FanFic'g on the Fly: A Live Audience-Prompted Series

Sleepover

Prompt by @moonhedish2: "Ah Si sleeps over at Shancai's house upon returning from London (Combo: Fluffy Lemon)

(Flashback)

"Daoming Si! Seriously, what are you doing here?" Shancai repeated the question now that Tian Ye had left and it was just the two of them in the entryway alley. She looked at him expectantly, curious as to why the boy she'd mini-sobbed over, not even a week ago, was now standing just a scant 15 feet from her doorway.

"What, can't I come back, just because?" he gruffed back, avoiding any sort of committal or emotionally laden response that would giveaway how whipped he was over her to the extent that not even 5 minutes on the departing plane ride his sister had knocked him out cold to prevent his escape and subsequent groveling for Shancai to pick him and not Lei.

"Oh," came back Shancai's hollow sounding reply, her gaze dropping down to the pavement in front of her and her arms coming up to wrap around herself.

He looked at her closely, there it was again—that voice; those soft brown, long lash, fringed eyes; and the body language, which all gave the impression that his departure had perhaps been painful for her. He'd noticed this same expression and look when she'd ran down the spiral staircase into the Bridge Room, demanding, if he was really leaving for London without saying goodbye.

He'd wanted to hurt her a little then, or not necessarily hurt her, per se, but get the silly girl to understand that she liked him and not Lei and that the longer she denied her feelings the more unnecessary angst she brought to herself and to him.

I guess, if I'm honest, I'm trying to punish her a little, right now too, he thought.

What the boy missed entirely is that for this girl, withholding her feelings wasn't a tactile defense, rather she'd had lifelong encouragement, reinforced by her caregivers, whom had fed her the idea of her being average, not focusing on her herself, and poor support around understanding and identifying her feelings. Daoming Si had been the first person ever to show this much interest and intensity towards her, and she was at a loss as to why.

(Present)

The two lay awkwardly in their beds, his clearly inadequate for his size, along with the ridiculously ill-fitting pajamas that Shancai's mother had made her husband lend him, in the hopes of getting the affluent heir to spend the night. The silence between them was deafening, each of them having things they wanted to ask, things they wanted to say, but neither seeming able to make the first move. Shancai was squeezing the life out of some soft, knit, yellow plush thing, with some odd looking green spikes, while Ah Si lay with his hands folded under the back of his head.

Shancai expelled a long sigh and decided to take a chance. The boy had burned a well worn path into her heart and losing him first, over the ill-fated beach kiss with Lei, and then again when he decided to pick up and move to London, had shown her that her feelings for him were true and deep. What did she have to lose anyhow, she decided? They weren't in a relationship—it seemed that they were incompatibly destined to have a cloud of miscommunication fog up any sort of budding love language between them. So, if anything she was potentially in the position to gain.

Besides, she didn't want to tamp down the fast beating of her heart, the tightness she felt there, and just a general buzz of sensations humming through her body from the moment Ah Si had made his appearance in the alleyway; all signs that clearly told her he meant a great deal to her. It was time to take off the blinders and step into the limelight. She was thrilled, relieved, and happy that he was back, and just as he had declared liking her in the driveway outside his home, she imagined that his showing up at her door and now lying in the infantile-sized cot next to her had to mean something.