Work Text:
When they meet, Cheng Xiaoshi decides that Lu Guang is a lonesome person.
A transfer student. He shows up at school some part of the way through the year with hair as white as Cheng Xiaoshi has ever seen on a person. He speaks with as few words as possible, nods and shakes his head instead of saying yes and no, and doesn’t seem to have many facial expressions in his arsenal. At lunch and during breaks he finds a spot under a tree to sit, and he spends the entire time flipping through pages of a book with pale, slender fingers and a watch on his wrist. He doesn’t smile. Looking at him makes Cheng Xiaoshi, seventeen and already tall but still certain he’ll grow taller, feel terribly young by contrast.
So, he decides, Lu Guang is lonesome. A loner. Not necessarily lonely, because lonely would imply a desire for companionship, which Lu Guang would certainly pursue if he had. Cheng Xiaoshi watches him for three days with half an eye and half a mind to speak to him, but he doesn’t. Instead, he wonders, perhaps stupidly, something like does he bite? because the rest of the boys treat him like he does. Lu Guang gets a berth as wide as he gives, and sometimes Cheng Xiaoshi glances at him reading under his tree as he catches his breath from playing basketball, but for the first little while, that’s all that there is.
Maybe a week and a half in, Lu Guang drops his book in the hallway. It’s an old thing, with a worn, wrinkled cover and yellowing pages. Cheng Xiaoshi, passing by and always one to pride himself on his friendliness, bends to pick it up. He asks, thinking to make a bit of small talk, where Lu Guang gets his hair done, to get it that white without frying it. He straightens up—finds himself taller than Lu Guang, which is surprising for reasons he can’t name—and holds out the book.
Lu Guang just stares, stares for too long without any expression on his face, and his eyes— Cheng Xiaoshi had assumed his eyes would be brown like everyone else's, but they’re gray. Gray like storm clouds or ashes or basalt. They flick left and right, landing anywhere but Cheng Xiaoshi’s face, and then he takes the book, says thank you, and walks away. That’s what sets it in stone. Lu Guang, lonesome.
Later, Lu Guang will tell him he didn’t respond because he thought Cheng Xiaoshi was making fun of him. The color of his hair is natural, he’ll say, and Cheng Xiaoshi wouldn’t have been the first to make fun of it, nor the last.
So they go on, separate but always within view of each other. Lu Guang has his books, and Cheng Xiaoshi has his group of friends that are only really friends until he goes home, until he realizes that not one of them knows a thing about him, and not one of them has he ever really thought of as permanent, or even temporary in the long term sense. These are people he’s friendly with, but they aren’t really his friends. So Lu Guang is lonesome, and Cheng Xiaoshi, perhaps, is lonely.
“How do you find people who stay?” he asks Qiao Ling one day. She has her feet kicked up on the coffee table, a controller in her lap, and she’s beaten Cheng Xiaoshi half a dozen times in half a dozen different games. Her nails are painted navy blue, and she was once taller than him. But now he’s seventeen and taller. Taller and still growing, and she’s nineteen and long since stopped.
“I don’t know,” she tells him, quiet in the way she gets when she’s serious about things. She’s better at this than he is. She has real friends and family that’s actually, genuinely hers. He doesn’t think she worries at night that people will leave her. “You just have to give people that chance. Some will take it, some won’t.”
But how do you stand that? he wants to ask. How can you take that chance over and over? How can you stand to let the ones that want to leave go? He doesn’t ask any of this. Instead he shrugs like it doesn’t mean much to him. Hums and picks up his controller for another round.
The day comes, weeks later, maybe months, where a friend of Cheng Xiaoshi’s is out with a cold or the flu or some illness or another. His group stands on the court. An odd number, short one player. Cheng Xiaoshi spins the ball between his hands and sucks on the inside of his cheek. He looks, both considering and not, at Lu Guang beneath his tree. The ball in his hands. His group of not really friends. He thinks, then, that while Lu Guang might not be lonely, he’s still alone. Cheng Xiaoshi knows far too well what that feels like.
“I’ll see if I can find someone else to play,” he says, and walks off. Concrete turns to grass. Sun turns to shade. He approaches, for the first real time, the boy beneath the tree. Lu Guang turns another page, the sound of it soft. Cheng Xiaoshi clears his throat.
“We’re short a player,” he says, confident in that way he's always been good at pretending to be. He tries to bounce the ball, but the grass absorbs all the force behind it and it only rolls into Lu Guang’s foot. “Wanna play?”
Lu Guang looks up when the ball hits him, and Cheng Xiaoshi thinks, this time not in the way one thinks of a rabid dog, but in the way one thinks of a fish swimming circles around a hook, will he bite? And this time, it’s considering, the look Lu Guang gives him. He watches the ball roll a bit further, watches Cheng Xiaoshi himself. It feels like an assessment, a search for sincerity before Lu Guang lets his guard down. Cheng Xiaoshi smiles, seventeen and still growing, with slightly crooked teeth and eyes Qiao Ling says are a little bit crazy.
Lu Guang slips his bookmark from the back cover of his book and marks his place. The pages shut with a soft sound, and then he stands, stoops to grab the ball, and says, in as few words as possible, “Sure.”
He still doesn’t smile, doesn’t offer more than that by way of an answer, but Cheng Xiaoshi comes to realize that maybe he’s just like that.
△
They don’t become friends, really, until weeks later. It happens on a Sunday, sometime close to the cusp of winter, when the weather is cold but not quite cold enough to shut the world down. Cheng Xiaoshi is helping Qiao Ling paint the storefront of her parents’ restaurant. They’ve picked an inoffensive off-white to cover up a slightly different shade of inoffensive off-white, and the chill means it’ll take eons to dry. Cheng Xiaoshi does all of this in checkered pajama bottoms and a winter coat that's slightly too warm to wear. He sweats, and then he unzips it, and then he freezes and zips it up again. Rinse and repeat.
Qiao Ling complains about tired arms and sore shoulders, so Cheng Xiaoshi lets her in for a break under the guise of getting them drinks. She disappears inside, and he steps back to survey their work. The paint shades are only just different enough that he doesn’t struggle to see where they’ve painted and where they haven’t. Maybe he doesn’t have an eye for aesthetics, but the restaurant looks the same to him. He picks up his roller again. It isn’t even twenty seconds later before he hears the sounds of someone’s footsteps on the sidewalk stop. He pauses, turns his head to look.
Gray eyes look back.
“Do you live around here?” Cheng Xiaoshi asks.
Lu Guang blinks. He’s wearing a tan colored coat. There’s fleece around the collar. “It’s a little cold to be painting, isn’t it?”
“I thought so too.”
Lu Guang takes a step forward, two. He bends to retrieve the roller Qiao Ling abandoned when she went inside, loads it up with paint. “Do you need help?”
And Cheng Xiaoshi finds him terribly interesting. He nods. Lu Guang steps up to the wall to help. He doesn’t say where he came from or why he stopped. Cheng Xiaoshi talks, he listens. When Qiao Ling comes back, confused to see a stranger helping out, he listens to her too.
Lonesome, Cheng Xiaoshi thinks, and then he wonders if he might have misjudged Lu Guang all along.
△
“He’s a good one,” Qiao Ling tells him. Later, with a slice of slightly soggy pizza half-eaten in her hand. “I’m glad you’ve made an actual friend.”
“I have plenty of friends, Qiao Ling-jie.”
She looks at him, and there’s pressure in that gaze. There’s knowing. “You do, Xiaoshi. But none of them are like that.”
“I don’t get it.”
But he does. He gets it. He gets it more than he’s gotten much of anything in his life. Lives move like tape reels. People don’t just stop. They don’t just—
“He’d probably stay, if you gave him the chance,” Qiao Ling says. It’s deceptively casual, the way she says those words. Like the thought of someone staying isn’t enough to make Cheng Xiaoshi’s ground shake. He laughs, because it’s better than taking her seriously.
“I barely know the guy.”
Qiao Ling smiles, shakes her head, and changes the subject. Something with roots embeds itself in Cheng Xiaoshi’s chest. He reaches for another slice of pizza.
△
They’re a bit like velcro. Cheng Xiaoshi is the side with the loops, a mess of tangled threads piled atop one another. Too many things, too many thoughts and doubts and fears spinning into this thing you can touch but you can’t sort through or fix or make sense of. Lu Guang is the hooks. Neat, orderly, and to someone who only knows stability in the form of leftover skewers after closing and once-monthly movie nights, he is grounding.
From then on, they start to talk at school. Hellos in the hallway. Deliberate farewells. Sometimes Cheng Xiaoshi skips out on basketball to sit with Lu Guang under his tree, and sometimes Lu Guang abandons the tree to play basketball. They talk and they linger in each other's spaces like they have each other’s spaces to fill. In pieces, Cheng Xiaoshi forgets lonely and Lu Guang forgets lonesome. Cheng Xiaoshi feels like the moon to the earth, or the earth to the sun. Something like that. Pulled into orbit and a little bit afraid of it.
He thinks, more and more seriously, that Qiao Ling might’ve been right. That Lu Guang, given the chance to stay, would. He’s not sure of it, not yet, not when that’s the sort of thing he’s only ever felt unsure of, but it’s a start. It’s something, and it’s terrifying.
He doesn’t like needing people, but he can’t help it. Cheng Xiaoshi has always been the type that needs with every part of himself. He can only hope it doesn’t scare Lu Guang away.
△
There’s a night somewhere in there, stuck between basketball games and boba runs, where Lu Guang stays with Cheng Xiaoshi long enough that it gets dark, and then starts to get light again. They lay shoulder to shoulder in Cheng Xiaoshi’s bed, talking. Talking about future plans and weird dreams, favorite shows and books and games, old friends and vacations and for a slightly awkward, short lived moment, girls. Everything and nothing. Too little and too much.
Cheng Xiaoshi admits a couple of things. He tells Lu Guang about a family that disappeared one night. Tells him about the boy left behind. The things he’s afraid of. The things he dreams about at night. Lu Guang, if anything at all, is a superb listener. He listens like he gets it. Cheng Xiaoshi almost thinks he does, wonders if Lu Guang might understand that deep-set fear of being left.
And then the sun starts to rise and orange light plays on top of gray eyes. He feels Lu Guang’s warm shoulder against his. The soft cotton of his shirt. Cool glass where the face of Lu Guang’s watch presses into his wrist. He feels all these things and he asks, quietly, if there’s no one waiting for Lu Guang at home. The answer he gets isn’t really an answer, but it’s as good as one. Cheng Xiaoshi recognizes avoidance that means yes.
And so he swallows and feels an entire stomach alight with butterflies, and he says, “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.”
And Lu Guang, impossibly, so possibly, does.
△
The day Cheng Xiaoshi turns eighteen, he measures himself against a tape measure and finds that he’s exactly one hundred eighty centimeters tall. He’s half a centimeter taller than the last time he measured himself, and he decides, finally, that he’s done growing.
Qiao Ling throws him a party. He gets drunk for the first time off beer and baijiu, and he earns more laughs that night than he ever has in his life. She calls him a clingy drunk on more than one occasion, when he finds himself with his arms around shoulders, half draped on acquaintances, or, more often than not, Lu Guang.
He’s quiet as ever. Cheng Xiaoshi has to bend just a bit to cover him. Just a matter of centimeters. He smells like grapefruit. Cheng Xiaoshi’s nose is drawn to his throat.
“Would you help him upstairs while I clean up?” Qiao Ling’s voice comes like an echo, far too distant to be directed at him. When his eyes open, it’s to the collar of a familiar shirt. White hair curling over the nape of a neck. He realizes then, that the party is over. The music has stopped. The warm, floaty feeling has turned into a dull throb in his head and heaviness in the rest of him. “See if you can get him to have a glass of water; his head is going to kill him tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about him, Jie,” Lu Guang replies. Cheng Xiaoshi wonders if his voice has always sounded like that. That soft, like flower petals or the brush of a cool hand over a fevered forehead. He could drown in the sound of him. His eyes slip closed. “Cheng Xiaoshi.”
“‘M fine,” Cheng Xiaoshi manages. There’s an arm around his shoulders. The scent of grapefruit. He peels his eyes open again to watch the world swim.
“I’m bringing you to bed,” Lu Guang tells him, and then they’re going up, up off the couch, up the stairs, up into Cheng Xiaoshi’s bedroom. Somehow, he stumbles into bed, missing the warmth, missing the touch, missing. This is the part where Lu Guang goes home for the night, Cheng Xiaoshi knows. His mouth is dry, sour tasting. Lu Guang’s back is to him. He doesn’t trust the ground or his own two feet, but he doesn’t want to be left alone, even if Qiao Ling is just downstairs and sure to be there for him as he nurses a hangover in the morning. He says, in desperation, in loneliness, the first thing he can think of.
“Have you ever been in love?”
It works to stop Lu Guang in his tracks. It makes him sigh. Such a soft thing. “Can this wait until you’ve had a glass of water?”
The clock on his nightstand shows that it’s past two in the morning. Cheng Xiaoshi squints. “No,” he breathes. So Lu Guang sighs again, and sits on the bed next to him.
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“Why not?”
Lu Guang looks at him with those storm-gray eyes. Just looks. Doesn’t answer. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“I meant Jie.”
“Oh.”
Lu Guang smiles then. Just a little thing. He doesn’t do that often, but he should. Cheng Xiaoshi would like him to. Would like to see him happy. His tongue is loose and his head is still floaty enough that he thinks about saying it, but Lu Guang speaks first. “I was joking,” he says, and Cheng Xiaoshi just blinks.
“Oh,” he says again, and yawns. “Sometimes I think I have.”
Lu Guang’s face does something kind of soft, kind of confusing. “I’m going to get you a glass of water,” he says, and stands.
“Guess,” Cheng Xiaoshi calls after him, struck with this not-quite panic. He doesn’t want Lu Guang to leave, even if he’ll be back, even if—
He stills. “What?”
“Guess who,” Cheng Xiaoshi says.
Lu Guang considers him. “I don’t know,” he says, “Qiao Ling-jie?”
Cheng Xiaoshi makes a face. “She’s basically my sister,” he says.
“Her friend, then,” Lu Guang tries. “Xu Shanshan?” Cheng Xiaoshi shakes his head. “Do you even know any other girls?”
“No, I…” Cheng Xiaoshi trails off. Storm-gray eyes look back at him. He wonders if he’s made a mistake.
“Oh,” Lu Guang says.
“Oh,” Cheng Xiaoshi echoes.
“That’s okay.”
“Is it?”
Lu Guang nods.
Cheng Xiaoshi swallows around a dry throat. “I’ll take that water now,” he says. So Lu Guang leaves, and then he comes back. And later, despite everything, he stays.
△
Lu Guang’s eighteenth is quieter. There isn’t a party, just the three of them watching a movie. Lu Guang stops after one drink, so the alcohol doesn’t seem to do much to him. He’s still quiet and inexpressive. Maybe, if Cheng Xiaoshi pays close attention, he’s a bit softer around the edges. More likely to lean into a touch rather than away from it.
So they’re both adults. Graduation comes soon after, then college plans. It’s Lu Guang who asks to room together. It’s Lu Guang, this time, asking if he can stay. There’s no timeline in which Cheng Xiaoshi says anything but yes.
So they move into a tiny dorm together, sharing a bunk bed and a space a bit too small for two people. They see enough of each other than anyone else might’ve been driven mad. Cheng Xiaoshi gets used to having someone to come home to, to long nights spent talking, to having someone to wake him up from his nightmares. Lu Guang gets used to him, he supposes. To being imposed upon and being okay with it. To… a lot of things, maybe. Cohabitation is a lot, for someone used to being alone. Cheng Xiaoshi probably doesn’t make it easy, as overbearing as he is. But Lu Guang never asks him to be anything else, never seems to get too tired of him, never complains more than calling him an idiot and shrugging him off when he gets too touchy.
It is—and they are—like velcro. Hooks and loops. Cheng Xiaoshi grows accustomed to routine, and in turn, stability.
There’s a night where they go dancing somewhere in their second year. Xu Shanshan invites them. Lu Guang doesn’t want to go, but he isn’t difficult to persuade. Cheng Xiaoshi just pouts, and then he’s sighing and searching for something to wear. It’s… nice, maybe. To have someone to convince with a pout. To have someone on his side and by it. Lu Guang is… something. More than that. He’s…
“You’re drunk, Cheng Xiaoshi.”
Today, he smells like white tea and the laundry detergent they share. Cheng Xiaoshi asks him to dance instead of just sitting a bit awkwardly at the bar, and this is his response. His collar—a white button-up, sleeves rolled to his elbows, open over a plain black shirt—is flipped up, and he’s— he’s grown into himself, maybe.
“Isn’t that the point?” Cheng Xiaoshi asks. He grabs Lu Guang’s wrist and pulls on him until he gives in, until he goes, as easy to convince with a touch as he is with a pout. Cheng Xiaoshi is unsteady on his feet. They trip their way to the dance floor, and then his arms are around Lu Guang’s neck, trying to fix his collar before he gets distracted by his throat, his Adam's apple, his pulse, the warmth of it, his scent. White tea and— sage, maybe. Cologne. Lu Guang is wearing cologne, Cheng Xiaoshi thinks, and he smells good, looks good in this button-up he’s never worn before, and—
“You’re too close,” Lu Guang tells him. Cheng Xiaoshi’s fingers fumble on fabric. Lu Guang’s collar finally flattens under them. Cheng Xiaoshi looks at him. His eyes. His mouth, soft red and cracked in one spot, shiny with spit or lip balm or leftover alcohol. Close, too close, maybe. It’s strange that he says this instead of just pushing Cheng Xiaoshi away.
“It’s just me,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. The music is too loud. Lu Guang has to watch his lips to understand his words. Maybe, or he’s looking just because.
“You’re drunk,” Lu Guang repeats, like this is a defense, like this means something. His hands are on Cheng Xiaoshi’s waist.
“You are too,” Cheng Xiaoshi tells him, but neither of them is, not really. Not more than tipsy. He takes half a step closer, elbows on Lu Guang’s shoulders. He tugs on the ends of the hair curling at Lu Guang’s nape.
“Cheng Xiaoshi.” A warning, maybe. Still, Lu Guang doesn’t push him away, doesn’t take a step back. He usually does those things without thought. This is strange, this is…
“Yes?”
Lu Guang swallows. His eyes flit around Cheng Xiaoshi’s face. They’ve been sharing a space for a long time now. Cheng Xiaoshi knows him, knows what his expressions mean. This one is unfamiliar, but it isn’t bad. It doesn’t mean anger or annoyance or anything like that. It’s just… uncertain, maybe. Lu Guang, on unsteady ground. He always walks into things like he has the world memorized.
“We’re dancing,” Cheng Xiaoshi tells him. “Are you scared?”
Again, Lu Guang tracks his mouth as he speaks. “Of you?” he asks.
“Sure,” Cheng Xiaoshi laughs, “of me.”
A frown, then. “You’re the least scary person I know.”
It makes him smile. Their foreheads press. He makes Lu Guang dance with him, something like swaying. The air tastes like sweat. His hands are warm, a body like blazing heat. Lu Guang still doesn’t push him away, and it feels like… permission, or something as good as it. So he says, “hey,” and then, “what if I kissed you?” when Lu Guang hums in response.
Still, impossibly, Lu Guang doesn’t shove him off. All he asks is, “Is that a good idea?”
So Cheng Xiaoshi thinks about it. Thinks about the fact that he hasn’t been pushed away. Thinks about Lu Guang’s willingness to follow him anywhere. Thinks about the way he’s stayed this long, the way he’s found a spot for himself, made room in Cheng Xiaoshi’s chest and settled down there. He is, quite possibly, the best idea Cheng Xiaoshi has ever had. He tells him this. Means it.
And so, Lu Guang gives him the okay, and it sounds like he means it too.
It happens like that. Cheng Xiaoshi waits a little longer, just in case Lu Guang changes his mind. He hovers for half a moment, but he doesn’t pull away, just waits, angled just right, unmoving. He’s holding his breath. Cheng Xiaoshi kisses him on the mouth. Just once, just softly. He tries to say something after, but Lu Guang pulls him back down and swallows it up. He tastes like whatever drink he had, fruity and sweet, and his mouth is a bit dry. Every bit of him is hot, hot, hot, and Cheng Xiaoshi kisses him to too loud music and a backdrop of too many people. It’s a bad place for it, but nobody is watching. This is still theirs. In the future, Cheng Xiaoshi will dream of it.
△
It’s before graduation that they discover their powers. Cheng Xiaoshi’s first dive is into a picture Lu Guang took. Another morning in the dorm. He opens his eyes in a body that isn’t his, and he’s forced to believe it. Lu Guang’s face stares back at him in the mirror, and he shakes.
You can come out, Lu Guang tells him, gentle and understanding, from inside his own head. He tells Cheng Xiaoshi to bring his hands together, and he does. When he comes back, he staggers a handful of steps, awed but trembling. Lu Guang catches him, guides him to sit in his desk chair, staring at his hands, his own, familiar hands. It’s his own face that looks at him in the mirror, so he can finally relax.
“We don’t have to use it,” Lu Guang tells him, hovering. He’s outwardly worried for the first time Cheng Xiaoshi has ever seen him, and strangely, that’s what calms him down.
“No,” he says, breath finally caught. He remembers what it felt like to live in Lu Guang’s skin. Surreal. Breathtaking, in a way. “Are you kidding? This is the coolest thing to ever happen to me.” He stares at his hands, and then the photo, discarded on the bed. Lu Guang, worriedly watching, as beautiful and stormy as ever. “Think,” he starts, then pauses to swallow. “Think of all the people we could help with this.”
“It’s dangerous,” Lu Guang warns him.
Cheng Xiaoshi looks at him, remembers the way his eyes went clear blue when he looked into the picture, and thinks it would be terribly stupid to waste this. “You’ll guide me,” he shoots back. Lu Guang holds his gaze. Nods, slowly, and still, though Cheng Xiaoshi has long since stopped worrying, stays.
△
They open Time Photo Studio next door to Qiao Ling’s parents’ restaurant straight after graduation. The upstairs room is theirs to share, and the sunroom becomes Cheng Xiaoshi’s favorite place for a nap. Qiao Ling helps them find clients. They settle into this new version of life the way one might settle into bed after a long night. These powers feel like a purpose, and Cheng Xiaoshi has been lost for a long time.
“Do you believe in soulmates?” he asks one night, watching the stars through the window, Lu Guang beside him.
“Not in the way you might be thinking of,” Lu Guang answers. “I don’t think anyone is fated for anybody else, but… maybe some people are meant to be in the same story.”
Cheng Xiaoshi huffs a laugh, more air than sound. “That’s almost romantic.”
“You asked.”
Cheng Xiaoshi nudges him. “Did I say that was a bad thing?” A grunt. Lu Guang makes a face like he’s uncomfortable or embarrassed or both. Cheng Xiaoshi puts his head on Lu Guang’s shoulder. “I love you,” he says, and waits. There it is: a hitch of breath, a body going stiff. He smiles. “Do you think we were meant to be in the same story?”
“Obviously,” Lu Guang tells him. “Us more than anyone.”
“Romantic,” Cheng Xiaoshi repeats, and kisses him. Lu Guang lets this happen. He always does, malleable like clay to Cheng Xiaoshi’s whims. He’s terribly soft, though he likes to pretend he isn’t. His cheeks are hot when Cheng Xiaoshi pulls away, gaze avoidant.
“It’s just the truth,” he mumbles. “Our powers are—”
Cheng Xiaoshi cups his face and kisses him again, firmer this time, fuller, with a mouth like a brand and hands that are just a little bit greedy. He manages to convince Lu Guang to be greedy too, falls into warmth. Lu Guang is holding his breath again. He always does, so Cheng Xiaoshi pulls back to let him breathe. Their foreheads lean together. He says for the hundredth time, “I love you.” It makes Lu Guang shudder. “I’m glad we’re in the same story.”
“I am too,” Lu Guang murmurs. “I—”
Cheng Xiaoshi smiles. “You wanna kiss me so bad.”
“I…” Lu Guang trails off. He sighs, looks at him for a long moment. “Idiot.”
△
Qiao Ling observes them in bits and pieces. She sees a lot, wonders about more, and is likely the only other person in the world who really gets both of them. She’s been with Cheng Xiaoshi since he was a kid. She knows what happiness looks like on him. Lu Guang, since the day he came into their lives, has been bringing him a lot of that. They stick to each other like glue, like velcro, and she’s never seen anyone else ever click with Cheng Xiaoshi like that. That’s why she wonders, that’s why she watches.
“Do you love him?” she asks one day. It’s in the way Cheng Xiaoshi clings and the way Lu Guang lets him. It’s in soft gazes and soft touches and softer gestures. Lu Guang loves in silence, Qiao Ling has known him long enough to understand that. Cheng Xiaoshi loves like a boombox and a whisper all at once. It’s easy, knowing where to look, to see the ways they love each other.
“I…” Cheng Xiaoshi chews on his lip, fiddles with his hands. He wasn’t expecting to be asked about this, but he should have figured it would happen at some point or another. Qiao Ling knows him inside and out. Even this, especially this, he can’t hope to hide from her. He’s too loud in the way he loves. Too obvious. “Yes,” he admits. “Yes, I do.”
Qiao Ling just nods, looks at him kind of softly, kind of proudly. “He’s a good one,” she says. “I told you that once, but you didn’t seem to believe me.”
“I believed you,” Cheng Xiaoshi says. “I was just…” Her expression is knowing; he changes course, spluttering, face hot. “Aren’t you supposed to go warn him not to break my heart? Some friend you are.”
Qiao Ling laughs and ruffles his hair. “I can, if you want,” she tells him. “But somehow I think you’re far more likely to break his heart than he is to break yours.”