Xingyun Oneshots

of course he could tell (he always can)

A/N: I'm gonna preface this by saying the last chapter was way better and I kinda hate this oneshot, but maybe I'm being too self critical and someone else will like it, anyways on with the story

They really did know each other inside and out. That much was nothing more than undeniable. Best friends for as far back as they remember. 'Attached at the hip,' the citizens of the harbor would call them. 'Soulmates,' Xiangling had once dared to call them. Xingqiu was quite sure she had meant that he and Chongyun were platonic soulmates, but nonetheless, it reigned true.

It truly seemed there was not a thing about one that the other did not already know. Any order at any restaurant or shop. Where the other was at any given moment. The exact specific shade of a favorite color, and all the exact language the other would use to describe that color. Any secret, often times before the boy holding it had even realized it.

With the two of them, all it took to get a secret held tight to the chest out in the open was the gentle prying and trusting eyes of the other. It was truly like magic how they knew each other.

And that closeness was exactly why Chongyun could never know. Exactly why Xingqiu would let himself have just one secret. Because if this one thing was the thing to make it out in the open then everything else would be gone.

No more knowing everything about each other. No more knowing each other at all. No more laughing together as Xingqiu ropes the other into miscellaneous misadventures. No more absent minded handholding as the two hide from responsibility and cling to a youth they're beginning to outgrow. A Chongyun shaped void hole-punched into his heart.

That is what he would be left with, lest he speak out. And so he settled. He settled every day. Maybe Chongyun wouldn't know that he is loved so dearly, but perhaps Xingqiu could make him feel it. Make him feel it in the way that he started so adoringly at him at every given chance. Plausible deniability, call it. He wasn't staring at Chongyun lovingly, he was staring at the lovely reds and golds of Liyue's hills. Certainly not the shifting hues of blue in Chongyun's eyes, that make it seem almost as though one can literally watch the gears turn in the exorcist's head as he thinks.

He settled in the way that he would never dare kiss Chongyun outright. But maybe when lips ghosted across the shoulder of a sleeping man whilst the two were staying together in the Wangshu Inn, the sleeping man in question didn't need to be aware of that... ever. And he knew his advancements were selfish. Love was an ever selfish emotion he had learned. Because with so many people in the entire expanse of Teyvat, the odds of being loved in return was infinitesimal. Love as a concept was selfish. It barred otherwise happy people from truly being happy because of soul crushing unreciprocated feelings. It drove people to do things that they knew may not be entirely moral. But it was what he had to do to save everything. Which was probably even more selfish of him.

He settled, even when he was alone. Even in the privacy of his own bedroom, he had started trying to prevent his selfish desires from fully forming as complete thoughts. He stopped reading romance so his mind wouldn't substitute himself and his dearest friend in for the protagonist and their lover. He started ignoring his own thoughts, as if ignoring them would simply make them go away. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say. However something within ones own mind can never truly be "out of sight," now can it? His attempts to bar his own thoughts never worked, of course. So he allowed himself ten minutes at a time. He could indulge for ten minutes, and then he had to return to the real world and not think about such fanciful things until the next ten minute increment. Self control, call it. It didn't work, but it certainly made him feel a little better about it all, to know he was trying.

But all of his "settling" and "self-control" and "plausible deniability" were all for naught. Because the two knew each other inside and out. And there were no secrets between them. Even if Xingqiu wanted to think there were. Of course Chongyun had known the whole time. He had never pressed on the issue, but of course he had known. What may have been the perfect plan to fool anyone else in the whole of Teyvat was nothing between Xingqiu and Chongyun. Because of course it wouldn't have worked. A single glance shared and the two were practically reading each other's minds. Sneaking around each other did nothing. And Xingqiu should have known that from the start. That it simply wasn't possible to have a secret between them.

He also should have realized, though, that in his own guarding of his heart, he had looked over the one that had been so neatly wrapped and handed to him. So protective of his own feelings, he hadn't realized Chongyun's had been there the entire time. He truly was an idiot.