Work Text:
He’s hallucinating.
He has to be.
Because there is no conceivable way he’s staring at swords. Swords, hanging on the wall.
He’s pretty sure at least one of them is a replica from an anime he used to watch back in middle school.
Lumine is never going to let him live it down that he let a sword kid into his apartment.
~~
It started innocent enough, with a Craigslist ad. Room for rent! Cheap downtown living + the best roommate ever! <3
After Zhongli had so rudely decided to move in with his boyfriend, Venti had no choice but to resort to drastic measures to find a roommate. All his friends already had suitable arrangements (read: long term, live-in significant others, the jerks) so what else was he supposed to do?
As he expected for the frankly ridiculously cheap rent for such a conveniently located, recently renovated apartment, it didn’t take more than thirty minutes before he got a text from an interested party.
[Unknown]
Hello, my name is Xiao and I am responding to your ad for
a roommate. I have a steady income and I don’t smoke or have
any pets. Please let me know if the unit is still available.
Venti should’ve known something was off with how formal this guy was from the get go. Even if he seemed normal enough, if not a little socially stilted, when Venti showed him around the apartment before the official lease signing.
Certainly there were no indicators of this Xiao character being… a sword kid.
“I know you’re in pain but this is hilarious.” Lumine takes a long, loud sip from her mostly empty glass of red-coloured something something craft cocktail.
“I don’t see how his having swords is a negative trait.” Zhongli raises a finger and thumb to cup his chin in thought. Venti wants to kick him in the shin. “Perhaps he is a skilled fighter.”
For once during these miserable get togethers, Childe chimes in as the voice of reason. “I don’t think that’s what’s up, babe.”
“These are replica swords. Like, pretty ones. Not ones anyone would use to actually fight.” Venti slumps down in his chair, lamenting the bottle of wine sitting on the table with not a single drop left in it.
Zhongli hums thoughtfully. Venti still wants to kick him in the shins. “I fail to see the problem in any case. They’re decoration, no?”
Flipping her hair over her shoulder, Lumine sighs. “It’s because people who are into swords are the ‘live in their mom’s basement until they’re 30’ type.”
“The ‘neckbeard' type,” Childe pipes up.
Nodding, Venti says, “‘Getting all their love advice from anime’ type.”
“‘Sit inside and play video games all day’ type.” Childe graciously pours a bit of whatever strange Snezhnayan import he’s been drinking all night into Venti’s empty plastic-cup-turned-wine-glass.
“He is a full-time streamer, actually, so he definitely does that.”
Ever the stupid, stupid voice of reason, Zhongli says sagely, “This all sounds very judgmental. Clearly he does not live in his mothers basement at 30 if he is in his 20s and lives outside of his childhood home—”
Lumine huffs. “It’s metaphorical.”
“An example,” Childe adds.
Sighing dramatically, Venti takes a hearty swig of the clear liquid that burns his insides the whole way down. “You lot are fantastically unhelpful.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Lumine shrugs. Unhelpfully. “What can you do for that matter? He’s already signed the lease so you’re stuck with him for—”
Behind her, the front door swings open.
And in walks the sword kid himself.
Paper bags haphazardly balanced against his hip, Xiao stops in the doorway and blinks owlishly at the four of them, sitting on the floor around the coffee table in the middle of the living room.
For a long time, no one says anything.
Venti knows that all of them can’t get the word SWORDS out of their heads as they look up at Xiao.
“Um,” Xiao starts, unsteady. He kicks the door shut behind him, toeing off his shoes in the entryway. “I brought food. To make dinner.” His eyes dart around the room to look at each of their faces. “I… only got enough for two, though, so…” he trails off, looking as out of his element as he sounds.
It’s Venti’s turn to blink up at Xiao, stupefied.
He wanted to make dinner? For the two of them? Zhongli never made house dinner, the stingy blockhead!
Across the table, Venti sees Childe and Lumine share a look. Between the two of them, it can only ever mean trouble.
“That’s okay!” Childe nearly shouts, chuckling from his chest. That troublemaker chuckle. He stands abruptly, patting Zhongli’s shoulder. “The three of us were just on our way out!”
“We were?” Zhongli’s brows furrow, deep creases forming in his forehead. Like the old man Venti swears he is even if his ID says he’s 28.
“Yupp! We were!” Lumine chirps, standing with much more grace than Childe. “And since Venti is such a wonderful host, he’s even gonna clean up for us, so we can take our leave now. Quickly.” Unlike Childe’s more delicate touch, Lumine does not hesitate to lift Zhongli (how she manages to maneuver that giant brick wall of a man Venti will never know, but he sure as hell isn’t gonna get on her bad side any time soon), literally hauling him up by the hood of his sweatshirt.
The three of them make their way to the front door, Xiao sidestepping the whirlwind of three mildly tipsy adults with ease and a cocked eyebrow.
And then there were two.
“They didn’t have to leave,” Xiao says, probably in a way that’s supposed to be gentle but with the raspy, rough quality of his voice it sounds more accusatory than anything.
“I couldn’t control those three if I tried, ehe.” Venti shrugs. He stands, stretching his arms over his head. “Need any help with the groceries?”
Xiao shakes his head, striding across the living room and disappearing into the kitchen. Venti trails after him, not a single worry in his head about the empty cans and glass bottles littered across the living room.
That’s a problem for future Venti.
Venti walks into the tiny kitchen to the sight of Xiao pulling out an assortment of ingredients that look way more green and leafy than anything Venti has eaten since he had to start making meals for himself.
“You look like you’ve never seen a vegetable before,” Xiao says gruffly, a head of something lettuce-like that kind of looks like a very shapely Pokemon in one of his hands.
How the hell— “Can you read minds?” Venti blurts, because that totally seems like something this mysterious practically-a-stranger of a roommate could do. He has that kind of aura about him.
“No.” Xiao narrows his eyes into dangerous amber slits. “Can you?”
“Wh—No, no, of course not!” Venti splutters.
Xiao eyes Venti wearily, setting down the lettuce-with-hips onto the counter, next to a bag of white things that look like logs. “Do you know how to cook? Most of the utensils in here are mine.”
“Of course I know how to cook, I’m a proper adult!” Xiao seems skeptical but doesn’t verbally dissent. “I’m just more of a simple meat-and-potatoes kinda guy.” And it’s actually true—he does cook more often than he orders out. So what if 95% of what he eats is some form of potato and/or pasta?
“You,” Xiao says drily. He trails his gaze from Venti’s head to his toes and back up again. “You’re a meat and potatoes kinda guy.” It’s a statement, but it’s meant to be a question. A rhetorical, mean question.
“Hey! I may look like a 15 year old twink, but I’m a true Mondstadter through and through!”
“...Right.” Xiao seems thoroughly unconvinced. He turns his attention back to the food neatly organized into piles on the counter.
“So, uh.” Venti rocks forward onto the balls of his feet. “What’s that curvy lettuce?”
Xiao points at the mysterious vegetable with the very large, very sharp knife in his hand. Venti has to try so incredibly hard to not draw a comparison between Xiao wielding this kitchen knife and the mental image of him swinging one of those fancy swords around. “Are you talking about the bok choy?”
Huh. That’s a much less cool name than he was expecting.
“Have you never seen bok choy before?” Xiao is giving him that narrow-eyed look again, like he’s squinting in an attempt to find the single brain cell Venti may or may not have knocking around inside his noggin.
“Must’ve slipped right past me all these years.” Venti laughs freely, stepping up to Xiao’s side. He leaves a respectable 18 inches between them. “Do you want help cutting the veggies? For… whatever it is you’re making…?”
“Rice cake stew. With a side of garlic spinach.” Xiao waves the knife around again, a little haphazardly. Maybe Venti should’ve run one of those free internet background checks on the guy instead of just stalking his bare-bones social media pages. “I don’t need help. I’d rather work alone.”
“Gotcha, gotcha.” Venti tilts his head back and forth, swaying slightly. “Mind if I sit at the table? Or do you want to banish me from the kitchen?”
Xiao sets down the knife, reaching into his pocket. Venti has a momentary panic because what the hell is he doing oh gods is he gonna pull out a pocket knife?? “You can stay,” Xiao says as he pulls out—
A hairband.
A scrunchie, to be exact.
Venti stares, completely dumbfounded yet again, while Xiao pulls back his shaggy hair into a tiny ponytail at the base of his skull.
What the fuck.
It’s so—so—
It’s so cute.
There’s, like, maybe two inches of hair protruding from the shiny teal-coloured material of the scrunchie. A few pieces toward the front aren’t quite long enough to be caught with the rest of his hair, so there are a couple piecey strands hanging near his forehead, slightly obscuring his face as he turns back to the cutting board and picks the knife back up. As he goes back to work chopping up a block of tofu into bite size pieces, Venti has a perfect, front-row seat to view his profile and.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh, no.
He’s adorable.
It’s all Venti can do to plop backwards into one of the dining chairs, staring absently at the way Xiao’s sharp cheekbones protrude from slightly chubby cheeks, at the way his ears come to the slightest point, at the way Xiao’s long, bony fingers deftly handle the knife that slices easily through whatever the hell that bok choy thing is.
Shit.
Venti’s in trouble.
~~
That night, after Venti successfully fends off Zhongli’s characteristically boomer texts of Will you tell me what a ‘neckbeard’ is? Childe keeps laughing at me instead of explaining, he drifts into a very peaceful slumber that definitely does not include a vivid dream wherein Venti wears a flowy sparkly rose-petal pink dress while being scooped into the arms of a knightly Xiao, with a sword sheathed in his belt.
~~
Okay, Venti is pretty sure Xiao doesn’t actually work at all.
He’s not exactly into the video game scene, but he’s seen enough clips of streamers while scrolling through TikTok to know that they’re loud as hell.
But Xiao is disturbingly quiet as a roommate.
Even Zhongli, who spent a vast majority of his free time reading or embroidering sweaters for the homeless or whatever, made more noise than this guy.
The days pass something like this:
Venti wakes up around noon, like a completely normal person who works from home, and stumbles out of the bedroom to find there’s already a pot of coffee made and still warm. He makes himself some sort of crappy and totally not ‘balanced’ breakfast of toast and an apple while he scrolls through Twitter to catch up on the world. He ambles into the living room and sets up his laptop on the coffee table and pretends to work on his next novel for a few hours. And then at 6:30pm, like clockwork, Xiao’s door opens. Xiao walks to the kitchen and wordlessly starts preparing dinner for the two of them. They eat together, usually in companionable silence or with soft music playing from Venti’s bluetooth speaker set up on top of the microwave.
And then Xiao retires back to his room once more.
In the three weeks that pass by in the exact same routine, Venti catches a glimpse of those swords four more times because Xiao sometimes forgets to shut his door behind him.
And, like, okay, yeah, Xiao doesn’t talk a lot but he’s definitely not a sword kid, Venti is sure of that much.
He’s just… a guy… who likes swords.
“Oh my god,” Lumine laments over the rim of her wine glass. An actual wine glass, with the stem and all, because they’re at her apartment that she shares with her disgustingly perfect lawyer girlfriend, Yanfei. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you? That’s why you can see past his being a sword kid.”
“Wh—no, I’m not in love with him!” Venti splutters, nearly knocking over his own precious wine in his dramatic flailing. “He’s just—he’s actually kinda cool? And he makes me food.”
“The way to a man’s heart is his stomach,” Zhongli adds, nodding as if he has just imparted the world’s deepest wisdom upon them.
“Celestia, no.” Venti shakes his head resolutely. “I barely know anything about him, but he’s not creepy or weird or anything, I swear.”
“What’s his gamer tag?” Childe asks from his spot on the floor, between Zhongli’s spread legs. His phone is in his hands, no doubt unlocked and loaded for nefarious internet stalking purposes.
Venti shrugs. “Dunno.”
“C’mon, you haven’t watched any of his streams?” Childe leans sideways, resting an elbow on Zhongli’s thigh. “You’re clearly obsessed with him. I’m surprised, is all.”
“Obsessed?” Venti all but screeches.
“He’s literally all you talk about when we get together these days,” Lumine says lightly.
“You’re exaggerating.” Venti chuckles, but it rings hollow in his ears. “He’s my roommate, so I see him around a lot.”
“Did you talk about me this much when we were roommates?” Zhongli taps a finger to his chin. “Venti, I must say I’m flattered but I don’t quite return the sentiment—”
“Put a fork in it, blockhead!” Venti playfully shoves his shoulder. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“So you admit Xiao is different, then.” A small smile graces Zhongli’s normally stony features. A smirk, almost. “Special, one might perhaps say.”
Venti groans, presses his face into the armrest of the couch.
“Aha, I found it!” Childe prods Venti’s knee to get his attention. Venti swats his hand away. “His gamertag is VigilantYaksha. Huh. Wonder what that means.”
“How the hell did you find it?” Venti asks, not removing his nose from the upholstery.
“I’m the best sleuth—”
“I do believe it is a reference to an ancient piece of folklore about the Yakshas, immortal beings who supposedly served the old Geo Archon, protecting ancient Liyue by slaying demons,” Zhongli explains, unceremoniously cutting off his boyfriend in whatever weird boast he was about to proclaim.
“How apropos,” Lumine says blandly. “Maybe those swords on his wall are used to slay demons.”
“You’re all horrible friends,” Venti says with no bite.
Before any of his no-good, awful friends can respond, the doorbell rings.
“Ah, that must be the sushi I ordered for us.” Lumine sets down her glass on a coaster— a coaster— and stands from her spot between Venti and Zhongli on the couch. “Something only a horrible friend would do for her companions…”
“Nevermind, you’re great, a true best friend, Lumine.”
~~
The first thing Venti does when he gets home that night is beeline to his laptop. He pulls up the streaming service he only knows the name of because it was on Xiao’s paystubs he showed their landlord at the lease signing and types in VigilantYaksha.
The search yields one result. The little circular picture is dark, mostly black with some neon green lights on it, so Venti clicks on it.
He’s brought to a channel page that looks… like, really professional. This way, he can see the profile picture more clearly, and oh lord Xiao is wearing headphones that have light up cat ears attached to them.
Fuck.
Venti is so, so fucked.
But not deterred!
At the very top of the page, it says OFFLINE in bold, green letters. So he clicks through to the ‘schedule’ tab and sees that Xiao will be live tomorrow at 2pm to play some game that looks kinda creepy, if the scratchy-lettered title card has anything to say about it.
Well. Venti knows what he’s doing tomorrow.
Regardless of the email from his editor with the subject line URGENT: DEADLINE FAST APPROACHING he left on read three days ago.
~~
Which is how Venti finds himself curled under his mass of fuzzy blankets, a lukewarm cup of coffee on his nightstand, his laptop propped up on a frog plush that was squished during the Accidental Sitting Incident of five years ago when Zhongli and Venti first moved into this apartment. His earbuds are shoved into his ears as he stares with dry eyes at the Stream starting soon screen that’s accompanied by some delightful lofi.
He doesn’t hear any noise coming from Xiao’s room, even though he knows from extremely unfortunate circumstances (circa this time last year when Zhongli had first started dating that ginger bastard) that the wall between the two bedrooms is extraordinarily thin.
Very sus indeed.
At exactly 2pm, the screen switches to a black box surrounded by an aesthetically pleasing neon green and black overlay. The black box quickly fills, and it’s Xiao’s face, but kinda.
Wow.
The lights in his room have been turned off, the only thing defining his facial features is the green LEDs coming from somewhere off screen. It highlights the high parts of his face but keeps other parts shadowed. In this lighting, his eyes almost seem to glow.
And, wait. Is that eyeliner?
That’s eyeliner.
Heart, be still.
Don’t even get him started on those god forsaken headphones.
The whole atmosphere is distracting enough that it takes Venti several seconds to realize those damn swords are visible in the background. All five of them, arranged in an ‘x’ shape on the wall behind Xiao.
And then Xiao opens his mouth, and whatever microphone he uses has to cost a million dollars to make his normally kinda scratchy voice sound that smooth and, dare he say, soothing.
“Hello. Today we’re going to play some DBD. I couldn’t get any friends on stream tonight, so it looks like it’ll be randos.”
Venti has no clue what DBD is, but the opening menu looks spooky.
“I’m hoping I can prestige III Kate today, but we’ll have to see what everyone else is playing…”
Count Venti completely lost. Xiao continues talking as he clicks through a few different screens and ends up in a waiting room of some sort. He responds to a few of the people in the chat that’s scrolling by way too fast for any normal human to be able to read, thanks the handful of new subs and followers that come in while the map loads.
It becomes apparent to Venti very quickly that this is the kind of game that any sane person would reasonably jump or scream at, with how abrupt everything is. But not Xiao. Xiao stays calm through the whole thing, chatting quietly about what he’s doing or what he thinks his teammates should be doing, even fielding some questions from the chat.
Huh.
He totally gets it.
If this is what it’s like watching streams, Venti is in.
As Xiao’s soft voice filters through the tinny and overused speakers of his earbuds, Venti feels his eyelids grow heavy even though he only woke up a few hours ago.
Before he knows it, he’s been awoken by rapid knocking at his door.
He shoots up in his bed, blankets falling all around him in pools of fleece. His laptop is still open, propped up by Squished Frog #2, the words Stream ended, be back later scrawled in fancy neon green letters.
Ah.
Right.
He was watching Xiao get murdered by various well-known horror classic killers.
“Venti?” Xiao’s voice is barely audible, muffled by the closed bedroom door and also the fact that Venti miraculously has his earbuds still in his ears.
He rips them out, tossing them onto the nightstand, where they make tinkling noises as they hit the side of the mug that holds now completely ice cold coffee in it.
“Uh, are you okay?” Xiao calls, knocking three more times.
“Ah, yeah,” Venti croaks. He clears the sticky sleep in his throat. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just taking a nap!”
There’s a pregnant pause, and then Xiao says, “Okay. I made dinner, if you want it.” The telltale sound of socked feet walking away from Venti’s door comes, and then nothing.
He really fell asleep to Xiao playing video games. To the sound of Xiao’s quiet voice filtering directly into his brain. To the image of Xiao’s subtle facial expressions, accented by that damn eyeliner.
Archons. Venti is truly right fucked.
~~
He watches every one of Xiao’s streams for the next nine days.
He even gets the hang of actually getting some work done while Xiao’s commentary plays over his laptop speakers, so his editor doesn’t come barreling through Venti’s front door with the threat of death if he doesn’t submit his draft on time.
On the tenth day, though, he’s invited to a late lunch at Childe and Zhongli’s apartment. He couldn’t refuse the offer since he’s been so rudely kept out of their home until Zhongli was satisfied with how much unpacking they’d finished up.
It’s a pleasant trip altogether, with Lumine and Childe only tag-teaming in their teasing Venti about his supposed obsession with his roommate for five measly minutes and only one stray comment about Xiao’s swords.
And they ordered takeout from Venti’s favourite Sumeran restaurant.
And he brings home the leftovers after winning an arm wrestling match against Childe.
(“How the hell are you so strong? You have the physique of a literal child! Have you ever been to a gym?!”
“I told you I would’ve fought in your place. I always win against him.”
“Thanks, Lumine, for rubbing salt into my fresh wound.”)
When he gets back, four half-empty containers of curry tucked under his arm, Xiao is nowhere to be found. Even though it’s 6:45, and Xiao is normally slicing away at whatever form of vegetable-based health food torture he decides is worthy with which to torture Venti that night.
Strange.
He toes off his shoes before he pads over to Xiao’s closed bedroom door. He presses his ear against the wood, just in case he might be interrupting some… personal time.
No noises, like usual.
Hmmmmm.
With probably less hesitation and way more vigour than he should use, Venti knocks on the door in a violently exuberant tune.
No response.
He tries again, this time a little louder.
Still nothing.
Alright, well.
Venti twists the knob, pushing the door open slightly so he can see what’s going on.
The lights are dimmed and everything is bathed in a blue-green glow, and Venti remembers that Xiao was streaming earlier.
He probably just went over his scheduled end time.
Shit.
Venti is a total douchebag. A nosy one.
Sure enough, he glances to his right and, yupp, there’s Xiao at his computer with way too many monitors for any one person, silly little cat-ear headphones over his ears.
In approximately thirty seconds, Venti would question his next action. He doesn’t know why he thought it was the best thing to do, but instead of promptly shutting the door and backing away, Venti drops to his knees, making sure to keep his precious curry cargo from spilling all over the carpet. He crawls the rest of the way through the doorway, kicking the door shut behind him.
And then he proceeds to crawl across the short expanse of Xiao’s room.
“What? Someone’s at the door?” Xiao’s voice sounds a little frantic, mostly confused. Surely the chat told him about the intruder, albeit on a slight delay.
Venti watches from his low position as Xiao twirls around in his cute little gaming chair. He looks at the door, brows furrowed, and then turns back to his computer.
“There’s no one there.” Xiao shakes his head, clicking away at his mouse like Venti isn’t a few scant inches away from his feet.
Well.
He’s already here, right?
Venti reaches up and taps Xiao’s thigh with a single finger.
Xiao nearly jolts out of his skin, his head snapping down immediately.
He stares incredulously at Venti.
“What.” It’s not a question. So Venti doesn’t answer it. Xiao blinks at him. Turns back to the monitor and brusquely says, “I’ll be right back, something came up.” He clicks something, another something, and then something else, and then he’s turning to face Venti.
Venti, who is literally on his hands and knees in an only mildly suggestive position.
Xiao rips off his headphones. “What in Celestia are you doing?”
Ah. So maybe he should’ve just walked away. He could’ve laughed it off later, haha sorry for making a cameo on your stream! Next time I’ll charge, hehe. But no. He’s here, right now. He leans back on his heels, pushing forward the plastic bag that holds his spicy spoils. “Ah. I, uh. Brought food.”
Xiao runs a hand over his face. “You—” He breathes deeply, inhaling sharply, exhaling slowly. “You couldn’t leave it in the fridge? Like, I don’t know, a normal person would do?”
“Well, come on now. Surely you know me well enough by now to know that I’m not a normal person. Ehe.” Venti sends him his world famous megawatt smile that melts all hearts, even those made of stone.
Hopefully that streak won’t be broken today.
Xiao keeps looking down at him like he’s an alien. Or like he’s spontaneously grown a second head. But he’s not, like, punching Venti in the face, so he’ll consider it a win.
“Um, it’s way after you normally end your streams, so I wanted to make sure everything was okay?” Venti says, lilting at the end like a question, hoping it’ll provide a little more context to the admittedly very insane thing Venti has done.
“That’s—” Xiao shakes his head. “That’s… fair, I guess. You’re right. I lost track of time.”
“Those fish won’t catch themselves, amirite?”
Xiao blinks wordlessly down at him.
“You’re playing Animal Crossing today, right? Sorry I couldn’t make it to this one, Zhongli finally let me go over to his place so—”
“Wait, you watch my streams?”
“Uh, yeah.” Venti fiddles with the end of a blue-tipped braid. “Is that weird? If it’s weird I can totally stop—”
“No, no it’s not weird. Just, if you wanted—” Xiao is cut off by the sound of his phone vibrating against his desk loudly. “Hang on, sorry, that’s my mod…”
Venti waves his hand in a vague go on gesture.
Xiao grabs his phone and unlocks it, tapping a few times. “Oh, shit.” He holds up one finger to Venti and turns back to his monitors, clicking away. He doesn’t bother putting his headphones back on. “Sorry about that, guys. Looks like I forgot to mute myself.”
He pauses. From this angle Venti can barely make out the chat box as line after line of text whizzes by. He thinks he sees the words boyfriend and twink more than a few times in the rapid fire bits of text.
Huh.
“Okay, I’m going to cut this off before it gets too out of hand. The person you saw was my roommate. He brought me dinner. Speaking of which, I didn’t realize I went so far over our normal time. So I’m cutting the stream now. Thanks for sticking with me. See you later.”
Xiao clicks a few more things, and then the monitors go black. He’s quiet for a while.
Venti clears his throat awkwardly. “How embarrassing for you, not turning off your mic.”
“I’m only making egg salad for dinner for the next week.”
“Xiao! You wouldn’t!” Venti pouts. “It’s so slimy and gross!”
“You’re slimy and gross.”
~~
The next day, Xiao sits across from Venti at the dining table while they eat their dinner—thankfully not egg salad, but a lovely soup with the brightest red, spiciest broth Venti has ever tasted.
“You know,” Xiao says offhandedly, with a forced casualty to his voice. It’s weird. “If you wanted to, you could—nevermind.”
Venti raises an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Aaaaand gruff Xiao is back.
“I’m gonna worry about it.” Venti lifts his elbows, resting them on the edge of the table. “So you might as well tell me anyway.”
“You’re impossible.” Xiao sets down his chopsticks, fiddling with the napkin in his lap. “Just—if you wanted to see behind the scenes or something you could watch my streams in my room. While I do them. Live. More live. I guess.”
Oh.
Oh oh oh.
“Really?” This time both of Venti’s eyebrows raise into his hairline. “Even though I’m a big mouth who never shuts up and will probably say something super stupid while you’re live—”
“When you put it that way, maybe not.”
“Oh,” Venti deflates. He lowers his gaze to the stretch of table separating them. “Well. Yeah, no, that’s totally fair—”
“I’m joking.”
Venti’s eyes dart back up.
Xiao is smiling.
Well, like. Smirking. At Venti’s expense.
But it is an upward motion with his mouth, which Venti hasn’t seen before.
“It’s no big deal. My sister used to do it all the time.”
“You have a sister?” Venti leans forward. Xiao is especially talkative tonight, it seems.
“Adopted.” Xiao shrugs nonchalantly, picking his chopsticks back up. “Her name is Ganyu.”
“Woah. That’s neat. I always wanted a sibling…”
“No, you really don’t.”
~~
Venti does watch Xiao stream in person. He sits cross-legged on Xiao’s bed— on Xiao’s bed, Lumine and Childe would have an absolute field day if they knew—and watches the master at work. He pulls up approximately 30,000 different windows on his computer, plugs in his microphone, and shoves his headphones over his ears. He turns to Venti, tilting his head in a silent question.
If Venti weren’t too distracted by those damn swords hanging from the wall that he can see out of the corner of his eye, he’d probably melt into a puddle. Instead, he sends a thumbs up in Xiao’s direction.
Xiao nods, then gets going. Does his thing.
It’s fun, getting to see everything that happens back here. Venti learns that it’s a lot harder than it seems.
He also learns that it’s not Xiao’s microphone that does that to his voice, it’s Xiao himself.
Venti is beside himself with this knowledge.
And so begins their new routine. Where Venti used to set up his makeshift work station in the living room, he now crawls into Xiao’s bed with a full mug of coffee and some snacks that require minimal crunching (for the audio quality of the stream, of course) and slowly pecks away at the novel his editor is still waiting for him to wrap up.
(The first time he brought his laptop into Xiao’s room with a cheerful So we can work together! Venti thought Xiao was about to fall right out of his chair.)
He brings himself to ask the dreaded question a few weeks later, once they’ve gotten into the rhythm of sharing a space during work hours.
“So,” Venti starts, closing the lid of his laptop after Xiao has retired his headphones to their trusty stand next to his mouse.
“So,” Xiao echoes.
“The swords…”
Xiao lifts a brow. “What about them?”
“They’re, really, ah… Prominent.” Venti bites the inside of his cheek. Stupid. He’s so stupid.
“I would hope so.” Xiao stands, stretching his arms over his head. His shirt rides up a little, leaving a small sliver of skin visible just above the waistband of his jeans. “I’m quite proud of them.”
Oh, archons. How can this man be so simultaneously sexy while unabashedly talking about his silly little anime swords?
Without so much as a warning, Xiao pulls one of them off the wall. The one Venti recognized from that one ninja anime that was popular 15 years ago. “I made them.”
What. WHAT? “You what.”
“I made them,” Xiao repeats, like it’s a totally normal sentence that is not at all littered with mystery. Like the average human being makes swords.
“I don’t know what that means.” Venti’s really making excellent use of that English degree he got, huh. Some real eloquent words there.
“I… made… them…” Xiao says, slowly, so so so slowly.
Venti still doesn’t understand.
At least his confusion must be blatant, because Xiao sighs as he unsheathes the sword from its decorative casing. “I forged the blade. And then I carved the sheath. And then I molded and balanced the handle.” He waves around the sword with surprising dexterity.
And, oh, fuck. The sword may look silly while it’s hung up on the wall, but when Xiao is holding it? Shit. Venti’s explored a lot of his own tastes, and never once did he think he had a weapon kink, but damn.
“I haven’t made one in a long time.” Xiao returns the blade to its holder, setting the sword back onto its display hooks. “I haven’t found a forge willing to let me use their supplies since I moved from Jueyun.”
“Oh.” Cool. Cool cool cool. Totally normal. Xiao doesn’t just own silly anime swords.
He makes silly anime swords.
“Do you know how to fight with them?” Venti asks around the dry lump stuck in his throat. There’s no way this is happening right now, right? Like, this is some weird graphic novel shit. No one makes swords IRL.
“These are decorative,” Xiao says, slowly again, like Venti is an idiot for thinking these handmade swords made by his roommate who plays video games for a living are usable. Totally his bad. “And too heavy. I’m used to the agility afforded by foils.”
“Foils.” Venti blinks. “Like. Fencing?”
“Yeah.” Xiao sits back down in his spinny chair that Venti recently learned was purchased for an exorbitant 25,000 mora. “I used to compete.”
Right. Right right right. Awesome. Yeah, that’s totally not an image Venti is going to see in his dreams that night, a sweaty, red-faced Xiao in one of those silly white puffy suits after successfully stabbing someone else to metaphorical death.
There’s so much going on tonight. Venti needs a nap.
“Y’know what?” Venti heaves himself up, grabbing his laptop and empty mug without fanfare. “I’m actually super tired. I’m gonna hit the hay early tonight! Don’t, ah. Don’t bother me, okay?”
And before Xiao can respond, he marches to his bedroom and slams the door shut behind him.
He finds his phone buried in the mass of blankets on his bed and pulls open the groupchat.
barbaTOES
>> guys
>> he made the swords
child(e)like wonder
<< WHAT
TheBetterTwin
<< ^ BUT LOUDER
SackOfRocks
<< What a fine skill.
<< Venti, you should formally introduce him. I’d like to know more about the process of forging weapons.
child(e)like wonder
<< now is really not the time babe
TheBetterTwin
<< bro
<< he just leveled up from weird sword kid to hot sword master
~~
That night, he does dream of Xiao.
But not in the weird fairytale princess-being-saved-by-the-knight scenario from many moons ago. Not in the sweaty competitive fencing scenario, either.
Instead, Venti and Xiao sit in a meadow of white-petaled flowers, holding hands, a picnic basket between them. At the end of the dream, Xiao leans over and kisses Venti on the lips. A brief peck, but a kiss nonetheless.
~~
To say that Venti is having a Crisis is an understatement.
Xiao knocks on his door at 1:45, asking if he’s okay because he hasn’t left his room all day.
Venti tells him he’s feeling a little sick and just wants to sleep.
He watches his laptop, waiting for Xiao to go live. It turns out those headphones are super noise cancelling, which is why Xiao hadn’t heard him knocking that fateful night. This time Venti is going to take advantage of it.
He sneaks out of the apartment as soon as he sees Xiao’s stream switch to his webcam view.
The seven block walk to Zhongli and Childe’s apartment is refreshing. It does absolutely nothing to clear his racing thoughts, but, well. The breeze feels nice, at least.
Zhongli is the one who answers the door.
“Venti,” he says in that deep timbre of his. “Were we expecting you?”
Gross. Zhongli has turned into a we. “No. But I kinda can’t be home right now.”
“I see.” Zhongli nods curtly, moving away from the door. He gestures for Venti to come inside.
Venti kicks off his shoes, letting them land wherever, and trudges over to the couch. He flops onto the cushions face-first, not caring that his childhood best friend and his freaky boyfriend have probably had sex here.
“You know,” Childe’s stupid stupid voice says out of nowhere, “your childhood best friend and I have had freaky sex right where your nose is.”
Venti groans, grabbing a nearby throw pillow and chucking it as hard as he can in the general direction of Childe’s voice.
It thuds against something solid. Probably the wall. “What’s with him?” Childe asks, presumably to Zhongli.
“I’m unsure.” Zhongli’s voice sounds close. Way too close. Like he’s hovering over Venti’s limp body. “He has not said anything yet.”
Venti groans again. Miserably. Because he’s a miserable excuse for a roommate.
“Maybe he needs to throw up,” Childe suggests, too fucking perky for Venti’s current misery. “That’s the sound you make before you throw up.”
“...I’d prefer it if you did not vomit on my furniture, Venti.” Zhongli tentatively pats Venti’s back, awkwardly.
“If I did need to throw up,” Venti says. Miserably. “Patting me on the back would only make it happen faster.” He scowls into the couch cushion. The dirty sex couch cushion. He groans again, this time as he rises to redirect his scowl at Zhongli. “You two are both so dumb. You deserve each other.”
“I too think we deserve each other,” Zhongli replies earnestly. “Thank you for the kind words.”
Gods.
“Anyway, why are you here? You’re getting sad energy all over my living room.” Childe walks around the couch so he’s in front of Venti, arms crossed.
Venti shifts so he’s sitting cross-legged in the middle of the couch. “I dreamt about kissing Xiao last night.”
Zhongli carefully takes a seat to Venti’s right. “Do you wish to kiss Xiao? Subconscious imaginings aside.”
Lowering his head into his hands, Venti nods.
He feels the cushion to his left dip. “Is it because of the swords?”
Venti punches Childe’s arm without looking up. “I’m being serious! I’m such a terrible roommate.”
“Why do you think that?” Zhongli asks gently.
“Because!” Venti runs a hand through his hair—his loose hair that he didn’t even bother braiding or throwing into a bun before he left the apartment. “Good roommates don’t want to kiss their roommate!”
“Perhaps,” Zhongli starts, and oh gods it’s in that voice like he’s about to lecture Venti, “you are not upset about wanting to kiss Xiao as much as you are upset that your feelings for him have evolved to a more romantic nature.”
“Perhaps I do!” Venti throws his hands up in the air. “He’s very cute and honestly really nice even if he pretends to be all prickly and he makes really, really good soup! What isn’t there to like!”
“I fail to see the dilemma.” Zhongli cocks his head, his ponytail tumbling over his shoulder. “If you are aware of your feelings, then why haven’t you told him yet?”
“It’s more complicated than that, Zhongli,” Childe admonishes, a light smile on his face. It looks weird on him, Venti thinks, when he normally has one of those shit eating grins plastered on his face instead. “You’re worried you’ll make things weird, yeah?”
“Exactly.” Venti slumps back against the couch. “I’m not sure he likes me back, so if I tell him and he rejects me, then it’ll be super awkward.”
“If,” Childe says.
“If,” Zhongli repeats. “You cannot know the outcome of something you have not yet tried.”
“Ugh.” Venti springs up from between them. “You two are grossly happy and disgustingly in love, you don’t get it.”
They share a look. Venti wants to throw up.
“We were not always, you know,” Zhongli says.
Childe nods. “Yeah. We had to talk about it to get here.”
“Great, thanks for the advice.” Venti trounces back to the front door. “You two were wildly unhelpful.” He slips into his shoes and cracks the door open. He turns back to face them. “Oh, and I’ve also had sex on that couch. You shouldn’t have given me a spare key.”
With that, he walks out, making sure to slam the door extra loudly behind him.
Well. That was not exactly how he wanted that to go.
~~
He sneaks back into the apartment with ease. Xiao’s door is still closed, thankfully. Venti grabs a sleeve of crackers, pours himself a cup of coffee from the mostly full pot, and stows away in his room. He shoves his earbuds in and turns on the loudest, poppiest music he has on the premium Spotify account he stole from Childe that one time the ginger made the mistake of leaving his laptop unlocked when he went to take a phone call.
Now he just has to wait it out.
He can do that. He has the entire internet at his fingertips.
And yet.
And yet he finds himself typing in that familiar URL he hasn’t had use for in nearly a month, and there it is. Xiao’s face, half-illuminated by a soft green glow. Today he’s playing the same game as the first time Venti tuned in, the one with the killers and generators that somehow every person in this camp(?) knows how to properly maintenance.
Ugh.
He’s so weak.
Xiao’s gentle voice is as calming as ever. Almost enough to erase all of Venti’s fears. Almost.
For half a second, he thinks about stomping over to Xiao’s room, throwing open his door mid-stream, and dramatically confessing his lust-slash-romantic-liking for the entirety of the world wide web to witness.
He promptly shuts down the idea when he thinks about how mortified Xiao would be. Xiao would probably move out immediately, security deposit be damned.
Ugh.
No, he can’t. Xiao has just started opening up to Venti. He’s kind of like a skittish cat—Venti’s afraid that with one wrong word, Xiao will completely disappear into the cave of his room and only come out to feed himself.
(And Venti. Xiao has always fed Venti.)
((Maybe it’s Venti who is the cat.))
“Looks like it’s time to wrap up,” Xiao’s voice is saying over Venti’s earbuds. “We had some good wins today. Until next time.”
The screen switches from a view of Xiao’s face to the customary Stream has ended screen.
Ughhhhhhhhh.
That wasn’t nearly enough time to come to a decisive decision.
There really isn’t enough time to collect himself whatsoever because almost immediately after Xiao shuts down his stream, there’s a knocking at Venti’s door.
“Venti? Are you awake?”
He could totally pretend that he’s not. He could pretend to be asleep. He used to do this all the time when Zhongli was being annoying.
“Um. I’m going to make dinner.”
Xiao is too sweet, honestly. Venti is the worst. He can’t believe he fell for his roommate of all people.
“I’ll leave your portion in the fridge.”
Gods, Xiao.
Venti bolts out of bed, flinging open his door before Xiao has a chance to walk away and start cooking.
Xiao blinks at him.
Venti blinks back.
“Hey,” Venti says, lamely. Again, an excellent use of his literature degree.
“Hey,” Xiao responds. It sounds less lame coming from him.
“Um.” Venti blows a stray piece of fringe from his eyes. He still hasn’t tied his hair back. “Sorry for missing our usual work session.”
“...It’s alright. Are you okay? You rushed away last night without even eating dinner.”
“I’m just peachy!” Venti grins. “I felt a little under the weather. But I’m all better now.”
Xiao nods, eyes narrowed, like he sees right through Venti’s tiny white lie. “Right… I’m going to go start dinner, then.”
“Wait!” Unbidden, Venti’s hand shoots out to grab Xiao’s upper arm. Xiao looks down at the fingers wrapped around his bicep like it’s a snake coiled around him and not a human hand. “Um. I have a hypothetical question for you.”
“A hypothetical question,” Xiao repeats. Skeptically.
“Yeah. Totally hypothetical.” Venti releases his hold on Xiao’s arm, letting his hand fall back to his side. “Hypothetically, how do you feel about roommates dating?”
What the hell???
What the hell is that, Venti?!
He hadn’t meant to ask that at all—Celestia, strike him down. Smite him. Remove him from this plane of existence. Put him out of his misery.
Xiao’s eyes widen comically. “Hypothetically.” He clears his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Hypothetically I think that’s a terrible idea.”
Oh.
“Oh,” Venti breathes out. “Right. Right right. Totally terrible. Awful. The worst.”
“But,” Xiao says, quietly, so so so quietly Venti almost misses it over the way blood is rushing through his ears, “hypothetically terrible ideas might realistically not be terrible.”
“Um.”
“Hypothetically, packing up all my stuff and moving across the country with nothing but my computer was a terrible idea. Hypothetically, moving into an apartment with someone who posted an ad on Craigslist that was riddled with grammatical errors was a terrible idea—”
“Hey! I’m a professional wordsmith, I’ll have you know—”
“—but those things turned out fine. So maybe…” Xiao clears his throat again. “Maybe this hypothetically terrible idea wouldn’t be so horrible in reality.”
“That makes sense, yeah.” Venti nods. And then it hits him. “Wait. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Xiao shrugs one shoulder noncommittally.
“Xiao.”
Xiao stares at the floor.
“Xiao, oh my gods. Do you—” Venti grins beatifically. “Do you like me?”
Pink spreads across Xiao’s cheeks.
Too cute. “I like you, too, for the record.” Venti can’t stop smiling like an idiot.
Xiao scoffs. He mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like that was obvious.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Xiao says sharply. “Anyway. I’m really hungry, so I’m gonna go make dinner.”
“Hang on! Are we dating now?”
Xiao raises a brow.
“Okay that was a terrible way to ask you out, I guess.” Venti squares his shoulders, raises his chin a little. “Xiao, would you grant me the generous honour of being my boyfriend?”
Rolling his eyes, Xiao shakes his head fondly. “Dork.” Without actually answering the damn question, he turns on his heel and makes his way to the kitchen.
“You didn’t answer me, jerk!” Venti is hot on his heels the entire way to the kitchen. He’s about to reach out and grab Xiao by the shoulder to demand a straightforward answer when Xiao stops abruptly and spins around. Venti nearly runs into him at the stark change of pace.
Xiao takes a half step forward, lifts a hand to cup the side of Venti’s neck—archons, his hands are freezing— and pulls Venti’s head forward so he can close the gap between them, firmly sealing his lips against Venti’s.
After less than half a second of their lips touching, oh gods kissing, Xiao pulls away.
“Is that answer enough for you?”
“I don’t know.” Venti rests a hand on Xiao’s hip. “I didn’t hear you super well…”
Xiao huffs something like a laugh, his breath puffing against Venti’s cheek, and then Venti completely forgets to be sarcastic smartass after that because Xiao pulls him in for another kiss.
[bonus]
Venti feels Xiao’s ice-cold fingers trail along his spine, lifting his shirt as he spreads his palm over Venti’s back.
“W-wait.” Venti pulls away, looks down at Xiao. He looks nice like this, beneath Venti, hair fluffed out among the pillows like a teal and black halo.
“Do you want to stop?” Xiao asks, eyes serious even though his cheeks are rosey, his lips red and swollen, wholly kiss-bitten.
Venti chews on his lower lip, shifting his position in Xiao’s lap. “I just… I can’t… in front of the swords…” His eyes dart to the aforementioned weapons hung on the wall directly in front of him.
“...” Xiao is silent for a long, stretching moment. “...Venti. Are you fucking serious?”
Venti tamps down the giggle threatening to burst out of his mouth. Barely.
“You’re making fun of me right now? Right now? I can feel your dick digging into my stomach.”
“Such a potty mouth, Xiao.”
“Venti, I swear to Celestia, if you don’t shut up and kiss me right now I’m going to stab you with one of those swords.”