Chapter Text
It comes apart slowly.
It takes a week, at first. Diluc, Jean, and Kaeya come to his apartment a bit after dinner.
“Surprise,” Kaeya greets, lifting up a bottle of wine.
Venti’s eyes light up at the sight of the bottle he knew came from Diluc’s family shop, and he pulls them in with a devious smile.
“I ought to be sad more often if it gets me free drinks from Diluc!” he says, voice teasing.
Diluc whacks Venti’s head lightly, and Kaeya breaks out into laughter. “I’m doing this just this once, alright?” Diluc sighs out.
“I’ll be making the most of it then,” he smiles. He makes his way to the cupboards, but Jean pushes him down into a seat by the kitchen counter instead, giving him a look that tells him to stay put.
He obliges, and waits obediently for Diluc to slide him a glass. He takes an indulgent sip from it while the rest of them take their seats around him.
They fill up the room with light conversation, words chosen carefully like they are treading over glass. Venti carries himself through it, calm and practiced, and fits himself into the gaps of the exchange with ease.
When the conversation begins to ebb away, Jean’s voice breaks through the approaching silence. “You’ve been alright, Venti?”
Venti smiles at her like he’d been expecting the question to come. “I’m alright, you don’t need to worry about me.”
“We won’t push you for the details, Venti,” Jean says slowly, hand moving from her glass to Venti’s shoulder. “Still, we’ll be here if you need us to, alright?”
“I promise I’ll be fine,” he assures—though where he stands, he isn’t quite sure who the comfort is meant for.
Two weeks pass. The rest of his friends start to take regular visits to his apartment after classes. One of those days, he finds Aether sitting outside Venti’s locked door. He looks up towards Venti’s approaching figure and sends him a cheeky smile.
“Welcome home?” Aether asks, cheeks tinged red from the cold. “Sorry, I didn’t think you’d be out today.”
Venti shakes his head and smiles at him, pulling Aether up by the hand and bringing the shivering boy into his apartment. Aether waits by the kitchen counter while Venti ventures through his kitchen cabinet to find a warm drink to serve the boy. He settles for some of the hot chocolate Jean left behind for him with other leftovers.
“Sorry for making you wait outside,” he laughs, sliding the glass to Aether.
“No, it’s my fault for not telling you first,” he says. He takes a sip from the mug, eyes scanning over the room. He pauses at the corner of Venti’s apartment.
“You haven’t been playing the piano recently?”
“Nah, haven’t been feeling very inspired,” he says listlessly. “It happens.”
Aether frowns, brows knit together, then turns to Venti. “You’ll be alright won’t you, Venti?”
“You kinda suck at comforting me, Aether,” Venti laughs, deflecting the question away.
“You’re just impossible to comfort,” he responds, a little disgruntled. “I can’t help someone that won’t even show others how he’s feeling.”
He laughs again, but his chest feels empty even as the sounds come out. He pauses for a moment, watching steam rise gently out of the cup of hot chocolate, warmth brushing against his cheeks.
“It’s a lot better this way,” Venti hums out, a belated response to Aether’s earlier question.
Aether sighs, somewhat resigned, knowing not to press any further. “Whatever happens, Venti,” he says, tone soft. “Just know you’re not alone, okay? We’re all here for you.”
He simply smiles back at Aether, and he wonders briefly if he really seems that lonely.
A month. He comes home after class one day and finds Zhongli slicing fruit in his kitchen. There’s a small crate of apples and a duplicate key on the counter—Venti already knows who Zhongli got it from.
“I think this is called breaking and entering,” he says.
“I used a key,” Zhongli replies without skipping a beat.
“Without my consent?” Venti adds.
He blinks at Venti once before turning back to the kitchen counter. “You haven’t been eating well,” Zhongli tells him, pointedly ignoring Venti’s response. He pushes the apple slices onto a plate and slides it to Venti across the counter.
“I haven’t,” Venti affirms, because it is not in his character to tell needless lies. It wouldn’t be believable, anyway, because his culinary skill has only ever extended to heating up leftovers and takeout, and Jean didn’t always have the time to come and cook food for him.
He picks an apple slice off of the plate and takes a bite out of it.
“Were you expecting to see someone else?” Zhongli asks while Venti chews on the slice.
“No, I’m glad to see you,” Venti hums out. It is not in his character to tell needless lies, but neither is telling the outright truth. He does not say that, while he was not expecting to see someone else, he had at least been hoping to see someone else. He does not say that he misses Xiao, all golden eyes, hushed greetings, and quirked lips that used to welcome him home.
He does not say he has been lonely—that the sound of his lone breath at night has grown suffocating, and that the cold on the other side of the bed is incapacitating. He does not say he wishes Zhongli had come with a boy instead of a key, because then all he had was another memento that told him it was over.
He does not tell Zhongli any of this, though he is sure that the man already knows. He lets Zhongli reach an arm out over Venti’s shoulder, pulling Venti closer to him. His grip is as firm as it is comforting, like he is telling Venti he can allow himself this moment of weakness.
It comes apart slowly, and it takes a month for Venti to allow himself to unravel. They sit together in the kitchen, silence punctuated by the light patter of snowfall against the windowsill, trembling breaths, and the crunch of teeth through slices of fruit.
“The apples are salty,” Venti complains through a choked breath.
“That has nothing to do with me,” Zhongli scoffs. His hand is still on Venti’s back, fingers running comforting circles into his skin.
“You were the one that sliced the apples,” Venti pouts.
“And you were the one that cried over them,” Zhongli says conclusively, leaving Venti no room for further argument. Venti lets Zhongli have his way.
:::
Venti is a poet, so he dreams in stories, with pages worn at the corners and ink fading into creased paper. He dreams in moments and in treasured memories, and that night, he dreams in nebulous warmth, gentle flames, and hazy smoke.
“The egg,” Xiao says, voice laced with something between amazement and disbelief. They are in Venti’s kitchen at two in the morning cooking an egg, the last bits of inebriation fading into clear consciousness. They weren’t sure what had pulled them together in the party they’d just come from, and they weren’t sure what dragged them here to Venti’s apartment. They knew, at least, that they were hungry, and that a carton of eggs were the last remaining signs of life in Venti’s fridge.
“The egg,” Venti parrots innocently, like he has no idea what Xiao is referring to, like he has not managed to burn a simple fried egg beyond recognition.
Xiao opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. “I didn’t even think eggs could burn that way,” he chokes out, voice breaking into light laughter. It floats adrift across the room, and Venti wants to reach out to the melody of it, letting its cadence move around his fingertips. He settles for the closest thing to that, which is to capture the sound of it between them as he presses their lips together.
He dreams of the day he falls in love: the distinct scent of burnt eggs clouding the air, the lingering taste of shitty beer and budget tequila, unraveling stars breathed into each other’s lungs.
“Xiao,” Venti says when they part. He looks into Xiao’s eyes, watching the galaxies bloom against golden skies. “Stay the night?”
Xiao smiles softly, and the constellations piece themselves together. “As long as you’ll have me, Venti.”
Venti is a musician, so he dreams in melodies, in notes and rhythms that dance across air. He dreams of the song coming to an end, the last plucks of the guitar strings fading into silence. When he is finally satisfied with the product of his work, he packs his things into a bag and locks up the studio.
When he gets home, it’s nearly midnight. Venti quietly pushes the door to his apartment open—there’s a foreign yet familiar head of green asleep on his kitchen counter, body hunched over beside a plate of food.
“Xiao,” Venti whispers, lightly shaking the boy’s shoulders. “You’ll catch a cold if you sleep out here.”
Xiao lets out a soft grunt, eyes fluttering open as he rouses to the sound of his name. “Venti,” he mumbles out, hands reaching to rub at his eyes. “I made you food.”
“I told you I’d be back late,” he smiles, pressing a soft kiss to Xiao’s forehead. “You didn’t have to wait up for me.”
After the incident of Venti’s fried egg, Xiao began coming to Venti’s apartment more often. Weekly visits turned into near daily ones, and evenings spent together began to extend into the mornings of the following day. Xiao came by often enough that eventually, Venti gave him a spare key, and the boy from then on became a familiar sight in Venti’s apartment.
Xiao shakes his head, hand reaching out to Venti’s face, letting the strands of his hair slide through his fingertips. “I did it because I wanted to,” he says easily.
He lets his lips graze Xiao’s palm before replacing it with a light squeeze from his own hand. He takes a seat beside Xiao, eyes scanning over the food laid out on the table—some Liyuen cuisine and a plate of sliced apples.
He dreams of home, and it is more boy than the four walls of his apartment. He dreams of golden eyes that look up to him expectantly beside lukewarm food, gentle hands seeping warmth into his skin, and a budding love that blossoms quietly in his midst.
He seats himself beside Xiao, a fond grin on his face. “I’m home,” he says.
Xiao smiles back at him, gentle as ever. “Welcome home, Venti.”
Venti is a lover, so he dreams of him.
He dreams of a boy who looks at Venti like he is someone that molds the sky with his hands and makes all of the winds sing. He plucks the stars out of the sky like flowers in a field and leaves them to bloom in his palms.
He dreams of the evenings they spend with each other, warmth shared between bodies pressed together. Moonlight melting away with the night, and sunlight beaming against them in the waking hours of the day.
He dreams that they are together, intertwined, then suddenly, they are not.
Sometimes, there are cancelled plans. Nights spent in a recording studio instead of his apartment.
“I’m sorry, Xiao,” he says when the boy picks up the phone. “I don’t think I can come home tonight. Please don’t wait for me.”
“It’s fine,” Xiao responds, his voice a little groggy across the static of their phone call. “You’re working hard. Don’t be sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats anyway, like his words will pull the seams back together. He hopes they will, because these days, apologies are all he has to offer. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
A muffled sound of agreement through the speakers, and a small moment of silence. He hears Xiao’s breath slow into a sleepy cadence.
“Thank you for waiting for me,” Venti tells no one before he puts the call down. It’s a little too late.
Other times, there are secrets. Remorse thrown belatedly across phone calls.
“Xiao,” Venti calls. He is in the recording studio, taking a short break away from his work. “You didn’t tell me you had an exhibit today. I could’ve made time to go.”
“It was just a small one,” Xiao says, tone meek. “And I know you shouldn’t be skipping out on work right now. It’s getting busy, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t—” Venti starts to argue back, emotions ready to roll off his tongue, but the voice of his co-worker calling him back to work pushes the words back down his throat. He tells them to give him some time, and stumbles with apologies when he returns to the call.
“Xiao,” he begins again.
“Don’t apologize,” Xiao tells him gently. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
He knows he shouldn’t, but the silence across the line is stifling, and Venti desperately wants to find the words to mask it away. Still, he comes up empty, and they remain quiet until Venti’s coworker calls him back again.
“I’m glad you called though,” Xiao tells him suddenly before Venti puts the call down. “It means a lot to me.”
It means a lot to me, he repeats in his head after. He repeats it again, trying to let the words fill his chest—but there’s emptiness that follows, and he can’t help but wonder how much it will take to be enough.
Oftentimes, there is simply nothing. An empty space on the left side of their bed. A phone screen void of any texts or calls. A cold apartment that no longer feels like home. He dreams of a lit candle and a small flame, slowly burning at wax and wick, and it is only when the faint warmth extinguishes that he finally notices it is gone.
And Venti is just a boy, heart full of emotions strewn across the floor like broken glass. He dreams in fragments, in bits and pieces, and he dreams of the things that will never become whole again.
“Xiao,” Venti calls out. It's late afternoon, the last slivers of sunlight spilling through Venti’s apartment window, and white walls dyed orange by the setting sun. The two of them are beside each other in the living room, eyes turned towards a broadcast of an idol’s—Barbara’s—performance. Venti helped her write the song.
He turns his eyes from the screen to Venti. Venti lifts a hand to Xiao’s face, and the boy shifts his head into the palm of his hand.
“Xiao,” Venti repeats again.
Xiao lifts his head slightly from where it rests in Venti’s palm, smiling at the sound of his name from Venti’s lips. “Yeah?”
It is still the same smile Venti had fallen in love with over burnt eggs. It’s the same smile, but somehow, it’s a little more worn, a little more tired. It is a smile that looks like it has loved a little too much at all the wrong times, and it is now fractured at the corners and seams.
“This isn’t making you happy anymore, is it?” he asks gently.
Xiao looks shocked, then looks hurt, then he just looks—he only stares at Venti, golden eyes glazed over like the sun past the windowpane. Venti watches the way they dart to the side, his lips quivering with hesitance.
“Xiao,” Venti says softly. “Xiao, you can be honest with me.”
There’s a moment of silence, broken moments after by the rough tenor of Xiao’s voice.
“I understand you’ve been busy,” Xiao says slowly. “I don’t expect you to always be able to make time for me.”
Venti skips over the dull pang in his chest at the words—though he wonders, briefly, if there is anything Xiao expects from him at all between them.
“Xiao,” he says, fingers running gently over Xiao’s face, his touch as gentle as it is hesitant. “You aren’t answering the question.”
“You’re being unfair, Venti,” he sighs, and Venti laughs in response, the sound weighed down with an unnameable sort of melancholy.
“I suppose I am,” he says thoughtfully, his hand dropping from Xiao’s face. “Though nothing about us is really fair anymore, is there?”
The thud of footsteps out in the hallway through the apartment’s poor soundproofing. The muffled sound of commercials from the television. The barest sounds of an exhale, trembling breaths struggling to keep a boy wounded together.
Xiao lets out a shaky exhale. “What do you want from us, Venti?”
“I want you to be happy, Xiao,” he says.
“Then you could have just given me you,” he tells Venti. He says it belatedly, like he has known it for so long and it is only now that he is finally letting their ruined secret slip past his lips.
I wanted to, he wants to say. I tried my best to.
“I’m sorry,” he says instead.
“It’s nothing you need to apologize for, Venti,” he replies softly. He puts his hand on Venti’s cheek, holding Venti gently like it is his beating heart in his hands, pulsing against his palms until it has left Xiao’s hands red and bruised. There is that clement gaze in his eyes, and he is looking at Venti like he is still worth loving past all the hurt.
Xiao always has been much kinder than Venti deserved.
He takes a sharp but concealed inhale, and breathes in the last bits of strength he is able to muster. Places his hand over Xiao’s, stretches his lips into a transparent smile. “Thank you for everything, Xiao.”
Venti dreams of scorched embers, the last bits of warmth ebbing away into the nighttime breeze. He dreams of a sky clouded over, black smoke pooling across the stars, and when he awakens from his echoes of dreams, he is all alone.