Chapter Text
“Lu Guang! Lu Guang!”
A rapid succession of footsteps glided down the staircase, Cheng Xiaoshi’s head peeking down from the top of Lu Guang’s vision. He ignored it and kept his eyes down on the book in his hands.
“Lu Guang!” Cheng Xiaoshi chirped. He stepped across the sunroom table and crouched at Lu Guang’s feet.
With a quick glance, Lu Guang asked, “What?”
“I have a really, really important question to ask you,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, placing his chin on Lu Guang’s knees. “Please listen to me, oh great one?”
Well. This couldn’t be anything good.
“...What?” he asked, keeping his gaze down on the pages beneath his fingers, despite not actually reading.
“And look at me?”
Lu Guang sighed, closing his book and putting it away to the side. He looked down to find Cheng Xiaoshi staring up at him with pleading eyes, and his heart fluttered hard.
“What do you want?” Lu Guang asked as blandly as he could. He watched as Cheng Xiaoshi’s face lit up, his energy spiked like a rampant dog.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Cheng Xiaoshi explained. “A very, very important and meaningful one. Actually, I’ve been waiting all day to ask you about it.”
The suspicion in Lu Guang’s gaze grew. He leaned closer, curious.
“Lu Guang, will you, please, oh so very please-” Cheng Xiaoshi grinned, tilting his head teasingly. “Have a sleepover with me?”
. . .
What?
“We already sleep in the same bedroom, idiot. Every night.” Lu Guang motioned towards the stairs. “What are you going on about?”
“I mean a proper sleepover!” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “Like with all the sleepover… perks!”
“Sleepover perks?”
“Yes!”
“Try again.”
Cheng Xiaoshi got up and fell beside Lu Guang on the couch, dropping his head on Lu Guang like a ragdoll. “Like baking stuff, staying up late, face masks?”
“Face masks?” Lu Guang asked, bizarrely confused now. He stared at the far door of the studio, possible explanations for this random conversation whirling through his brain.
“I’m borrowing from Qiao Ling’s text,” Cheng Xiaoshi admitted, pulling up his phone. “Her and Xu Shanshan are having a sleepover today, so obviously, we need to have one too.”
Lu Guang read the various texts whizzing past the screen, catching some swearing, some yelling, some middle fingers…
“You made a bet with Qiao Ling, didn’t you?”
“Oh yeah definitely.”
They both stared at each other.
Lu Guang inched back in something akin to fear. “Why would you do that?”
“Because we’re going to have a better sleepover than them!” Cheng Xiaoshi insisted. “And I really want to see Qiao Ling in a bright orange pumpkin costume. Can you imagine the blackmail?”
“I can imagine you begging Qiao Ling to forfeit the bet tomorrow morning,” Lu Guang said. “Very vividly, actually.”
“Lu Guang, have some more faith in us! There’s no way I’m losing to our wretched landlady.” Cheng Xiaoshi typed quickly on his phone, then turned the screen to him. “Let’s start off with this? Please?”
An image of a fresh, Christmas batch of cookies stared back at Lu Guang. In the front row, a cartoonish elf smiled down at him, its eyes shimmering with warning.
Unfortunately, one look at Cheng Xiaoshi’s hopeful, pleading expression crumpled his willpower like wet paper. Any resolve Lu Guang should have had was, embarrassingly, nonexistent.
With a hint of hesitation, he pointed to the phone. “Am I included in the consequences of this bet?”
“Nope!” Cheng Xiaoshi said, a bright smile gracing his lips.
“Oh. Then yes, let's do it.”
There was one slight problem Lu Guang faced with baking.
He didn’t know how to bake.
“...Are you cooking the flour?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked, standing a couple steps away with horror in his eyes.
Lu Guang looked down at the pan he was warming, the flour steaming oddly. He subtly turned the stove off.
“No.”
…After that, Lu Guang was given a list of instructions, plastered onto the minifridge. He would’ve loved to argue that the list wasn’t needed, but sadly, it was.
“Cheng Xiaoshi,” he said, mixing batter in a wide bowl. “What does baking have to do with a sleepover?”
“I don’t know, to be honest,” Cheng Xiaoshi replied. He was darting all around the place, gathering supplies to make icing. “I think it’s about the bonding. And food! Everything’s better with some food.”
“But what does this have to do with sleeping?”
His partner snorted, turning open the sugar jar. “You’ve never been to a sleepover, have you?”
“No. Have you?”
Cheng Xiaoshi thought about it for a moment. “Kinda. With Qiao Ling. But those weren’t really proper sleepovers, more like…”
Lu Guang waited for a continuation. When the silence stretched on, he glanced up only to find Cheng Xiaoshi staring at a block of butter.
“I haven’t, I guess,” he finally mumbled. “Kids didn’t really want to come over that often. I didn’t have a whole lot of people to do anything with.”
He dumped a cup of sugar into his mixture. Lu Guang stayed quiet, but a surge of anger pricked his heart in empathy.
“You have me,” Lu Guang said.
A smile tugged at Cheng Xiaoshi’s lips. “Yeah. Now get to work, or I’ll put you in a pumpkin costume.”
Lu Guang rolled his eyes. He mixed his too-thin batter with a warmer heart.
The hardest part proved to be the actual icing bit. For someone so experienced in photo development and martial arts, one would suspect Cheng Xiaoshi’s hands to not shake as much as they did.
“It’s harder than it looks!” Cheng Xiaoshi protested when a particularly big clump of icing missed the cookie and fell right onto the tray.
“You’re ruining all the cookies,” Lu Guang complained.
“Well, you could lend a hand or something!”
Unable to witness the atrocious icing anymore, Lu Guang reached over and held onto the same icing bag as Cheng Xiaoshi, steadying his partner’s hand. He kept his grip firm, relieved when the sugary contraption finally hit its mark for once.
“Huh,” Cheng Xiaoshi muttered. “Maybe it’s a two-person job.”
“It definitely isn’t.”
“Yet you’re helping me.”
“You looked desperate.”
Cheng Xiaoshi chuckled, bumping Lu Guang’s shoulder. “Maybe I should be desperate more often, then.”
…What does that mean?
“Okay, I think that’s it,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. He took the icing packet off the tray, squeezed a bit on his index finger, and put it away.
“I’m impressed the kitchen is still intact,” Lu Guang said.
“Well prepare to be more impressed, because we are winning this bet!” Cheng Xiaoshi tipped forward and rubbed his finger past Lu Guang’s cheek. The cool, sugary feeling of icing made itself known on his skin.
“Childish,” he said. Cheng Xiaoshi shrugged with a grin and turned around, making his way to clean the rest of the counter. It gave Lu Guang the perfect opportunity.
Lu Guang reached for the icing bag and quickly scooped some onto his two fingers.
“Cheng Xiaoshi?”
Cheng Xiaoshi hummed and turned around, unsuspecting. “Yeah?”
“Could you come here, please?” he asked.
With a nod, Cheng Xiaoshi walked over, curious. Lu Guang closed the distance, swiping the icing onto Cheng Xiaoshi’s forehead. He took his sweet time and rubbed it in, suppressing a smirk at Cheng Xiaoshi’s hanging jaw and betrayed eyes.
“Oh, so it’s like that,” he said.
“Mmm.” Lu Guang took his hand off, satisfied, and made his way to the sink to wash the thick texture off his fingers.
It was a rookie mistake.
With a sudden war cry, Cheng Xiaoshi leaped onto Lu Guang’s back, smothering a handful of icing over his mouth. His arms swung over Lu Guang's neck and he hung on tight.
Lu Guang yelped. He stumbled back to support the newly added weight as the sweet icing coated his tongue.
“Cheng Xiaoshi!” he yelled through the sugar.
His partner got off, laughing loudly, and Lu Guang reached for the icing once more. He chased after Cheng Xiaoshi with the bag in hand and all, finding a stupid amount of joy in the chase.