Chapter Text
Lumine is sure she’s seen him somewhere.
It’s the tattoo, she reckons - one does not forget a tattoo like that, deep jade swirls climbing up to the shoulder, disappearing under the sleeve of a black t-shirt.
She realises she’s been staring and heats pools on her face.
“I’m sorry, may you repeat?”
She hopes the fluster in her voice is not as painfully obvious to him as it is to her.
The stranger seems unaffected. “One cup of black tea, no sugar, no milk.”
His voice is calm and pleasant, and she imagines how it may sound during an argument, a fight, with a rougher edge to it, like the wind-
This must stop.
“Sure. Take a seat and I’ll bring it over for you!”
“And…” he is hesitating, looking at the menu chalkboard behind her, “Is the almond tofu homemade?” he meets her gaze as he asks, and her breath catches in her throat – the image of a harbour at night flashes before her eyes, the sky bright with stars.
She looks away, feeling her head dizzy and her chest tight, and breathes in and out, as if to expel the image. What the hell. She should answer, so she summons all the nerve she can muster and flashes her best customer smile - say anything, anything is fine.
“Yes, it is! We prepare it daily. I mean- I prepare it daily, my frie- my colleague cannot be trusted in the kitchen, she eats most of the food while cooking it, I always tell her she has some self-control issues – and she’s so tiny, you’d wonder where all the food really goes,” nonsense keeps falling out of her mouth, and she prays the gods have mercy on her and let a meteor land on the café, “Anyway, yes. Freshly made.”
“Then I’ll have some, please.”
His voice is neutral and composed, not a trace of the perplexity or irritation she expected.
“Yes,” and she clamps her mouth shut before she can humiliate herself again.
She hastens to turn on the boiler and prepare the almond tofu. Her heart is racing, pins and needles in her hands making it hard to hold the tray steadily. She frets to serve him, laying the tray on the table and bowing quickly before hurrying back to the counter.
Half an hour passes and her heart goes back to a normal pace. She ignores the buzzing in her ears telling her to make sense of what she saw- maybe if she ignores it, it will go away.
Much to her own dismay, Lumine finds herself glancing at the customer every few seconds – if more visitors entered the café she wouldn’t, but it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon and not a single bird is flying along the main street.
Most customers sitting on their own would gulp down their drink and eat while scrolling down their phone or holding a full conversation, but this young man seems to enjoy the almond tofu, savouring each spoonful, and sips at his tea every once in a while. His phone doesn’t lie on the table at all, and he watches intently the scenery out of the window – nothing exciting anyway, just a few passers-by and the steamed bun seller repairing himself from the icy wind.
When she looks at him once more, Lumine meets his eyes and her mind goes blank again – there’s a harbour at night and the sky is bursting with lights and a pair of red-rimmed golden eyes are staring at her, transfixed by her.
She blinks the image away and finds the man staring at her – has he called her over? Maybe he’d like a second cup of tea.
“Did you enjoy the almond tofu? It’s one of our special dishes,” she chatters as she comes near in the steadiest voice she can manage.
“It was exceedingly good,” and the corners of his lips curve in the faintest impression of a smile. It’s not the first time someone compliments her delicacies, but she is strangely pleased.
She is about to ask him whether he desires anything more, but her mouth moves of its own accord: “It may be a weird question, but… have we met somewhere?”
Rather than answering, he stares at her intently, as if he were studying her face: “Do you think we’ve met somewhere?”
“I…” she thinks of a reply, any reply, but her tongue sticks to the floor of her mouth, “Well, you look like someone I may have seen around. Do you attend college? My courses just started. Maybe we share some lectures.”
He averts his gaze. “Unlikely. I don’t attend most of my lectures.”
Before she can reply, the bells over the front door chime: “I’ll be back in a minute,” she promises as she rushes to the counter to greet the new customer.
So he does go to college. They must have crossed paths in the canteen or in the corridors, and an inaccessible part of her preserved the memory of his prying golden eyes.
Relief floods through her veins, yet she can’t kick out an eerie sense of guilt, as if she’s lying to herself, and she thinks of the harbour at night.
“Excuse me? Are you listening?”
Fuck.
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
As she takes the old man’s order, the bells chime once more: the table by the window is now empty.
To say she is surprised by his return on Tuesday afternoon would be an understatement.
The café is empty again and she’s on her own behind the counter, as commonly occurs after lunch. There’s nothing to pretend to be occupied with during the few infinite seconds it takes for him to walk to her.
“What may I do for you?” Her voice sounds less gleeful than she meant.
“One cup of black tea, no sugar, no milk.”
She nods. Same as last time.
“Is there still some almond tofu left?”
Quite the routine he has.
“Yes.”
“Then I can safely assume your colleague did not prepare it, is that correct?”
She remembers her ceaseless blabber on Paimon’s poor self-control skills: “It’s- well, I prepared it but- I mean, my colleague did not deserve this-“
He snorts, the tiniest smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and all her muscles loosen: “I did not think you’d remember that.”
“I remember very well,” he pauses, the ghost of a smile still playing on his face, then clarifies, “I’d like some almond tofu, then.”
“Only if you swear that you’ll never mention my words to Paimon. She’s famous for bearing grudges.”
“Your secrets are safe with me.”
He sits by the window again, his chin in his hand, and she hums a song as she boils the water.
“Here you!” she quips as she comes closer.
“Thanks.”
She places the tray before him. “Last time you left so abruptly that I worried you wouldn’t come back, you know. Glad to see I was wrong.”
His face is again a neutral mask: “I had to go back to work.”
He grabs his cup of tea and she takes it as her cue to leave, but then he asks: “Is it something you do for all your customers?”
“Huh?”
“Worrying whether they’ll return, I mean” he analyses the vapor volutes raising over the teacup, as if he’s not even conversing with her, but his voice betrays a slight note of hope.
“Only customers that pique my interest” she grins, “And you definitely look like someone I’ve met already.”
He takes a long sip of scorching hot tea without wincing. “Are you certain we’ve met?” his voice is suddenly quieter.
“Well…” And then alien thoughts flood her mind, like someone else’s voice is pushing to escape her lips, I could draw your tattoo from memory even though I’ve only seen it once. I know the harshness of your voice when you’re angry, how soft it can be at night.
Her mouth goes dry, blood pounding in her ears, I remember-
Then she blinks and her mind goes blissfully silent. Her heart is beating so hard it could break ribs and she swallows once before speaking: “I may be wrong, of course.”
Every word seems to put some distance between her and whatever just happened, so she keeps on speaking: “If we met, I’d look familiar to you as well.”
“My memory sometimes fails me.”
“Then I could have been mistaken. I’m Lumine, by the way.”
“Xiao,” he looks up from his cup of tea, golden eyes shining like the rising sun at the horizon, and Lumine smiles wider.
“Nice to meet you, Xiao.”
She savours how his name rolls off her tongue.
Xiao comes to the café every other day, his order unchanging. The fifth time he comes, he refuses the almond tofu for a reason so incomprehensible that she huffs in protest: “I swear it’s just as good!”
He's irremovable: “Your colleague may be a talented chef, but I’ll do without the almond tofu if you haven’t made it.”
He always comes in the afternoon when the café is empty, and Lumine takes to sitting with him after placing the tray on the table. He seems to enojy her company, although he often leaves when other customers enter the café and she stands up to serve them.
“I’ll be back in a minute” she protests once, to which he shrugs and replies, “I have to go back to work.”
He seldom mentions college courses, and soon she finds out that he doesn't attend his lectures to dedicate himself to work. He has a job as a clerk in a law firm, which leaves her gaping: “You don’t even have a degree and work there?”
“I don’t do much.”
“And here I thought you didn’t go to lecture to play Call of Duty.”
He furrows his brows: “War games are not my cup of tea.”
“First time I hear a boy say that.”
He doesn’t know much about video games, but seems to know everything about Liyue and Teyvat, so many legends and facts and traditions she can never get enough of- no one knew so much about the continent in the small town she comes from: “You must have travelled a lot.”
“Much less than you think. I’ve mostly lived here in Liyue.”
When Lumine tells him she's pursuing a degree in journalism to travel the world, he finds it exhilarating.
“You can stop laughing now.”
“It’s just… travelling really seems fitting. For you, I mean.”
“And that makes you laugh? Your humour is from another planet altogether.”
He ignores her comment. “Where would you like to travel?”
“Everywhere. I want to see all of Teyvat.”
She’s surprised when two days later he offers her a guide to travelling through the continent, a heavy thick book that promises to unveil all the secrets of the continent: “I figured you like reading.”
She shifts her weight from foot to foot: “I can’t accept that.”
“You can give it back to me when you’ve read it.”
Here goes again that sensation, pins and needles torturing her legs, and she feels like they have exchanged books before, like they’ve spent hours in the shade of ancient trees with a book in his lap, her head against his shoulder, him reading out lout. It only lasts a moment, and then it disappears.
Forgetting it is easy, like tossing a pebble in a pond. She only makes the conscious decision of throwing it, and then it sinks in the mud, as if it never existed in the first place.
The more Lumine gets to know him, the clearer her mind is, and the foreign visions that haunted her the day she met him turn to dust. She finds herself thinking unusual thoughts, like someone else’s voice whispering in her ear, but she slams them down as soon they’re born.
Then one day she trips over her own feet whilst bringing the tray to his table, the teacup shattering in minute fragments, searing hot tea splattering everywhere and burning her bare shins.
She braces herself for the impact with the floor. It doesn’t come.
When she opens her eyes, Xiao is steading her on her feet, his arm around her waist. His fragrance is pervasive, an earthy scent with fresh and sour undertones, like late-blooming flowers after the rain, and she leans against his chest one second too long.
“Are you okay?”
He’s wide-eyed and tense, and she would laugh his preoccupation off if she could – but then before her open eyes are blinding white comets and she’s falling through the sky, the echo of a crumbling palace in her ears.
“Yes,” her own voice sounds so distant, “Sorry- I wasn’t paying attention.”
The warmth of his hand seeps through the fabric of her shirt, and she’s suddenly aware of how close he is, how he hasn’t let go of her yet.
“Sorry,” she repeats, taking a step back, “I’m brewing your tea again, I’ll be right back.”
“Sit, please” he pulls out the chair next to his, and her heart is pounding too hard, her breath too shallow for her not to comply.
She hasn’t been sleeping well lately. She actually hasn’t been sleeping at all for the past two nights, pulling all-nighters for the Media Law and Ethics interim assessment, so overwhelmed by college and work and life that she even forgot to eat once or twice.
Lumine doesn’t tell him any of this, couldn’t even if she wanted to. She’s still in free fall, the night sky getting farther and farther- she blinks and forces herself to reality, back to the café.
“I’m fine now.”
Xiao’s lips are a flat line, but he doesn’t contradict her.
“Be careful.”
She blinks twice more. Her heart steadies, and she locks the image away in a part of her mind where crumbling palaces and harbour at night-time can exist without bothering her. Where Xiao’s scent can be familiar without driving her insane over the question of how it can ever be so.
Be careful.
It resonates in her dreams that night. The fall, the images flashing, be careful- they feel like pebbles glued to her hand, and she tries and tries to get rid of them, desperately wishing for the mud to engulf them, for the ripples on the water to stop circling.
It’s a stone heavy to throw, but she does throw it. Come morning, everything seems like a distant memory, like a picture behind ground glass, and then in few hours it’s as if it never happened.
Still, his scent follows her for days.
She reads the book he’s given her. The history of Teyvat is long and twisted, and she sometimes loses track of the political intricacies that shaped the present.
“Where will you go for your first trip?” Xiao asks her when she returns him the book.
“Maybe Mondstadt for tourism. And… Snezhnaya as a full-time correspondent.”
If she hadn’t learnt to read his expression, she’d say he’s uninterested: there is only a quick raise of his eyebrows, his lips parting ever so slightly for a second, and she knows he’s impressed.
“You have a wish to die young?”
She laughs. “Snezhnaya doesn’t sound so bad, c’mon.”
“That’s because you’ve never met their refugees” and she wonders if he ever has while working at the law firm. She learned he’s reluctant to speak about his clerkship, so she doesn’t ask.
“But that’s what makes it interesting, you know? There’s zero media coverage on Snezhnaya. The key source of information are defectors, but they are not necessarily reliable,” she’s excited now, words spilling out of her mouth like fresh water, “Imagine being the first to report on Snezhnaya! After that, I could even retire.”
His eyes widen, a flash of an expression she hasn’t yet learnt to read – it could be amusement or exasperation: “You never back down from a challenge, do you.”
It’s not a question, yet she answers with a grin: “Challenges only make life more exciting.”
“Reckless girl,” he mutters as he sips his tea, but she doesn’t miss the smile behind the teacup.
The table by the window remains empty one day.
Spring is awakening and Lumine has placed flower vases in every corner of the room, with camellia bouquets towering on the windowsill, their subtle sweet aroma filling the room.
Lumine has picked that location because they’re the most beautiful when they drink in all the light they can. The fact that Xiao usually sits next to the windowsill has no relevance.
Xiao, however, doesn’t come that day, or the next one.
Four days later, the outer petals of the camellias have wilted. She disposes of them the next week.
Perhaps he’s unwell (but most flus pass in few days), or he may be studying for his exams (but finals are weeks away for most courses at college), or the law firm may be entangled in a case bigger than expected (but he would have told her, wouldn’t he?).
Her afternoon shifts seem now longer: on weekdays the bar is crowded in the morning and almost deserted after lunch, and his absence is painfully more evident with each hour the clock ticks by.
One night, she finds the law firm on Google Maps. Xiao has mentioned the name of one of the partners, and there is only one lawyer named Zhongli in Liyue. Her skin tingles when she reads the address – six streets away from the café, a five-minute detour from her usual work-home journey.
This is madness.
Lumine knows it is, yet the following day she doesn’t get on the usual bus for college. She has perfect attendance, the first morning lecture can go to hell for all she cares.
If anyone asks (who should ask?), she’ll say she’s walking to the café because of her morning shift, and she almost believes it.
Her plan seems fully reasonable until she’s less than one hundred meters away from the law firm. She’s really going to walk in that glass building and ask for a customer whose surname she doesn’t even know.
Her feet are glued to the pavement, her stomach churning, the noise of busy traffic on the main street suddenly hammering in her ears- what the actual fuck, Lumine.
She can’t do it, just can’t, but her body refuses to move in any direction but forward, so she doesn’t move at all.
Other pedestrians walk at a breath distance from her, glaring at the sudden block she’s imposed on the foot traffic, white-collar workers bumping into her and cursing under their breath.
Warm fingers wrap around her forearm: “What are you doing here?”
It’s Xiao, golden eyes puzzled.
Her heart misses a beat. She could say she’s going to work, that she switched shifts with Paimon for this week.
“I was looking for you.”
Or she could just say that.
Before he can reply she adds: “You haven’t come to the café for two weeks now, and I get bored when you are not around. I mean. Afternoon shifts are boring by default, no one ever comes by. And you could have been dead for all I knew-”
Another man bumps into her, and she’s almost grateful to him for interrupting her nonsense, for making Xiao tighten his hand around her wrist until she gains her footing.
Be careful, she hears. She feels like she’s falling from the sky again, the palace shattering beneath her feet. She suppresses the image as soon as it’s born, another pebble in the pond.
His ears are red and hasn’t yet let go of her. Hazily she realises that she likes the warmth of his finger, how his calloused palm scratches lightly against her skin. The pebble sinks in the mud, and her head is suddenly light again.
“There’s a case… litigation is not going as planned. I’ve been quite busy with the paperwork.”
“They make you work an awful lot for a college student,” and then, in a quieter whisper so that she can lean closer, “You should rebel. I can provide you shelter and food.”
He snorts, eyes gleaming with amusement, lips tugged in a tiny smile.
“I will think about your offer. Hard to rebel against your legal tutor, though.”
“Tutor?”
“Zhongli,” he lets go of her wrist, like he only now realises he hasn’t yet, “I have to go now. I’ll come by this afternoon.”
It sounds like a promise, and she holds onto that.
He doesn’t come at three o’clock. Nor at four. Her eyes squeeze shut each time the door opens and a customer comes in.
He said he’d come.
The sun is setting when he opens the door.
“It’s closing time.”
“I know.” He leans against the wall: “I was thinking we could have dinner.” He knows a place at the harbour, he says. A way to make up for rendering her afternoon shifts so boring.
She feels dizzy, her tongue twisted with too many words she wants to say: “But I’m underdressed!” she stutters.
“You look perfectly agreeable to me,” and that is enough to convince her.
She realises the meaning of his offer only five minutes later, as she locks the entrance door of the café. She catches a glimpse of him, of the glorious golden red light of sunset dancing on his skin, how it makes his eyes glow.
“Xiao, is this a date?”
He clearly wasn’t expecting this. He looks away, brow furrowed, ears tinted red, and Lumine is pretty sure it’s not because of the sunset: “What a foolish question. It’s a requital for my absence, like I said," but his voice is gentle, too gentle for his words to sound stern like he means.
Her grin widens: “I say this is a date. And if this is a date,” she grasps his hand, “then I can do this.”
There’s something familiar in his hold, long fingers intertwining with hers, his thumb stroking quickly the back of her hand – she shudders as the sensation flows away, as quick as it came.
“Silly girl,” she hears him mutters.
Lumine holds his hand tighter.
She kisses him first. It’s their second date, though Xiao would not agree on the definition, and she insisted on visiting the botanical gardens: she’s been living in Liyue for almost one year and she’s seen little of the city but the college campus.
He shows her the stone forest area, where a cool dry wind blows and mountain plants can flourish. White solitary flowers are scattered over the rocks, like pools of freshly fallen snow.
Xiao plucks one for her to see: “Qingxin flowers only grow here in Liyue.”
“You shouldn’t pick flowers in botanical gardens” she protests, but the flower is too pretty for her not to accept it.
A part of her knows that Xiao is watching her intently, almost studying her face for something more, but she is enraptured by the translucence of the flower, its five perfect petals almost glowing.
Lumine suddenly knows, she knows the sound it makes when it’s plucked, the slight resistance it opposes, as if she collected a thousand qingxin flowers once, days and days and days climbing mountains to reach the lonely place where they grow-
She bats her eyelids once, twice, and the image disappears.
“What are you thinking?” there’s an edge of uncertainty in his voice.
“It’s… beautiful,” and then she’s hit by the fresh, slightly sweet scent, with sour whiffs coming from the sap drops. She remembers the time he caught her in the café, how she leant against his chest and inhaled his perfume, how it stayed with her for days. “It smells like you,” she whispers.
There’s no reply. For a second, he seems miles away from her.
“Xiao?”
He takes the flower from her hands: “Let me?”
Lumine lets him tuck the flower behind her ear, his hand brushing against her cheek a second too long, and for a moment neither of them speaks.
“Shall we go?” he asks at last.
But there’s something vulnerable in his eyes, something akin to loneliness and longing, and she just can’t go.
She tugs at his shirt and stands on her toes to graze her mouth against his, and his lips are soft, so impossibly soft.
It is a gentle, shy kiss, that makes his breath hitch. She smiles against his mouth, is still smiling as she pulls away, her cheeks burning hot even in the cool mid-March air promising rain soon.
His lips trail hers, like he’s reluctant to let go, and she stifles a giggle.
“Qingxin flowers are pretty, but I think I like you better,” she whispers, drinking in his scent so she can drown in it.
And then Xiao grabs her face in his hands and kisses her, really kisses her, stumbles to the closest tree and presses her against the trunk, his mouth so demanding that she forgets to breathe. Her legs feel weak, and she might fall if he took a step back. She grips at his shirt with both hands, pulling him closer, so close that his body could melt into hers and still it wouldn’t be enough.
She shudders as they part for breath, his forehead bumping against hers, his eyes closed.
“So, huh… was this a way to say that you like me too?”
His hands are on her hips, and he kisses her again.
Intrusive images plague her less and less frequently, to the point she often forgets they ever occurred in the first place – and when she remembers, she tries her hardest to seclude them in a contained part of her mind, where they can exist without making her lungs burn and her chest explode. The bed of the pond is now filled with pebbles, but it doesn’t matter as long as she doesn’t see them.
One time they are at the cinema, halfway through the horror movie she’s picked out of boredom, and she catches his gaze fixed on her during the goriest parts.
“I don’t scare easily, you know” she scolds him in a low whisper.
“I never questioned that.”
She leans forward so her lips are grazing his ear, smiling as she teases him: “So maybe you are scared?”
“I’ve seen much worse than this,” he scoffs, and, as if to punctuate his words, the monster bites off the sidekick’s head, blood splattering everywhere on the other side of the screen.
I’ve seen much worse than this. She sees hills soaked in blood, mauled demons screeching as they come closer to her, turning to dust as a blade runs through them. Her heart is pounding against her ribcage, cracking it, and she could throw up.
She wills the image away and grasps his hand tight. Her heart comes back to a steady rhythm long after they leave the cinema.
Every episode is easier to ignore than the previous one, like the time he comes to the café on a rainy day and she insists that he should have something different from almond tofu.
“The cherry pie I made yesterday is reportedly divine,” she says, hands on her hips.
“I don’t doubt that, but I’ll have some almond tofu.”
“Your order is so boring.”
“You have no respect for your customers, then.”
“I do,” she pouts, “I’d be happier if my favourite customer showed more appreciation for my cooking.”
She giggles when his ears turn red with embarrassment. Xiao is surprisingly easy and fun to fluster.
He clears his throat: “Your almond tofu tastes like dreams. I want nothing else.”
It tastes like dreams.
It resonates in her mind for a second only, a pins and needles sensation in her legs, and she is in a familiar old-fashioned kitchen she’s never seen before, making almond tofu from scratch and failing miserably.
She secures the vision to the dark depths of her unconsciousness and doesn’t miss a beat: “I’ll bring you some, then.”
He once asks her if she’s remembered when or where they’ve met. By then she is arrived at the conclusion that they haven’t, that her visions are only meaningless daydreams. He is sure they haven’t crossed paths on campus, and where else could have they met?
“I haven’t. Must have dropped a clanger that time,” she laughs it off.
“You sure?” his tone is sharp, and she’s suddenly aware of how rigid his shoulders are.
“Quite. And you’d be hard to forget anyway,” she hopes he’ll return her smile, but he only nods, with a stiffness to it like he’s holding back from saying something.
And then he lets out a bitter, empty laugh: “You are hard to forget, too.”
Lightning flashes across the sky, thunder rumbling in the distance.
Storms are unusual in Liyue, especially in early April, yet the avalanche of hailstones falling from the sky is completely unaware of its seasonal inconsistency.
“You want to come up?” Lumine pants as they reach her building. They are soaked, water pooling at their feet as they take refuge in the main entrance: the wind sucked away her umbrella, and Xiao’s provided a poor shield against the water – how they reached her apartment is a mystery.
“If you don’t mind” his voice is unconcerned, dismissive, like he could just as easily walk through the city back to his place.
She takes his hand, so warm even after walking through the merciless rain, and guides him through the shadows of the main entrance and the dimly lit staircase – damn this overpriced apartment and its antediluvian electrical wiring.
She wishes that welcoming him in her apartment were not so easy: she should be vaguely self-conscious of the book piles in her kitchen, of her untidied bed, but she isn’t, as if Xiao visited her house more than once.
He takes off his shoes in the entryway and stands there in silence, water dripping to the floor. His green t-shirt adheres to his chest like a second skin, and she suddenly realizes that she doesn’t have any spare clothes that would suit him, that he should take his clothes off and-
“I’ll fetch some towels,” she offers, and rushes to the bathroom before he can reply.
Get a grip of yourself, Lumine.
When she comes back, he is bare-chested, his shirt neatly laid on the back of a chair, and heat pools on her face. The dark lines of his tattoo look black in the gloom of her living room, climbing to his shapely shoulder where the skin looks so taut. She vaguely wonders how cold it must be to touch, how salty it must taste. Water is trickling down his neck, and she swallows hard at the idea of following it with her tongue.
“You okay?”
She comes back to reality with a nod: “Yes- here, a towel.”
Her own dress is still soaked, and she should go change herself in her warmest PJ set. She should throw him his towel and leave. She should.
What she does is walking up to him, water pooling on the carpet as she moves, and patting his hair with the towel. He is close enough for her to breathe him in, qingxin flowers and musky raindrops – they’ve been closer before, pressed together while biting each other’s lips, but it feels so different this time, as if a string tightly wound around them is now about to snap.
She dries his shoulders, his chest, his arms. When she dares to look up at him, his eyes are wide open, his lips tight. His heart pounds loudly against his chest, against her open hand, and he barely breathes.
“I want you” she hears her own voice saying. Has she always been this direct? She can’t remember. Her fingers trace the drawing over his damp shoulder, his muscles twitching beneath his skin as she touches him.
He lets out a low sigh: “Are you sure?” His voice is hoarse and deep and sends shivers down her spine.
She kisses his neck, licks the tender skin beneath his jaw, and hopes this is answer enough. The way his breath hitches sparks an aching want inside her chest, and she stands on the tip of her toes to kiss him.
She moans when he kisses her back, a kiss rough and hard and deep like never before, his fingers roaming on her body and digging in her back like he desperately wants to own her.
“Wait- like this,” it’s a feverish murmur as she grasps his wrist and brings his hand to her thigh, gasping when he buries his fingers in her damp skin.
Her dress crashes on the floor with a wet sound, chilling as the cool air hits her bare skin, but Xiao’s hands and body are warm.
“I want you” he growls against her lips.
“I’ve said it first- ah!” she bites back a moan as his fingers find her breast, slide beneath the cup of her bra to circle her nipple. She cries when he pinches it, soothing it with a gentle stroke of the thumb.
“You’re always so sensitive,” he mumbles against her neck.
Her voice is breathless, but indignant: “You have seen nothing.” She tugs at the belt loop of his jeans, pressing her thigh between his legs and relishing how hard he is, how frantically he bucks his hips against her.
He pinches her nipple again, harder this time, pleasure and pain radiating to her belly: “Then show me.”
They stumble to her bedroom, her bra lost somewhere in the corridor, and the bed frame cracks when they fall onto the mattress.
And then she sees.
Xiao leans over her, but he looks different, hair dry and tousled, and they are in a foreign room she knows she’s been in already – a lonely room in a homely inn, with a bed softer than hers. Then she blinks and she’s in her room again, pinned to her dampened mattress by Xiao as his mouth finds its way to her breasts, her navel, her thighs, eyes dark with need and want and mine.
She’s here and there at the same time, and Xiao is with her, over her, into her, and she’s moaning and arching her back to pull him closer, deeper with each thrust of his hips. “Please” she voicelessly mouths the word again and again and again, and there’s only the sound of rain splattering against the window – and then there’s not, and she’s in the other familiar foreign room, the murmurs of a quiet summer night coming from the window.
He mumbles something against her shoulder, something she doesn’t grasp, but his teeth sink into her skin and Lumine needs more of this, needs him to mark her, to take her and take her until there’s nothing left.
When his rhythm becomes erratic, he slides a hand between her thighs, drawing soundless moans from her throat until she’s seeing white, heat shooting from her belly to her thighs, to everywhere.
Everything is white and pleasure and she doesn’t know where or when she is. She doesn’t care. She’s with Xiao, and that’s enough for her to know.
“It’s so magical.”
She’s breathless as thousands of lanterns soar in the night sky, and her hand raises of its own accord in the childish attempt of capturing the closest one. When she fails, she brings it back to earth and blindly looks for Xiao’s hand in the grass.
He lets her clasp her fingers around it, but his own hand is limp. He’s been strangely silent the whole evening, which is even odder when considering that he insisted on going to the Lantern Rite Festival.
Perhaps he’s tired. The job at the law firm has been extenuating, with him researching and summarizing old cases even on weekends.
“I like they moved it to spring,” she says lightly, “I much prefer late April over February to lie in the park at night.”
There’s silence after that.
“Lumine?”
She’s startled. He doesn’t call her by her name often, but his voice is so soft when he does, as if he savours every syllable like almond tofu. “Yes?”
“Does this look familiar to you?”
For a split second she’s reminded of another night, a New Year Rite with lanterns filling the sky above the harbour like a galaxy of stars, her fingers tentatively looking for someone’s hand in the grass. She erases the vision as soon as it emerges from the mist of her mind.
She shakes her head: “Never seen a Lantern Rite so wonderful before.”
His gaze is unfocused, like he’s staring at a place beyond the sky. Few seconds later, he swallows hard and asks, his voice a flat line: “Never?”
She confirms – and why shouldn’t she? The images only haunt her for a few moments and then they’re gone, like nightmares forgotten come morning. They’re nothing but a play-pretend, like a child’s game. Nothing worth mentioning.
He’s silent for most of the evening after that. He walks her home with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, clipping his answers to few syllables, until Lumine stops trying to hold a conversation.
“You want to come up?” she already knows the answer, but she feels disheartened nonetheless when he shakes his head.
“I must be at the firm early in the morning tomorrow.”
“I see. Then good night?”
His lips crash into hers for an instant, his hand cupping her cheek, and it’s a short, desperate kiss, one that makes her moan in protest when he walks away.
“Good night,” he says, and then he’s gone, leaving her dumbfounded with her keys in her hand.
The next day, he doesn’t answer her texts. At lunch, she tries to call him without success. He doesn’t come to the café for many days.
A week passes before she admits to herself that Xiao is gone.