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He can’t fall fully asleep in a car, he’s never been able to, but he gets close enough to it as they trundle along down roads that grow smoother and smoother under their tires until the crunch of dirt and gravel and the cracked pavement of the roads through town become the steady hum of the interstate. Mingjue starts snoring sometime not long after that and Meng Yao lets the rhythm of it lull him a little deeper, drifting in the white noise of the road and the AC running on low until Mingjue stops snoring and his dozing is interrupted in regular, quick intervals by a dull orange glow through his closed eyelids; they must be passing near a town, he thinks, or at least an exit ramp that must be well-used for it to have its own set of streetlights.

The glow fades back into soothing darkness but Meng Yao can’t quite go back to sleep just yet, and it’s not even his fault. He’s never claimed not to be extra cuddly when he’s sleepy, an embarrassing habit that he’s never been strong enough to break (not that he has any intention of trying to break it right now) but even if he could he’s certainly not going to do it when Nie Mingjue is so solid and warm against him, holding him close and leaning down every so often to kiss his forehead long and slow like he’s trying to do it without waking him. Just because he can. That’s worth staying awake for, at least for a few minutes.

Meng Yao tilts his head back at the end of one – maybe the fourth one, but who’s counting? – to crack an eye open and make sure Mingjue sees him drop a glance down at his mouth. Mingjue smiles at him (he knows, he’s openly staring) and leans in to kiss him properly with the same lingering tenderness until Meng Yao’s breath catches in his chest and his hand on Mingjue’s chest curls into a tight fist in well-worn cotton.

“Go back to sleep, I’ve got you,” Mingjue presses into his lips when Meng Yao finally has to break away just far enough to gasp a little shakily, trying not to let on how breathless the kiss has made him. Mingjue runs the hand on his hip up his side, over his shoulder, in a few circles between his shoulderblades, only to drag it back down slowly and tuck Meng Yao into his side again, even more secure than before. And who is Meng Yao to argue with that? He steals one more kiss, tipping his head up to glance it off the end of Mingjue’s chin, and then he tucks in to bury his face into one firm, warm pec and drift off a little more deeply than before.

He drifts easily in and out, bumps in the road and the occasional passing headlights threatening to wake him up while Nie Mingjue’s easy breathing and steady presence lull him right back under. It’s not the most restful sleep he’s ever had, but it’s certainly not unpleasant.

He’s tired enough to actually sleep properly for a little while, and when he half-wakes again it’s only because he’s somehow managed to smash his face even more firmly into the hollow of Mingjue’s shoulder and he can’t breathe. He moves just enough to un-smash his nose and tries to settle again, annoyed with himself for waking up, even only halfway, for such a silly reason. He huffs a little sigh and Mingjue instantly responds, kissing the top of his head and releasing the underside of his knee to stroke his shin a few times – up and down, knee to ankle and back – which really has no right to be as soothing as it is.

“We stopping soon, a-Huan?” Mingjue rumbles overhead, dragging Meng Yao a little closer towards being properly awake. He puts up some token amount of fight, tilting his head up to hide in the warm crook of Mingjue’s neck instead and sighing at the feeling of bare skin against his, the steady thrum of Mingjue’s pulse against his lips.

“Mm, at the next exit with a gas station that I see. Is A-Yao awake?”

“Yes.”

“Am not,” he mumbles for the sake of his pride and he bats weakly at Mingjue’s chest when his boyfriend starts laughing at him, low and soft with his jaw tucked up snugly against Meng Yao’s cheek with a pleasant little rasp of morning stubble.

“Alright, you’re not,” Mingjue agrees easily. He slides his hand out of the crook of Meng Yao’s knee again, this time to skim along the outside of his thigh (a mere suggestion of a touch through his jeans), up his side, around the ball of his shoulder, to cup against the back of his head.

All at once he’s much more awake, and the meandering thoughts he’d been vaguely entertaining about Mingjue’s many incredible talents as a heated body pillow capable of kissing and cuddling with the best of them feel a lot more… urgent .

Mingjue runs his fingers through Meng Yao’s hair, the spread of them covering the entire back of his head, and he blinks, his lips parting with a soft gasp against Mingjue’s throat as he tries to tell himself that the heat turning his palms sweaty must be the sun falling on them through the window. Has he slept long enough for it to be dawn? He goes so far as to blink his heavy eyes open and turn his head to look out the window to check-

Oh.

The pre-dawn gloom is still painting the world outside the truck in muted shades of blue and lavender, the mountains in the distance just barely starting to glow gold at their peaks.

Okay fine so the heat under his skin isn’t the sun. He stares at the shadows of trees clustered at the edges of fields; sparse homesteads glowing white like ghosts through the morning fog nestled among them; and the occasional flash of caution reflectors on guardrails alongside the road as he tries to tell himself that maybe he’s just a little flushed from cuddling up to Mingjue.

But the back of his arm is freezing, cooled by the AC even though it’s barely even on. The small of his back is unpleasantly clammy with cold sweat, and as soon as he realizes it he shivers ever so slightly. Mingjue rubs a brisk hand up and down his back a few times and Meng Yao realizes he must admit, with no small amount of embarrassment and incredulity, “Oh my god, I want to have sex with you.”

There’s an unbearable beat of silence in which he feels Mingjue go perfectly still and he could swear he hears the protesting squeak of the leather steering wheel cover under Xichen’s hands.

“You…What? Right now?” Mingjue asks and Meng Yao, flushed and aroused , apparently, just nods somewhat miserably and decides that it’s time to hide in Mingjue’s very nice chest again. It’s slightly less nice when Mingjue snorts and fails to completely contain his laughter, but, well. He deserves that one, probably.

--//--

“Don’t tease him, Mingjue,” Xichen pleads; is that mostly for his own sake rather than Meng Yao’s, because the only thing that can make them harder to resist is them getting playful about wanting to have sex? Maybe. Probably.

Yes.

He makes the mistake of glancing over at them and swallows hard around the sudden tightness in his throat at the way they’re curled up together, clinging and close. And alright maybe it’s early and he’s tired, and maybe he’s feeling a bit emotional about Meng Yao feeling comfortable enough to admit to something so vulnerable, but he very nearly pulls the truck over onto the gravel shoulder to throw all caution to the wind and figure out how they could possibly make that work, logistically, in the cab of the pickup when he and Mingjue are both well over 6 feet tall and barely fit in the thing even in the normal configuration.

(Hm that’s not helping, because they’ve definitely fit in it – well, the bed anyway – in a much more horizontal configuration plenty of times and he’s not thinking about it, because the last thing he’s going to do is subject Meng Yao to sex on the side of the highway in any capacity, but definitely not in the open bed of the truck.)

Mingjue stops laughing and Xichen is quite literally white-knuckling the steering wheel because Mingjue only stopped snickering in favor of catching Meng Yao up in a kiss that, while as syrupy slow as the kisses they’ve traded so far on this trip, is extremely different than the others from what he can tell from such a quick glance at them. Whatever he’s doing this time isn’t soothing; whatever it is makes Meng Yao whimper into his mouth and Xichen has to breathe slowly in and out. He has to focus on the road. He has to-

Meng Yao shifts to straddle Mingjue’s lap and drape himself against his chest and Xichen exhales through pursed lips. He looks so hard for a motel sign or a gas station or anywhere to stop in the distance that he drifts over the rumble strips at the edge of the road and Mingjue laughs at him, just a dark chuckle against Meng Yao’s mouth.

“Keep driving, a-Huan,” he rumbles, one hand on Meng Yao’s hip and the other buried in his hair as he adds, “C’mere baby,” and makes Meng Yao whimper again.

Xichen’s hands are aching around the wheel and he forces himself to focus on that more than the other extremely insistent ache vying for his attention.

Meng Yao rolls his hips, slow and deep, and Xichen swears he can feel some sort of sympathetic sensation of it, a phantom pressure on his own lap that does absolutely nothing at all to soothe the arousal tugging low in his belly both at the thought and the sound the little maneuver drags out of Mingjue’s bared throat as he tips his head back, presses it hard against the headrest.

He wants to tell them to stop, to insist that Meng Yao deserves better than limitations of a moving vehicle for their first time together, but…he keeps driving. The highway is empty but for them, their headlights alone cutting through the predawn blue (though the sky is lightening enough to see beyond them as well). There are no pinpricks of oncoming headlights, only the faint glow of a single set of tail lights somewhere far off ahead of them almost out of sight despite the flat, straight road stretching for miles.

He’s speeding but he can’t slow down, his entire body tense with the thrum of energy that has nowhere to go but through the pedal under his boot, and he exhales slowly again as he listens to his partners kiss, sloppy and breathless, not even two feet away from him. He watches them out of the corner of his eye; his imagination fills in details from the glimpses he can catch in his periphery, the long straight road superimposed with half-imagined rolls of hips and fists curled in dark hair and soft, warm skin bruised in the shape of fingertips and mouths.

The droning of the road and the soft rustle of fabric shifting against fabric is cut through with a sharp metallic zzzip – Mingjue’s the one wearing jeans, he’d been awake enough to get properly dressed while Meng Yao had just stumbled out of bed and straight downstairs at the last possible moment he could, so Xichen’s imagination fills in what Meng Yao’s hands must be doing down between their rocking hips. And then Mingjue gasps in that way that he does when Xichen touches him and his partner’s body abruptly remembers that he can feel good, that he can be hungry in a way that has nothing at all to do with survival, and Xichen glances down at the dash in time to see the little arm of the speedometer tick over to 95.

Xichen tries to ease off the gas pedal as he unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth to say, a little ragged around the edges, “He likes it slow.”

Meng Yao makes an interested, inquiring little noise in the back of his throat and he must take the direction because Mingjue groans, almost too low to be heard over the ambient noise of the road and the AC, and drops away from Meng Yao with the slick sound of their mouths parting to bury his face in their boyfriend’s shoulder and pant for breath around a heartfelt, “ Fuck.”

Xichen fumbles a hand off the wheel to the dash and twists the dial for the AC as far to the left as it can go with a snap of his wrist so at least he can hear the soft press of Meng Yao’s lips against Mingjue’s cheek and jaw, the whisper-quiet rhythm of his hand on Mingjue, the gasp he lets out when, out of the corner of his eye, Xichen sees Mingjue slide a hand down under the waist of his sweatpants to grab his ass and start giving back what he’s getting.

Eyes on the road.

Xichen stares so hard at the road stretching out ahead of them he has to blink to stop his vision doubling, and then he has to blink again and squint to try to make out the shape of a bright yellow sign he can see off in the distance, hoping against hope that it’s-

Motherfucking Dollar General!

His dreams of checking into a Super 8 within the next 20 minutes are dashed in what is quite possibly the worst way he can imagine and he grits his teeth against his impatience to participate, or at least get to actually watch.

100 miles per hour.

Meng Yao slaps his free hand against the roof of the cab and lifts up on his knees as much as he can in the small space, his head ducked to keep kissing – maybe actually biting? – Mingjue’s jaw and his other hand still down between their hips to keep working him over as Mingjue fumbles to yank him closer, both hands on his ass to help him grind his hips against Mingjue’s abs. Xichen debates whether or not it’s worth it to just crash the truck and be done with it if it’ll mean he can be part of this as more than an extremely horny and frustrated sort-of-observer, but of course that’s ridiculous and he knows that. Definitely.

They slow things down again and Xichen tries to do the same, the arm of the speedometer ticking smoothly back down, 100, 95, 90, 87, 82, as Meng Yao rolls his hips with satisfied groans and strokes Mingjue’s dick in between each grind forward, both of them clearly taking the time to savor the sensations until Mingjue swears again and chokes on a tight noise that’s difficult to categorize beyond ‘pleasure’.

Xichen dares to take his eyes off the road long enough to glance to his right and he hopes that the sight of them grinning and breathless against each other’s mouths, eyes heavy-lidded and cheeks visibly flushed even in the dim glow of the dashboard panel and their own headlights reflecting off the road, will stay burned into his brain forever.

“C’mere, I’ve got you,” Mingjue mumbles and Xichen tears his eyes away, back to the empty highway stretching out forever ahead of them, as Mingjue slips his hand around to the front of Meng Yao’s hips and makes short work of getting him off, too.

Xichen exhales slowly, shakily, at the same time Meng Yao does when he relaxes at the end of his orgasm. He glances down at the dash. 70 miles an hour. A quarter tank of gas. He unclenches his aching fingers from the steering wheel. He flexes them a few times, stretching and curling them as he keeps his eyes trained on the road right in front of them, no longer staring into the distance.

The headlights, becoming less and less necessary as dawn approaches properly, reflect off a blue exit sign listing a single business. He glances up and to the right – another yellow sign on the roadside, bright against the pale blue morning.

The click-click-click of the blinker seems loud in the post-orgasm silence of the cab, and Xichen chooses to focus on that as he carefully slows further, 60, 55, 45, 30, and takes the exit. Gravel is strewn across the road from people who take the exit too sharply, tires spinning over the shoulder before they right themselves again and bring the gravel with them. It crunches under the tires as Xichen pulls to a full stop at the sign and indicates again, click-click-click and then he’s pulling out onto the state road, turning right.

The sun hasn’t risen past the mountains yet but the sky is light enough to see the Love’s is quiet enough, no haulers moving in or out of the truck lot, a lone station wagon at the pumps, a pickup in one of the parking spots nearest the station. Xichen pulls into the back of the lot, as far away from the 18-wheelers and the two pedestrian cars as he can get. It’s light enough now that the big LED pole lights in the lot have clicked off, but still dark enough that the interior noticeably dims when Xichen cuts the engine and the headlights go dark. 

The silence is deafening.

Xichen takes a deep breath in and reaches down to his hip to unlatch his seatbelt, surprised to find that his hands are shaking. The belt retracts with a hiss, metal tongue clicking loudly against the window and clattering against textured plastic before it settles in place behind his left shoulder.

He turns to bring his knee up on the middle seat on the bench where Meng Yao should be sitting and finds himself the subject of two equally intense stares that dig right into that pit of arousal in his belly and make the ache between his legs absolutely impossible to ignore any longer.

--//--

What the hell just happened?

Meng Yao clambers back out of his lap to cross the cab of the truck and settle in Xichen’s lap instead. Mingjue stays exactly where he is and stares blankly out the windshield for approximately twenty seconds before he hurries to tuck his soft cock back into his boxers and zip up his jeans, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that yes he really did just have sex with Meng Yao.

He just had sex with Meng Yao for the first time.

He just had sex with Meng Yao, their first time, in a moving vehicle?!

That was definitely not on the itinerary for today but he is absolutely not complaining one single fucking bit.

“You did so well,” Meng Yao mumbles between greedy kisses and Mingjue turns to mirror Xichen’s position, one knee up on the bench seat so he can sit with his back against the passenger side door and watch Meng Yao kiss Xichen absolutely senseless. He kisses with his whole body, his arms curled around Xichen’s shoulders to bury his hands in his hair and arch as close as physically possible, his knees bracketing Xichen’s thigh and his feet haphazardly crammed under the dashboard to try to fit in a space meant for one.

Meng Yao continues, smearing it into Xichen’s skin in between kisses, “So good for us Huan-ge, did you get to see anything?” Xichen nods but he seems too determined to kiss every inch of Meng Yao’s neck and shoulders that he can reach to bother answering with words. “Did you like it?” A ridiculous question, considering who he’s talking to and the very visible bulge he’s currently grinding down on, but Xichen just nods again, more frantically. “Good.”

Meng Yao kisses Xichen for another few moments and then he’s somehow managing to maneuver out of his lap; Mingjue watches him do it but he still doesn’t understand exactly how Meng Yao manages to cram himself down in the footwell, and he definitely doesn’t know how he’s going to get back out of it without either himself or Xichen having to get out and give him extra space to work with, but that doesn’t matter right now.

Meng Yao settles in on his knees and makes short work of getting Xichen out of his joggers and Mingjue slides closer, careful not to kick Meng Yao on accident, to wrap an arm around Xichen’s shoulders and yank him into a kiss that’s more bite than anything as Meng Yao gets his mouth on him.

Xichen shifts restlessly underneath them, his breath catching and shuddering on the inhale and his hand not buried in Meng Yao’s hair smacking flat against the back wall of the cab behind the bench seat, sweaty palm squeaking against the glass of the window in the middle. Mingjue lets his mouth go just long enough for him to exhale in a desperate rush, suck in another gasp, and that’s as patient as he’s capable of being so he dives in again and Xichen shudders hard. One knee knocks against the driver’s side door, the other foot pops up onto the bench seat so he can sling his leg over Meng Yao’s shoulder and Mingjue’s knee. That foot kicks the opposite door and Mingjue grins into their frantic kiss, as pleased as ever to see Xichen reduced to indecorous squirming and frantic motion he can’t possibly hope to keep contained.

He doesn’t last long, which isn’t a surprise and which Meng Yao seems quite pleased by. Mingjue keeps a tight grip on Xichen’s hair and kisses him even after he’s relaxed, but he unfortunately can’t keep himself from laughing just once when Xichen twitches hard enough to kick both doors again as Meng Yao carefully tucks him back into his joggers, which of course breaks the kiss.

“Hm. Sensitive,” Meng Yao remarks and Mingjue snickers, Xichen joining in weakly with a tired, “Mhm. Very.”

They sit together like that for a few minutes until Xichen sighs and drops his head back to thunk quietly against the window and Meng Yao shifts his weight with a little wince when he knocks his head against the bottom of the steering wheel.

“Alright, enough afterglow. Everyone out of the truck,” Mingjue decides and begins attempting to untangle his legs from theirs, which is easier said than done. After a few false starts, a few knocks of knees and elbows and heads against various parts of the truck, and just as many giggling fits (mostly from Xichen), Mingjue huffs and tells the others to stay still for a second. He kicks open the passenger door and manages to extricate himself, stumbling out onto the asphalt and taking a second to right himself so he can reach back into the truck and help Meng Yao slide across the floorboard to join him. His boyfriend doesn’t look thrilled to be pulled across the width of the truck by his ankles, but he should’ve thought of that before deciding to suck Xichen off like that, so Mingjue just gives him an extra kiss when he’s upright, and that at least seems to mollify him.

With the both of them out of the way, Xichen is easily able to kick open the driver’s side door and stumble out of it, one hand on the side of the cab as he runs the other over his face and through his hair, looking mildly shellshocked but quite pleased about it.

“Okay. We go in and clean up, we fill up the tank, and then we get back on the road,” he says and the other two nod. They troop into the Love’s and Mingjue tries not to look like he just got spectacularly laid in the passenger seat of his own truck, but the clerk and the only other customer in the store over at the hot food counter don’t do more than glance at them as they come in and head straight for the bathrooms.

Cleaning up is a quick scrub with paper towels and handsoap at the sink, which makes both Xichen and Meng Yao wrinkle their noses a little but Mingjue just smiles to himself and adores them far too much to call them out on their mutual fussiness.

They clean up. Mingjue takes it upon himself to go to the clerk and put $70 on one of the pumps, leaving the others to buy coffee and a few snacks for the rest of the trip as he heads back out to move the truck and fill it up. Meng Yao comes out with coffee, Xichen comes out a few moments later with the snacks and their change for the gas, and when they pile back into the truck Mingjue slides behind the wheel with his coffee in hand.

They get back on the road, and this time Meng Yao sits properly in the middle with his feet firmly on the floor and his coffee cradled in both hands, his lap taken up with a box of pastries and a few bags of pretzels and trail mix.

“Wanna talk about it, A-Yao?” Mingjue asks as he eases them back onto the highway.

“Later?” he asks, small and uncertain behind the mouth of his to-go cup.

From his spot in the passenger seat, Xichen promises, “Whenever you want if you’d like to, but we also don’t have to talk about it at all. It’s alright either way, A-Yao.”

Meng Yao sips his coffee. Mingjue indicates left so they can pass an 18-wheeler. He indicates right. Xichen reaches out to the dash to turn on the radio; static, a quick flick through the tuner, and then he stops on what sounds like a classic rock station playing a ballad.

“I do want to talk about it, just…later. At the motel.”

Mingjue raises an eyebrow at that and glances down at Meng Yao beside him just as the sun finally crests over the mountains, or maybe the road has sloped up just enough, to fill the cab with bright morning light.

“Yeah?”

Meng Yao peeks up at him through his lashes and then over to Xichen, a sly smile tucked behind his next sip of coffee. “Mhm.” Mingjue glances at Xichen over Meng Yao’s head and finds the same banked excitement that he feels in his partner’s gaze.

They’ll talk about it later.

So they drive on in companionable silence for the most part; they swing through a drive-through for lunch in the interest of time, and when they’re a couple hours out they pull into another truck stop to stretch their legs and fuel up. He and Xichen swap again for the rest of the trip so Mingjue settles in and tucks Meng Yao under his arm like usual. It doesn’t result in some sudden urge to have sex again, which is probably good, but Meng Yao does spend the entire rest of the drive fidgeting with the inside seam on his jeans a solid few inches above his knee so his hopes are still plenty damn high (as is his libido).

They pull into a gravel lot around mid-afternoon, Xichen expertly backing them into a spot between two other beater pickups nearly identical to theirs. The roadside motel is already full, the neon ‘no’ on the sign illuminated, but Meng Yao had suggested a few days ago that they call ahead to book their room and so he’s visibly (deservedly) smug about being proven right as he crosses the lot to check them in.

“I love him.”

Mingjue takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it back out slowly as he watches Meng Yao step into the motel lobby and out of sight.

“Yeah. Me too.”

Mingjue looks over at Xichen to find his partner already watching him, looking quietly devastated.

“You gonna be able to keep it to yourself?” Mingjue asks, though he knows the answer even before Xichen shakes his head in the negative. “Fair enough.”

Meng Yao reemerges from the office spinning their room key around his index finger, and Mingjue wonders just how old this motel is if they’re still using literal physical keys, though of course it makes no difference to him either way. He and Xichen clamber out of the truck as Meng Yao crosses the lot back towards them, smiling and shading his eyes with a hand, and Mingjue makes an executive decision that’ll probably get him in trouble, but what’s life without a little risk?

“Hey. Xichen just told me he loves you.”

Meng Yao stops in his tracks, mouth dropping open, and Mingjue can feel Xichen’s eyes boring into him across the hood of the truck but he doesn’t turn to make sure.

“I do too, for the record.”

Meng Yao’s lashes flutter and he glances at Xichen so Mingjue does too, only to find Xichen burying his face in his hands. Oh okay yeah he’s definitely in trouble, though the fact that Meng Yao laughs in the next moment is probably going to save his ass at least a little bit; Xichen always likes it when Meng Yao laughs. “Couldn’t even wait to get me inside, could you? You two are hopeless. Come on, let’s head up.”

Mingjue grabs their bags, Meng Yao leads the way up a rickety metal staircase to the second floor, and Xichen brings up the rear with an admonishing smack to Mingjue’s ass that just makes him smirk – as far as punishments go it’s not very effective.

Meng Yao opens the door to a room that definitely used to be a smoking room, and in the time it takes Mingjue to haul their bags inside and up onto the rickety suitcase stands next to the broken TV, Xichen has flopped onto the bed on his back, feet on the floor and arms spread out to either side.

“This bedspread is not nearly clean enough for that, ge,” Meng Yao snorts, but he still climbs over Xichen on his hands and knees to look down at him so he must not care too much. Mingjue opens the curtains and flicks on the ancient window AC unit on the off-chance it still actually works, and when he turns back around Meng Yao has leaned down to kiss Xichen long and slow, Xichen’s hands running up and down his arms in a lazy circuit as he lays there and lets himself be kissed.

“A-Yao..the…the thing?..You wanted..to talk about?” Xichen asks between kisses and Mingjue can’t help but roll his eyes, though it’s more fond than anything. He squints at the bedspread but despite Meng Yao’s assessment it doesn’t seem too stained, at least not in any way he finds immediately concerning. He sits down next to the others and Xichen immediately wraps an arm around his hips, the other hand still stroking up and down Meng Yao’s arm.

Meng Yao gives him one more little kiss before he sits up straight and then, after a moment, just gets off Xichen entirely to stand at the foot of the bed. Xichen sits up and Mingjue rests a hand on his knee to keep him from joining Meng Yao, who looks like he needs that little bit of space as he organizes his thoughts. Meng Yao shifts his weight from one foot to the other, tugs at the hem of his shirt to twitch it straight, and then tucks his hands behind his back with a sharp inhale to brace himself.

“I don’t know why I…did what I did. This morning.” Mingjue bites the tip of his tongue to avoid interrupting to ask Meng Yao why he sounds like he’s almost…guilty? “I wanted it. And thank you for indulging me. I…It doesn’t actually change what I said before though. I don’t know how often I’ll want it, and I don’t want it to be the only reason I can share a bed with both of you, I’m still- I don’t-”

“Breathe.” Mingjue says it with enough authority that Meng Yao immediately obeys, sucking in a quick, hitching breath and holding it for a two-count before he exhales again sharply. “We don’t expect you to change for us, A-Yao.”

“He’s right, sweetheart,” Xichen says, so unbelievably gentle in the way only he can be, “we just want you as you are, that’s all. Is that okay?”

Meng Yao visibly struggles to internalize that before he also visibly forces himself to, his uncertainty melting into shy acceptance in the beat before he ducks his head to watch his own shoe scuff against the carpet.

“Yeah, that’s okay. I…you both really…love me?”

Mingjue glances at Xichen and doesn’t even have to wait for his partner’s nod. “Yup. That okay too?”

“Mhm.” Meng Yao nods and drops his hands to hang loose at his sides, and when he looks up to meet their eyes again he’s smiling Mingjue’s favorite sly little smirk. “You make it very easy to love you back, after all.”

There isn’t a force on earth that could stop Mingjue’s grin slowly spreading across his face. “Oh yeah?”

“Mhm. And…since we’re on the same page about this morning…I don’t know what caused it but I’m still kind of feeling…” Meng Yao trails off meaningfully and raises an eyebrow as his smirk widens, “hmm..hot? If either of you wanted to, you know, capitalize on that? Not on that duvet though.”

Mingjue stands up then and takes Meng Yao’s face in both hands to hold him still so he can duck down to kiss him as Xichen practically whips the duvet off the bed and throws it into the far corner of the room in what Mingjue is pretty sure is a clear gesture of intent.