Chapter Text
The moment his boyfriend opens the door, Aether smacks his face with the letter he received earlier that morning.
“I’m not going to uni,” he states proudly, as Xiao tugs the paper away from his face to read it, brows furrowing.
“It… says you got accepted, though?”
Aether reclaims the acceptance letter to the University he had once been excited to attend, and shoves it haphazardly in his jacket pocket. “Yeah, all thanks to you,” he grins, “but I decided not to go. I think I just need a break from everything, you know?”
Xiao nods slowly, fingers flexing against the front door to his house that they idle at. “Everything?” He hesitantly asks.
Noticing the way his best friend’s eyes dart to the ground, the way they often do whenever he’s nervous, Aether quickly shakes his head, and plants a kiss on Xiao’s cheek. “Not from you, of course,” he laughs softly, and kisses him again, this time catching his lips with his own as he curls a hand around Xiao’s collar, tugging him closer. “I can never get enough of you, Xiao-Xiao,” he murmurs into their kiss, before pulling away.
Aether jerks a thumb behind him towards a recently-repainted red car. “Got keys?” And by the time Xiao nods, Aether’s already dragging him towards their car.
Well, it was Xiao’s car, but Xiao had already admitted that Aether spends almost as much time in it as he does. On top of that, Xiao offered to lend Aether his car for when he finally learns how to drive, saying that he trusts Aether not to get it seriously damaged — and Aether took that trust very seriously, though he hasn’t yet admitted to scratching the new paint job within the first few minutes that he saw it. Maybe Xiao wouldn’t notice.
“You’re the reason I was even sane enough to graduate high school, you know,” Aether says quietly once they’ve both slid on the still-decaying leather seats. “I know I shouldn’t have flaked from so many classes but I was stressed out of my mind, and you helped me relax, you helped me to understand these stupid exams.” He reaches over the centre console, patting Xiao’s thigh, and smiles as Xiao meets his gaze. “You’ve been an amazing friend to me, and an even better boyfriend,” he laughs, ducking his head. “I still can’t believe I get to call you that — my boyfriend… my boyfriend.”
Xiao flushes at the intonation, laying a hand over Aether’s and curling their fingers together. “Sometimes I think I’m dreaming,” he confesses, “and I fear that when I wake up you’ll still believe I like Lumine.”
“Okay, maybe I’m a little bad at picking up clues,” Aether huffs, turning his hand over to properly intertwine their fingers, “but in my defence, my brain was mush from school, and I never really considered the possibility that you could like me.”
Xiao raises a brow. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Well,” Aether sighs, “you’re my best friend and… I dunno. I never thought I’d get the chance to kiss you as much as I do now.”
“You’re telling me,” Xiao huffs and turns away. “Which one of us was hopelessly pining again?” He says through his hand, trying to stifle his pitiful laugh.
He’s met with silence though — not that he was really expecting an answer, but it’s unusual for Aether to fall so quiet in the middle of conversation. When he turns back to look at him, ignoring the flush on his own cheeks, he finds a gentle smile staring back at him, and honey eyes full of adoration overwhelm all his senses.
“I thought about it before,” Aether’s voice is even softer than his smile, his hand subtly tightening around Xiao’s. “Kissing you, I mean—”
“Huh?”
“—Maybe like, once every couple of days it would cross my mind, especially whenever you were wearing lip balm—”
Xiao’s eyes widen comically. “Wait, what?”
“—because it would make your lips shinier,” Aether continues in spite of Xiao’s utter bafflement, “and I wondered how it would taste. I guess I convinced myself it was normal to think that way about my best friend.”
“It’s…” Xiao breathes, his mouth agape. “It’s really not,” he manages, barely.
“Yeah, I realise that now,” Aether chuckles. He picks up Xiao’s hand and shakes it a little, before letting their linked hands fall back onto Xiao’s thigh. Xiao responds to the light gesture with a gentle squeeze. “What I’m trying to say is that I never thought your crush could be me, because it was new and… and different, but I’ve always felt this way about you. At least, for as long as I can remember.”
Looking up, Aether meets Xiao’s gaze with such an intense warmth and affection, that Xiao all but melts before him, as he says his last words in the clearest voice he can muster. “What I’m really trying to say, Xiao, is that I love you — I think I’ve always been in love with you, it just took me a long time to finally figure that out.” He brings Xiao’s hand up to his mouth, holding it tighter as he feels Xiao shaking in his grasp, and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “I love you, Xiao,” he repeats, “and I can’t imagine a world where I don’t love you, honestly, because I simply don’t know any different.”
Xiao opens his mouth; closes it, and opens it again; but eventually gives up and nods wordlessly instead, dropping his forehead to rest on their linked hands as Aether cards his free hand through raven hair.
He presses a kiss to the crown of his head, cradling Xiao closer, awkwardly hugging him across the middle of the car. “I’m sorry it took me so long, Xiao-Xiao,” he murmurs into dark strands. Beneath his lips, Xiao shakes his head, then nods, before devolving into less sensical movements, and Aether kisses him again and again. “I love you, I love you. I love you, so much,” he says over and over, hoping to make up for just how slow he’s been, and Xiao holds his hand tighter with every confession. Soft sobs escape him, so Aether kisses him more, professes his love again, because Xiao deserves the world; deserves to know he is loved.
He’s taken back to Xiao’s confession, almost a whole month ago now, and how his best friend had babbled the same declaration multiple times in hopes that Aether wouldn’t mishear him — and now that their roles are reversed, Aether understands why Xiao had said it so many times. Finally saying ‘I love you’ lifts a heavy weight off of Aether’s chest that he didn’t even know he had been carrying, and sends his heart soaring into soft cotton clouds.
Aether simply can’t imagine a world in which the words ‘I love you’ rang anything but true, when it was Xiao he sang them to.
Xiao’s legs ache by the time his tears finally dry up, as he shoots an unbridled smile at Aether, still unable to form any coherent sentences even within his own mind. The only words that he hears are Aether loves me, and he almost starts crying again, but he wants to drive them somewhere — anywhere, to celebrate that Aether loves him — and he can’t quite do that with tears clouding his vision.
A hand finds its way onto his thigh, again, rubbing soothing motions into his muscles as he stretches out his legs to drive. When he looks back up at Aether, he wants to climb over and kiss him — and Aether clearly wants to, too, by the way his tongue darts over dried lips — but they have been idling in Xiao’s driveway for far too long, and his father was bound to come out soon. He’d rather not be accused of ‘going at it in the car’ again. So instead, he does up his seatbelt, listens as Aether does the same, and lets his mind wander a bit. Aether was his boyfriend now, and apparently had similar risqué thoughts about Xiao for… the whole time they were friends. The thought sends a shiver down his spine, and he’s smiling like an idiot again.
“How about we get some ice cream?” Aether suggests as Xiao finally rolls over the gutter, catching a glimpse of the smirk that lifts his face out the corner of his eye. “I can finally eat that one that looks like you.”
Xiao laughs, louder than he usually does, but he doesn’t care. Aether loves him. And because he wants to even the flustering-score, he does something we would never dare to in the past.
Xiao teases.
“Just make sure you don’t eat the wrong one,” he murmurs, enjoying the way Aether’s face lights up immediately, and falling in love all over again when Aether’s brilliant laugh floods the car. He could never grow tired of that laugh.
Aether loves me, too.