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There is nobody in Xiao’s life that he can ask about Zhongli. His parents are dead. Fushe dead. Military squad dead. Friends from military academy—didn’t have any to start with, although that’s for the best, considering they probably would have died too. Xiao doesn’t even have an apartment that he likes, so he sits himself on the pavement right outside Zhongli’s office building and glowers at the parking lot.
This would be a peaceful place to sulk were there not a street musician on the sidewalk, banging away at the dirtiest, grossest electric keyboard that Xiao has ever seen. Xiao smokes half a pack of cigarettes before the musician coughs and says, “You got something on your mind?”
Xiao digs out a couple of coins and drops it in the upturned cup by the musician’s feet and turns away.
“Thanks!” says the musician, and then coughs again even more pointedly. “So, um, about the cigarette smoke…”
Xiao spits out the end of his last cigarette and crushes it under his foot. Then he pulls out his lighter and another cigarette.
“Hmmmmmm,” says the musician. “Well, you see, I have the most angelic voice this side of Mondstadt, and I’m really quite precious about taking care of my vocal chords…”
Before Xiao’s eyes, the musician pauses, takes the longest drink out of a straight bottle of whiskey that Xiao has ever seen in one go, clears his throat, and continues: “And I’m not really the biggest fan of cigarette smoke, you know?”
“Hey,” says Xiao. “I’m going to ask you a question. You can’t ask me any questions back.”
“This seems like a fair and equal trade,” says the musician. “Sure!”
“If you’re in love with your therapist,” says Xiao, “you’re supposed to switch to a different one, right?”
The musician opens his mouth. Closes it. “Well played with the ‘no questions’ thing,” he says.
Xiao turns back around and sighs.
“Hey, well, I think it depends!” says the musician. “It can take a while to build up a relationship with a therapist, so, you know, sometimes for people who are really really difficult cases…”
“’Difficult cases,’” Xiao repeats blandly.
The musician holds up his hands. “I’m but a humble street player. I don’t know anything about anything. And there’s exceptions to every rule! And, okay, yes, the legal thing you’re supposed to do is—well, not just as a matter of legality, actually; it’s pretty bad for the therapeutic relationship in itself if you’re in love with them—”
Xiao stops listening, because Xiao has seen therapists before. He knows this about himself—that he is one of those, as it was said, difficult cases. He knows that this is part of the reason why he failed the psych eval and got discharged from the military in the first place. Zhongli is the only person on this earth patient enough to put up with Xiao. “I don’t want to talk to anyone except Zhongli,” Xiao mutters.
“Zhongli?” says the musician. “He’s your—?“
“No questions,” says Xiao.
“No, no, it’s not a bad thing! I just know him. He works in that office up there, right?” Without waiting for a response: “He had a terrible smoking habit,” the musician says with mock sorrow. “I had to make him quit.”
Xiao turns around. “Zhongli?” he says. “A smoker?”
Never in all the months that Xiao has been to Zhongli’s office has Xiao even caught the scent of cigarettes. The musician leans over his keyboard with a sunny smile. “You didn’t know? He’s not very upfront his life outside of the therapy room, is he?”
“What are you trying to imply? That’s what good therapists do,” Xiao snaps. “It’s not my place to pry into his life.”
The musician waves a breezy hand. “He used to be a businessman before he retired at the ripe old age of forty-something. Well, not much of a career shift, if you ask me; he was in the funeral industry making a killing, no pun intended, on other people’s grief, and now he’s a therapist making a couple hundred thousand Mora per hour off a different kind of grief. More of an ambulance-chaser than any lawyer, in my opinion, which ironically was his first profession before he went into the funeral industry.”
Xiao is already on his feet as if he’s going to bodily stop this street musician from telling him details about Zhongli’s private life, and in such a disparaging and cruel way, but, traitorously, Xiao can’t bring himself to make a move. The musician gives a sunny smile and hits an unpleasant chord on his piano. “You know how the drinking and smoking culture is with businessmen. Can’t go two weeks without someone giving you a nice box of cigars as a thank you present, and it was always super high quality and Zhongli likes anything and everything of refined taste, and how’s a guy supposed to quit like that?”
“You couldn’t possibly actually make him quit,” says Xiao.
“Oh, sure. People’s mouths taste disgusting when they’ve been smoking. So he had incentive.”
Xiao stares at him. “This is a cruel joke,” he says.
“Far be it from me to be cruel,” says the musician. “Hey, if you don’t even know anything about Zhongli, why do you think you’re in love with him?”
Xiao walks away without another word.
It’s not Xiao’s place to know anything about Zhongli. What Xiao knows about Zhongli is limited to: Zhongli has a huge office on the third floor full to the ceiling with books and rare stones and antiques and a dozen valuable ceramics and a piano that he never plays, but will occasionally sit at the piano bench to read. He knows that Zhongli drives a beautiful car and wears suits worth more than a year of Xiao’s pension. He knows that Zhongli had the generosity to get Xiao out of the in-patient program, the patience to walk Xiao through finding a job and an apartment and a new life after the military, the kindness not to call Xiao insane. Xiao’s place is to be grateful to this man who let Xiao sit in his office in complete silence for entire months worth of appointments, and not give up on Xiao at the end. Xiao does not exaggerate in the statement that he owes his entire life to Zhongli. That’s a debt that can never be repaid.
Xiao would like to think that he can repay Zhongli in small ways—such as, for example, not picking a fistfight with the street musician who plays outside Zhongli’s office building and getting arrested for assault and battery. He could also theoretically repay Zhongli by not jacking off to the voicemail Zhongli left on his phone, or not opening a separate bank account to save money for gifts Xiao will never give Zhongli, but these are lost causes, unfortunately.
But there’s always relief in lost causes. To abandon hope is the truest solace that Xiao knows of.
Xiao waits out the week and goes back to Zhongli’s office—the street musician isn’t there. The second Zhongli opens his office door, Zhongli says, “I’ve thought about what you said.”
Xiao blinks owlishly. “From last week,” says Zhongli with a smile that makes Xiao understand why sunflowers face the sun. “Would you like to come in?”
Xiao would like a lot of things. Most of which he shouldn’t.
“For all the time that we’ve spent together,” Zhongli begins before Xiao has even walked through the door, “I don’t always get the impression that you feel that you can talk to me about all the difficulties in your life.”
Xiao looks away. That would be, of course, because Zhongli is currently one of them.
“I wonder if I am not fulfilling my responsibility to you. Have I let you down as your therapist, Xiao?”
“No!” says Xiao immediately. “No. Never.”
“You do not have to feel like you should spare my feelings. I ask because I wonder if you would be better served by being transferred to someone else.”
“No,” says Xiao.
Zhongli looks at him sidelong. He picks up a book from the pile of antiques that have been piled on top of the piano. “It is your wellbeing that I am concerned about. If difficulty in your life arose, would you truly reach out to someone?”
Xiao opens his mouth.
“Or would you simply suffer alone,” says Zhongli pointedly, “in an attempt to ensure that you do not burden others with your problems?”
Xiao closes his mouth.
There’s a moment of quiet as Zhongli waits for Xiao to respond, and Xiao does not do that. Xiao thinks that if Xiao were his own therapist, he would have throttled himself long ago. Zhongli only nods and hands Xiao the book and says, “Let’s go to my car. Do you know anything about the history of dance?”
Xiao has never actually read any of the books that Zhongli has recommended to him, but this barely matters, as Zhongli inevitably explains the book in great detail no matter what. Or rather, Zhongli explains something, which Xiao is certain isn’t actually in the book, because Zhongli first ushers Xiao into his car and then proceeds to recount several generations worth of family history of someone named ‘Yun Jin’ that ultimately culminated in some performing arts troupe that Xiao has never heard of, but god forbid that anyone forget that the troupe was originally designed for opera, which is the cause of several of the troupe’s current day problems including something that Xiao doesn’t remember because he stopped listening. Exactly at the moment that Zhongli parks outside the troupe’s front door, he says, “And I hope this will show to you that your options are not as limited as you may have believed.”
Xiao sees now why they’re here.
“I’ve already sent my resume to local police departments,” says Xiao. “They would happily hire ex-military.”
“But are you interested in working with the police?”
Xiao does not like working with others at all. But at least if Xiao joined the police, he’d be doing something vaguely adjacent to what he used to in the military. “I would know what to do,” says Xiao.
“But are you interested? Do you want to?”
This question is something that Zhongli has asked him several times. Xiao knows he wants to stare at Zhongli’s face for around twenty hours a day, and that is the extent of his self-awareness as to what he wants to do with his life, now that the military no longer owns it.
“There’s no reason to exclude other avenues simply because military work is the only thing you’ve ever done,” says Zhongli.
“I’m not interested in a career change,” says Xiao.
Zhongli looks at him. Perhaps you should be remains unsaid but clearly heard. Xiao conceded several weeks ago that Zhongli is right, but this does not mean that Xiao will do as he should, nor does it mean that Xiao will concede this point aloud. “Let’s go inside,” says Zhongli. Xiao is relieved that it is not a question.
“The troupe is in dire need of assistance,” Zhongli says as they enter, “not simply financially, but in terms of participants who are willing to devote themselves to it. Finding someone with the athletic ability, loyalty, and dedication to perfection can be difficult for Miss Yun Jin’s standards.” There’s a dance studio, several closed rooms where distant singing can be heard, the sound of the piano from another room. There’s a woman leading a dress rehearsal in front of a wall of mirrors, and she waves to Zhongli, who evidently knows her and waves back. Zhongli says in a much quieter voice: “Miss Yun Jin is not interested in people who do things by halves. Naturally, I thought of you.”
“I’ve never danced a day in my life.”
“One kinesthetic activity is not so different from another.”
Xiao’s kinesthetic activities usually included handling weaponry and intimate knowledge of how to cause critical organ failure. “I don’t know anything about beauty.”
“How ironic. I dare say that beauty knows something about you.”
Xiao tries to unwrap that sentence in his head. “And their costume designer is truly unparalleled,” Zhongli goes on. “Look—her use of fabric is masterful. You wouldn’t be interested in seeing what art she could make of you?”
“No?” says Xiao. “Am I… supposed to?”
“No, no. I simply came here the other day, and looking at the costume design made me think of you.”
Xiao looks at the girl twisting her torso into a terrifying shape. There are no male dancers, and everyone in the dance studio is wearing a dress. Xiao doesn’t see why dresses would remind Zhongli of Xiao.
“I appreciate the effort to find me a career,” says Xiao at last. Xiao knows that he won’t be able to live off his pension forever.
“Of course. I have faith that you will certainly find something that you are interested in doing. Doing work you love is critical to one’s well-being. In the meantime, there are worse things than spending time watching a wonderful performance. Perhaps another time, we can see the performance on opening night.”
Xiao looks at Zhongli. “Yes?” Zhongli says.
Xiao narrows his eyes. But he keeps his mouth shut.
“If you’re wondering if I’m using this as an excuse to simply write off watching dance performances as a business expense,” says Zhongli, “I can neither confirm nor deny that I would ever do such a thing.”
“It would be morally unethical,” says Xiao.
“It would be good business,” says Zhongli.
Xiao bristles. “It would be unethical, and you would never do something like that.”
Zhongli smiles. It makes Xiao feel sick with how much he wants. It makes Xiao feel like a lech. A freak. Like he’s an inch away from being the sort of person who crawls in through Zhongli’s house window and sniffs his clothes. It’s debasing to crawl in the ground for scraps of Zhongli’s affection, deriving sick pleasure from Zhongli’s approval, all while Zhongli just—just thinks that he’s doing the right thing, being the upstanding moral person that he is—
“The weather is beautiful this afternoon,” says Zhongli. “Your therapy appointment slot is nearly over, and I don’t have any appointments after yours. Won’t you stay a while with me?”
By the time Zhongli drops Xiao back off at the office parking lot, the musician is back, and so is his portable electric keyboard. “Good to see you again,” says the musician, as Zhongli’s car slides out of sight. “We never introduced ourselves, now that I think about it.”
“Who are you to Zhongli?” says Xiao.
“Just a friend of his,” says the musician.
“Just a friend,” says Xiao. A friend who knows what Zhongli’s mouth tastes like after he’s been smoking.
“Ex-friend, even. We’re not on the best of terms.”
“You don’t see each other anymore?” Why would this musician be hanging around Zhongli’s office building if that were the case?
The musician holds up his arms defensively. “If you’re worried about me as competition, rest assured, Zhongli personally took it upon himself to make himself single on every single legal contract he’s in. We are people who used to know each other. We share—” he pulls out an unlabeled bottle of wine from below the keyboard and pops the cork “—a mutual mistake, you could say.”
Sounds like a one-night stand that went badly. Xiao wouldn’t know what it’s like to sleep with your friends because he typically doesn’t have any, but Fushe used to assure him that it never ended well. This, unfortunately, had not deterred Fushe from sleeping with Minu while they were both blind-stupid drunk, which had not been a problem for Fushe and Minu so much as it had been a problem for Fanan, who had been Minu’s fiancée. It had thankfully ended well because they were all committed to the suicidal nature of the special ops team and couldn’t be pissed off at each other, so Fanan had just slept with Yingda and made Minu sleep in the doghouse for a month and eventually they’d made up with “the best sex I’ve ever had in my life” (in Minu’s words, along with some other sexually-explicit facts that Xiao vaguely wishes Minu had not told him) and then Minu and Fanan had proceeded to get married. Xiao had expressed his displeasure with this ongoing drama at every possible turn and Fushe had laughed and told him “You’ll understand the ways of adults when you’re older” and Xiao had reminded him that he was twenty-six by punching him in the arm so hard that Fushe had to get it relocated. Xiao had thought that all his teammates were properly insane at the time, but that had been then, before he’d met Zhongli, and also before he’d been called insane by therapists who’d meant it and could write that on his official military file.
“I thought about what you said,” Xiao tells the musician.
The musician giggles. “My ex-husband used to say that before our arguments. Well, I’ve always wanted to get into a street brawl—”
“I’m not here to get into an argument with you,” says Xiao sharply. He has no intention of being one of those veterans who startles at every sharp noise and knocks the teeth out of everyone who looks at them wrong.
“Sometimes a good argument can clear the air, so to speak! Nothing wrong with wanting to throw hands with the strange guy in the parking lot who kept needling you about your handsome therapis—”
“I came to tell you that you’re right,” says Xiao.
“—oh,” says the musician. “Well, my ex-husband never said that. Carry on!”
Xiao glowers at him. “There’s nothing else to say. I am only considering the fact that I’m not in love with him at all. Or if I am, then it does not mean that it is a rational feeling.” Let alone the fact that Zhongli is an esteemed man who wouldn’t want anything to do with a stunted military creation like Xiao who still wakes up at three in the morning on autopilot and barely understands how to function without a commanding officer. “So I wanted to thank you for your honesty. It opened my eyes to the truth.”
“Now you’re just making me depressed,” says the musician.
“Facts are depressing.”
The musician’s eyebrows are knit so tightly together. Oddly enough, he’s still smiling, as if on autopilot. “But you were so sure of yourself,” says the musician. “You must’ve had a good reason for thinking you loved him.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Xiao pulls out a cigarette and lights it just for something to do. “I don’t know. He’s important to me. But a good therapist should be important to you.” He examines the cigarette burning. “I don’t know. It’s not my place. My job is to reintegrate back to civilian life and pass their tests and make Zhongli feel like he did a good job.”
The musician sighs dramatically. Then he holds out the wine bottle. “It’s four in the afternoon,” says Xiao.
“Misery doesn’t wait for the bars to open.”
Xiao looks at the grungy bottle. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s vintage!”
Xiao snatches the bottle. To his surprise, the wine tastes actually quite good. Bright and clean and airy, with a friendly prickle along the tongue not unlike champagne. Xiao reexamines the bottle and considers that perhaps most of this “dirt” is just discoloration for aesthetic show. “This…”
“So how are you going to break it to Zhongli that you were just using him for his body?” says the musician.
Xiao chokes on the wine. “What?”
“Aren’t you? Since you’re definitely, clearly, surely, obviously not in love with him, but he’s doting and fawning all over you—“
“He isn’t!”
The musician stares at Xiao in bewilderment. “He adores you. He takes you out every week! I sit in this parking lot every week; I’ve seen him!”
“He only does that so I can explore different career options. He wants me to find an occupation I’m happy with.”
“He doesn’t do that for any of his other patients!”
“His other patients aren’t me,” says Xiao.
He means that in the sense of Zhongli’s other patients aren’t ex-military who attended military school and grew up in a military family. “Exactly!” exclaims the musician. “You’re the only one that he dotes on that way—don’t you see?”
Xiao started talking to this person to have an anonymous person to confess his mistakes to, not to his beliefs questioned. “How dare you accuse Zhongli of ever having improper relations with a patient. He—“
“I thought you wanted him to fuck you?”
“Just because I want that doesn’t mean it’s right!” Xiao says angrily, and then claps his hands over his mouth at what he just said. “You—he—Zhongli is an upstanding professional who has never done anything but care about my well-being and provide guidance—“
“He hasn’t fucked you?” the musician says.
“Shut up,” Xiao hisses. “Stop using that word.”
“No, no, really? The way he’s always taking you out for dates, I really thought that you’d been boning for months—“
Xiao crushes his lit cigarette in his fist. “Zhongli would never do such a thing, if Zhongli did care about me that way, because it would jeopardize my reintegration back to civilian life. Zhongli would not be that selfish. And it would have to be illegal for a therapist to have relations with a patient. He wouldn’t let his feelings stand in the way of his principles.”
“Good gods,” says the musician. “You really mean that.”
Nearly shaking, Xiao says, “He doesn’t want me that way.”
Then the musician laughs until he nearly cries.
“Oh, Zhongli never knows what he wants,” says the musician, wiping away imaginary tears, “and evidently, neither do you. My name’s Venti. Have a drink with me, and I’ll prove it.”
(In retrospect, Xiao never asked exactly what Venti would prove.)
Yingda had set herself on fire and Xiao had said that it had made sense. Fushe had burned to death, alongside Fanan and Minu, and Yingda had promised to witness their last moments: Dying the same way that they had was the closest that she could get. Xiao had said that the most love Fanan had ever had for Minu had been when she’d shot him in the head, so that he didn’t have to burn alone. Xiao had said he envied Fushe’s resilience to the end, steadfast to his orders to the last, and most of all, he’d envied that Fushe had not had to survive his brothers-in-arms. He said that it was not a mystery that Fushe had burnt alive in Xiao’s place. He said that he understood that Yingda had envied Fushe so much that she’d followed him to the end and past. He said that if Yingda had ever shared her plans to kill herself—neither confirming nor denying that Xiao had known before she’d lit the match—Xiao would not have tried to stop her.
Then they stuck him in in-patient, and that was when Xiao started to feel thoroughly insane.
It’d been nearly a year before Xiao had been allowed to handle chopsticks without someone looking at him as if he were going to stick it through his own eye. Well-trained and well-versed in what he was supposed to say, Xiao had introduced himself to Zhongli by informing him that Zhongli would be, if he was willing, responsible for coordinating Xiao’s return to civilian life in the out-patient half of the program, and that Xiao was a highly unstable individual who required intensive structuring in his life as well as close surveillance at all times. He suffered from a recurring desire to end his own life and a marked hopelessness in the future and a fixation on the deaths of his previous team. He is, in short, insane.
Is that true? Zhongli had asked.
By this time, Xiao had come to understand why he failed his first psych eval. He’d figured out that it was his decisiveness that bothers most people. If he softened the conviction in his words, spoke less, kept what parts of him that matter to himself, there’s really nothing wrong with him at all. You’re the out-patient therapist, Xiao had said. That’s for you to tell me.
Zhongli had laced his fingers together. For some, it can be deeply reassuring to be considered insane. For many, it is a welcome relief from being held responsible for failures that were beyond their control. For others, it is a welcome relief from being held responsible.
Both of those ideas had sounded horrible to Xiao. They still do.
What I think, Zhongli had replied, is that you have had an extraordinarily difficult life, and you have endured far more than you should. You attended a military school before you served in the military, and before that, you were raised in a military family. For you to feel as though the end of your military career is the end of your life as well is no mark of insanity, and to miss your friends you have lost is a simple matter of human grief. Why would you say that you are insane?
Hearing those words had cemented Xiao’s loyalty to him to this day.
Now, Venti downs another cocktail and says, “Well, sometimes what we think we know is up for debate. And Zhongli always needs a bit of help with what he thinks he knows.”
“And who are you to say so?” says Xiao.
“It has nothing to do with who I am and everything to do with who Zhongli is. You sound angry,” says Venti. “Have another drink. Oh, bartender…!”
Venti sounds like every therapist Xiao’s ever had in in-patient, who frequently said many words that all boiled down to the same three sentences: You don’t know what you want. You don’t know what you think. How are you sure that you are sane? Xiao does take a drink and nearly spits it out again, if only to prove a point. “Zhongli has never once in his life understood what he actually wants,” says Venti as the bartender takes the cocktail glass away. “Two marriages. Three careers. He’ll probably get a fourth and he’ll be none the wiser about why his stint as a therapist was unfulfilling. He’s forty-something and still doesn’t know the first thing about himself.”
“What are you going on about now, Venti,” says the bartender.
“Don’t act like that. People come from all over to hear my divine wisdom,” says Venti. “Hey, add an extra shot of tequila on the next one, will you?”
“So sorry you’ve become this pest’s latest victim,” the bartender tells Xiao.
Xiao holds out his empty beer glass. The bartender refills it without a word. “I’m not a pest! No, listen,” says Venti. “I have a plan. I can—”
“How many bottles of wine have you had,” says the bartender.
“—just think Zhongli deserves something nice, and maybe the something nice should be a fun new boy toy to chew on—”
“I’ve already told you to give it up,” says Xiao. “—I’m not a boy toy.”
“Who’s Zhongli,” says the bartender.
“Xiao’s beloved future true love,” says Venti just as Xiao says, “My therapist.”
The bartender makes an expression like he’s bitten into a moldy fruit. “Zhongli is—” Venti sighs dramatically. “Well. There’s laws about this sort of thing, where you’re not allowed to fuck your patients. For good reason, of course! And Zhongli believes in those laws very strongly, and he is a very principled man. Very upright. Straight-laced. He would never go against what he believes is right.”
Venti spins around and stares at Xiao with a frighteningly sober stare. “But Zhongli is also a sad old man who works all day long with too much money and too much free time and not enough people to share it with. Zhongli needs someone to show him what he wants,” says Venti with the same tone of voice that commanding officers will discuss plans before an operation. “Then he’ll be very angry and call his lawyer and say things like ‘That’s a human rights violation.’ But then he’ll come around.”
“I’m leaving,” says Xiao.
“You’re not,” says Venti.
“You’re pitying me.”
“I’m not.”
“And I think that you’re a jealous, meddling stranger who thinks mockery is entertainment,” says Xiao.
Venti beams. “I,” he says with gravitas, “am the angel of love, who knows wine and song is the best kind of therapy—” he swings around and hops off his barstool and snatches the display guitar from the bar wall “—and it is my business to see everyone find the person who makes their life worth living!”
“Venti,” snaps the bartender.
“LOVE—” Venti sings at the top of his lungs with a strum of the guitar.
“Venti!”
“—is like a ham sandwich, made in a—”
The bartender slams the glass down and leaps over the bar. Venti screams and runs to the other end of the restaurant. Several patrons burst into laughter. “Let him sing, Diluc!” yells a customer.
“—made in a stitch, to scratch a hungry itch—”
“GET OUT,” says Diluc.
Xiao, without Diluc watching the bar, leans over the edge and pours himself another draft of beer.
“LOOOOOOVE,” sings Venti, “is like a big fat joint, tapered to a point, gone too fast and sure to disappoint—”
Xiao grabs the vodka bottle and pours that into the beer, too. People behind him start yelling as if at a sports match.
“Love is like feet, better with pictures, to better beat your mea—AH,” says Venti, ducking under Diluc’s rolled up newspaper and banging right into Xiao. “Love is like clean sheets in the cheapest suites,” Venti sings into Xiao’s ear, “inches from the winter streets, where we pay hotel workers to be discreet—”
Xiao tips the glass up and drinks the entire thing in one go. Several patrons cheer like he’s part of Venti’s act, and Venti laughs and grabs Xiao’s face and kisses him hard on the cheek. ”Love is a retreat, although always incomplete,” Venti croons, “alone together listening to the sleet…”
Xiao’s cheek feels like melted sugar where Venti kissed him.
Diluc throws Xiao out of the bar into the alleyway first, then Venti to land heavily on Xiao’s chest. “Why am I getting thrown out?” says Xiao, annoyed.
“Aiding and abetting his bad songs for the last four hours,” says Diluc. “It’s nothing personal.”
“Love is like a rock in your throat,” Venti sings into Xiao’s ear. Xiao claps a hand over Venti’s mouth.
“Tell him to go pick up some sobering tea,” says Diluc.
“What’s sobering tea?” Xiao says, and then Diluc shuts the door and locks it.
Venti licks his palm. Xiao, who has held grosser things in his bare hands, does not let go. “Lvb mm a mcgh n yrm mrhthg,” Venti sings, at which point Xiao is forced to let go: “—making you sing the wrong note… Shaped like your lover’s heart, and neither sinks nor floats…”
Xiao shoves halfheartedly at Venti. Venti remains splayed flat on top of Xiao, facedown into the crook of Xiao’s neck: “Love is like a… like a lonely moan; I still can’t hear the right tones… lovers naked but unknown; I am wanted but on a loan and… and… to postpone… the bitter arguments on the phone…” Venti sighs. “We cut to the bone I was surprised you weren’t made of stone…”
“The cadence is wrong,” says Xiao.
“It rhymes,” says Venti.
“But it doesn’t have rhythm.”
Venti rolls over. “I miss my Steinway.”
Xiao feels oddly cold without Venti’s warmth, not to mention covered in the sticky bar residue and gritty asphalt. “Would you be nice to Zhongli?” says Venti.
This again? “I already told you that I’m not going to make a move. I’m keeping my mouth shut. Hurry up and get off the ground.”
“It would make him really sad if you didn’t love him.”
“He doesn’t like me that way,” says Xiao grouchily, for perhaps the five-hundredth time that night.
Venti crawls into Xiao’s lap. “You really want him that bad,” says Venti.
“There’s no need to mock me. I’m already aware that I shouldn’t.”
“And for what!” says Venti cheerfully, as if Xiao hadn’t spoken. “Why him? That big idiot, all brain and no common sense, the delicacy of a rhino and just as smart—”
“Don’t talk about him that way,” says Xiao. He can’t stop himself from letting his lip curl.
Venti hangs from Xiao’s neck and peers up at him. Xiao is struck with the sudden conviction that Venti has done this exact thing with Zhongli, and he dismisses the idea before he goes insane. “I don’t know what happened with you and him,” Xiao says loudly, “but I don’t have any interest in hearing your grievances against him. Everyone has past relationships. Whatever happened between you two is your business, not mine.”
“You could call me by his name while we fuck,” says Venti.
“What,” says Xiao.
Venti lays his entire chest against Xiao’s. Xiao can feel him breathing. He’s surprisingly heavy and too fragile; it’s hard to think about anyone as solid when Xiao has seen ribcages snap with the grace of popsicle sticks. Venti is saying something and Xiao is staring at his lips moving and they’re very pretty lips, but not so pretty that Xiao doesn’t know how they would burn, or what ligaments tie them to Venti’s jaw, or the delicate skin between teeth and gum and lip that bleeds best under a knife. Venti says, “We’ll get a blindfold. I know what he’s like in bed. I’ll do everything he’d do and you can pretend I’m him.”
Zhongli has thin, but well-kept lips. Very hydrated. Xiao would say that Zhongli would take longer to burn, but Xiao has never noticed much difference when he was assigned to torch the fields. Fat, muscle, water, bones, short or tall—there was never much enough of a difference between people that it mattered when they burned. “I’ll cover my mouth in cigarette smoke and you’ll never be able to tell the difference between us,” says Venti’s voice.
“N. No,” says Xiao.
“Why not?”
“It’s weird,” Xiao hisses.
“It’s not weird. It’s what you’d want, right?”
Xiao hasn’t been this close to a human being in years. Venti’s skin feels blazing hot; Xiao feels more drunk with another human being sitting on top of him than he has all night. “This way, you can have a little taste.”
Xiao’s hand slips on the asphalt. Venti pins him to the alley floor instantly. This close, Xiao can almost taste the alcohol on his breath. “Don’t tell me what I do or don’t want,” Xiao says.
“You tell me, then. I’ve done nothing but annoy you and make you angry.” Venti tilts his head. “But you’ve spent the whole night listening to me sing songs without cadence and getting you kicked out of bars. So what do you want from me?”
Xiao freezes. Venti’s eyes are very close and oddly luminous in the dark. “Um,” says Xiao, and Venti sighs, and then Venti’s mouth tastes so sour and warm and his thighs are soft in Xiao’s hands and across his waist. Xiao stops thinking and reaches blindly to hold him closer.
“I knew you’d like the idea about—” Venti hiccups directly into Xiao’s mouth. Xiao gags. “—about me pretending to be him.”
“Please stop talking,” says Xiao.
“Yeah, he—” Venti presses little kisses to Xiao’s lips, to his nose, back to his lips. Every time Xiao tries to kiss back, Venti pulls away. “He’s really quiet. In bed. Zhongli is, I mean—”
Xiao pinches Venti’s thigh angrily. Venti yelps and laughs. “Stop talking about him. I already told you that I’m not calling you by his name.”
“Be that way, then. You can think about whoever you like.” Venti winks, except that he is too drunk to wink, and it just looks like a pained wince. “We’ll find out who you were thinking about when you call his name.” Venti pauses. “I’ll do my best to make it realistic to what he’d do, but just remember, I definitely give better blowjobs than him. You know what they say about people who play wind instruments and all that. Fun fact! I actually prefer string instruments.”
“We’re doing this here—?” Xiao says, and then jumps as Venti reaches for Xiao’s belt. “Venti—!”
When Xiao comes, he bites his lip until he tastes blood, and doesn’t call anyone’s name.
“GET OUT OF MY ALLEYWAY,” says Diluc. “AND PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON.”
“You seem worried,” Zhongli says at their next appointment.
Xiao is staring at Zhongli’s bookshelf, full of books on law, history, and funeral practices. There’s photos on his desk in frames, but the photos are all turned away so that Xiao can’t see who’s in them. Zhongli’s left ring finger is bare, but the ring that clearly used to be his marriage ring has been resized for his middle finger.
Xiao doesn’t know how he never noticed before.
More of an ambulance-chaser than any lawyer, Venti had said, which ironically was his first profession before he went into the funeral industry. Two marriages. Three careers. Zhongli never knows what he wants.
Zhongli holds out a cup of tea and a pen. “I’m happy to go over the details again.”
“I know what the paper says,” says Xiao.
Zhongli nods and says nothing when Xiao gives the paper an annoyed look. Zhongli had mentioned a tea shop he’d wanted to see, and as their excursions to find Xiao a profession he might enjoy had increasingly become excursions during which Zhongli took the military’s money to drag Xiao to increasingly expensive venues, the more Xiao had actually enjoyed their three o’clock appointments. The less Xiao talked about himself, the more sane he felt. The less Xiao talked about himself, the more it felt like Venti was right, and Zhongli was just taking him on dates, like they were normal people. He does not appreciate the military’s reminder that Zhongli is technically here to pick Xiao’s brain.
“If it’s any help, I have full intention of reporting back that your reintegration to civilian life has gone wonderfully,” says Zhongli. “Perhaps in the coming months, they will require less… hmm…”
“Surveillance,” says Xiao.
“I try not to surveil you. The military is simply concerned for your well-being.”
Zhongli is concerned for Xiao’s well-being. Xiao worked for the military for his entire adult life and he would not be so idiotic as to say they are concerned for his well-being. “You can tell them whatever you like,” says Xiao.
Zhongli’s phone buzzes. He gives it the most annoyed glance that Xiao has ever seen from him. “Wouldn’t you like to know what I write before it’s sent? You’re also welcome to suggest anything that you would like me to put in your file.”
“Isn’t it unwise to let the patient have a say in what gets said about them?” says Xiao.
“Some therapists would say it’s unwise not to.”
“Then tell them I feel fine,” says Xiao. He blinks. He looks down at his hands folded in his lap, next to the teacup Zhongli gave him. He considers the fact that this may be true.
“Do you feel happy?”
Xiao says nothing for a long moment. “Do I have to, in order to be ‘better’?”
“That may be a matter for each of us to determine on our own,” says Zhongli.
Zhongli blows on his tea and takes a serene sip. Zhongli is a sad old man who works all day long, Xiao can hear Venti saying, with too much money and too much free time and not enough people to share it with. Zhongli’s phone buzzes again. Zhongli ignores it again.
“I have people I care about,” says Xiao.
Zhongli stares at him.
“I think I made a friend,” says Xiao. If friend can be the word applied to someone who sucks your dick in an alleyway.
“That,” says Zhongli, and then clears his throat. He smiles. “That’s wonderful news. Truly.”
“Isn’t that better than being happy?” says Xiao.
“Is this friend recent?” says Zhongli instead. “How did you meet?”
“I wouldn’t want to burden you with the trivial minutiae of my days.”
“I am your therapist, Xiao,” says Zhongli dryly. “It is my job to listen to the minutiae of your days.”
Xiao crosses his arms. “…Next week. We… could go to the art exhibition you mentioned.”
“Will I get to hear about the minutiae of your days if we go to the art museum?”
Xiao resists the unhappy bend that his mouth keeps twisting to. “…I will try.”
Zhongli nods. “I hope that your friend brings you happiness, then.”
If Zhongli sounds sad, Xiao has no proof, since the moment passes and Zhongli stands. “I’ll complete the form and let you see it before it’s sent. I’ve heard the gallery has gotten artists all the way from Mondstadt, and one will be making an appearance there at around six in the evening on the day of our appointment, if you have any interest—a chance to meet someone like him is rare, and his art reflects his background in biology in the most marvelous ways. Every painting he’s done has an anatomical viewpoint that borders on unfeeling, but truly, the attention to detail could only be done with love, creating a truly lovely paradox in the viewing experience…”
Whatever Zhongli says next, Xiao is distracted by the door right next to Zhongli’s. Zhongli’s office is part of a two-office suite that shares a single waiting room, and until this moment, Xiao had always assumed that Zhongli simply leased both rooms in the suite, since the other room never seemed to be used. He has never seen the light in that room turned on before now.
“My business partner,” says Zhongli. “Another therapist. We share the lease on the office suite.”
The door has a small, fog-tinted window. The light is yellowing. “I didn’t even know you had a business partner,” says Xiao.
“He keeps unusual hours,” says Zhongli without smiling. Zhongli’s phone vibrates a third time, and this time Zhongli silences it without expression. Only when the light goes off does Zhongli’s smile return. “Same time next week?”
Venti is what Fanan would have called—delicately—a “lonely fuck.” He talks a lot and says little and promises nothing. It’s a wonder that someone who won’t even commit to a standing appointment could ever have committed to marriage. Xiao can so barely comprehend the idea of Venti promising to love someone else for the rest of his life through hardship and suffering that, whenever Venti mentions his ex-husband, Xiao imagines that Venti simply emerged into the universe already married somehow, and proceeded to immediately get divorced—marriage couldn’t possibly have been something Venti chose at one point. Such a promise of lifelong commitment could only exist as a chain for flighty, airy, terminally-late and chronically-drunk Venti to break. All of this is unrelated to Venti being a lonely fuck, but it is the part of Venti that Xiao both despises—and takes advantage of—the most.
Because Venti’s apartment is a disaster of empty bottles and unwashed clothes and a dozen instruments without strings and it is a horrible place that could only possibly be bearable if it were temporary, and it’s always temporary when Xiao spends the night. When Xiao visits, it is always the last time. When Venti’s face lights up with laughter, this is also temporary, and Xiao therefore need not feel so afraid. Venti is temporary.
Venti also says things like, “You’re so cute,” when Xiao is trying to wipe Venti’s cum off his face, which makes Xiao question Venti’s definition of cute, but Venti at least knows how to say thank you in his own way. For a temporary friend, Xiao thinks he can do worse.
“So when are you going to tell Zhongli that I’m fucking your brains out every day,” says Venti one day.
Xiao turns the page on the book that Zhongli lent him and says, “I’m not.”
They’re sitting on Venti’s apartment balcony, up on the twentieth floor of a surprisingly respectable apartment complex only a few blocks away from Zhongli’s office. It’s too hot to wear a shirt, so Xiao isn’t wearing one; Venti, on the other hand, is wearing Xiao’s. “It’s none of his concern. It would be highly inappropriate to tell him about my relationships,” says Xiao.
“I’m pretty sure talking to your therapist about your relationships is what therapists are for. Do you understand even a little bit of that book?”
Xiao examines the title of the book: Regional Government and Political Integration in Southwest Liyue: A Military History. “No,” says Xiao. “Please play that properly or I will go elsewhere.”
Venti picks at his guitar, holding it like a cello. “What if you told him about me. Just to see what he’d say.”
“No,” says Xiao.
“If you told him, you might get to see if he’d be jealous. Zhongli is the kind of dense who doesn’t know what he wants until someone’s about to take it from him.”
“I don’t want to burden him with my bad decisions,” says Xiao.
Venti starts laughing. “I didn’t mean to call you that,” Xiao says.
“I thought you wanted his attention?”
Xiao narrows his eyes. “If you’re so interested in Zhongli,” says Xiao, “why don’t you just go fuck him yourself?”
Venti says, “Hm,” and plays something that Xiao doesn’t recognize. It’s a thoughtful piece, contemplative and romantic and slow, with full chords that hold their note to the end. He never stops holding it like a cello.
Xiao knocks on Zhongli’s door at the time of his appointment and makes the mistake of letting the door swing open, and there is Zhongli and Venti standing much too close together in the middle of the room.
They turn to look at him in perfect unison and Xiao’s first thought is that he is in danger.
He knows that he is capable in a physical fight; he won’t be outclassed with a gun of any make; he knows every blade and blunted weapon he’s ever met; but when it comes to words, he is outclassed against most people. Here and now, he has no reason to believe his gut or think that he hasn’t just gone insane, but he somehow knows in that moment that he is the prey.
“I’ll go,” says Xiao.
“Venti was just leaving,” says Zhongli.
“I wasn’t,” says Venti.
“You were. It’s Xiao’s appointment time.”
Xiao looks at Venti as if he could beam the thoughts What did you do into Venti’s brain through sheer fury alone. Venti looks him in the eye and shrugs.
“You don’t have any sense of humor,” Venti tells Zhongli.
“I have a sense of privacy. And a sense of when meddling in other people’s affairs would be unwelcome, and more importantly, rude.”
Venti shrugs dramatically. “Sometimes meddling gets things done.”
“I’ll think about that,” says Zhongli in a tone of voice that says he will not be thinking about that.
“I can provide some details for you to think abou—”
“Xiao,” Zhongli says sharply, crowding Venti towards the door. “Please come in. Venti, if you please.”
“—time is of the essence, as they say! Don’t wait until he’s gone—”
Zhongli wedges himself between Venti and Xiao, pushes Venti out the door, and shuts it hard. Surprisingly, Venti stops talking, so that he can no longer be heard through the door.
Xiao stares.
Zhongli smooths down his jacket. The line of his mouth is without pleasure—neither displeased nor pleased, which is Xiao’s only clue that he is absolutely fucking pissed. “I apologize. That street musician seems to think he knows you.”
Xiao can’t explain why it feels so horrible to think of Venti and Zhongli in the same room—two halves of Xiao’s life, the neat and respectable Zhongli and the carefree and wild Venti. He feels like he should be a better person for Zhongli than the sort of man who’d get thrown out of bars and hang around a dirty apartment with a chronic alcoholic. He supposes that Venti is right—that this would be an easy way to make Zhongli jealous, if Zhongli were the sort of person who cared about Xiao that way or experienced jealousy—but Xiao doesn’t want to make Zhongli jealous. He isn’t even sure if he wants Zhongli to care at all.
Zhongli goes on: “I brought it to his attention that hanging outside the building doing nothing but playing bad music on a cheap keyboard is bad for the business of those of us who actually work within the building, trying to earn a genuine living.” Zhongli casts a narrow-eyed look at the unused piano sitting in the corner of his office. “He could have better things to do with his time than harassing my patients and interfering in matters that isn’t his.”
“He didn’t say anything about…?” Xiao says.
“About what?” says Zhongli.
Xiao shuts his mouth. “Nothing.”
Zhongli crosses his arms. “This piano just takes up space,” he says suddenly, looking at the piano that has stood unused for the entirety of Xiao’s therapy appointments here. He shuts the keyboard cover, so that the Steinway & Sons label disappears. “I really should get rid of it. Xiao, let’s go.”
Zhongli’s quiet has the inaudible grind of tectonic plates roiling under the earth. Without Zhongli’s several hours worth of spoken trivia every time they’ve gone anywhere, Xiao becomes uncomfortably aware of how little he himself speaks. The result is that the car ride is silent. The purchase of the gallery tickets is silent. The gallery itself, full of other patrons of the arts who choose to view paintings without speaking, is silent.
The weather is thunderously hot, with a humidity that sticks Xiao’s hair to his skin. After only an hour, this is preferable to staying inside the gallery.
Zhongli comes to find him when Xiao is halfway through his second cigarette. “Apologies. The curator recognized me, and we struck up a conversation about an upcoming exhibit about ceramicware.” Zhongli eyes Xiao’s cigarette. “I didn’t know that you smoked.”
I didn’t know you smoked, either, Xiao doesn’t say. “Would you like one?”
Zhongli sighs. “I shouldn’t. It took so long to quit.”
Because Venti made you? Xiao thinks. He doesn’t say this either.
“What did you think of the gallery?” Zhongli says.
Xiao doesn’t care for art. He just thought Zhongli would enjoy it, and he thought that Zhongli would have something to say if they went, and he likes listening to Zhongli talk, except that Zhongli proceeded to not do that because of whatever Venti told him. Xiao has half a mind to send Venti an annoyed text about ruining their date, but he supposes that they’re not supposed to be on a date in the first place. So Xiao just shrugs, and Zhongli sighs.
Then, of course, it starts raining.
By the time they’ve scrambled into the car, they’re both soaked, and Xiao is mortified about the state of Zhongli’s leather seats. Despite Zhongli’s best efforts, he doesn’t manage to get the car on before the rain starts coming down so hard that the windshield wipers can’t keep up, and Zhongli leans back in defeat. “Hm,” says Zhongli, looking amused for some reason at Xiao dripping wet like a drowned rat, which Xiao would be annoyed by if he wasn’t distracted by the smudges at the corners of Zhongli’s eyes.
“You wear eyeliner?” Xiao blurts out.
After so many hours of wearing an expression like stone, Zhongli’s laugh sounds startled out of him. Zhongli has such an unpracticed laugh that it looks awkward—beautiful, of course, with soft wrinkles that Xiao didn’t know were there, but still stilted. Xiao can’t stop himself from staring before Zhongli notices. “Sorry,” says Xiao quickly. He clears his throat and looks away.
“No, no. Oh, the eyeliner really is everywhere.” Zhongli pulls out a handkerchief—a real god damn cloth handkerchief—and looks at himself in the rear view mirror. Oddly, he starts laughing again. “I look like I’m attending a rock concert.”
Xiao starts shivering in the cold blast from Zhongli’s car air conditioner. Sympathetically, Zhongli turns the air conditioner off and pulls off his jacket and hands it over, which Xiao really wishes he hadn’t if only so that Xiao wouldn’t know what Zhongli smells like. The jacket is soaked through, but it’s warm from Zhongli’s body heat, and it’s so large that Xiao can cover himself from the cold air completely.
“Well,” Zhongli says to Xiao. “I’m sure that this is what you were thinking of when you came to therapy today.”
Zhongli still has the afterimage of laughter in the corner of his mouth, and this is what Xiao is staring at when Zhongli says, “Is there something on my face? Is there still eyeliner I missed?”
“No,” says Xiao. Then before he can stop himself: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh before.”
Zhongli pauses. He folds the handkerchief neatly and tucks it into the pocket of his jacket, which Xiao happens to be wearing. “I do not laugh very often. Despite my best efforts, I think I still spend…” Zhongli thinks about this. “At least eleven hours in the office a day.”
Xiao chokes.
“Although it’s only seven on the weekends,” Zhongli says. “Ah, and about nine on the days of your appointments.”
Whatever expression Xiao makes at that, it makes Zhongli laugh again. “Oh, yes. I am quite aware that I have a problem. Even before I went into counseling, I spent most of my days working, and I did not choose a line of work that evokes joy in any one of my careers.” A brief silence. In a rare show of self-consciousness, Zhongli fiddles with the radio, but can’t seem to find a station he likes. “Naturally, for all the fine clothes and precious items that I own, they do not quite make one laugh the way that people can, and people cannot be acquired as easily as items.”
The echo of Venti’s words makes Xiao’s skin crawl, and Xiao looks at him with incredulity. Zhongli smiles at that, too. “I’m afraid my social circle is quite small, although my business network was vast, and is sometimes mistaken to be my social circle. Such is the natural conclusion of working so often. Even my first wife was my business partner first. We were both lawyers, before we decided to change careers together. And when I remarried, my husband—my ex-husband, now—he had been a former client of ours.”
Zhongli turns the radio off. The rain beats hard along the roof of the car. There’s nothing visible through the windows, which continue to sleet with water, although Zhongli continues to examine the windows rather than look at Xiao.
“I divorced my ex-husband a while ago,” Zhongli says. “My first wife and I spent our lives amassing wealth, and then came the cancer, and it turned out that for all our hard work—no, no condolences needed,” says Zhongli, with the brusqueness of someone who has heard apologies for this many times over. Xiao shuts his mouth. “In any event, Guizhong would never have the time to enjoy what we’d built together. And my ex-husband…” Zhongli sighs. “I don’t mean to regale you with such history. This is your therapy appointment, is it not?”
“I would like to hear it,” says Xiao.
Zhongli looks wry. “Well. As the story goes, my ex-husband spent most of our brief marriage drinking away the money Guizhong had saved. And I did not like that.”
Xiao stiffens.
“He said she’d meant those savings to be enjoyed, and she wasn’t here any longer anyway, and…” Zhongli sighs. “When I think about the matter, I think that I should not have buried her myself. I wanted the funeral to be done right. I didn’t trust anyone else to do it. And I thought that if I did it myself, it would make it easier to let her go. Funerals are for the living, as they say.” Zhongli says nothing for a long moment. “But even still. I did all the rites. I said the prayers. I sewed the shroud myself. And still, when he spent her life savings on silly things like wine and song, it felt like he was killing her.”
Xiao sits straight upright. “Who is he?” says Xiao. “Where is he? I will talk to him. I can—”
Zhongli starts laughing. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, and with his face flushing red, Xiao pulls Zhongli’s jacket around him and tries to unclench his fists. “I appreciate it. I do. But the odd thing is, now I think that he may have had a point. My wife and I worked so hard, for so long, and amassed so much. And for what?” Zhongli leans back on the bench. “Now I think, perhaps life should be wasted in the name of enjoyment. What else is life good for? It cannot be saved like Mora. It cannot be guaranteed like financial forecasts or company growth. I thought his actions wasteful, as if life does not waste itself. It slips by without purpose, and if we do not enjoy it as it goes, it will have disappeared before long without mercy or apology.”
Zhongli looks over at him. Xiao nods.
“Yes,” says Zhongli. “Sometimes, I think about what he said. Sometimes, I think that he was right.
“Xiao, life has been hard for you already. It is important that you find that sort of happiness. Wherever you go, or whoever with. If there is anyone who deserves to enjoy life to the point of wastefulness, it would be you.”
Zhongli’s hand lifts, as if to reach for Xiao’s—to pat him, or touch him, Xiao doesn’t know, because he stiffens, and Zhongli pulls away smoothly as if it never happened. “The rain is letting up,” says Zhongli, and turns the windshield wipers on. “We should probably be off to find you dry clothes.”
In this moment, Xiao does not know how he could explain how he knows what he knows to a therapist. They would ask him for evidence, or for what thought process he took to get that idea, or imply gently that Xiao imagined the entire thing. But Xiao knows what he saw just then. And in that moment, Xiao saw that Venti was right: Zhongli did adore him the way he shouldn’t.
Xiao walks into Zhongli’s office the next week a whole hour early. “What are you doing here?” says Xiao.
Venti looks up from where he’s examining Zhongli’s unused, unplayed piano. “What are you doing here?” says Venti.
“My appointment is later today.”
“A whole hour later. You’re a bit early, aren’t you?”
Xiao clenches his fists. “I have to get a new therapist,” says Xiao.
Venti’s eyebrows raise.
Xiao presses his fingers into the bridge of his nose. “I—you were right. About Zhongli. And the way he feels about me. And—”
“Really?” says Venti.
Xiao backs away the closer Venti comes. “That’s not a good thing. It’s not proper. I don’t want to jeopardize his career.”
Venti keeps walking closer. “You’ll break his heart all over again. He’ll just get another career.”
“Sleeping with a patient isn’t something you can just get a new career after. I’ll just transfer out.”
“Will you tell him after you transfer out?”
“It’s better that he doesn’t think of me.”
“Isn’t that for him to decide?”
Xiao waves the idea away. Venti, without smiling, steps closer, until Xiao has to back up against Zhongli’s desk.
“Don’t you think he would make a choice if he knew that the choice was there?”
“Stop,” says Xiao. “You’re entertaining impossible ideas. Leave it alone.”
“But—”
“No,” says Xiao.
Whatever expression is on Venti’s face, it’s the closest that Xiao has ever seen him to being annoyed. “The thing you want is right in front of you, Xiao. What are you so afraid of?”
Xiao doesn’t know. Xiao doesn’t care to know. He thinks Zhongli deserves better than someone who has to go to therapy for two years and got written up for letting his squadmate kill herself. He doesn’t want to be the kind of person who has no friends and sleeps with a stranger because the stranger gave him the time of day and a kiss on the cheek. He knows he shouldn’t be the kind of person who sleeps with their therapist because Zhongli deserves someone who wouldn’t be so deranged as to lust after anyone who bothers to be kind. He just wants to be not insane.
Venti crowds Xiao up against Zhongli’s desk. “Fine, then. If you’re so dead set on doing nothing, you could just go to therapy every week like nothing happened,” says Venti. “You could sit across from him and listen to him talk. You could watch him watching you. You could think about how he’s probably thinking about how bad he wants to fuck you. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Xiao knows where this is going, when Venti stands this close to him. “Zhongli will be back any second,” Xiao hisses.
“It’s a whole hour before your appointment,” says Venti breezily. “You really think that we can’t finish in an hour?”
“We are not having sex here.”
“It’s the closest you’re ever going to get to fucking him,” says Venti. “What, are you saying you’ve never been sitting in here, listening to him prattle on about whatever he talks about nowadays, thinking about how he’d look with his mouth on your cock?”
Xiao honestly hadn’t thought that he’d been thinking about anything too awful—he’d looked longer than he should have at Zhongli’s arm cuffs, or his legs when he crossed them, or Zhongli’s waist when Zhongli reached to pick up pens from his desk—but now that Venti’s voice is in his ear and Venti’s hands are holding Xiao’s waist, it’s as if the thoughts had been in Xiao’s head all along. Zhongli holding him against the wall. Zhongli lifting him onto his desk. Zhongli’s fingers gently pulling Xiao’s waistband from his skin, the way Venti does now. Venti’s breath is warm against his neck and Venti is pressing Xiao back across Zhongli’s desk, standing right where Zhongli always sits when Xiao first comes in, and for a moment Xiao is surprised that Venti’s eyes are green and not bright gold when Venti tilts his head down to look at him.
“I don’t think about anything,” says Xiao. Venti smiles widely.
“You don’t think about getting fucked across his desk?”
Xiao does now. “No,” says Xiao.
“Getting under the desk,” says Venti, “undoing his belt, sucking his cock while he takes a phone ca—”
“No,” says Xiao.
“Him fucking you against the wall while there’s another patient in the waiting room, just on the other side, listening to your moans while he—”
“Why is he the one fucking me in all of these ideas,” says Xiao.
Venti bursts into laughter. “I wonder,” he says, and before Xiao can ask him what that means, Venti pushes Xiao up against Zhongli’s desk and unzips Xiao’s pants.
In the corner of Zhongli’s desk, there’s a picture of Zhongli and a woman in wedding attire who Xiao doesn’t recognize, and for the first time it occurs to Xiao that that woman must be his first wife. In the photo, they look happy, insofar as Zhongli ever smiles. By the time Venti’s gotten around to putting Xiao’s dick in his actual mouth, Xiao’s already biting his bottom lip hard, and he’s not sure if it’s because he’s staring at Zhongli’s fucking wedding photo, or because Xiao is too much of a lonely idiot to say no to Venti anymore. The sounds Venti’s mouth makes are disgusting, and no matter how many times Xiao tells him to be quieter, Venti carries on with another exaggeratedly loud noise, and Xiao has to shut up or he’ll moan aloud and then Venti will really laugh at him. “Feeling good?” Venti asks, with a voice that barely sounds hoarse.
Xiao unsticks his throat, which is almost painfully tight from how hard he’s been trying not to make any noises. “Hurry up,” he says raspily. Xiao cannot believe he’s letting Venti bully him into this.
“You’d tell me if you were getting close, right?” says Venti. He licks his own palm and strokes Xiao hard but too slow, and Xiao grips the edge of the desk with his nails.
“So you can use it against me?” Xiao says through gritted teeth.
“Well,” says Venti in a comically low whisper, “how else am I supposed to keep you quiet? Who knows who’s outside in the waiting room, right? Maybe Zhongli is out there right now.”
“He’s not,” says Xiao unsteadily. But the thought makes his head spin, and not in an unpleasant way.
“Maybe he’s listening to all of this right now.” Venti’s hand makes a wet noise against Xiao’s cock, and all of a sudden it’s the loudest noise Xiao’s ever heard, especially in the silence of Zhongli’s office. “And we haven’t even gotten to the part where you suck my dick. Since that’s only fair, after all.”
“So you can moan like a porn star and get us caught?”
“I wouldn’t,” says Venti, mock offended. He pulls Xiao closer to him, still stroking Xiao almost absent-mindedly. “See, this is about you, not me. And if Zhongli is out there in the waiting room, I’m sure he’d want to hear from you. The best blowjobs are a little messy, I think, right? Lots of spit. You can rub my cock against the inside of your cheek and Zhongli can listen to me tell you how good you are at sucking cock, and then I’ll be sure to fuck your throat until you gag, nice and loud, and then a bit more so he can hear how good your throat feels when I fuck it—”
Xiao makes a noise and, as if Venti knew that he was about to come, Venti takes his hand off completely. The sudden lack of stimulation makes Xiao’s entire body tense. He can’t stop himself from gasping. Blearily, he blinks his eyes open when he hears the shutter go off, and Venti’s smile is entirely too smug as he examines the photos on his phone.
“What are you doing with those,” Xiao says raspily.
Venti feigns disappointment. “You don’t want to show Zhongli what we’ve been getting up to on his desk?”
Venti wouldn’t actually send them to him, is Xiao’s first thought. Venti is not that insane. “Just—hurry up and finish this,” says Xiao at last.
Venti grins widely.
When Xiao doesn’t get to come for the fifth time, the phone shutter clicks again. “You look lovely like this,” says Venti’s voice, and Xiao tries to close his mouth and catch his breath. “Perfect for the camera, I think. Oh, are those tears?”
“No,” Xiao says deliriously. He tries to peel his eyes open, but the overhead lights are blinding from the water in his eyes. “I’m not… I just…”
Xiao is flat on his back on Zhongli’s desk and Zhongli’s laptop has long ago been knocked to the floor. Venti crawls up to straddle Xiao’s waist, pressing his weight against Xiao’s painfully hard and naked cock. Xiao wants to scream. Venti’s tongue in his mouth feels like a lifeline, and Xiao kisses him back with the desperate hope that it’ll stop him from begging, but it isn’t enough to get him off and Venti holds him down when Xiao tries to grind up against him. “Not yet!” Venti chirps.
Zhongli will come back any moment and You fucking asshole and Please please please are all on the tip of his tongue and all Xiao manages is, “Venti,” but Venti seems to hear what he meant to say.
“Well,” says Venti, training the camera on Xiao again, “I haven’t been touched even a little bit, right? It’s only fair that I get to have some fun before we call it a day.”
Xiao closes his eyes and hears himself make a noise like a whimper.
“You don’t like it?” asks Venti.
Xiao has never once in his life begged for anything in bed and he is not starting now.
“Hm? Xiao? You don’t like being fucked on Zhongli’s desk? Personally, I think he would like it.”
Xiao shudders. Venti pushes Xiao’s legs together and when Xiao opens his eyes again, Venti slides his cock slowly between Xiao’s thighs, teasingly close to Xiao’s own cock. He can just barely feel the friction, but after so many times of almost coming, it makes Xiao feel like he’s going to crawl out of his own skin. Venti points the phone camera right at Xiao’s stomach, where Venti’s cockhead pokes out between Xiao’s legs. “I bet,” Venti says aloud for the camera video, “Zhongli’s thought about fucking you in this office more times than he can count. I bet the only thing he’d be mad about is that he didn’t get to do this himself.”
Xiao whimpers and squeezes his legs together in a vain attempt at friction. “Ah, no,” says Venti. “Hold still, Xiao. Have to pose right for the camera, or else Zhongli won’t be able to see—”
“Please,” Xiao blurts out.
“Please what?”
Xiao can’t breathe. When Venti points the camera at his face, he covers his face on reflex, but he can’t bring himself to tell him to stop. Venti drags his cock against Xiao’s thighs so close to Xiao’s balls that Xiao finally cries out. “Please what?”
“Please just fuck me,” Xiao spits out, and once it’s out of his mouth he can’t stop: “Venti, please, please, just let me come, Venti, please—”
Venti slams the phone down and wrenches Xiao’s thighs apart. “Cute,” he says, and then he’s stroking Xiao so fast and painfully hard that Xiao nearly wails when he finally, finally comes. Distantly, Xiao can hear Venti laughing in delight, and vaguely he registers Venti stroking himself until he comes in wet, warm stripes across Xiao’s exposed stomach. If Venti has any intention of wiping the fluids off of Xiao, it clearly takes a backseat to Venti picking up the phone, again, and turning the video off, and snapping one last picture of Xiao covered in both of their cum and too exhausted to really care what Venti does with those pictures. Venti admires first the photos, then Xiao, and then kisses Xiao with an oddly chaste peck on the lips. “Thanks!” he says.
Xiao groans and sighs rather than trying to decipher what that means. “What time is it?”
“Hmm,” says Venti, and checks the phone screen. “Right on time, I think.”
Probably a few minutes before Xiao’s appointment is supposed to start. Xiao has to go scrub himself down in a bathroom somewhere first. He couldn’t live with himself if he showed up to his therapy appointment with Zhongli—neat and clean and perfectly-ironed-clothes Zhongli—with his hair mussed from Venti’s fingers and his lips bruised from kissing and also covered in Venti’s cum. And he’s exhausted, like he’s been running for hours.
“Here—” Venti throws Xiao’s shirt back on, haphazardly puts Xiao’s pants back up, and tousles Xiao’s hair again. “Great.”
“How do I look?” says Xiao.
“Like you just got fucked over a desk.”
Xiao sighs.
“Relax! You look perfect,” says Venti, pats Xiao’s cheek, and hops over to the door.
“Wait!” Xiao says. “I haven’t—”
—fixed my clothes, is what he means to say, but he doesn’t get the words out before Venti throws the door open, and there, of course, is Zhongli, sitting in his own waiting room looking murderous while Xiao is still on Zhongli’s desk wearing an half-zipped pair of pants and a cum-stained shirt and reeking of sex.
Venti beams.
Zhongli’s fingers slowly curl into fists.
“Venti,” says Zhongli.
“Darling,” says Venti. He stands to the side, letting Zhongli have a full view. Xiao fumbles to get off Zhongli’s desk and contemplates throwing himself out a window. “Like what you see?” Venti coos.
“Get out of my office,” says Zhongli.
“Your walls are very thin, aren’t they? You can really hear everything from the waiting room.”
“Stop talking,” says Zhongli.
“Not happy I paid you a visit?”
“Leave,” says Zhongli.
“I’m happy to see you. You look just as beautiful as you did on our wedding day—”
“Venti,” says Zhongli.
(Oh, Xiao is going to be sick.)
“Would you look at the time!” Venti exclaims in mock surprise. “Looks like it’s four already. Xiao, you totally missed your appointment.”
“It’s been two hours?” Xiao blurts out.
“Anyway!” says Venti. “You know where to find me, dear. I’ll pick up your eggs from the store later.” And without another word, Venti walks right past Zhongli, who does nothing but follow him with his eyes as if Zhongli were attempting to kill him with looks alone.
“I’ll. Go,” says Xiao.
Zhongli stands. As Xiao scrambles to make his way out of the waiting room, hopefully to never interact with Zhongli ever again, Zhongli only stands aside. “I apologize for his conduct,” says Zhongli in a voice like steel.
“I,” says Xiao. “I’m sorry. I can’t apologize enough—I didn’t know that he was married—I didn’t know you and him were—”
“If you are worried about having an affair with a married man,” says Zhongli, “don’t. That man is my ex-husband.”
Now Xiao is sorry for fucking Zhongli’s ex-husband in his office. “You will never see me again,” he says.
Zhongli looks at him. Specifically, Zhongli looks at the line of Venti’s cum that has stained through Xiao’s shirt. “Do not blame yourself for Venti’s actions,” says Zhongli at last. “He enjoys his own sense of humor. We will have to discuss your therapy arrangements next week.”
Xiao really wishes he were dead, actually.
“One more thing,” says Zhongli, as Xiao turns to go. “I understand that he may have deceived you by omission. I will speak to him about it. But whatever it is that he’s told you,” says Zhongli, “he will not have lied.”
Today — 8:32 PM
Xiao (8:32 PM): Where are the photos
Venti (8:34 PM): what photos
Xiao (8:34 PM): The ones you took of me
Xiao (8:34 PM): On your phone
Venti (8:36 PM): oh
Venti (8:36 PM): LMAO
Venti (8:36 PM): that wasn’t my phone
Xiao (8:37 PM): ???
Xiao (8:37 PM): The photos aren’t on my phone
Xiao (8:37 PM): They have to be on yours
Venti (8:41 PM): lol???
Venti (8:41 PM): ok since u need it spelled out for u ig
Venti (8:41 PM): u can ask zhongli about whose phone it was at ur next appointment 💕💕
Today — 9:57 PM
Xiao (9:57 PM): Venti. Come downstairs. I’m outside in the parking lot
Venti (10:04 PM): what why
Venti (10:04 PM): why r u holding a baseball bat
Unsurprisingly, the first thing Zhongli does, one week later, is hand Xiao a piece of paper and say, “I’ve referred you to another therapist. You will continue your out-patient program with him.”
Xiao nods mutely.
“As such, our meetings will terminate today, and I have taken the liberty of already arranging a recurring appointment at the same time with another practitioner.”
Xiao nods again.
Zhongli checks his wristwatch. “Your first appointment with him is scheduled for fifteen minutes from now, to smooth the transition. I thought it would be easiest for you if you transferred to someone close by, so I have asked my business partner to take your case. You already know that he is located in the office next to mine, in the same suite.”
The paper in Xiao’s hands has a lot of clinical language. It doesn’t mention anything illicit, for which Xiao supposes he should be grateful. Zhongli takes out his car keys and picks up his briefcase.
“I have somewhere to be, unfortunately. If you need to reschedule, you will have to ask him, rather than myself. Excuse me.”
And without another word, Zhongli walks past him and out the door.
Xiao sits in the waiting room for fifteen minutes and contemplates that he did not deserve to object, and certainly did not deserve a goodbye. That if this was the last time they ever spoke, it would probably be too soon for Zhongli. Xiao will never be able to apologize enough for what he’s done. Zhongli was right to wash his hands of him. Indeed, perhaps everything that Xiao told him when they first met was true: Xiao is a highly unstable individual who needs—as the in-patient doctors would say—a high degree of structuring in his life, and could not be trusted to operate on his own.
All of it was true in the end. Xiao truly had been a broken individual all along. He is only sorry that Zhongli had to bear the brunt of Xiao’s mistakes.
And so, at exactly 3:15 PM, Xiao pushes open the door to the other room and peers inside to see Venti with both legs crossed in an armchair while he plays a rhythm game on his phone.
“Hey,” says Venti, and then looks up, and pauses, and says, “Motherfucker.”
“What,” says Xiao.
Venti leaps out of his chair and grabs Xiao. “Don’t you see?” says Venti, with a cheer sharp enough to cut. “That absolute fucking asshole gives me a letter saying he’s forwarding a patient to me and tells me he can’t tell me who it is—because he can’t legally fuck you while you’re his patient. So he forwarded you to me, because I’m his business partner. Which means that I can’t legally fuck you.”
“What,” says Xiao.
“And that son of a bitch is going to be waiting in the parking lot to snipe you the second you step outside,” Venti seethes. “I guarantee you the first thing he’ll do is get out of his car and invite you to dinner.”
“He,” says Xiao. “No. He’s not the kind of person who would actually date his patient.” He hesitates. “His ex-patient.”
“You don’t think so? Then leave out the back entrance. You’ll avoid the parking lot. You’ll never see him again. Go out into the hallway, turn left instead of right, and you’ll never see him again.”
“Dating your ex-therapist is the sort of thing that mentally unwell people do,” says Xiao. “Insane people, even.”
“Then turn left. And give me that,” says Venti, and snatches the paperwork from Xiao’s hands. “I need to process this thing. He’s giving me paperwork! I can’t believe him! After everything I do for him! Getting him a new boy toy and everything!” And Venti shoves Xiao out of the waiting room into the hallway and slams the door.
Xiao wishes that Venti had given him a long, eloquent answer about the nature of human choices or a philosophical musing upon the purpose of life, the way that Zhongli would have. Instead, Xiao is standing in a hallway alone, and there are only two options, and he has to take one, and one of them is the wrong one.
Xiao looks down the hallway to the left. Xiao looks down the hallway to the right.
Sometimes, I think about what he said, Zhongli had said. Sometimes, I think that he was right.
Without any other option, Xiao makes a decision.