another chuckle, puffs of air soft against the yaksha’s lips. “Is that the criteria?”
“Yes?” Xiao mumbled, biting his lips as he resolutely ignored the sudden urge to lean closer.
“Well, then I definitely love you more!”
“How so?”
Venti stared at Xiao in disbelief. “Xiao, are you… are you serious right now?”
Xiao tilted his head in confusion.
A beat of silence passed before Venti burst out laughing, leaping into Xiao’s arm and rolling them onto the roof of the inn, evidently extremely tickled by whatever Xiao said. “I’ve written you hundreds of songs! I’ve played them for you!!”
“... Huh?”
“I’ve been writing you songs for centuries, long before we… Do you know how many Mondstadtian love ballads are about you?”
Xiao blinked at him. “There are… Mondstadtian love ballads… about me?”
“Hundreds of them!” Venti declared, tucking Xiao closer to him. “Maybe a thousand by now!”
Xiao fought to keep the flush from his cheeks. “How was I supposed to know?”
Venti traced the back of his hand and began to sing softly.
“Under the glow of the moonlight,
With an anguished cry,
Shouldering burdens not meant for him alone,
The unseen warrior collapsed at last.
Alone he laid, buried heavy with pain,
Until the light of the music,
Washed him clean of agony.”
Switching to a different song, he continued.
“Alone atop Starsnatch Cliff,
The Cecilia sits waiting,
Encircled by a warm breeze
From the Qingxin of afar.
The duties they hold
May keep them apart,
But patience, little bird,
For the wind will return.”
The bard took a deep breath before murmuring a final line. “Whenever a light breeze rustles through your hair, know that's me thinking of you from afar. What did you think they all meant?”
“Oh.”
“I sang some of them to you!”
“You’ve sung me ballads of stories from before either of us existed,” Xiao protested weakly. “It doesn’t have to be about me.”
Venti huffed. “What about ‘A Tango in the Wind’ then? The kiss on the wind I bestow upon my pretty little bird?”
Xiao flushed at the reminder. “I… I wasn’t going to presume. It could have just been from a tale?”
Venti’s eyes widened in incredulity. “We were already together!”
“You write plenty of songs retelling stories of others. Half the time, they aren’t even true stories,” Xiao mumbled. In all honesty, he had, at the time, briefly entertained the thought of it, and basked in the flightful fantasy of Venti writing a song about him, only to quickly dismiss the thought. It had seemed ridiculous at the time, for the song was chokeful of enchanting descriptors that hardly fitted him.
Venti rolled off of Xiao onto the side, staring forlornly into the sky. “This whole time… I thought you were just too shy to say anything about them! You seemed to like them when I played them for you.”
“I do like them,” Xiao insisted, desperate to reassure. “Your songs are always amazing, you know I enjoy them.”
Venti wrinkled his nose. “That’s not the same! These were written for you. About you. You weren’t listening to them right.”
Xiao’s gaze locked onto Venti’s pout and for a moment, he wished he could kiss the grumpiness away. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I just… They were too lovely to have been about…” His voice trailed off. None of those were the correct words. They were not words Venti wanted to hear from him, yet he didn’t know what else to day. Unconsciously, Xiao began fiddling with the hem of his shirt.
“Do you still think they are too lovely for you?”
Xiao frowned. “In… some ways.” He paused. “But if you say they’re about me, then they’re not. From… your perspective, at least.”
Venti turned to face him, eyes shining with something Xiao could not quite identify. “Which is always right!”
Xiao smiled indulgently. “Which is always right,” he agreed readily.
Venti sighed dramatically, intertwining their fingers. “Ah well, what a pity. Hundreds of songs you’ve never caught the proper meanings of. That is simply unacceptable, so I suppose I’ll have to play them all for you again.”
Xiao blinked. That seemed excessive. A part of him nearly wanted to protest, to insist that it was unnecessary for Venti to personally play them all for him again, but the cheeky twinkle in Venti’s eyes had him swallowing his words. Venti wanted to play them for him again, he realized. And he would never say no to listening to Venti’s songs in the first place.
Beyond that, it would also be a fascinating re-look at their relationship from the start. It would be a chance to get to know Venti’s heart across the ages through the songs he had written at different points in time and to understand how Xiao himself was seen through Venti’s eyes.
Venti’s eyes bore onto him, waiting patiently as Xiao struggled to come up with a playful jab in response. “I’ll… listen properly?”
Venti lets out a little puff of laughter. “Don’t you always? But that’s settled then! I shall pay Lisa a visit soon to get my repertoire’s chronology in perfect order.”
“Hmm…”
“Hmm?”
“I have a lot of catching up to do,” Xiao mused aloud. Hundreds of songs, maybe even a thousand by now…
Venti giggled, poking his nose. “There is no need, my dear. You’ve shown your love in a thousand different ways! The songs would tell you,” he promised.
“Although,” Venti added after a moment, his voice tinged with a hidden hope he tried to suppress as he tucked himself closer to Xiao. “I will not object to more songs from you about me.”
That he could do, Xiao decided. Venti deserved more songs written about him. Not just as the great archon Barbatos, but as a lover. As someone who was loved and desired and admired, for after all, he was such an incredible person to love there was almost a magic to a romance with him. Xiao would know.
A soft smile graced the yaksha’s lips. “As you wish.”