Chapter Text
The apartment does not smell like air anymore.
It smells like ozone, like the static charge right before lightning strikes, threaded through with the unmistakable evidence of Heizou’s return: airport metal, sun-warmed fabric, cologne gone sharp from too many hours against skin. His suitcase lies abandoned near the door, one side sagging open, a sleeve caught in the zipper as if even his luggage has given up pretending the summer had been brief.
Heizou’s eyes are blown wide, pupils swallowing the green until they look like holes in the universe. He laughs, a breathless, wrecked sound, and goes slack against the wood, surrendering just enough without letting go.
“I’ve missed you,” Aether says, plain and honest, before kissing him yet again.
Heizou makes a sound into his mouth that might have been agreement if it had survived long enough to become language.
Aether counts that as a win.
There are many things he should do. He should ask whether the flight was awful, because it almost certainly was; Heizou had texted him a picture of a vending machine sandwich at one in the morning with the caption I have solved airport cuisine. The answer is crime. He should make sure Heizou has eaten something that was not sealed in plastic and spiritually opposed to moisture. He should, at the very least, move the suitcase out of the doorway before Paimon comes home and trips over it loudly enough to make the neighbors assume a murder has occurred.
Instead, he presses Heizou harder against the wall and feels every sensible thought leave him with the same efficiency as students after attendance.
Heizou’s hand slides up the back of his neck. His fingers are cold from outside, or from the airport, or from the fact that Aether opened the door and kissed him before either of them remembered temperature as a concept.
“Sensei,” Heizou murmurs, which is unfair.
It is not as though he has not gotten used to calling Aether by name. He has. In fact, he says it often enough now that Aether has grown embarrassingly attached to the shape of it in his mouth: sleepy and rough in the morning, bright with laughter when he wants something, low and dangerous when he has decided Aether’s dignity is a solvable problem.
He just knows what both names do in different cadences, and somehow keeps his cake and eats it too.
Maybe that is on Aether, really. He is so far gone that Heizou does not even have to try very hard.
The three months of separation have not helped, either.
Aether has been good. This is far from his first monogamous relationship; he knows how to act. He has not betrayed Heizou’s trust—not that basic decency deserves a medal. The point is, he is simply pent up. Sexting was good, very good at times, because Heizou has never encountered a medium of communication he could not turn into a weapon, but it was not the real thing.
It could not put Heizou’s weight in his hands. It could not give him the exact moment a joke broke into a gasp, or the warm, living pressure of Heizou laughing against his mouth because Aether had missed him too much to pace himself properly.
And Aether really, really has missed him.
Heizou seems to know this. Worse, he seems to enjoy knowing it.
His hand curls at the back of Aether’s neck, thumb brushing once over the short hair there, and Aether feels the small motion with a level of attention usually reserved for astronomical events and university emails with the word urgent in the subject line.
“Sensei,” Heizou says again, softer this time.
Aether closes his eyes for one second. “Heizou.”
“Mm?”
“You are doing this on purpose.”
“I do most things on purpose.”
“I know.”
“Is that a complaint?”
Aether opens his eyes.
Heizou is smiling up at him, still pressed against the wall, suitcase forgotten near the door, hair mussed from Aether’s hands. He looks tired from travel and pleased with himself and pleased with Aether for being unable to hide how badly he wants him.
It is extremely difficult to build a moral objection under these conditions.
“No,” Aether says, because honesty has always worked on Heizou better than dignity. “It is not a complaint.”
The smile flickers.
There. That is the thing Aether likes doing to him. Heizou is brilliant with momentum, beautiful when he has a rhythm and a theory and someone else’s pulse under his fingers, but directness still catches him sometimes. It cuts through the performance cleanly enough to show the person underneath, the one who wants to be wanted and is still faintly surprised when the wanting arrives without a trapdoor beneath it.
Aether kisses him before Heizou can decide whether to make a joke of it.
He means for it to be slower. Somewhat. Perhaps not dignified, but at least less like an attempted correction to the entire summer. Then Heizou makes a small sound low in his throat and tilts his head just so, and Aether loses the argument with himself before it becomes formal.
The kiss turns hungry again.
Heizou’s fingers tighten in his hair. His body shifts against the wall, one knee sliding forward, not quite between Aether’s legs but close enough to make the suggestion insulting in its accuracy.
Aether laughs against his mouth.
Heizou pulls back by half an inch. “What?”
“You.”
“That is a broad subject.”
“I missed you.”
“You said that.”
“I am discovering it has subcategories.”
Heizou’s eyes brighten. “Oh?”
“I missed your mouth.”
“Reasonable.”
“I missed your hands.”
“Also reasonable.”
“I missed the way you pretend you are not fishing for compliments while building the most elaborate compliment traps known to man.”
“That sounds like slander.”
“I missed that too.” Aether lets his thumb brush Heizou’s cheekbone. “I missed you being here,” he says. “Not on my phone. Not in another city. Here.”
Heizou’s expression is quiet for one second. His gaze drops to Aether’s mouth. “You should probably kiss me before I say something embarrassing.”
“I like when you say embarrassing things.”
“I know. It has enabled terrible behavior.”
“Good.”
Aether kisses him again. The apartment gives around them. Or maybe Aether simply stops paying attention to anything past Heizou.
Heizou, here, real in his hands.
Aether keeps returning to that fact with the dull astonishment of a man who had spent three months being perfectly functional and is only now realizing how much of that function had been spite.
He had gotten through the summer. He had taught his shortened course, answered emails, traveled with his family, picked up groceries, helped Paimon reorganize the pantry according to a system only she understood and then immediately forgot. He had slept. He had cooked. He had even remembered to water the plant Lumine had given him, along with the warning that if he killed this one too, she would begin taking it personally. She had not accepted the excuse that living with Tighnari for years had made Aether lazy about having a green thumb.
Point is, he had been fine.
Now Heizou is here, and fine seems like an insult.
Aether shifts his hands to Heizou’s waist.
Heizou follows the pressure easily at first, then resists just enough to make Aether look at him.
“What?” Aether asks.
“I brought you something,” Heizou says.
Aether blinks.
Of all the things Heizou could say while pressed against the wall with Aether’s mouth still too close to his, this is not the worst. It is not even surprising, really. Heizou’s timing has always been a philosophical objection to peace.
“Are you that something?” Aether asks.
Heizou pauses. Then his smile spreads, slow and delighted, as if Aether has just handed him a loaded weapon with a bow around it. “Oh,” he says. “That was awful.”
“It was honest,” Aether says. “I need you. I can’t think about anything else.”
The smile does not disappear so much as fail.
Only for a second. Only long enough that Aether sees the joke in Heizou’s mouth lose its footing, slip, and fall somewhere too deep to retrieve gracefully.
Heizou breathes out, soft and uneven. “That is a terribly unfair thing to say to a man who just got off a plane.”
“You started it.”
“I brought a gift.”
“You said sensei.”
“That was respect.”
“That was attempted murder.”
“Attempted,” Heizou says, recovering by inches, though his fingers have gone tight in Aether’s shirt. “So I failed.”
“No,” Aether says, and kisses him again because there is no point lying. “You didn’t.”
Heizou makes a sound at that, low and pleased and caught off guard, and Aether feels it against his mouth more than he hears it. Three months of perfectly ordinary competence collapse under the small proof of Heizou wanting him back.
He had known, of course. He is not insecure about that, not exactly. Heizou had missed him; Heizou had said so in texts, in calls, in increasingly elaborate complaints about hotel pillows and suspicious vending machines and the moral failures of coffee served too hot to drink and too cold to respect. He had once sent Aether a blurry picture of the moon over a parking lot with the caption your fault, which Aether had saved immediately and never admitted to saving.
Still, knowing is a thin thing compared to this.
Heizou’s body under his hands. Heizou’s breath catching when Aether presses closer. Heizou’s clever mouth going useless for a second because Aether has said the truth too plainly to dodge.
Aether likes that more than he should.
Heizou notices, because he notices everything inconvenient. “You are enjoying yourself,” he says.
“I missed that too.”
“What?”
“Watching you run out of things to say.”
Heizou’s eyes narrow. “I never run out of things to say.”
“You paused.”
“For dramatic timing.”
“You forgot words.”
“I was selecting from too many.”
“You looked emotionally attacked.”
“I was emotionally ambushed,” Heizou corrects. “There is a difference.”
Aether smiles despite himself. There he is.
Heizou’s expression softens at the edges when he sees it, and that is worse, somehow. The way he looks proud of making Aether smile, but not smug. Not this time. As if he has come home with proof of something and found proof waiting for him too.
Aether slides both hands to his waist again. Heizou follows the pressure without resisting.
Aether does not give him time to find a new equilibrium. He tightens his grip on Heizou’s waist and pulls, a hefty, uncompromising drag that dislodges Heizou from his casual slouch against the wall. They collide in the center of the entryway, chests knocking together with a force that drives the air out of them both.
Heizou gasps, his head falling against Aether’s shoulder. “Aggressive,” he manages, sounding delighted.
Aether’s answer is not words.
He gets one arm around Heizou’s back, the other under his thigh, and lifts.
Heizou makes a sound so startled and pleased that Aether would be embarrassed by how much it affects him if he had any room left in his body for embarrassment. Fortunately, Heizou hooks his legs around him immediately, practical even in surrender, and Aether decides gratitude is a better use of his limited remaining faculties.
“Oh,” Heizou says near his ear. “We are skipping several procedural steps.”
“Yes.”
“The suitcase—”
“Can burn.”
"The foreplay you say you can't get enough of—"
“Do you want me to?”
“Hell, no. Get in me already.”
Aether presses him against the wall again, this time supporting his weight, and kisses him before he can find another layer.
It is not clean. Nothing about it is clean. Heizou is still in his travel clothes, one shoe half slipping from his heel, the suitcase tossed near them like a dead witness. Aether has him pinned beside the little table by the door, close enough that the frame rattles when Heizou’s shoulder knocks it. Somewhere behind them, the key bowl tips with a small ceramic clatter.
Heizou’s mouth opens under his, hungry and laughing until Aether shifts his grip again, lifting him higher, taking more of his weight, and then the laugh breaks into something else.
They are chest to chest now, the friction of fabric against fabric burning like static. Aether can feel the frantic rhythm of Heizou’s heart hammering against his own ribs, a terrifying, synchronized tempo.
Heizou makes a sound that is halfway between a laugh and a sob, his head thumping back against the wood with enough force to vibrate through Aether’s shoulder blades. He buries his hands in Aether’s hair, pulling him in, and Aether goes with a moan, surrendering to the gravity of him.
He presses closer until there is nowhere for the air to go. The friction is unbearable—rough denim against smooth sweatpants, cotton pulling tight across shoulders. Aether grinds his hips forward, a slow, heavy roll that drags a moan out of Heizou’s throat that sounds like it’s been dragged up from the bottom of the ocean.
"Still too many clothes," Heizou gasps, tugging uselessly at Aether’s shirt. His fingers are shaking. "Why are we still wearing clothes?"
Aether is as confused as he is, so instead of finding an answer, he moves to remedy it. He shifts one hand under Heizou’s thigh, keeps him pinned with his hips, and uses the other to drag his own shirt up.
Heizou helps him along hurriedly, as if he cannot tolerate this lasting one moment longer than necessary, and tosses the shirt away like yesterday’s trash. His hands return at once, seeking Aether’s chest tattoo with an almost frantic precision.
Aether’s breath catches.
Heizou has seen it countless times by now. Touched it, kissed it, once spent an entire morning pretending to conduct a “visual survey” that somehow required Aether to remain shirtless through breakfast. Familiarity should have dulled the effect.
It has not.
Not with Heizou’s fingers shaking over the dark lines. Not with his eyes fixed there like the tattoo is proof of something he had been deprived of for three months and is only now allowed to verify by hand.
"I missed this," Heizou confesses, breathy, like he can't help saying it.
“The tattoo?” Aether manages to tease despite the inhale in his own voice.
Heizou’s thumb drags over the lowest visible line of it, slow enough to be a punishment. “The tattoo,” he says. “The chest. The unbearable way you look when you pretend not to know you are being looked at. Several related phenomena.”
Aether laughs, but it does not come out right. Instead of insisting on it, he rolls his hip forward again.
Heizou’s head knocks back against the wall with a sound that would worry Aether if Heizou did not immediately make a far more interesting one. His legs tighten around Aether’s waist. His hands leave the tattoo only to slide over Aether’s shoulders, down his back, as if he is comparing the memory to the fact of him and finding the fact far more persuasive.
The hallway has become too hot. The apartment air no longer carries airport metal or sun-warmed fabric or ozone in any way that matters. It smells like them now: sweat, skin, laundry detergent, Heizou’s cologne crushed under Aether’s mouth until it is barely itself anymore.
Heizou’s jacket becomes a problem. It is still caught around one elbow, one shoulder bared where Aether has dragged fabric aside with more conviction than method. The other sleeve remains stubbornly in place, clinging to Heizou with the dedication of a minor antagonist.
Aether glares at it briefly before he catches the offending sleeve and pulls.
The jacket does not move.
Heizou laughs harder, which makes the attempt worse, because his whole body shifts against Aether’s, and Aether briefly forgets what jackets are. Or what hands are. Or what the purpose of civilization has ever been.
Then Heizou says, “Need help, sensei?”
Aether bites his shoulder. Not hard. Not enough to hurt beyond the first bright edge of it. Enough.
Heizou’s laugh breaks cleanly into a gasp.
“There,” Aether says against his skin. “Helpful.”
“You are,” Heizou says, voice suddenly less stable, “becoming very difficult to tease.”
“Good.”
“That was not a complaint.”
“I know.”
Aether finally gets the jacket down Heizou’s arm. It lands somewhere near the suitcase with the defeated slump of an enemy combatant. He does not bother checking where. If Heizou cared about fabric dignity, he would not have begun this by saying get in me already in the hallway.
He gets his hands under the hem of Heizou’s t-shirt, palms flattening against the sharp, jutting lines of Heizou’s hipbones, and pushes the fabric up.
Heizou arches into the touch, his spine bowing away from the wall. The friction of skin against skin is a shock that overrides every other sensation on the planet. Aether feels the muscles of Heizou’s stomach flutter under his fingertips, breath hitching, heart hammering so hard Aether can feel it against his own chest.
"Sensei," Heizou whimpers, and it's not a tease this time, but something so helpless Aether loses his mind a little. "Sensei, we should have started with pants."
"Impatient."
"Impatient? I waited three months."
Aether laughs, but it breaks somewhere in the middle because Heizou is not wrong. Three months is long enough that Heizou saying sensei like that, helpless and half-mad against the wall, feels less like provocation and more like restitution.
Heizou’s hands abandon Aether’s hair to drag at his own belt, a frantic, clattering effort that betrays his composure completely. The metal buckle jingles—a discordant, bright sound in the quiet apartment—and then snaps free.
“Hurry,” Heizou breathes, the word falling out of him like a plea. “Hurry, Aether.”
The use of his name is ruinous.
He drops his hand to replace Heizou’s, fingers brushing the knuckles that are white-knuckled against the leather of the belt. The contact makes Heizou shudder, his head tipping forward to rest his forehead against Aether’s temple, a sudden, desperate anchor amidst the chaos of their own momentum.
"The denim," Heizou breathes, "is an oppressive institution."
“Heizou.”
“What?”
“Stop making political arguments against your clothes.”
“I am building a case.”
“You are making this harder.”
Heizou’s smile flashes, wicked despite the tremor in his mouth. “I should hope so.”
Aether stares at him.
Heizou looks extremely proud of himself for approximately half a second before Aether kisses him hard enough to make victory logistically impossible.
The button gives under his fingers with what feels, in the circumstances, like divine intervention. Aether has never been religious in any organized sense, but he is willing to reconsider if it means zippers continue cooperating.
Heizou shifts against him with intention, and Aether nearly feels the soul leave his body.
"Fuck me, sensei," Heizou begs with a voice Aether might have called pornographic if the crass acting held a candle to this.
Aether laughs once, low and disbelieving, and presses his forehead to Heizou’s. “You are going to kill me.”
“You survived three months.”
“Barely.”
“You looked very functional in your texts.”
“I am excellent at lying in writing.”
“I know,” Heizou says, and then his voice breaks on the next breath because Aether finally gets his hand down, right where they both need it. “Aether.”
The name is softer this time.
Aether kisses him for it, because he has no better defense. He keeps one hand behind Heizou’s head now, protecting him from the wall he keeps forgetting exists,
Heizou’s hands scramble for purchase, sliding over Aether’s shoulders, fingers tangling in the braid, stealing a hiss from Aether's lips.
The friction between them turns liquid, urgent, a messy slide of skin and cloth that defies the cramped geometry of the hallway. Heizou makes a sound that is half-laugh, half-desperate sob, his legs tightening around Aether’s waist like he’s terrified of being let go, even as he arches into the friction with reckless abandon.
“Aether,” he gasps, and the sound of his name—unfiltered, unperformed—hits Aether harder than the heat. “Please, I—you have to—”
Aether bites at the hinge of his jaw, tasting salt and sweat. “Have to what?”
Heizou doesn't explain. Instead he claws at the waistband of Aether's sweatpants, pushing hurried and careless until Aether's dick is free.
"You know," Heizou says, wrapping his hand around it. "I did miss having you in my mouth."
"Who wants foreplay now?"
"Foreplay? No. Just telling you to put it on the agenda for the next one."
The logic of the statement collapses under the weight of the hand currently stroking him. Aether’s hips snap forward, driving his cock into Heizou’s grip, and the breath punches out of him in a ragged groan.
“I will take that under advisement,” Aether manages, what little control he has fraying at the edges like cheap paper. He drops his head to Heizou’s shoulder, biting at the curve of his neck, tasting the salt-slick skin. He needs to be inside him. Now. The urgency isn't just lust; it’s a gravitational imperative, a sudden, violent need to rewrite the last three months of absence into a single, undeniable point of contact.
"Just fuck me already," Heizou says, something between command and plea.
Heizou shudders violently as Aether’s fingers dip below the waistband of his jeans. He’s wet. Slick and soft and overwhelmingly ready, his body reacting to Aether’s proximity so easily.
"Now?" Aether asks.
"Now. Yesterday. Every day for three months. Come on."
Aether does not ask him to repeat himself. He withdraws his fingers with a wet, obscene sound that seems to echo off the hallway walls, ignoring Heizou’s whine of loss. He hooks his hands into the belt loops of Heizou’s open jeans and drags them down as far as he can without setting him down, taking the boxers with them. The denim catches at Heizou’s knees, bunched and useless, but Aether doesn’t care. He needs the clearance. He needs the access.
He grabs one of Heizou’s thighs, hauling his leg higher, spreading him open against the wall. The angle is precarious, a feat of structural engineering that relies heavily on Aether’s core strength and Heizou’s trust.
"I love you, Heizou," Aether whispers.
"I love you too, Aether."
He lines himself up.
The first push is a revelation. The drag of it is overwhelming. Three months is a long time to go without this specific kind of gravity—the tight, wet clutch of Heizou’s body taking him in, inch by devastating inch. Heizou’s breath hitched, a sharp, punched-out sound, and his fingers dug into Aether’s shoulders hard enough to bruise.
"Okay?" Aether asks, stopping himself halfway in.
"Don't you dare stop," Heizou hisses, throwing his head back. "If you stop, I will divorce you. I don't care we aren't married."
Despite everything, that does make Aether laugh again, low and breathy, and he moves.
It is not the slow, reverent rediscovery he might have planned if they had made it to the bedroom. It is a desperate, frantic rhythm, driven by the physics of the wall and the sheer, unadulterated need to close the distance three months had carved between them.
Aether pulls out nearly all the way, the drag of friction against sensitive tissue making Heizou whine high in his throat, and then drives back in. The impact is jarring. Heizou’s whole body jolts, his head knocking against the hand Aether is using to cushion exactly this kind of hit.
"You haven't forgotten," Heizou says. "You still find it so fast."
"How could I forget?"
Aether sets a rhythm that is less about finesse and more about desperate necessity, dragging his hips back only to snap them forward again, burying himself deep inside the clenching, eager body welcoming him. Heizou meets every thrust with a willingness that borders on violence, his hips rolling down to meet Aether’s, his heels digging into Aether’s back to pull him impossibly closer. The air between them is thick with the sound of it—the slap of skin, the wet, obscene slick of Aether moving inside him, the ragged, punched-out gasps that tear from Heizou’s throat with every impact.
"Aether," Heizou gasps, the name breaking apart on a moan as Aether hits a spot that makes his eyes roll back. "Sensei, yes, there, please, don't stop—"
Aether can feel the way Heizou is tightening around him, the rhythmic, desperate flutter of muscle that signals he’s close. He leans in and bites the curve of Heizou’s shoulder, tasting the salt-slick skin. "Let go," he encourages, his voice rough with exertion and affection. "I’ve got you."
Heizou comes with a sound that starts as a sob and ends as a gasp, his whole body seizing in Aether’s arms. It’s not a graceful thing. It is full-body and violent, his back arching off the wall, his thighs clamping tight around Aether’s waist with bruising force. He clamps down around Aether, a rhythmic, fluttering grip that drags a ragged moan out of him, pulling him closer, deeper, demanding he follow.
How is Aether supposed to resist? He is still human, and he's needed this for so, so long.
He buries his face in the crook of Heizou’s neck to muffle the sound he makes—a low, broken noise that feels wrenched out of him. His hips jerk once, twice, a desperate, staccato rhythm as he spills deep inside, chasing the heat of him, grounding himself in the only place on earth that makes sense.
For a while, the apartment is only breath.
Aether does not move. He cannot, at first. Not because he lacks the strength, although his thighs are beginning to register several complaints and one of his arms has gone hot with the strain of holding Heizou up. He does not move because Heizou is still wrapped around him, trembling in little delayed waves, face buried against his neck as if the wall, the hallway, the suitcase, the whole indecent geography of their reunion might vanish if he lets go too soon.
Aether keeps his hand behind Heizou’s head. It feels important, absurdly. The worst is over. The risk has passed. Heizou is no longer knocking back against the wall with every breathless impact, no longer half-laughing, half-breaking around Aether’s name.
Heizou notices. His mouth brushes Aether’s throat when he speaks. “You are still protecting me from the wall.”
“You keep fighting it.”
“The wall began hostilities.”
“You attacked it with your back.”
“Victim-blaming.”
Aether laughs, but it comes out weak.
Heizou’s arms tighten around his neck immediately, as if the sound has weight. As if it needs catching. Aether turns his face into Heizou’s hair and closes his eyes.
The apartment smells like them now, fully and without ambiguity. The ozone from earlier is gone, the airport metal buried under sweat and skin and laundry detergent and the faint, stubborn trace of Heizou’s cologne clinging to places Aether has thoroughly ruined. The suitcase remains open by the door. One of Heizou’s shoes lies upside down near the little table. Aether’s shirt is draped over the edge of the suitcase like a flag of surrender. The framed print beside them hangs crooked.
Aether opens one eye and starts laughing.
Heizou lifts his head with visible effort. His hair is a disaster. His mouth is red. His expression carries the deep offense of a man interrupted during post-catastrophe recovery. “What?”
Aether nods toward the print.
Heizou turns his head.
A pause.
Very solemnly, Heizou says, “It has seen too much.”
Aether laughs harder.
“Don’t,” Heizou says, though he is already smiling. “Do not laugh while I am experiencing structural and emotional aftershocks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No.”
“Terrible bedside manner.”
“We are not in bed.”
“Precisely my complaint.”
That makes Aether aware of several things at once. The floor waiting beneath them. The wall behind Heizou. The awkward angle of his own spine. The fact that continuing to hold Heizou like this is becoming less romantic by the second and more likely to end with both of them requiring ice packs for non-erotic reasons.
“Can you stand?” Aether asks.
Heizou looks down at himself, then at Aether, then at the state of the hallway. “I resent the question.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I can stand spiritually.”
“Also not an answer.”
“In my defense, you were very convincing," Heizou mutters, and kisses him.
It is barely a kiss. A touch, really. Tired and warm and too intimate for the hallway they have already thoroughly disgraced. Aether accepts it like a gift because it is one. Heizou, afterward, is different from Heizou during. Less armed. More irritable about being known. Easier to hurt, if Aether were ever careless enough to try.
So Aether is careful.
He lowers him slowly.
Heizou makes a noise of protest when his feet touch the floor, then immediately proves why the question was necessary by swaying into Aether’s chest.
Aether catches him around the waist.
Heizou glares up at him. “Say nothing.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking something tender and humiliating.”
“I was thinking you need water.”
“Tender and humiliating.”
“And probably a shower.”
“Practical and humiliating.”
“And the bedroom.”
Heizou pauses. Then, with impressive dignity for someone still clinging to Aether’s shoulders, “Continue.”
Aether laughs under his breath and kisses Heizou's forehead.
Heizou closes his eyes before remembering to look offended. “Cruel,” he says.
“Water first.”
“Dictator.”
“You said I was convincing.”
“I revoke that.”
“You cannot revoke evidence.”
“Watch me.”
Aether leaves one arm around Heizou’s waist and starts guiding him away from the wall.
They make it one step before Heizou stops.
Aether turns his head. “What?”
Heizou is looking at the suitcase. Not the clothes. Not the shrimp crackers half-visible in one side pocket. Not the general state of disaster that would certainly make Zhongli sigh, Lumine judge, and Paimon begin a loud investigation.
The flat envelope lies half-hidden under one folded shirt, cream-colored and slightly bent at the corner.
The gift.
Aether remembers it all at once.
Heizou’s expression has gone quieter.
Aether’s hand tightens at his waist. “Later?”
Heizou looks at him.
The soft, wrecked humor is still there, but something else has risen beneath it. Something more vulnerable than desire and more difficult to joke into safety.
“In a minute,” Heizou says.
Aether nods.
That seems to affect Heizou more than if he had pushed. His gaze flickers over Aether’s face, reading the lack of pressure, the permission to keep the envelope unopened for one more breath, one more glass of water, one more moment where home can simply be a body and not yet proof.
Heizou leans into him. Aether holds him there.
The hallway is a ruin. The print is crooked. The wall has, apparently, won some kind of moral victory by remaining upright.
Heizou is home.
For now, that is enough.
Not too alone.
His body is thoroughly marked anywhere respectable clothes will cover, and four postcards are stuck to the wall beside the headboard: a vintage star chart, a moon phase diagram, a map of northern hemisphere summer constellations, and sketches of telescope plans, vintage again. They are from the space museum Aether thought Heizou had visited once—the day he called with the camera on to show him around.
It turns out it had been every day Heizou missed him while he was in Chicago.
Which means every day Heizou was in Chicago.
The writing behind them is a secret between Aether, Heizou, and the wall. Aether has used special tape, the kind that lets him take the postcards down and read them all over again without damaging them.
Not that he needs to look to remember.
"I actually understood the exhibit text, and it's all your fault."
"You should be here to explain these and occupy more space in my brain, which would otherwise be useful for actual life."
"It's my birthday, and right in the middle, is your favorite July constellation. It is now my favorite July constellation."
"Miss you. Obviously."
Aether’s heart flutters looking at each one.
He is so in love with this boy it is driving him insane.
He has not felt this way since—
Yeah, no.
He is not going there. Not on the first day of the academic year. Not with sunlight creeping pale and judgmental through the curtains, not with four postcards on his wall and the ghost of Heizou’s mouth still mapped over places his shirt will hide from polite society. Not with his alarm already dismissed twice and Paimon knocking around somewhere in the kitchen with the confidence of a small creature who has never once respected the emotional privacy of adults.
Aether turns his face into the pillow and breathes out.
The pillow smells like Heizou.
That does not help.
It makes the unfinished thought worse, actually, because the shape of it is obvious even when he refuses to look directly at it. He has loved many times. With his body, a frankly ridiculous number of times; with his mind, less often, but still enough that he cannot pretend inexperience has anything to do with this.
But like this?
Only twice.
This is the only thing he has ever had that could drive away the first one.
That—
—is a terrible thought.
So Aether stops indulging it.
He gets up, dresses, does his hair, puts on a little make-up, texts Venti for him and Zhongli to be ready downstairs in ten minutes, and goes to prepare Paimon a quick breakfast. Not quick to eat. Quick to prepare.
Paimon is already sitting at the table with her feet on the chair and her phone propped against a jar of honey. She looks up when he comes in, eyes narrowing with the immediate suspicion of someone who has never once mistaken silence for innocence.
Aether kisses the top of her head on his way past.
Paimon accepts this with a small, pleased hum “Morning!” she chirps.
“Good morning,” he says. “You’re awake before me.”
“Paimon is full of surprises.”
“You once told me waking up before your guardian was a violation of child labor laws.”
“That was before Paimon became internationally adjusted.”
Aether pauses with the bread in his hand. “Internationally adjusted.”
“Paimon’s body has recovered from France, but still wakes too early for Japan.” She thinks about it, face scrunching with mathematical strain. “Maybe Paimon’s biological clock has gone only east enough for Indonesia.”
“That is not how time zones work.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“I am reasonably sure they work the same for everyone.”
“Then why does Paimon feel awake and betrayed?”
“Jet lag.”
“Suspiciously convenient explanation.”
“It’s the correct explanation.”
“That’s what makes it suspicious.”
Aether puts two slices of bread in the toaster and reaches for the eggs.
Paimon watches him crack the first one into the pan. “Heizou is back.”
“Yes.”
“Paimon knows because his suitcase tried to kill Paimon in the hallway.”
“I’ll move it.”
“You said that about the laundry chair.”
“The suitcase is more urgent.”
“The laundry chair had a society living on it.”
“It had two sweaters.”
“And a scarf. That is how civilizations begin.”
Aether smiles despite himself.
Paimon points at him with immediate triumph. “There! That face.”
“What face?”
“The Heizou face.”
“I do not have a Heizou face.”
“You totally have a Heizou face. If you don't believe, ask Lumine. Is she still sleeping?”
“She uses mornings to study Japanese on that app, so she doesn’t get up right away.”
Paimon frowns. “That sounds like sleeping with extra steps.”
“It is studying.”
“She is in bed.”
“She has headphones on.”
“Paimon also has headphones.”
“You use them to watch videos about raccoons stealing things.”
“Educational videos about field tactics.”
Aether glances over his shoulder. “Are you planning to steal something?”
“No.” Paimon pauses. “Not before breakfast.”
“Comforting.”
“Anyway, Lumine would agree with Paimon. You have a Heizou face.”
“I’m not asking my sister to evaluate my face.”
“Because you fear the truth.”
“Because I have eggs on the stove.”
“Deflection.”
“Breakfast.”
“Deflection with protein.”
Aether slides the eggs onto a plate and reaches for the fruit. Paimon watches him with the severe patience of someone willing to suspend prosecution if bribed properly.
“You also had a Kazuha face,” she says.
The knife pauses against the cutting board.
Only for a second.
Paimon notices anyway. She may not have Heizou’s talent for making three deductions out of one poorly folded receipt, but she has lived with Aether long enough to know the difference between silence and quiet.
Aether resumes cutting the orange. “Did I?”
“Mm-hm.” Paimon props her chin in both hands. “It was different.”
“How?”
“The Kazuha face was quieter.”
The orange segment separates under the knife, clean and bright.
Aether says nothing.
Paimon continues, because she is Paimon and therefore regards uninvited emotional precision as a breakfast condiment. “Like when someone puts a blanket on a chair and forgets it there, but nobody wants to move it because maybe the person is coming back.”
Aether looks at her.
She looks back, very serious now.
Then she adds, “The Heizou face is louder. Even when you’re not saying anything. Like toast when it pops up.”
Aether blinks. “That metaphor became less precise.”
“Paimon is still waking up in Indonesia.”
Despite himself, Aether laughs.
Paimon beams as if she has successfully completed a rescue operation.
“There,” she says. “See? Heizou face.”
Aether turns back to the cutting board before his smile can do anything worse. “Eat your breakfast when I put it down.”
“Paimon will consider it.”
“You will eat it.”
“Paimon will graciously accept tribute.”
“Paimon.”
“Fine, fine. Paimon will eat the tribute.”
Aether considers packing breakfast for himself, but decides against it. He has missed the bagel sandwich at the university café, the one that remained stubbornly unavailable whenever the undergraduates left, no matter how miserable this made the faculty.
Besides, that is too many Kazuha thoughts for one morning appetite.
Two.
Which is too many.
He hopes it is not an omen or something.
Of course it is a goddamn omen. It's freaking foreshadowing, because Aether’s instincts are too good for his own good.
Venti slides into the backseat almost synchronously with his husband settling into the passenger seat. “No Heizou?” he asks.
“He needed to settle into his dorm room,” Aether responds. “Otherwise he loses it.”
Venti makes a thoughtful sound. “Mm. Dormitory. How quaint.”
"It's free and it gives him literal room on campus for when he needs."
“For when he needs what?” Venti asks. “A study cave? A detective lair? A secondary residence for suspiciously organized chaos?”
“A place close to his morning classes. Also something something don’t put all your eggs in a ten-month relationship.”
The car goes quiet for half a second.
Not ominously. Worse.
Interested.
Aether realizes his mistake before Venti’s whole face appears between the front seats like a summoned problem.
“Ten months,” Venti repeats.
“No.”
“I only said the number back.”
“You said it with orchestration.”
“I say everything with orchestration. I am a showman, baby.”
"I like when you say baby," Aether says, smiling.
"And I like that you like it." Venti turns to Zhongli. "I am divorcing you and eloping with Aether."
"Thank you," Zhongli says.
Aether laughs, because there is no version of Zhongli’s tone that does not improve the sentence. “You are thanking him for the divorce?”
“Wow,” Venti says, hand over his chest. “So cold. So swift. Not even a custody discussion.”
“We do not have children.”
“We have shared plants.”
“The jade plant prefers me.”
“The jade plant is a social climber.”
Zhongli takes a slow sip of coffee. “It is photosynthetic.”
“That is exactly what it wants you to think.”
The morning light slides over the windshield, bright and ordinary enough that Aether can almost forget the moment before this, the almost-thought, the dangerous little number he had let slip into the car like an uninvited passenger.
Venti catches his eye in the rearview mirror.
The humor is still there, because Venti without humor would probably violate several natural laws, but it has narrowed. Focused. Less performance, more instrument.
Aether’s stomach sinks before Venti says anything.
Zhongli knows.
That is the first thing Aether understands. Not because Zhongli looks guilty—Zhongli has never looked guilty in his life, only occasionally regretful in advance—but because he takes another sip of coffee with the solemn precision of a man preparing to be present through unpleasant weather.
Aether looks back at the road. “What?”
Venti blinks. “What?”
“You have news.”
“I always have news.”
“You have news you are pretending is casual.”
Venti presses a hand to his chest. “Aether. I am wounded.”
“You are choreographing your face.”
“My face is naturally expressive.”
“Your face is wearing tap shoes.”
Zhongli lowers his coffee by a fraction.
Aether looks between the road and Zhongli. “You know what this is.”
Zhongli is quiet for one second too long. “I have been made aware of certain developments. Developments you will overreact to.”
“Excuse me? When have you ever seen me overreact to anything?”
“Consistently, but only about two things,” Zhongli says. “People calling Pluto a planet, and a certain someone who, funnily enough, happens to call Pluto a planet.”
Aether closes his eyes, briefly, not enough to constitute any danger on the road. “Kazuha.”
The road remains irritatingly normal in front of him. Morning traffic, a delivery truck with one brake light out, a cyclist who has decided lane markings are a philosophical suggestion. Nothing about the world indicates that Aether has just had a name placed carefully in the car like something fragile and explosive.
Zhongli meets Venti's eyes through the rearview mirror. "There you go. I have initiated the conversation. The rest is on you."
"That's not initiation," Venti says. "That's the opposite of breaking the ice. That's freezing the ice."
"You said you would the moment you caught him alone."
“He’s not alone. You’re here.”
“I assumed my presence would not count against your courage.”
“My courage is robust. My survival instinct is decorative but occasionally audible.”
“You were the one who insisted the timing was delicate.”
“It is delicate. Which is why I planned an opening with emotional cushioning.”
“You began by asking about Heizou.”
“That was context.”
“That was provocation.”
“That was social embroidery.”
Aether’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel.
Venti continues, because Venti has many virtues and none of them involve stopping on time. “Besides, you cannot simply drop Kazuha’s name into the car like a frozen brick and then say, ah, my work here is done. There is tone. There is staging. There is—”
“Can both of you stop?” Aether snaps.
The car goes silent.
Aether hears the end of his own voice after it leaves him, too sharp in the small space, too loud for morning traffic and coffee and two people who are, irritatingly, trying to be careful with him. His jaw locks. He keeps his eyes on the road because looking at either of them would require deciding what expression belongs on his face.
Venti says nothing. That is worse.
Zhongli lowers his coffee with the same solemnity one might use at a funeral or a faculty budget meeting. “There you go,” he says.
Aether lets out a breath through his nose. “Do not.”
“The subject you consistently overreact to.”
“I did not overreact.”
“You raised your voice.”
“I raised my voice because you were both discussing how to discuss me while I was driving the car you are sitting in.”
“A fair objection,” Zhongli allows.
“Thank you.”
“And also an overreaction.”
Aether’s eyes flick toward him.
Zhongli looks calmly ahead, apparently unconcerned with the possibility of being left at the next traffic light. Maybe because this is his car, as if that would matter when Aether's buttons are adequately pushed. Hell, he would sacrifice the car itself.
Venti, from the backseat, says carefully, “For what it’s worth, I do think that part was fair.”
“Which part?”
“The part where we were discussing how to discuss you in front of you. That was rude.”
“It was not ideal,” Zhongli says.
“It was rude,” Venti repeats, then adds, quieter, “I’m sorry.”
Aether’s grip loosens by a fraction.
The apology does not make him feel better. It makes him feel worse, actually, because now he has to hold the fact that Venti is sorry beside the fact that Aether snapped, and both facts are true and neither one solves anything.
He keeps driving.
The delivery truck turns off ahead of them. The cyclist survives another lane decision through what appears to be divine indulgence. The morning refuses to become dramatic enough to justify the state of his chest.
Aether says, more evenly, “Just say it.”
Venti does not immediately obey.
Another sign things are bad.
“The university wants to expand the campaign around the Chicago invitational.”
Aether already knows where this is going. His body knew before his mind did, back when Zhongli said Pluto and Venti went too quiet and the car filled with that careful, awful preface people use when they believe kindness is a form of choreography.
Still, he lets Venti speak.
“Not just athletics,” Venti continues. “Campus life. International exchange. Faculty, clubs, student spaces, maybe some visiting-team follow-up if the schedule works. Communications wants something with an actual visual identity instead of three students laughing at a microscope with no sample under it.”
"They hired Kazuha?"
Venti’s voice is softer now. Less theatrical. “He is the best photographer I know. He needs a job. I suggested him.”
“You suggested him.”
“I did,” Venti says, solemn but chin up. “He’s my friend. Which is because you introduced him to our friend group, by the way.”
Aether’s mouth tightens.
That is unfair.
It is also true, which is worse.
Kazuha had not arrived in their lives as an abstraction, no matter how convenient it would be if Aether could remember him that way now. He had arrived with quiet manners, a careful smile, and the devastating ability to make Venti shut up for almost three full seconds by saying something too lovely to interrupt. He had become real to them because Aether brought him close enough to be known.
Then Aether had lost him.
Or Kazuha had let himself be lost.
Or both of them had stood on opposite sides of the same beautiful disaster and called it freedom until the word became useless.
He knew, in theory, that no one had really stopped being friends with him. That Tighnari called him as often as he called Aether. That Venti and Zhongli and Lumine and even Paimon visited him regularly. But there was a rule: around Aether, people pretended Kazuha did not exist.
“He doesn’t need a job,” he manages. “Whenever money goes below what he can pretend is manageable, he fucks off somewhere on the other side of the globe and saves some more.”
Venti does not answer immediately, which is almost alarming enough to make Aether take the words back. Almost. Then he sees Venti’s face in the mirror, all the softness gone from it, and realizes there are some things even Venti will not decorate for him.
Zhongli says, very evenly, “That was unkind.”
Aether’s fingers tighten on the wheel. “It was supposed to be.”
No defense. No cleverness. No insistence that he is only being factual, though a bitter, petty part of him wants to. Kazuha does leave. Kazuha has always left, with a backpack and a camera and that quiet, devastating confidence that distance would somehow clarify what closeness kept making unbearable.
Knowing how much it had destroyed Aether when Lumine left.
Knowing how much he also meant to him.
It is not that Aether had always thought the worst of him. Kazuha has always been particular, and Aether loved that as much as he loved anything else about him. So he let him go, pretending he was okay with it, pretending he was okay with Kazuha seeing him as a shackle, which was the worst thing anything could be to Kazuha.
And one day, Aether was crushed under the same heartbreak multiplying through repetition.
No single departure had done it. That would have been easier, in a way. Cleaner. Something dramatic enough to point at and say: there. That was the wound. That was the moment love became untenable.
Instead, it had been a slow arithmetic.
One trip. Then another. One decision made without him, then another apology offered beautifully after the fact. One weekend gone because Kazuha needed air, then one month elsewhere because a commission came up, then one conversation where Aether realized he had become very good at smiling when he found out Kazuha was in Alaska after three months of no contact.
He had become very good at pretending he did not know which dates guaranteed Kazuha’s departure.
Not every time Kazuha left, no. That would have been too clean, too easy to resent.
But there were two absences Aether could mark on a calendar before Kazuha ever packed a bag.
A dead man’s birthday.
A dead man’s death anniversary.
Worst of all, Kazuha would lash out around those dates. Not in the way most people did. Not loudly enough to be easy. Not cruelly enough to let Aether feel clean about being hurt.
In a very Kazuha way.
He would provoke Aether into a fight, not with teasing designed to make him indignant about Pluto, but with something quieter and more hostile. A careless correction where he would usually be gentle. A decision made three steps ahead and explained only after Aether had already adjusted to it. A refusal to say where they were going until Aether was in the car, halfway through a drive that turned out to be a pilgrimage to a makeshift shrine Kazuha had built somewhere no map cared to name.
He would insist he was fine with a voice too calm to survive interrogation.
He would call recklessness clarity.
He would say he needed air, as if Aether had become the room.
Once, he had driven them two hours out of the city in near silence, then pulled over by a stretch of roadside grass and walked ahead without checking whether Aether followed. There had been flowers in the trunk. Incense. A small wooden box wrapped in cloth. Things Aether had not known were coming until he was already standing there, holding them, made into witness and accomplice at once.
And when Aether had asked, carefully, because he had still believed care could save them from every sharp edge—
Why didn’t you tell me this was today?
Kazuha had looked at him with eyes gone distant and said, I did not think I needed permission to grieve.
Aether had known, even then, that it was not fair.
He had also known it was not entirely untrue.
That was how Kazuha hurt him best: with sentences that were wrong only in placement. With truths used where kindness should have gone.
“I am not heartless,” Venti says, gently. “I knew what it would do to you. The campus is big enough. I’ll keep you two out of each other’s way. I could have even made sure you had no idea, but…” His voice loses some of its certainty. “I think you deserved to know.”
Aether’s first instinct is to say something unkind.
Not because Venti deserves it. He does not. Not really. Deserved, however, is a dangerous word before breakfast, especially when applied to a wound everyone else has been politely stepping around for years. Aether deserved to know Kazuha might be back on campus. He had also deserved to know when Kazuha was leaving the country. He had deserved to know when a shrine was waiting at the end of a car ride. He had deserved, once, to be loved without needing to prove he was not a cage.
Deserving has never made anyone hand him the thing on time.
So he keeps his mouth shut.
For once, Venti does too.
Zhongli looks out the windshield, coffee balanced carefully between both hands. His silence is not absence. Zhongli’s silences rarely are. They have weight, architecture, load-bearing purpose.
Aether hates that he is grateful for it.
The road curves toward the university gates, and campus comes into view in pieces: the main building catching pale morning light, the early clusters of students pretending not to be lost, a banner half-secured to the fence and already losing its argument with the wind.
A new year.
How optimistic of it.
Aether exhales through his nose. “You cannot keep us out of each other’s way.”
Venti shifts in the backseat. “I can try.”
“No.” Aether’s voice is not sharp this time. Tired, maybe. Clearer for it. “You can keep us off the same shooting schedule. You can ask communications not to assign him to my classes. You can make sure I don’t walk into a meeting and find him there without warning.”
“I can do all of that.”
“I know.” Aether stops at the light. “But you cannot keep us out of each other’s way.”
“I just…” Venti exhales. “Listen. This affects you, but it is not about you. He needed a gig, there was an opportunity at the place where I work. He’s as much my friend as you are.”
“That is true,” Zhongli says. “It goes both ways. I assure you, we called him out as well whenever he grew too dramatic about you. Except—”
Venti sends him a glare that is not saved for their usual bickering, but for the rare occasions when Zhongli grossly overspends on something frivolous and gets them into debt. As far as Aether knows, this has happened exactly once in public. It involved an antique tea set, and ended with Venti saying the words financial infidelity in front of three guests and one mortified seller.
Zhongli receives the glare with the grave dignity of a man who knows he is already guilty and has decided to continue anyway.
“Except,” Aether repeats.
“No,” Venti says at once.
That is almost never a good sign.
Aether keeps his eyes on the road. “Except what?”
“Nothing.”
“Venti.”
“It is a very small except.”
“Zhongli.”
Zhongli takes a measured sip of coffee.
Venti points at him. “Do not.”
“Except,” Zhongli says, because he is never not honest with Aether, and Aether loves him for it even when it ruins his morning, “it goes in opposite directions. We call you out when you overreact in order to keep him away. We correct him when he decides he should chase you.”
Aether does not react immediately. He is driving. That is his excuse, and for once it is a good one. The road requires his eyes, his hands, the small practical calculations of distance and speed and whether the taxi two cars ahead is going to stop where stopping is neither legal nor spiritually justified.
Still, his grip tightens around the wheel.
Venti groans softly from the backseat. “He did not need to know that.”
“He asked." Zhongli takes another measured sip of coffee, which Aether is beginning to suspect is less a beverage and more a shield. “The point is not that we have been arranging your lives from the shadows.”
“Reassuring opening.”
“The point,” Zhongli continues, “is that both of you have had moments where contact would have been unwise.”
Aether’s laugh is quiet and unpleasant. “For whom?”
“For both of you,” Venti says, softer now. “Even when only one of you would have admitted it.”
The car moves forward another few meters, traffic loosening and tightening with the particular sadism of morning commute. Aether follows it because the body is often better at continuing than the mind.
He thinks of Kazuha deciding he should chase him.
Not call. Not apologize. Chase.
That is worse, maybe. More like him. Less like a clean phone call, more like a sudden arrival, a letter slipped under a door, a photograph sent without warning, some beautiful, unbearable gesture made after the damage had already learned to scar.
Aether says, “When?”
Venti makes a show of pretending not to have heard—not to convince Aether that he did not, but to demonstrate that he is refusing to acknowledge the question.
Zhongli answers, because of course he does. “Several times.”
“Do you want to kill him and then make him kill all of us in this car?” Venti snaps.
"That sequence of events is not plausible."
"It is when he is driving the car."
“Ah,” Zhongli says. “Yes, I see it now.”
Venti lets out a breath that sounds almost like relief and almost like grief. “There. Wonderful. Growth. Everyone is bleeding with vocabulary. Can we not do details and dates?”
Aether’s first instinct is to say no. He wants details. He wants dates. He wants the ugly comfort of knowing exactly where he stood in every story everyone else kept from him. When Kazuha wanted to chase him. How often. Who stopped him. Whether he was drunk, lonely, guilty, grieving, selfish, sincere. Whether he said Aether’s name like a wound or a shrine or a door.
He wants to know, because not knowing was the problem.
He does not want to know, because knowing will not change what happened. Worse, it might give old pain new choreography.
Aether exhales. “Fine,” he says. “No dates.”
The relief from the backseat is immediate enough to be audible. Venti slumps against the seat like a puppet with one string cut, then apparently remembers dignity halfway down and tries to convert the motion into casual lounging.
It does not work.
Zhongli notices.
Aether notices Zhongli noticing.
Venti notices both of them and says, “I am allowed to experience relief with artistic physicality.”
“You fell over,” Aether says.
“I reclined under emotional duress.”
“That sounds like a diagnosis you invented.”
“Most diagnoses were invented by someone.”
It is enough to make the car less impossible to breathe in.
The traffic loosens. Morning begins to behave like morning again: brake lights, impatient scooters, sunlight catching on windshields, people crossing at the wrong places with the calm entitlement of pedestrians who believe regret is for cars. Aether follows the flow because driving is simple in a way the rest of his life has rarely had the decency to be.
"When will he start threatening my sanctum of academic astronomy?" he asks. "So that, you know, I can be careful."
"Next month."
"Next month is in two weeks, Venti."
"Yes, but next month sounds farther and safer."
Aether laughs once, without much humor. “For whom?”
“For everyone’s blood pressure.”
“My blood pressure is fine.”
Zhongli looks at him.
Aether keeps his eyes on the road. “Do not.”
“I said nothing.”
“You looked clinical.”
“I was merely observing.”
“Clinically.”
“Perhaps.”
Venti leans forward again, though this time with less theatrical invasion and more tactical caution. “The first planning meeting is in two weeks. Actual shooting probably starts later. They still need to finalize locations, departments, themes, which offices will insist on being photographed and then complain about every photo, the usual.”
“The physics department?”
“Likely.”
Aether exhales.
Venti adds, too quickly, “Not first.”
“You are not permanent faculty yet anyway,” Zhongli adds. “I doubt anyone would want to cement you in promotional material. Venti is part of the committee overseeing the project, so he can tell you when to schedule around it.”
Venti says, “Which is a shame, because you are extremely cementable.”
“Do not.”
“In a promotional sense.”
“Still no.”
“You have the look. Friendly, approachable, devastatingly photogenic when explaining the end of the universe. And drop-dead gorgeous, but you know that already.”
“The university does not know I am devastatingly photogenic when explaining the end of the universe.”
“Students have eyes.”
“Students also have phones,” Zhongli says. “And how many sections did you have to open this semester because of overwhelming demand?”
Aether’s mouth twitches despite himself. “Heizou begged me to make him my TA so he could keep an eye out and fail anyone who looks at me wrong.”
“He did that last semester too.”
“No,” Aether says, something in his chest loosening. “This semester, he begged, because apparently there is a Facebook group where they exchange suggestions or cautions about instructors and he saw many… flattering comments about me."
Venti makes a sound. “Facebook still exists?”
Zhongli turns, just as comically bewildered, which is straight-up hilarious on him. “And a generation later than ours is using it?”
“Apparently only for this group in particular.” Aether pauses. “And a page called something like Confessions. It is full of anonymous gossip and also several things that will break your faith in the new generation. It can be fun, though. There is a poll about Venti’s gender there.”
“That is anthropology,” Venti says.
“That is alarming,” Zhongli says.
“That is Heizou’s villain origin story,” Venti decides. “Imagine him discovering a secret archive of strangers calling his boyfriend hot while pretending to discuss attendance policy.”
“Short but hot, apparently,” Aether corrects. “I am not saying that to brag. I seem to have led Japanese students to discover the term short king. Heizou’s teammates started calling him that too.”
Venti makes a strangled sound.
Zhongli’s face is calm in the way old architecture is calm while actively cracking inside. “What,” he says, “is a short king?”
Aether tries to answer.
He fails.
Venti does not even try. He folds forward in the backseat, one hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking with the silent violence of a man trying not to endanger everyone on the road through laughter.
Zhongli waits.
This makes it worse.
“It is,” Aether says carefully, “a complimentary term.”
“For monarchs of limited height, like Napoleon?”
Venti makes a noise like a dying flute.
Aether bites the inside of his cheek. “No.”
“No?”
“Not exactly.”
“Was Napoleon not short?”
“That is historically complicated.”
“I am well aware. But for the purposes of this conversation…”
“For the purposes of this conversation,” Aether says, “please do not bring Napoleon into a Facebook thirst category.”
Venti wheezes.
This is one of the many reasons Aether loves his friends. He still remembers it being very hard to breathe in the car moments ago, and yet now, already, that has become a past-tense thing. Something Kazuha hurt, but something Aether can survive with, which is far from the first example of its kind.
Zhongli looks politely unconvinced. “I am attempting to establish scope.”
“The scope is,” Venti manages, “Aether and Heizou.”
“And Venti,” Aether adds, “when the poll is leaning more toward a man.”
“Aw, thank you.” Venti wipes under one eye with theatrical delicacy. “In summary: a young man of modest stature, significant confidence, and apparently enough public admiration to create linguistic transfer among Japanese undergraduates.”
Zhongli considers this. “A concise definition.”
“It was not supposed to be a definition.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Do not encourage him,” Aether says.
“I am encouraging accuracy.”
“You are encouraging the phrase short king to gain academic legitimacy.”
“Language develops through use.”
“Not in my car.”
“Well,” Zhongli says, “it is my car.”
“You may own the vessel, but I am the pilot. The captain.”
Zhongli turns his head toward Aether with a slowness that suggests the sentence has offended him on several historical levels.
“A car,” he says, “is not a vessel.”
“It carries passengers.”
“So does an elevator.”
“Elevators have captains too, spiritually.”
“They do not.”
“They could, if society had courage.”
Venti leans forward between the seats, delighted beyond decency. “I would like it noted that I support elevator captains.”
“You would,” Zhongli says.
“I would look wonderful in the hat.”
“There is no hat.”
“There is always a hat if one believes hard enough.”
Aether keeps his eyes on the road, but his mouth has already betrayed him. “I am not wearing a captain’s hat to drive you to work.”
Venti gasps. “So there is a hat.”
“No.”
“You said the hat.”
“I said a hat.”
“Language develops through use.”
“Do not use my own argument against me.”
“It was Zhongli’s argument.”
“Do not use Zhongli’s argument against me in Zhongli’s car.”
“Well,” Zhongli says again, “it is my car.”
Aether laughs properly this time.
It comes out clean, almost surprising in its ease, and the car changes around it. Venti’s grin widens in the mirror; Zhongli’s mouth softens by a fraction, which for Zhongli is practically an aria.
The pain is not gone. Kazuha is still there in the conversation, waiting with all the patience of old weather. The job, the camera, the possibility of seeing him in a hallway or lecture room or courtyard—all of it remains.
But for a few minutes, the car is also this: Zhongli arguing maritime classification, Venti inventing elevator captains, Aether driving a car that is not his through morning traffic while being forced to explain his boyfriend has achieved symbolic kingship among Japanese undergraduate basketball players.
It is ridiculous.
It is survivable.
That, for now, is enough.